Dead Words — A.W. Tozer

The ability to write. We would not hesitate to say that he's the greatest pope and orator in our organization. Dr. Tozer, Chicago, Illinois, pastor of the South Side Canary Alliance Church. God bless you, Dr. Tozer.

I appreciate those kind words by Dr. Tozer, Chicago, Illinois, pastor of the South Side Canary Alliance Church. I hope that it will be a privilege to counsel sessions at any time. Dr. Brown, as he said here, and I said, over the faces within the range of me here, and I said, criticize and say what you please about these boys.

They're all wonderful. We shall begin without a text. Some text appearance of verse which God gave to my heart. Now, maybe let me say to my heart very greatly when I read it today. Put it that way, in the book of Exodus and to Moses and to me, he said, Lo, you may hear me speak to thee.

So I transfer tonight the responsibility from my shoulders to his. You, the preacher, you're going to deal with the presence in this place. Now, let me begin the sermon by saying to you this which you certainly already know, that in every thought or in every given time they dominate.

The Power of Ideas and Words

They dominate the thinking endeavors of that generation within that field. Now, this that I state, this of certain crucial words and phrases, it is true in the field of philosophy, and it is true in the field of literature, politics, religion.

Every generation, every age, every period in history, certain phrases, certain words, certain ideas, and these become lords over the mind, and they determine the direction of the endeavor of men in that generation.

The power of these words lies that they embody and express. Now, don't let's undervalue the power of an idea. John says, in the beginning was the word. All things were. Students know that when John said, in the beginning was the word, the law of us.

In the beginning was an active idea in expression. An active idea plus its expression. Jesus is called. So that in the beginning was an active idea. Born out of the heart of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

That is around about us in the city of St. Louis or in the city of Berlin or London or anywhere where men live. Everything was grew out of an idea or ideas. Civilization, for instance, it's a fine, I don't know that I know what civilization is exactly, but it's certainly better than the jungle, better to live in the Jefferson than to live in a mud hut and sleep on the floor.

Civilization has its points, and civilization began with a discontented mind of somebody way back yonder, who determined he was going to fix up a little bit and make things better. And so our civilization has come out of that idea.

Take the idea of liberty left in this country, and all that we have, that we see and have enjoyed over the generations, came out of the idea, the tortured minds of certain men, sometimes even in prison those men were.

And they dreamed high dreams of the Jeffersons and the rest of them. And those ideas were embodied in the Constitution of the United States, the mightiest and noblest document Gladstone said ever struck off by the mind of man.

They all began with an idea. So with transportation, somebody somewhere way back down yonder wearing a leopard skin, I suppose, discovered a wheel. He discovered that if you took a round thing and put a hole in the middle, you could roll it easy and you could drag.

It was born out of that man's head. And out of the wheel came automobiles and airplanes and trains and everything. Whiskery, Harry had some simple fellow living in a mud hut somewhere, I suppose. Communication, these gadgets, that there are six of them here before me, seven of them.

They're all born, eight of them. They were all somebody's head. Lee DeForest or that fellow that sounds like macaroni there in Italy, what was his name? They all had ideas, got active and became busy.

And out of it came radio and television and what the English call wireless. Same with the Reformation. The inspiration of the Holy Ghost said, blessed is the man who says the Lord will not impute iniquity.

And that idea went to sleep a long time, came to life again in the heart of the man Paul. And he gave us the book of Romans, the book of Galatians. The idea leaped to life as a thinking of the early church, the idea of justification by faith, and that went to sleep again a long time.

It was born out to life again in the mind of a man named Luther and some of his helpers. We had the Reformation, and it was out of the tortured heart of a man that the Christian and Missionary Alliance was born.

It had to be an idea before it could be a society. A great oak yonder on the hillside, stretching its mighty limbs out in all direction and raising its leafy arms to pray. A long time laying in the tiny acorn that you could put in your pocket.

So the whole Christian and Missionary Alliance with its pioneers all over the world and its two million dollars a year for missions once lay in the heart of a Canadian man named Luther. An idea not as big as an acorn, not as big, scarcely so big that you could measure it, but it was there.

How Living Truth Becomes Dead Tradition

So the ideas, my brethren, are mighty things. Don't undervalue them. But you know there's a catch in this whole business. And the catch is that ideas and words and phrases have a way of living only one generation and then dying.

After they die, they refuse to fade away. They still culminate after their death. We see that more and better, more clearly than we see in any field of human endeavor or thinking. God will come along and he will give to a generation a living good for that hour, a living truth.

