Ye Are Yet Carnal — Leonard Ravenhill

Ye Are Yet Carnal — Leonard Ravenhill

I have said you would know if you're not with me, for hitherto you were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able, for ye are yet carnal, for whereof there is anonluency, and strife, and division, are ye not carnal and wrought in men?

For while one saith I am of Paul, and another I am of Apollos, are ye not carnal? Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos? That ministers by whom ye believe, even as the Lord gave to every man. I have planted, Apollos watered, but God gave me increase.

So then neither is he that planteth anything, neither he that watereth, but God that giveth increase. Now he that planteth, and he that watereth the plants, and every man shall receive his own reward, according to his own labour.

Paul’s Spiritual Greatness and the Believer’s Poverty

It must be true of all of us that we have our favourite characters in the world of God. And as for Jesus Christ, unquestionably Paul has a place of preeminence in my interest and in my thinking. To attempt to measure Paul by modern standards of spirituality is about as difficult as trying to measure the son of an insect.

I have walked with this man considerably during this very day, and pictured him like a colossus, like a giant. And seeing that he towers into the sky, I have to recognise that at the side of him spiritually I am only a dwarf.

He embarrasses me with his spiritual wealth, so that he makes me conscious of my spiritual poverty. He has left abundant evidence of his great spiritual strength, and so I am forced to recognise my weakness.

He has such an abundance of sacrifice, that my sacrifice looks like sacrilege at the side of it. He knows so much about the power of God, that I haven't even got the soles of my feet wet yet, never mind going to the place of waters to the ankles, or knees, or waters to swim in.

Maybe one of the most embarrassing things when we get to the judgment seat of Christ, is that we were to say that right at our fingertips there was wealth, that not only would make us wealthy in Christ, but would make the Church of Jesus Christ wealthy.

It is of course fundamental to our truth that, as the word of God says, that if a man saves his life, he loses it. But that isn't all the story. If you save your life, you not only lose it, you lose somebody else's.

No man lives for himself, and no man dies for himself. And here is a classical example of a man who confessed that his life was hid with Christ in God. The background of this story of the Church of Corinth is given in the 17th and 18th chapters of the book of Acts.

There is no spiritual evidence that Paul ever had a period of backsliding. I was persuaded in my own mind that this man sat down and counted the costs. He had already had evidence that in following Jesus Christ, he might meet with a premature and unsightly death, as Stephen did, whose death he had already witnessed.

Paul’s Renunciation of Status for Christ

And so when he goes over into the realm of Christ and leaves behind Judaism, he forgets his colossal pedigree and he resigns his wonderful intellect. And there, though once he was esteemed, the greatest intellect of his day, there came a day when men wrote him off and said he was a fool for Christ's sake.

He didn't bear it with repulse, he didn't fight back, he very gladly embraced it and said, well if that's foolishness, then wipe me off as a fool. Now this man lived, as maybe no other man, or at least very few men, have ever lived.

The trouble with most of us is that we have divided loyalties. Andrew Bonner once wrote a wonderful poem, we know the first part of it, we sing it over and over again, Oh happy day that fixed my choice, on thee my Saviour and my God, that's only half the story.

When he got to the last verse, he said triumphantly, now rest my long divided heart. And I come to the conclusion that lots of people, now this may knock your theology sideways, and you may want to knock me sideways after, but I'm quite sure of this, that lots of people after they get sanctified, still have a divided heart.

The proof is that they don't give all their time to the work of God, otherwise they'd be more off to the friendly things. They're divided because they love the things of the world, particularly money.

Covetousness as Idolatry

A Roman Catholic priest startled us not very long ago by saying that for 25 years, he had been sitting in the confectioner listening to the confections of men and women, and he said, I've never, never yet heard one sin confessed.

I've heard murder, I've heard rape, I've met with dozers, I've met fornicators, I've met men and women who have broken every law of God and man, and broken them with repetition. That never in 25 years has anyone poured into my ear this confession, I'm covetous.

We don't call it covetousness, we may wrap it up and call it ambition, we may call it thisness, we may call it this, we may call it other, but right down in the centre of some of those things, there's a little, little rotten worm that's called covetousness.

And Paul says covetousness is idolatry, and idolatry is blasphemy. This man had a complete sell-out to Jesus Christ. We sing, my riches gain, I count but loss. And Paul contends on all my pride. Well, I'd better not argue with you along that line while I'm here, but brother, you get in the trouble when somebody else pours contempt on your pride, not when you pour it on.

