Corporate Confession and Repentance - Part 2 — Richard Owen Roberts

Corporate Confession, Fasting, and the Solemn Assembly

With fasting, weeping, moaning, knocking, retorting to his rich, compassionate, romantic, loving, kind, forgiving voice, who knows whether he will not turn and relent and leave a blessing behind him, even a great offering and a libation for the Lord your God.

Oh, the competence I am consecrated by, for prayer, a solemn service. As I have told you already, these words were taken seriously by our Father. This nation became a great nation. Whenever there was some evidence of God's displeasure, the spiritual leaders called the nation to fast and pray, and now the spiritual leaders often believe that only they can do it.

I meet with men who tell me that we're in the midst of the greatest revival in the history of the world, and they say it with utter sincerity and stupidity. They think because they've got 15 ,000 people attending their services that they're in the midst of revival, and they never noticed that the devil was in the back applauding for the whole thing.

And it never occurred to them to wonder why the 15 ,000 people know nothing about transformed life, or the Holy Spirit's power, or the beauty of holiness. But let's be direct and plain now. Has your church called the Solemn Ascension?

Follow the center line. Well, the basics are laid out here. You gather all the people together. But your church, I do know that in most churches the solemn ascension is defeated before it starts, because you can never get all of the people together.

Imagine, and I hear two pastors on the front row, imagine commanding the presence of every person, and every person is saying, yes, pastor, we'll be there. I thank God for those churches where pastors have some authority.

Pastoral Authority and the Call to Gather the Church

But I'm going to say it very plainly, and I'm a little off my subject, but as it's in my mind, I'm going to say it. I think a lot of pastors have destroyed their own usefulness. They want everybody to think of them as just one of themselves.

Don't call me Mr. Roberts, call me David. When I come around, don't expect to see me dressed in a way that marks the fact that I'm a servant of the living God. I'm in my overalls. I clad hands of people.

And when I preach a serious sermon, I stand at the door and say, don't believe anything I said. I want you to know I'm just doing my job, but I'm just a real guy like you. What's funny? How many men destroy their authority and oppose it, and then complain because people don't respect them?

Before solemn assemblance can be really meaningful, we've got to have pastors of such stature before God that they can issue commands from the throne and the people know it's not a blabbermouth pastor talking, but almighty God speaking through his sermons.

And when Job called the people together, they came. It is such a subject of solemn assembly. In his scriptures, you'll see over and over, the people came. And the people sanctified themselves. They gathered the elders, verse 16.

They gathered the children and the nursing infants. There are multitudes of churches that can't hope to see God do anything significant because the major portion of their congregation is in junior church.

All the kids are out of the service, and a significant number of the leaders are out of the service, messing around with the kids. The kids ought to be in the solemn assembly. God didn't say, have a nursing for the infants.

No, he says, let the mother come with the nursing infant at her breast. Solemn assembly is called, are to be present. Verse 16, let the bridegroom come out of his room, and the bride out of her bridal chamber.

Can you imagine? The honeymoon was revoked. They were given long honeymoons in those days. Some estimated a year. However long it was, it was revoked. They were required to be present, although for a church, where when a call to solemn assembly is issued, everybody comes.

And pastor, if you know good and well that you issue a solemn assembly call and everybody wouldn't come, I'd work in the direction of ridding the church from those that care. One of the greatest revivals that could happen to an awful lot of churches is what we used to call a backdoor revival.

Removing False Converts and Seeking True Conversion

When a lot of people who have no love of God, but they love authority and control, get so angry at the gospel that they leave. Now, I'd rather sing than hurt. But many of them have heard the gospel for more than 50 years and have never bent low before the cross.

Why should we allow this stubborn group of people in their 60s and 70s and 80s and even 90s, often, rule the church of God and keep the spirit of God out? If need be, I would drive them out with the gospel acts.