And this living truth will become clothed incarnated influence of a phrase or a word or a half-dozen phrases or two phrases. And this phrase will get itself into a bibliography. It will have books written about it, magazines dedicated, preachers to it, preachers going up and down the country.

Preachers will have schools gathered around it and will become a school of thought in its generation. Because it's a living idea, because it came from the heart of God, because it is alive, and creative, and powerful, and great things are born out of it.

The people it helps to create, the next generation usually. But after it will continue to dominate. We have the dead phrases and words and living ideas, but do so no more. And yet those dead words and phrases still continue to determine how, and continue to determine how the preachers in that group will preach and what they'll teach in the school and what they'll get in the magazine, what they'll be written into the books that they'll sell, and what they'll sing in the songs they sing.

But nobody ever said the phrase died generations ago. Nobody stops to think that that word that is bandied by everybody and tossed around and becomes the catchword and center for great groups of people, denominations even, that that word died long ago, and it hasn't any life left in it, and it doesn't do what it set out to do or did originally, and did to the first one or two generations, it ceased to do it.

And so we continue for another generation or two to be dominated by the ghosts of theological zombies out of the tomb, living or dead things that walk like the living. And with spectral voices they call out of the tombs of theology, out of the musty, bony tombs where the...

Nobody ever has the courage to challenge that and say this thing's dead, and look to God for a live idea for a war. So the great dead hands of theological phrases that choke us and choke us. And in this hour in which we live, our lifeblood is being choked off by the continual use of words that once meant something and do mean something still to some people, but don't mean anything to us.

The Dead Words “Accept” and “Receive”

Now I'm going to name only two of them. There are a lot more, and I think somebody could write a book about this if he had time. Is that somebody me? But yeah, I want to mention two words. One of them is the word accept, C-C-E-P-P, in case they accept.

It teaches the door, the doctrine of moral passivity. But it was a good word one time, incidentally in the sense of accept Jesus. Doesn't occur there. But there was a time when it was a living idea. Some set of circumstances with spiritual experiences being what they were, and conditions being what they were in a given generation.

Time when living voices rose and said you're not saved by works, you're saved by accepting Christ. And it was life to it. And men who had been trying to climb to heaven on Jacob's ladder of good works suddenly discovered that they could believe him into their heart and be converted like that.

It was a wonderful word in its day. Fifty to seventy-five years ago in the great campaign of Jesus Christ, it became the catchword for evangelicalism, fundamentalism, full gospelism. And it contained a mighty truth that it's long since died.

But it still stays on. It stays on the theological specter. And it's producing a generation of Christians, the so-called Christians, that are impenitent in their heart, frivolous in their spirit, and worldly in their conduct.

Telling our young people that come to us to be converted, or old people, either for that matter, who say, accept Jesus. So they say, all right, I'll accept Jesus. So they accept Jesus, and that's about all there is to it.

There's no transformation. There's an impenitent root of the being that's never cured. There's a pride that is never crucified. A worldliness that they've never been before. A frivolity of spirit that's beyond description.

And a whole generation running around today, all over our country, that are the victims of this dead theological word, accept. There is one place that I know of, to give you an illustration of what I mean.

They specialize in getting young sailors and boys in service in and talking to them about the Lord. They have a staff, and that staff is supposed to go into the Lord Jesus just before they go overseas, usually.

And one day, one of their workers came to me, a Baptist preacher. He came to me and see me in my stud, and he sat down, threw himself down on a little old davenet, and he said, Brother Tozer, I'm working at such-and-such a center.

He told me what it was, and he said, do you know what the trouble is down there? You won't let me mention repentance. All I dare tell the boys going out to die is that they receive Jesus. The result is, they bow their heads and say, yes, I accept him, get up and sort of smile in a pitiful way.

And he said, some of my scared kids, they're on their way out, and they may not come back. And he said, I don't even dare talk to you about repentance. He said, I'm bound to say only accept Jesus. And all over the country, evangelists are blazing abroad the message, accept Jesus, which has become in our day nothing more than a theological zombie, singing a voice out of the tomb, which means nothing to this generation.

And then the second word in this sermon tonight is the word receive. And that teaches the doctrine of spiritual quiescence. They're both passive words. And the outworking of this receive doctrine is nothing short of a miracle in our country, tragic in the Christian and missionary life.

And I was a young fellow 30 years ago, and I happened to get in the company of an old lady, God bless her memory, too much theology. But she believed the way to get filled with the Holy Ghost was to get down on your knees and die out and open your heart and get filled with it.