Paul’s Conversion and Complete Surrender

Yes, sir. Where the whole realm of nature mind, it would have offered, oh yes, I know that, we've modernised for him now, we don't say love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, we say love so amazing, so divine, shall have my soul.

Brother, it's no good singing lies, it's not true. Right. And of course, Paul said, love so amazing, so divine, that he loved me and gave himself for me as a blasphemer. I hurled men to prison. It's going to be thought within myself that I'd be doing another favour if I went and captivated the men who had lighted the fire of Jesus Christ.

I thought I was doing God's service, but suddenly I was conscious of the fact that there on that road to Damascus, there was Jesus Christ. Herodotus, who is sometimes called the father of history, tells us that previous, even to the days of the apostle, it was possible for a man who had been a slave, if he could escape from his old master, he could run to the temple of Heracles, and there made known the soles of his feet, or pushing his shoulder down on his back, they would brand him with the brand of his God.

That man might come away from the temple, be going down the street in his old master's feet, and he'd say, hi, get that man for me there, and you'd run and arrest the man, and he'd say, bring him here, I'll make you bow, I'll crack the whip over you, I'll make you realise who's your master, you come here and bow and apologise, and then I'll scourge you a thousand times.

The man would come all right. Maybe I wish to see a deborah, he'd get down and poke fun at his master, and before they could crack the whip, he'd say, see that, Sarge, I don't belong to you any more, I belong to my God, I've been to the temple of Heracles, I'm branded with the property of my God, and Paul finishes with a simple allegation, and he says, henceforth let no man trouble me, I bear in my body the owner's mark of Jesus, I'm branded with the stigmata of the cross, the world has no pull on me, money has no pull on me, I don't see a great name, men can't terrorise me, money can't magnetise me, and Christ, my richest gain, my social distinctions, my intellectual distinctions, I count him under done, he becomes all those defences, he ties them all up, and then with time he climbs to the top, he took all his others, and the cross of Benjamin, and the seed of Abraham, concerning zeal 22 in the church, a Pharisee of the Pharisees, he comes right out of the very core of everything that's good, and he renounces it as damn that he may gain Christ, and then we struck with our little denominations, brother some of us need to get dead to our denominations, I'm glad I'm an arteries, I'm glad I'm a free Methodist, I'm glad I'm this, brother I'm glad I'm nothing, the only bit that's left is praise the Lord, amen, well he got one off, and she's at the other side of the road, I don't know why, but they are, he's the same, he's just at the other side of the church, he's not that far away, wouldn't it be wonderful if we could get some people just like Paul, amen, folks just as dead, I know most folks are dead, I don't mean that way, I mean the other way, I mean dead to thirst, dead to ambition, dead to feelings, dead to the pokey feelings of people, dead to being offended, dead to being slighted, dead to being injured, dead, three generations of birth, sanctification, so be that you have it, if it's real it's a death, if it's an effect, oh I just want a bit of help, well I wouldn't help anybody at the altar, what do you want, just a closer walk with God, well get up and walk with him then, why sure, amen, what is the altar for, there's only one reason in the Bible that the altar is for us, and if you don't want to die, well don't come, I don't even have a reputation to look after, so I'm alright, we need to answer the altar, amen, they come from backache and toothache and anything these days to the altar, come because I don't feel so well, because I've had a bad day or something, brother you don't need to come to the altar for that, the altar either comes to get born or else comes to die, that's right, amen, Paul had died, he not only died, he died to everything, so as I said last night, listen I'm brother, you have an obligation, there's not a man or a woman here that's born of God, listen, it may be every cent you spend is robbing the listen field, it may be every hour of the moment you use, you're seeking to get power from God in order to be exiting this world, when it's just smitten with rotten anti-Christian religion and system, we're on a time limit ministry now, the end of the age is rushing in on us, world tides are beating on the church and it's now or never for revival, so we're laying just as though we've got everything in the bag and the soul of 99 people out of every 100 are already redeemed instead of 99 out of every 100 are already damned, and Paul sat on a desert, not only said it, he lived like it didn't he, and you'll find him in the 17th chapter of Acts, there he is, he's on the hill, the oleophagus arguing with men, all gathered round him and when they start reasoning, he reasons, he gives history against history and poetry against poetry and philosophy against philosophy and argument against argument, that's why there's a letter of Paul to the Corinthians, and the Ephesians and the Romans and Thessalonians, there is no epistle of Paul to the Athenians, why?