But I would prefer them to stay and to get right to Christ. But I would be unwilling if I were a pastor to let a handful of unretentioned people prevent the spirit of God from doing a mighty work. Amen.

Let the priests, the Lord's ministers, weep between the porch and the altar, and let them say, Spare thy people, O Lord, and do not make thine inheritance a reproach. My dear brothers and sisters, that's where we're at.

God's inheritance in America is a reproach. His name has become a binding among the nations. The wicked in our day look at the shriveling, snot-nosed church and laugh. Many times I've heard them say, I've read it in priests, Christianity is dead.

Their old church and ethics will never, ever raise their head and interrupt our lifestyle again. We want the battle. Let the world win. There was a time when the church influenced the world for good. When the world didn't dare do certain things except at night and behind closed doors.

But now it's the world that influences the church for evil. There's much more of the world in the church than there is of the church in the world. I have often said in meetings like this, and I mean this exactly as I stated, the negative influence of millions and millions of people who call themselves Christians and are not is vastly greater than the positive influence of a handful of true believers.

Every time we add another false convert to the ranks, we strengthen the hand of the devil and we give the world another cause to celebrate. And where does it begin? It begins with priests, the Lord's ministers.

Weeping between the corpse and the altar, and crying and saying, spare thy people a while. Go make thy comparisons to be put. Why should those among the people say there is their God? Verse 18, then the Lord will be zealous for his land and will have pity on his people.

And the Lord will answer and say to his people, behold, I'm going to send you grain, wine, oil, and you'll be satisfied and full with them. And I will never again make you a reproach among the nations, for I will remove the northern army far from you.

I will drive it into the parched and desert land, and its vanguards into the eastern sea, and its rearguards into the western sea. Do you remember that plague of locusts I described where winds arose and blew them into the sea?

And billions and billions of carcasses of dead insects washed up on shore? Our land has been swept with evil in a degree rarely compared with Joel's description of the invasion of Ophiuchus. But the very God that drove those insects into the sea could cause even today innocent great breath to arise in this region, and before nightfall the evil could be blown away.

Joel's Promise of Restoration After Judgment

Do not fear, O land. Rejoice and be glad, for the Lord has done great things. Do not fear east of field, for the pastures of the wilderness have turned green, for the tree has poured its fruit. The big tree and the vine have yielded in full.

So rejoice, O sons of thine, and be glad in the Lord your God. He's given you the early rain for your invocation. He's poured down for you the early and the latter rain as before. And the threshing floors will be full of grain, and the backs will overflow with new wine and oil.

Then I will make up for you the years that the swarming locust is eaten, the creeping locust, the stripping locust, the gnawing locust, my great army, which I sent among you. Dear friends, I hope you're not among those silly people who leave this passage and join the latter rain denomination, or make some silly fuss about early and latter rain.

Here's the passage that hangs together. These people have experienced the most awful plague of locusts in human history, and the tragic drought that accompanied it, and God says, I am going to respond to your solemn thanks.

I have heard you, and my heart is gladdened by what I have seen. Your tears have not been shed in vain. Your wails have not missed my attention. I'm aware of your pleas to ministers of the Lord who went between the porch and the altar.

I know that when you issued the call to the solemn assembly and demanded the presence of all, that all came, and I was paying strict attention, and now I've already sent early rain, and I'm going to send now quickly another great rain.

I've brought my son to beat it down from the earth, and this terrible destruction that you've experienced is going to pass quickly. The crops are going to come out with tremendous rapidity. You're going to have more foodstuff than you've ever enjoyed before.

I'm going to make up for the years, but the Lord is pleased. I'd be ashamed before God if I made some silly interpretation of a perfectly precious truth. When God sends revival in six months' time, He can make up for 60 years of loss and devastation.

Your shoes are the time in which to this be done, and that I, and the Lord through God, and the list of others, with my people, will never be put to shame. Now, seventh, it seems to me that the subject of the solemn assembly is just about as clear a subject as any subject to be found anywhere in the Holy Scripture.