And not having very much theology either, thank God, I obeyed. And the result was an almighty invasion of my nature by the Holy Ghost. And that's why I can't preach any sermon without toast and the baptism of the Holy Ghost, because I received that baptism.

But you know, brethren, it wasn't long, even then, very long, until they began to say, receive the Holy Spirit. And some hungry-hearted, pensive-looking young fellow would come and say, the Holy Ghost and his teacher said, why, receive him.

Just receive him, young fellow. Do you receive him? Yes, I receive him. And so the tragedy is, they didn't receive him. And we've sent fellows out by the dozens, even sent them to the mission field, that haven't any better any wisdom than the doctrine of spiritual passivity.

Receiving, receiving. Brethren, these are some dead words, though in another set of circumstances, at another moment, they may again leap to life and become the very words of God. But we have abused those words and caused them to die, and they've died in the house of their friends.

Nothing now to do but believe and receive. And the result is, we do not receive, and whatever kind of belief we have does not change the light. Now I want to give you, in the next few minutes, some live words, which I want to substitute for the two words I claim have died.

Watch them, and when they come to life again, or a situation demands it, use them for their truth. They represent a half-truth, badly understood, and wrecked in our day. And the result is a generation of bewildered Christians that do not know their rights and can't find out.

Purgation and Cleansing from Sin

I got a long-distance call from the city of Boston, Sunday night a week ago, or the last Sunday night. Just before church time, the operator was trying to get me, and it was from Boston, Massachusetts.

The lady said, I just finished reading the Divine Conquest, and my husband and I want to come to Chicago and be filled with the Holy Ghost. Well, I said, you're not going to be filled with the Holy Ghost.

She said, now wait a minute. She said, I don't know anybody in this city that'll tell me how to be filled with the Holy Ghost. I didn't know who to tell her exactly. I suppose there are people that could tell her, but you can't talk too long over the phone.

I said, sister, I can't have you come here. She said, I want to bring her husband and come. She said, we're both candidates. And I said, you go and read it on your knees, both of you, and keep on reading it till the fire falls.

She said, you think that'll work? I said, that'll work all right. Much happened, but I trust that's what happened. Now, I want to give you some live words, brethren. Live words. I believe we preachers ought to take back to our congregations, ought to pray through and begin to preach again.

Words that are not zombies, not dead things, but living things for the hour. One word is purgation. You ever hear that word? It occurs in the Bible, purge me with him. Purge from his old sins, that word purgation.

What a difference it would be if we were a soldier on his way out to die, and we were to say to him, Private Jones, have you been purged from your sins? I think you'd get under that boy's skin. But when we simply say, have you accepted Jesus?

Well, you'll say, I will, sure, and bow his head and say, I accept Jesus, and nothing comes of it, just as he came in. But what a difference it'll make to us, and what a difference it'll make to our congregations, and what a difference it'll make to us, if we go back to the biblical word again, a living biblical word, and say, Jesus Christ came that he might cleanse people.

This is the day of excusing sin instead of purging sin. This is the hour when we write books to praise a little bit of hell and still be a good Christian. Brethren, it's a terrible state of affairs, and we need again to get the fiery word back again, that word purgation.

But somebody will say, you go around telling people they ought to be purged from sin, and they'll think you're crazy. You can't do very much unless you're a little bit fanatical. Let me tell you that.

If you insist upon being proper, you'll be as sterile as the sterilest thing on the planet. And that's our trouble today. We're sterile because we're proper. This is our fanatics, and they're out winning rings around us.

And the communists are fanatics, and they're out taking country, because they're men of blazing ideas, narrowed down to a fire-hot point. And we'd rather be proper. He's a very well balanced man. He has his head screwed on properly.

I don't want anybody to tell me I have my head screwed on. Nobody screws a thing on. And I don't care if they do say you're fanatic, he's a radical. All right, so is Paul, so is Christ, so is Luther, so is Wesley, so is A .B. Simpson, so is Jeffrey, and so is every man that's ever challenged these generations with ideas born of God, and dared throw off the dead white curtains of a theology that's dead, the ideas that are dead, I mean, the phrases that have no meaning anymore, that have been talked about.

You talk about separation, and the regions beyond, and phrases that want were living, breathing things, but today they cease to live and breathe, and we're propagating and perpetuating the grave clothes of ideas of God.