Well because as far as we know there's only one or two people who live on the top flight of intellectualism, philosophy and speculation and reason, they have those gilded minds that only few people have and he stepped down from the height, not only the geographical height but intellectual height, he came up with an isthmus there into Corinth and faced the greatest challenge of his missionary career, Corinth, the old German commentator Meyer says, Corinth, blessed but sublime paradox, the church of God in Corinth, it sounds as ridiculous as talking about a square circle, the church in Corinth, not long ago a lady came to our home just before I was coming away and she said to one of my boys, what do you want to be when you grow up and he pondered for a little while and he said a man, I said that's good boy, there are not many men around today, no there's not, there's an awful shortage of men, that's right, well if you want me to put it, you become a man, not only a man but a man full of faith and the Holy Ghost, wouldn't that be wonderful, when that lady asked that little boy that question, I remember a woman used to come to our home and every time before she went she asked the same question, what do you want to be, the pastime of some people I take, well I didn't want to be and I had always an answer, I remember one day my father took me out to the coast and there was a stretch of a sea run bright in land and over that sea there's a great big bridge and like boys do, I began to ask questions, how did they lay a foundation there to get a pillar and then build a bridge over, how did they do it, my father didn't know, that bridge was about 100 years old, how did they do it in those days, I know how they do it these days, when the tide's always in, when you've only sand to work on, how did they get the foundation there, I don't know, the hair standing infinitely, how did Paul lay the foundation of the church of God in Corinth, the stores of hair ran through Corinth, when Paul was living and he wanted to attach everything that was rotten to a man, all you did was say he's a Corinthian and you meant he lived right down in dissipation and iniquity and Paul had left the failure behind, here's a difficult, horrible challenge in front of him to establish the church of Jesus Christ, why impurity, immorality, prostitutes were standing in the corridors of the temple, impurity was part of their religion and he leaves failure behind and faces the challenge of Satan's feet on earth, how did he establish the church, do you know how he did it, he must be born again, he's bloody amazed when I try and catch the moon in one hand and catch the sea in a second, think about being born again unless you do something about men being born again, why did Paul manage to be a success here under the power of God when he was a failure of Satan and he gives you the reason that he writes to these people in Corinth, so you see, it doesn't matter very much whether the city's going to hell fire or not, usually the preachers are very clear on what they're saying, then we say, now look you need to bring those converts along to our church because if they go to the Nabbines they wouldn't get fed properly there and if they go through the 3 Methodists they don't have all the answers and if they go to the other Methodists they don't know what they'll get now you bring them to our church.

Church Growth Versus Denominational Possession

We've got the truth, we've put a label on them, we'll feed them, we won't turn them into goats, They don't know any better. Little babies don't know where they're going. Newcomers don't know where they're going.

And they take hold of it. When Graham had his great revival meeting in Portland just a few years ago, people were coming by hundreds to the altar. And people were there with the Bibles and they were saying, now I need to unfriendly, unfriendly, we'll take you along to our meeting.

And they found a certain evidence if you were walking at the altar with teachers and getting under the surface. They found some of the Jehovah's Witnesses were at the altar and taking the converts to the church.

That's guile if you like, craft. I almost feel like patting them on the back that they didn't come in to do it. But I always love my church. Nothing matters. People are perishing in your city, in your town, in your village.

It won't disturb some of the ministers until they're here. Some of them having a revival and then say, friends, we need to be careful about this and say they're getting with us. That's right. I was in a meeting not very long ago.

I'd been treated in that town by a citywide campaign that lasted a little less than a week actually. But one of the greatest preachers in America, it wasn't Billy Graham, he came along. And the ministers had their meeting and they said, yes, we'll take a certain building and we'll cancel all our meetings and we'll agree about the money and we'll agree about advertising, we'll agree about other things.

Any more questions? No more questions. And then finally he said, oh yes, yes, there's another question. All right, brother, let's have it out. Don't start talking on the things over. What's the question?

He said, I want to know what's going to happen to all the concerts. Are you going to give them to us because they live in our area or are we going to hand out the decision cards and say, ten for you and ten for you and ten for them?

Are we going to have them divided equally? What are we going to do with all the concerts? Well, to cut a long story short, they didn't have a lot of trouble. Because after all the days of preaching, they had one concert.

Now don't ask me how they divided him, I never asked. But isn't that the trouble? Right. Lord have mercy. Paul said, ye may have ten thousand instructors. You'll want me to get saved. And somebody comes and says, listen, listen, friend, of course I believe in the inspiration of the Bible from cover to cover, but I want to warn you that there's a thing called dispensationalism and you might get your finger on the promise and you might be going to claim the riches of God and poor bankrupt me.