God's Judgment Through the Withdrawal of His Presence

But we take the genius to understand God hates sin, and helps Himself, yes, to turn His back upon the unrepentant. Not because He's a God of loving-kindness and great grace. He was sent for immediate judgment.

Can you ever thank God for that? Would you ever get down on your face before God with utter seriousness and thank Him that instead of sending the final judgment to America, He has graciously sent for immediate judgment?

You say, well, what judgment does He send? It's twofold. It's the judgment of the withdrawal of His manifest presence. When God is in the midst of His people in a selfless way, they don't dare sin. Does anybody dare to sin today?

Why, the question has to be refreshed. Is there anybody afraid to sin? Well, thank God, here and there, one or two. But the vast army that calls itself the army of God does not fear sin. We are singing greedily with both hands, openly.

Many of you understand that in a city where the police force goes on strike, there's an immense and an immediate increase of evil everywhere. And if you've had experiences such as I have had, I'm recollecting a specific experience where I was driving from my office home one night, and glanced in my rearview mirror and realized there was a police car following me.

I was immediately badly uncomfortable. I looked at the speedometer. Well, if it isn't the speed limit. I thought about the last place where I had turned, had properly signaled, checked where I was in the lane.

All was well. Couldn't think of anything I was doing wrong, but still the police car was behind me. And then, to my consternation and grief, I realized his lights were blinking. And the only thing I could think of was that I was driving a very old vehicle and maybe some part had fallen off.

So it was a very busy road, it was curved, and I had to look for a place to get off. The side of it. And as I was trying to get off the roadway, I glanced again in the mirror and to my amazement, the lights weren't blinking.

And it still felt very uneasy. And I glanced again and they weren't blinking. And then it dawned on me that it was the ray of the sun hitting the lenses of the police car light that made it look as if they were blinking.

But you will understand when I tell you I felt no peace or rest until we came to the next intersection. He turned left and I went straight. It was only then that I knew he was behind me accidentally and not on purpose.

The manifest presence of law and order has a remarkable effect in arresting evil. Nearby where we live in Illinois, I had noticed for a number of years that parked at the gate of a major subdivision was a police car.

Every time I passed there, day or night, seven days a week, there was that police car. And I thought, isn't that amazing? How can they afford to have a police car to be there all the time? And then to my astonishment, I read in the newspaper that the citizens of that subdivision had pooled money together, purchased a used car, painted it to look like a police car, parked it at the gate of the subdivision, and the crime rate in their subdivision was less than a third of the crime rate all around there.

Even imitation police. That's what's happened in fact. I stood down in the airport in Albuquerque a while ago, waiting for my flight to be called. That's the gate, just coming away from a series of meetings.

Stood there, just praying and musing over what the Lord had been doing. It was in fact the case that I mentioned this morning, that the men were collecting the workmen's comps and so on illegally. And I stood there at the airport, and I was musing about what had been going on, and I glanced over my right shoulder, and there is a large-sized policeman staring at me.

So I say to myself, I don't recognize him. I wonder if he was in a meeting. Should I go and speak to him? Well, I'll just wait quietly and see what happens. So I just stood there. After a bit, I glanced again.

He's still staring at me, like I'm comfortable with it. Still wasn't clear in my mind what to do. So I waited a bit. He's still there. So then I thought, well, I'll just sashay backwards a little, see what happens.

When I went back perhaps six or eight feet, I glanced again, and it was nothing but a piece of cardboard with a life-size image of a policeman on it, and I said, you know, he does just not withdraw of his manifest presence.

And so people sit without fear, people in the chair, people who know better, people who once met over little lies now engage in the grossest iniquity and not fear. Slips down the cheek. God has judged us.

He's turned us over to the power of our own iniquities. It's as if he said, you won't do things my way. I'll let you see what it's like to do things your way. But there's another judgment that has accompanied this withdrawal of his manifest presence.