Purgation is a word I recommend to you, brethren. And then there's the word illumination. The scripture says after you are illuminated, you endure the fight of affliction. Nobody expects to be illuminated, leave that to the spiritualists.

I believe in inward illumination. I believe that if a man gets purged from his sin, that there will be a spirit inside the man. And I find that there were Quakers who were illuminated within, and they had a light.

And the old Methodists and some of the others, they raised up a generation of people without much education, without. They picked their teeth with their penknife, and threw the chicken bones to the dogs in the governor's palace, as Peter Carter I did.

They had gone through to a place where they had received a sudden flash of illumination from above. And they knew with an inwardness, the very fact, brethren, that so many questions are being asked these days, is a terrible and a evidence that we're not being illuminated.

The illuminated man doesn't ask questions, he answers them. But in our day, everybody's asking questions. And they'll surround him, begin to ask questions about this theological nicety, antelope hair splitting, and what this theological shaving means.

No illumination, brethren. There was a generation of plowmen years ago that got up and stood up in their blue jeans, and knew more theology than you can learn in any school. The man Isaiah said, I saw God high and lifted up in his train, filled the temple, and he had an illumination there.

The man Ezekiel said that I saw visions of God, and the hand of God was upon me. And what we're dying for in this day is a few men, just a few men, that don't have to go and check with anybody to see if they're right.

That have illumination, that know by nature that God Almighty said this, and here it is. Like it or lump it, here it is. And for the first little while, what'll happen, he'll kick all around. Everybody'll be afraid of him.

He's too hot to handle. They'll be afraid of him. They'll say, well, I'm afraid the poor fellow's in for trouble. He'll flop around a while, and flop around a while, and finally find himself. Make everybody ashamed, that thought he was a little off.

Many illuminated people in these days. I believe in inward illumination, and my friend Bob Bell from Chicago knows him. And this man was, he played an organ in the church for 30 years, and he said he never heard the gong for 30 years.

In addition to that, he had been an organist in the, in some, whatever they call it, of the Mace Summit, and he played the organ for years for the Masons. One day, two tough-looking fellas came in with revolvers.

He was currency exchange, wrote checks, you know, and so on. Wrote orders and cash checks. And when he started to go out, they had been, and they bought him this thing. He said, I've just set the time lock, and I can't open it.

They said, you're lying, and we want the money. My friend Charlie said, I'm telling you the truth. They knocked him down. An early little Charlie on the floor, bald-headed, and helpless, and unsafe. He'd been coming to my church and giving me ties.

Ties so loud, brother, they'd flag a handkerchief. And I couldn't wear them. I gave them to my boys, but Charlie keeps giving me ties. But he wasn't converted. He's just a Mason. They knocked him. Flurry lay, a whimpering, cowed man, waiting to be shot.

One of them said, shoot him. The other one said, no, we won't shoot him yet. Said, we'll make him tell how to get open. And he said, I don't know. He said, God whispered to my heart. He said, tell him that it's a lock, and you can't open it.

And tell him to put their ear against the safe and listen. So he peeped up at him from where he was down on the floor, and he said, boys, listen. They did, and they said, he's right. It's a time lock.

Let's get out of here. So they got out, and Charlie got up. And he was hurt, but he was shocked. He'd nearly, he'd had a little brush with death, you see. So a few days later, listening to the radio, going in his little booth, among the money, surrounded all around him by filthy lucre.

And he heard a man say on the radio that, I don't know what he said, but something or other. It didn't sound to me as if it was a gospel message at all. But suddenly, there flagged mine, illumination from God, and he stood on his feet, completely and radically and instantly saved.

Well, brother, a glorious nuisance ever since. You can't get him out of your hair. He wants to tell everybody. First thing he did was go to his pastor. He played the organ here 30 years and never heard the gospel.

I am converted, and I'm going to leave. And I won't leave until you get a new man. But he said, before I go, I'll claim 30 years' privilege testifying. Poor, bewildered pastor scratched what he had and said, all right, Charlie, you can testify.

You can tell his people that you've been born again. Then he went to 300 men with buttons on. And I don't mean coat buttons either. And he said, he said, boys, you know, I've loved, we've had nice times together, but you know, I'll never be back after tonight.

I've come to tell you that it's happened to me again. God saved my soul. And he said, I'm through now. They said, Charlie, we'll give you a big money if you play for us. He said, I'm born again. Then he went home and here he was a fine musician.

He had popular music all around about him, you know, all around everywhere. Said to his wife, get me a basket. And he said, out she goes. Now, I'll mark you, I'd never told him a word. God Almighty converted him, illuminated him, standing on his feet in the bank.