I've been going round the world tossing, backsliding and half sad and half mad and half bad and sometimes in victory, more often in defeat. Sometimes I hit the devil more often, he rubs me in the dust.

And friend, you need to be careful. I want to instruct you. And they don't know the first thing about anything. They need instructing themselves. But they're just afraid. They believe in inspiration from cover to cover.

And then they get a lot of perspiration over the inspiration and say, don't believe that, because, because, because. Right. Oh, the poor holy ghost gets pushed around these days. Paul says, ye have ten thousand instructors inside the church.

So what? But I have begotten you. That's why he got revival. He knew how to produce people. He knew how to father them in the faith. He knew how to conceive in the holy ghost. He knew how to trouble them until Christ will form them in a minute.

We don't do that anymore. You can hardly remember the last time there were tears in your prayer meeting. You can hardly remember the last time somebody hit the devil, if it were, right on the chin in the prayer meeting and said, I believe God.

That's right. That's the truth. Most of our prayer meetings we just give God advice. We hand him a shopping list and ask him, would he get these sent down our way as quickly as he can, because that would save us having a lot of sweat and trouble actually praying about them, see.

Paul didn't do that. Paul got on a burden. He was an obligated man. I'm a debtor. He had his disease, and he had something that could heal that man's disease. Every man was fettered, and he had a hammer that could break his fetters.

Every man was blind, and he could open his eyes. Every man was deaf, and he could unplug his ears. He was a debtor to the barbarians, to the intellectuals, to the Greeks, to the Jews. Why, we've got 18 chapters of the Acts of the Apostles.

He went in the synagogue. And in the synagogue he preached unto the power of God, and to the very leader of the synagogue, bent on the anointing of Jesus Christ as his Savior. No wonder they take him out of the city.

He reasoned with them in the marketplace. In season, out of season, in night time and day time, dates go different. When we get a burden of a song like that, we'll get revival. Yes, that's right. When we're sweating our throats, we'll get revival.

When we conceive in the Holy Ghost, we'll get revival. When birth pain comes upon, we don't like pain. It isn't an easy age, a flabby age. Our Christianity and Bible Christianity is about as related as a donkey and a therapist.

They're not too near relative. And they're longing to feed on Bible Christianity. Isn't it wonderful? Yes, sir. Makes us debtors. Makes us reckless. We talk about our spiritual pedigree. Are there any Moravians around here?

Any Moravians? Put up your hands. Oh, nobody. Well, Colter once told me, he said, Ravio, the only thing I know about you must be a Moravian. Well, that's good. I'd be glad to be a Moravian. All the Moravians go and say goodbye to their wives and their children, and they stood on the pedestal in the market, and they sold them into slavery, so they might preach Christ to the slaves.

They put an iron collar around their necks, and chained them up to the man, and they booked five men in the royal, and they had to pull a plough to the team instead of the ox to the ass. They died in slavery.

A message of redeeming love, where they wouldn't get their wives unless they literally sold themselves into slavery. Why we don't sell ourselves in a glad bondage to Jesus Christ. My freedom is thy grand control, said Madame Guillen.

Carnality and Arrested Spiritual Growth

But he established the church anyhow. That's the main thing that madame's here. When he wrote this epistle, he writes them at least two years after he had seen them wonderfully born again in the spirit of God.

Now notice what he says. The whole proposition hangs on a preposition. He says, Ye are bathed in, I am in Christ. Ye are yet, Y-E-T, Ye are yet carnal. They were carnal when they were born, and they're still in carnality, and he is concerned that they get rid of this carnal thing called carnality.

Something has erected their spiritual development. They're dwarfs. They haven't grown up. They can't put on the whole armor of God. They can't fight God's battles. They can't bear God's burdens. There are things God wants to show them.

But there are some things you could never show to them. They'd be terrified. They would not reason sideways. They'd be lunatics after it. We pray and ask God to give us wisdom, do this and do the other.

God says, I hold off you. You couldn't even bear it. You're not big enough to take it. That's right. He uses the word over and over and over. He says you are carnal, whereas there is among you envy, and strife and division.

Envy is infernal. Strife is external. Divisions are infernal. Strife, division, are fermented hard, are tenuous, it's cankerous, it's smitten, in the body of Christ. Listen, fellow, you know that cup you can't get over in your church?