Spiritual Drunkenness as a Form of Divine Judgment

We'll read it out in Jeremiah 13, the judgment of spiritual drunkenness. When God's people sin and will not repent, he forces them to drink of the wine of his wrath to exact it, so that they stagnate out with drunkenness.

Did you ever study drunkenness? If I ask you to list now the 12 characteristics of a drunken person, did you know what they're all telling you? You only did a big sum of them, and they stand up to speak.

You don't know a single thing they've said. It's just stupid. And they think they've never spoken more intelligently in their whole life. That's what a lot of sermons I listen to are like. They're nothing but garbled words of absolute nonsense.

Lies all over the place. He stinks so you can't get anywhere near him. And yet he'll rush up and put his arm around you again, wonder why you decoy him. I understand. He's no idea of his filthiness. We have multitudes in the church today whose lives are so filthy that they literally stink.

And they don't even know that they're drinking wine. I'm not going through the list of 12, but you sit down and write the marks of drunkenness, and you'll see that every single mark of drunkenness is a mark upon the church today.

We're a drunken people. We're under God's judgment. I repeat again what I said already. Don't fool me. We say if we're not careful, God may judge us. He has it already. But the appalling thing, the grievous thing, the thing that I can't understand, why, why, why, why are we so slow to inquire?

Or what is your grievance with us, and what must we do to be right? Instead, we blame somebody else. Well, if it wasn't for those rotten politicians, things wouldn't be this way. If we could just get these abortionists out of the land, then we'd be all right.

The Church's Responsibility for Cultural Evil

That's what God hates. No! God has no quarrel with the abortionists. It's surprising when a sinner's sin is with his own people. There was a time when the abortionists could not have been right, because the pure Church of Jesus Christ was salt in the earth and right in the earth.

We've all had salt in the earth, and we cease to be right, and all manner of evil can spring up around us, and we foolishly blame the evil ones instead of coming right down to the root of the issue, which is the Church.

It is the unrepentant Church that God has brought unto judgment, and the judgment of God upon the Church has enabled evil to thrive in the world. Don't waste your time picking with worse than plenty. Spend the place to pick it.

Pick at your own heart. Some blame it on the educational system, and some on the media. I'm not holding them up as primate examples of dignity and purity. I'm just saying God's quarrel is with us, and not with them.

And when the Church is right with God, the world will be afraid of its own evil. I look back over the years when I've been in Spain, and I see the horrendous changes that have occurred. And I often think of this question, is it that there is so much more evil in the world than there was when I was a young man?

I don't know for sure, but there is one thing I know absolutely, and I've referred to this already, there was a time when evil men were afraid of their wickedness. And now, the most violent and awful things occur on the street corners and on the television screens of evangelicals, and there's no quiet about watching.

John the Baptist's Call to Repentance

And that leads me to the final segment of our gathering today, and I want to come back now at the end to the subject of repentance once more. And I want to ask you to turn with me to the book of Matthew, the portion that I'm about to read will be quite familiar to many of you.

Chapter 3 of Matthew, verse 1,. Matthew 3 verse 1,. And on those days John Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, saying, Repent. For the kingdom of heaven is at hand. For this is the one referred to by Isaiah the prophet, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make ready the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.

And himself had a garment of camel's hair, and a leather belt about his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. And then Jerusalem was going up there, and all Judea and all the districts around the Jordan, and they were being baptized by him in the Jordan River, and they confessed their sins.

But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, You drew the vipers. Who warned you of me from the wrath to come? Therefore bring forth truth in keeping with your repentance.

And do not suppose that you can say to yourselves, We have Abraham for our father. For I say to you that God is able from these stones to raise up children day and night. And the axe is already laid at the root of the tree.

Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. As for me, I baptize you in water for repentance. But he who is coming after me is mightier than I, and I'm not even fit to remove his sandals.