And so there's Charlie. Charlie's a better looking man now and you can't get rid of him. He holds my hand like a sweetheart in the moonlight. Tells me, oh, brother told her, brother told her what God's done for me, what God's done for me.

And all their instantaneously transformed. And all I thank God for is that nobody told him he ought to accept Jesus. That's all. I thank God nobody wrapped him in grave clothes. He got born again and illuminated.

Renunciation and Separation from the World

And I give you another word, and that's the word renunciation. Getting these words purgation, illumination, renunciation. Jesus said, if any man will follow me, let him take up himself and come after me.

The day in which we live, we no longer teach renunciation. We're not supposing to become Christian. We're not told to, we're not supposed to. We just believe something and accept something. And with all passivity, moral inertia, men go right back doing what we were before.

And there are men in this country who fear of compromising the cross of Christ with the world so you can't tell which is which. And where one believes all. Now you don't have to say amen, I don't care at all.

Because I've done some renouncing. Brethren, when a man is converted, he ought to renounce his old life. And he ought to renounce We're members of a new creation, born from above. Sons of the Father, joined heirs with the Son.

Heaven, hallelujah, is our language. And we belong to a little company, a minority group in the middle of thighs and rejecters of men. But instead of that now, Christianity has become popular. Fundamentalism has become popular.

And it's, I wrote, now some of you won't like this, but I'm sorry for you. I wrote a little script in the Alliance Weekly calling the movie Prayer Meetings a pagan religion. I said it's pagan praying when they pray and then go right back to the set and make another picture.

Some fellow wrote me a letter, a very lovely, intelligent letter. He said, I'm an evangelical, I'm a graduate, and he named a certain fine Christian school. He said, Brother Tozer, your editorial sounded to me like evangelical prejudice against movies.

He said, don't you think the time has come for us to rethink movies in the evangelical circle? He said, there are some good movies and we evangelical Christians ought to go to the bad ones and raise the level of the movies.

And he said, the thing sounds to me like egorical dogmatism. Well, that didn't for me. I had heard that before. I knew even how to pronounce it. And I sat down and wrote him a letter and I said, dear brother, your suggestion that we full gospel people think the movies is old stuff.

The modern has said that 30 years ago. And they rethought the movies with the results that they and the movies are like that now. And there is no separation. And now, dear brother, whenever you hear a man for the right to be worldly, he's covering up a basic unbelief in his heart.

The man who's been purged and illuminated will renounce the world and leave it and get out of it. God converts a movie actress. We Christians have a right to demand that she gets some clock off of the set and never go back.

If God converts a gambler, we have a right that he throw down his cards and walk out and pay everybody that he owes if he can. God converts a poor right to demand that he sell every horse and renounce the old bobtail man and get to God.

When a boy is drowning, a sailor is drowning in the sea, he has to renounce, renounce that little old paddle he's hanging to and grab hold of the thing that can save him. But renunciation isn't anymore.

Charlie, my friend, renounce the Masons. Some of you will feel bad about that, but it's all right. Then I got another word for you. And that's the word immolation. You know what that means? That means offering yourself as a lamb on altar.

Immolation and the Call to Sacrificial Discipleship

When the priest took a lamb and put it on an altar and strapped it down and cut its throat, that's immolation. Paul said that in the 12th chapter of Romans. The saints of God have believed in that all down the years.

Nowadays it's safety we're looking for instead of a place to die. God's people ought not to be looking for safety or a place to die, a place to give themselves to. Why, why was it we were so moved and surprised when Michaelson told us the story of going into a place and sending the plane away and putting himself on the spot where he was in the chimney?

Because it's so rare. That's why it sounded so wonderful. It's so rare. God's people want to use light bulbs to get out of trouble, to bridge over the flames and then go back and live as they did before and never offer them, immolate themselves.

I have a boy that was always ashamed that he didn't get overseas. He was in World War and they kept him in this country. He was ashamed that he had warmed a chair all during the last world war. He stayed in the Korean war team.

They reached out and grabbed him and jerked him to Korea. He was a green kid. He'd been reared and hated anybody. He wasn't mad at anybody. He didn't want to kill anybody. And like everybody else, he loved his own life.

So did all the fellows that he was leaving. Went up there to the reservoir, got up there to the reservoir when that terrible influx and downflow just came there around the first of December when our boys were cut off and our Marines began that epic retreat down on the Kuru and down to Amhang.