You know that woman you can't bear? Listen, if Christ is in that man, and Christ is in that man, will the Christ in that man take the Christ in that man? Will the Christ in that man gossip about the Christ in that man?

Will the Christ in that man deliver the Christ in that man? Never. Christ is not divided. Well, if it isn't Christ in that man, then who is Christ in that man? Who is it? It's the self in that man. It's carnality in that man, and it's carnality in that man.

Yes, sir. Yes, sir. It's Christ. Yes, sir. So Paul here, he claims he's a wise master, well, so he is. He claimed he's a good husband, and so he is. But he's more than that, he's a clever diagnostician, he's a soul surgeon.

He looks on in ecstasy and says, I know why you haven't grown during these last two years. You're carnal! And God is my witness and that's my hand tonight. I would want you to get up after the meeting and say, Mr. Anger, will you pray to me?

I've got cancer in my body. For brother, cancer will hurt you, but carnality will hurt the church. Yes, that's right. Cancer will make you sick, but carnality will make the church sick. Cancer will make you weak, but carnality will make the church weak.

Yes, that's right. Cancer will lay you on one's side and make you impotent, but carnality makes the church impotent. That's right. You're carnal! ...speeching in Dublin, as the poet says, Dublin's fair city.

Well, the girls are so pretty, but I've not heard most of the second line, too. Dub Dublin's fair city, you know. Now, speaking in the great Methodist church there on the main road, Leonard Evans, a Methodist preacher in England, was speaking.

And he used this thoughtful illustration of when, just about a week before he was born, his mother met her friend and said, well, this, that and the other, and each woman discovered that they were going to have children.

And they agreed to send information to the other when the child was born. And one day in hospital, this woman received a note to say that a little boy had been born to her friend, and she scribbled a note and said, congratulations, the little child was born.

Some days after, Mrs. Evans received her little boy, a little black-haired Welsh fellow, fine little fellow, and being an intelligent woman, she called him Leonard. And so she got her baby about a week after the other.

A little fellow on one day with his mother, and there was the other fellow. Now Leonard Evans had grown up, a mature man, physically fine, intellectually fine, a Methodist preacher, and now he has a fine church in the centre of England tonight.

The other little fellow that was born a week before him, his mother took him home. For a while everybody looked at him and adored him and said who he was like, it must be a charming child, but before very long that woman never took her child out in the daylight.

She wheeled him out at dark when the shadows had come down. She didn't say, look at my little baby, isn't he beautiful? She hurried past when people had asked questions. And that little fellow went to his bed.

The other has been an athlete, a cricketer, a footballer, a swimmer. He's developed his intellect, he's a pride of his father and mother. The other little fellow went to his bed. He's still on the bed and he was taken home that first month from the hospital.

He's six feet two in length, but he plays with a little rattle, and he loves to have a balloon, and he's a child, and his mother even has to chew food and pre-digest it before she gives it to him, and give him a bottle every night and chain him.

Their tragedy, if you like, it's alright to be a baby during that period of babyhood, but perhaps that period of babyhood is a tragedy. And maybe King of Bali had to invent the story of Peter Pan, the boy that never grew up, but God knows it's the curse of the church tonight.

People that never grow up. Because a woman say not long ago she said, I'm 37 years of age. I thought she got the figures wrong way round, but never mind. She said, I'm 37 years of age. At least she said, I'm approaching 37.

I don't know what they said from which side, but anyhow. She said, I'm around about 37 years of age. A day or two after, she said, you know, I'm only 10 years old. So I said, will you show me how you work that out?

Of course she said, that's very easy, I was saved 10 years ago in a meeting, and I said, that doesn't make you 10 years old. Of course not. I know some people who have been saved 20 years, they're not 10 weeks old yet in grey.

Confession, Repentance, and New Birth

I preached in an old barn, a place with holes in the roof, and rats running around, and pigs in it in the day time, and we cleared them all out and got the other pigs in at night. At least Stephen was not living any better than pigs.

We got adulterers and liars and fornicators. One night on the back seat there was a big intelligent man, a champion boxer. A man that had read H .G. Wells' outline of history and Schopenhauer's philosophy.

A man with a keen interest. The fellow said to me, you see that man on the back, brother, it would be worth all the money in Ireland to get that man saved. The first night, he's come in because it's the last night.

It would take a year of preaching to get conviction down his mind, he's that drunken and maddened thing. Well, I said, God does miracles, you know, we could pray for him right now and believe God saved him tonight.