He himself will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. And his winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will thoroughly clean his threshing floor, and he will gather his meat into the bar, and he will burn up the chalice with unquenchable fire.

So the words of John the Baptist and the Pharisees and the Sadducees would not seem to me to be suitable words to address to you. I might be wrong in refusing to do so, but there's nothing in my heart that says that I ought to address this body as a generation of vipers.

There are plenty of vipers in the churches. I don't think many have been here. I would expect probably none came today. But there is something very urgent that this passage enables us to focus on. As you read here in Matthew, you get the impression that when this gang of Pharisees and Sadducees came forth after him, John baptized them.

Is that your impression? Some shaker had known that. Well, that was my mind. We read in a very plain statement that he didn't baptize them. Luke 7, verse 30. Well, that leads me to confirm something that I said this morning.

He discerned those who were ready for his baptism, and he discerned those who were not ready. Now, we're not pretending that the baptism of John is the same as the baptism of Isaiah. We know that the baptism of John was the baptism of preparation, of readiness.

We read these words quoted from Isaiah, the voice of one's pride in the wilderness. Make ready the way of the Lord. Make his path straight. We know that John's task, assigned by the Holy One, was to prepare the way of the Lord, and to warn people to be ready when the Lord came.

And we know that the scribes, and the Pharisees, and the Sadducees were not ready when Christ came. And when Christ came to his own, his own, we see, did not know that. I only call them a generation of vipers, but he refused to baptize them.

True Conversion Versus Cultural Christianity

If you're listening, I know it's been a long day for you, but actually I bet you're the same length of time as I am. I am aggrieved deeply at the realization that many of us do not know the times in which we live.

Has it occurred to you, this sounds so silly, but it's so urgent, has it occurred to you that we're not living 50 years ago? 50 years ago, a preacher could get in the pulpit and drop a tidbit or two of truth, and the vast majority were sufficiently vividly literate to be able to handle his little droppings of truth.

But you wouldn't send a missionary to some war-heathen nation and expect that they could drop sweet little tidbits of God bless you, and you have a wonderful plan for your life, and things like that, and see any real harm.

We are living now in one of the world's foremost pagan nations. We are living in a time when the vast majority of people in our churches don't even know that there are two major parts to life. We are living at a time of gross stupidity, of physical ignorance, and yet we are proclaiming a message that consists of juicy tidbits that the rank unbeliever can't relate to.

And whenever you induce someone to a decision for Christ, based upon a fraction of the truth, you get less than a true convert. I repeat, discern that there were people coming to him for baptism who were not fit to be baptized, and he would not baptize them.

But many pastors who stand in the room today will baptize anybody that comes along and asks for it. I ask not only where is your heart, but where is your head? Do you realize that you are a major contributor to the problem that has overswept us and is destroying us as a nation?

All these millions and millions of people who call themselves Christians, and they are no more saved than Satan himself. Nobody is saved as a result of ascending to truth. We read in our Bibles, the devil believes and trembles.

What does the devil believe? He believes in the virgin birth of Christ. Many in our churches don't. He believes that Christ was indeed the incarnate son of God. Many of us who call themselves convicts.

He believes that Jesus taught and preached and worked many mighty miracles. Many of you believe that? He believes that Christ was persecuted from the earliest days of his ministry and put to death by religious leaders.

Religious leaders couldn't imagine themselves as guilty of anything of such a thing. He believes that Christ was not only crucified, dead, and buried, but that he rose again from the dead. There are millions of people that doubt seriously that Christ ever rose far away from the dead.

But actually, he believes it. He also believes that when Jesus Christ died, he died as a suffragette in the land, who took upon his own shoulders the sin of the crucifixion. The devil believes that everyone who kneels to Jesus Christ as the Pentecostal Savior will be saved.

But does that make the devil Christian? Why not? He believes it. Well, for one reason, he trembles. I've never seen any people tremble. It would appear to me that the devil has more grace in those church members.