And the coast and safety, a marvelous thing but a terrible thing. And he said, those kids were all green kids. They never had handled guns much and they'd never been in a fight and they'd been in fellows' and lawyers' offices until they were suddenly jerked over there without an hour's training and thrown in.

And he said when into the crossfire of the Communists, he said, every Marine hit the ditch. And he said an old Marine officer, an old Marine officer got up and with cold scorn, he said, what do you fellows think you are?

Do Marines get up and act like Marines? And he said immediately, every boy got up and started and he said, I knew it, Dad. I led him into the fire of the Communists. And he said, they fell everywhere and the boys, tall and warm, and went down to get cold in the Korean snows.

My boy said, we brought our dead out with us, Dad. It's a tradition of the Marines. And the boys died there, twisted and bloody, but they died like Marines. Boy out from under him, he was recuperating from his terrible wounds now.

And I've seen that great athletic boy who was once offered a contract, one of the major league teams, athletic and big, in spite of his small father. I've seen him cry like a baby because of the pain and the grief and the shock of the hell they went through.

But now he's not ashamed anymore. Went down twisted and broken, but he went down like a Marine. Brethren, isn't it time somebody saw spots and cushions to fall on and places to hide? And we who claim to be from lowly Nazarene begin to immolate ourselves and hunt an altar on which to die instead of an easy prize?

They're doing it in some places. They're doing it among the Communists. They're doing it, I say, again among Jehovah's Witnesses. But we're the softest bunch. God help us in this day, so soft. I say, let's begin again to preach the offering of ourselves on an altar as a sacrifice in blood.

About ten years ago when I was, I had to settle something, and I settled it, I think, by the grace of God. I had to settle whether I was going to get bald and peter out and get weak and preach in a high voice and look for an easy path Dutch to do and make my bed nicely and move off to a little lake.

It was a cottage and place and live on my, retire. Or whether I was going to be a voice to this generation, come on now. Whether I was going to hunt a place to die and ask God for the privilege of speaking God's words to this generation and let's be what they will.

Well, I can find lots of places to die, but you know the nice part about it is, brethren, that this alliance bunch is that the tougher you get, the more they love you. And the more you want to die, the more they try to keep you alive.

That's wonderful. But we have to arrive at the place where we're sacrifices on an altar. And I've got one more last word and I'm through with adoration. Oh, adoration. You don't hear much about it anymore.

Adoration and the Worship of God

We don't worship God anymore. Dr. Brown likes to sing the old hymns for me because he knows that I'm a fanatic on the old hymns. But I'm a I sing the things that adore my maker. The music of the heart is adoration.

The music of the heart is adoration. And when we get to heaven, we'll find that the harpers harping on their harps are just adoring God. They're not playing Sweet Adeline or Huckleberry Hill. They are adoring God by us.

And a spirit-baptized man will be an adorer of God. Brethren, I don't want to go back and say what the alliance was, old technique, and I don't like it. But I will say this, that I wasn't among the alliance people when they were first.

That is, older than I am by a good many years. But I have written books about them and I have read the old weeklies back to the year 84 and I've talked to the old saints. And from what I can gather, the thing that characterized the early alliance was a melding ecstatic love for the person of Jesus Christ.

They loved Jesus until they shouted it out for joy. The person of Jesus, they adored him. They were harpers harping on their harps. And some of their harlotry, but it was glorious biology. And they sang it to the skies.

They adored God. And it restores adoration in our hearts for the three persons of the Trinity. The Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. So to them, sirs, we praise thee, O God, we acknowledge thee to be the Lord.

All the earth doth worship thee, the Father everlasting. Just cry aloud the heavens and all the powers therein. Holy, holy, holy Lord God of Sabbath, the whole of thy glory. And I, brethren, am looking for the fellowship of the burning heart.

I belong to the alliance. I was a Methodist once, but I don't belong to the Methodists. I claim the Methodists and the Baptists as mine. And I claim everybody that loves Jesus Christ as mine. But I'm looking for the burning heart.

Men and women of all generations and everywhere that loved the Savior until adoration became the new rule. Until they didn't have to be fooled with and entertained and amused as Christ was everything, was all in all.

I want the fellowship of the burning heart. I wonder what the Lord. You know, Mary said, they've taken away my Lord, and I'm no not worthy lady. Listen, brethren, we can be cursed and get nowhere at all.

But if we become prophets and worshipers of God, God will honor us in the hour in which we live. And I think that we ought to go to our churches, whether laymen or preachers, and insist that we adore God.