But he's still not Christian. Do you know why? When the Bible calls upon us to believe, it calls upon us to repent and believe. And the word belief is not passive, it is active. True belief is not acquiescence to truth.

It's not, as I said already, mental ascent. No. If I believe and Jesus says to me, sit down and shut up. Believe, let's do as we're told. And to say that you believe, and yet to actively resist, and to refuse to bend and bow, declares the fact that you're not broken, and not transgrident, and therefore not one in whom God makes His consequences.

It requires active obedience. Now, normally when they begin believing, they know everything they're supposed to do. So I'm not talking about perfection. I'm just saying, as the claims of God draw upon your soul, you actively submit.

Active Obedience, Church Authority, and Christian Baptism

I spoke about the solemn assembly. I spoke about a pastor ordering everybody to be present. And in the ordinary congregation, there would be a multitude that would say, Pastor, you haven't done any right to tell me what to do.

And they believe that with all their hearts, because they don't know God. If they knew God, they would know God is too great for them. And they would know that God's way is to speak through chosen spokesmen.

They must resist this. This is part of our American heritage. We love our own freedom. I am as important as the next guy. We pretend that in the great process of reformation, the priesthood of all believers comes down to the fact, I say, shut up, I'll take care of my own life.

You don't have to cross me around, Pastor. Everyone who believes knows that God appoints His man to lead His flock. And then the pastor says, come to the solemn assembly. Believers come. Others stick with carrying the cross.

There are businessmen who are out of the country. They're not making it impossible. They're just saying that belief means active obedience. And I am stressing the wisdom of John the Baptist in refusing to baptize those who were not preparing the way of the Lord.

Now, Christian baptism, as I said, is not preparing the way of the Lord. I have happened to be a Baptist. Many times I wish I were. But I want congregations to do a forgiving for that. In the fellowship in which I minister, we even have some who baptize innocents.

I don't like that. I can do it myself. That's what it means to do congregations, to give freedom of conscience to others. Some baptized by sprinkling, some by pouring, and some by nourishing. Well, I like to nourish them.

I don't make a fuss about it. It's just that it so beautifully represents the baptism of Christ. I go down under water, symbolizing the fact that I'm there. I come up out of water, symbolizing the fact that I'm raised to newness of life in Christ Jesus.

And that some of you are busy baptizing people who never died to himself, who never yielded to Christ the Father, who have not one intention in the world of power continuously to Him. And so we need to deal in the closing moments now with this urge to repentance again.

Repentance as an Ongoing Life of Fruitfulness

And from the standpoint I stressed toward the end this morning, the standpoint of doctrinal error, it's a very profound doctrinal issue when you baptize those who are not ready to be baptized. It indicates a great deal about your own system and your understanding of the message of the Word of God.

Now in this passage, John not only says regeneration of life, but he says again, bring forth fruit in keeping with your repentance. And it's upon those few words that I want to look at my watch and see where we are time-wise.

Oh my word, I have believed the word of your love before. So I once said, was I a fool? No, but I could. I want to stress three things. The nature of true repentance is that it is not a one-time act, but it's an ongoing commitment or attitude.

It's not enough to say I repented. I must say it and know I am repentant. I live as a repentant person. I would not baptize anybody on their profession's name, in pagan society. If you sent me as a missionary 50 years ago to some dark spot on the continent, if you would have instructed me in sending me, don't baptize anyone until they give fruit.

Until they prove that they have understood and have made a response to Christ that is a living and enduring response. We all want the wisdom of missionaries who don't hastily baptize. But dear friends, as I said already, this is the pagan nation.

And some of you are baptizing people on professional faith, and that's all they've got, is a new vocabulary. They've never had a change of heart. They're not new creatures in Christ's kingdom. I would not purposely baptize anybody in a pagan society.

I would give them time to prove that they have truly repented, and that they understood that repentance is not a single act, but a lifetime commitment. Secondly, and I spoke of this somewhat this morning, and so I'll be very brief, we need to learn to distinguish between those who have repented of the fruits, f-r-u-i-t-s, the fruits of sin, and those who have repented of the roots of sin.

I gave you an illustration this morning speaking of persons who commit sexual acts of impurity, who rarely have done anything in confession or given sexual impurity, because underneath almost all impure sexuality is Christ.

I would urge those of you who baptize others, those of you who pray for the Lord, those of you who witness and seek to win others, I would urge you to go to the root, holy root, and never feel any comfort, never feel as if you've done your job surely, never give any word of encouragement or assurance to anybody until there is overwhelming evidence that they have repented of the roots of sin.

It's not enough to say, I'm sorry for what I've done. I must reach that point where I am broken and grieved over what I am. What I am is vastly more consequential than what I do. And we've called all kinds of people Christians who have never repented of what they are, only of something they did.

And you'll learn that distinction and that's spiritual class. Here I will be a bit longer, and if you want to get angry, wait, go ahead. We need to learn to distinguish between what our forefathers described as legal, l-e-g-a, a legal repentance, and evangelical repentance.

Legal Repentance Versus Evangelical Repentance

You know those distinctions? How many of you know what I'm talking about? Let me see if you need to stay for a few minutes. I spoke on this subject in one of the Eastern churches some time back, and at the end of the service, the lovely old gentleman hovered up to me, a very sweet spirited man, quite elderly, and he looked at me ever so graciously, and he said, now Mr. Roberts, concerning this matter of ego repentance.

I said, excuse me sir, I didn't use the word ego today. Well, he said, that's what you were talking about, ego repentance versus evangelical repentance. No sir, I said, I was talking about legal, l-e-g-a-l.

Oh, he said, my apologies sir, you see I'm old, my hearing isn't so good. No, I said, sir, I will not apologize, I will not accept your apology. Instead I must ask you to accept my apology. He said, what do you mean?

I said, your word is better than mine. That's what our fathers meant when they said legal. They meant that which you do for yourself, or against evangelical, that which you do for God. May I put it to you in the form of a personal question.

The repentance that you love, is it evil? It is evangelical. I put it to you pastors and friends of the people. Have you led them in ego repentance, or evangelical repentance? He said, spell it out so they understand.

Let me pretend that this is an evangelistic service, and that we're just about to close with God, even though it is. Many evangelists come to the end of the sermon, and this is what really comes down to.

A series of egocentric issues. You're here tonight. You've been carrying this terrible weight upon you. You're a young woman. You had an abortion. At the time you thought nothing of it. Others encouraged you in it.

You were pleased with yourself for doing it, but for months now you haven't been able to escape the weight of it. You say, this is a terrible thing, I murdered my child. Oh, forgive me. Come to Christ tonight, and you roll the terrible weight off your shoulders.

Is that true? Well, there is truth in it. But coming to Christ to escape a weight is a very soddy reason to come to Christ. The world you feel may turn in this direction. You're here. You're lonely. Your life seems just full of misery and sorrow.

You save yourself often. There's nobody that cares. There's nobody that understands. My husband of years standing just left me. No life. He'll be your friend. What a place to get to bear. There is a friend that sticks closer than a brother.

Come to Christ and get a friend. Is that true? Well, it's wonderfully true. But it's a lousy reason to urge somebody to repent or change the picture a little. Here's the preacher winding up, getting ready for the altar call.

And he says, tonight you have become aware of the fact that you're a sinner on your way to hell. And you have the opportunity tonight to express Christ and to escape hell. And this opportunity may never be given to you again.

Wouldn't it be terrible if you spent all of eternity in remorse? Because tonight, when I appeal to you to accept Christ, you wouldn't do it. Come to Christ tonight and escape hell. Does one escape hell in coming to Christ?