When the altar call went in, he was the first man to put up his hand. He set it down from the altar and there he went and sawed it with his tears. He groaned. He didn't say, well, Lord, I've been a naughty boy.

Could I please you better and forgive me? He just brought his sins and he laid them out and he humbled himself and he told God he'd repent of them. He told God he'd put things straight. He was living with poor married women at the time.

Going to the homes at night. Living in immorality, living in drunkenness, living in wickedness. That man struck reality, that man got wonderfully, dramatically, dynamically born again of the Spirit of God.

Within six months of being born of the Spirit, that young man was spending the whole night of God in prayer. That man was caught down the road, that old Irish road, some night, one or two o 'clock in the morning, he was parked on the ground and I'd seen there his mother couldn't afford to burn the electric lights so he bought candles.

And there was a candle and he was reading the Word of God. I've never seen a man growing brains like that. He'd been saved four years now, five years nearly. He's the finest preacher in all the world that I know.

He's a man that gets down the haystack and beats his heart out in prayer. In five years, he's 50 years old. Some people drop around in the shadows of spirituality. They want toys, they want triviality, they want redemption, they want their dead held higher.

They'll put on the armour of God, they'll put off wickedness, they'll put off this, but it's put him on that God wants. This is an hour of militant unbelief. This is the hour when you don't have the atheist at the street corner with a red face, hurling fire and drinks to the almighty God.

You don't need the atheist at the street corner, you've got him in the school teacher now. Yes, that's right. They put the Bible, you can't teach the Bible in Christian America. You can't teach the Bible in most schools.

The Roman Catholics don't like it and the Jews oppose it, but your Pilgrim Father insisted on it. Why don't you insist on it? God help us. Amen. You can't give a nation going by money, you give a nation going by love and spirituality.

The Church as an Armory Rather Than a Nursery

This is a day when every man needs a sword in his hand and a brass plate of righteousness and a shield of faith and a helmet of hopeless salvation. It speaks to God with the preparation of the gospel of peace.

Man, because your money's good for God, men will perish in your factory. And the last thing they'll do, the judgment bar of God, they'll say, if you cared for my soul, I'd be going to heaven, now I'm going to hell.

That's why God will have to wipe away tears from your eyes because you failed God. And in this hour when the world is creeping in on us and Communism is massacring men and women like Pete Steele, while Romanism is throwing bodies into the Magdalena River and preachers are sailing down there day by day, while Communism is threatening to destroy us and Romanism is pledged to annihilate Christianity, when we need a church that should be an armory, we've got a church that's a nursery.

Yes. God help us. Yes. He obeys. Saving lives means they'll have to get dressed up, don't they? God help us. I like nice things. I don't believe God made all the list. If he wanted all one colour, he'd have made the world black and all the grass would be black and the sea would be black and everything else would be black.

God made colours and I like colours in the place, in order, when things are right. Yes, sir. Brother, I hate to see the church looking like a menagerie Sunday morning. The competition is who's got the best hat and the best dress and the best this and the best that.

And kids love to get dressed up, don't they? Mm-hmm. Feeds their mammoth it. Appears. Children are weak. He weakens us. You've got a cancer in your body and you feed your body, you don't feed your body, you feed the cancer.

We feed the cancer. And you think your priest is a nice preacher because he's not a rough, raw-born individual like me or worse still, like Shmuel there. You think he's nice and he's taking you to hell on a feather bed.

False Diagnosis and the Need for Biblical Truth

Maybe a rougher one now, but he's taking you. Man went into the doctor's one day, bent up like this, you know. Poor face was as yellow as butter and the doctor said, oh, I shouldn't put you right. Gave him a prescription and said, come back next Friday.

The man was nearly touching the ground the first time, but boy, he was in all fours when he came the next time, really. The doctor said, did you take what I gave you? He said, yes. Oh, ma 'am, he said, I'll double the dose.

Doubled the dose and gave him another dose and said, I'll try to strong you if you try to stray when you come back next week. Next week, he could have got through another box nearly. The poor fellow was in such bad shape.

It didn't happen to me that there was another doctor in who was a surgeon when he came in and he said, well, here's my friend, Mr. So-and-so. But then the doctor said, just a minute, how do you feel tonight, Mr.

So-and-so? Oh, he said, I'll die if I won't see you another week. Oh, he said, I'm in a terrible condition. I'm awful. The pains are getting worse. I'm dying. Oh, the doctor said, I must intensify this dose for you.

The friend said, just a minute, what are you treating him for? What am I treating him for? He said, it's obvious he's as yellow as butter. He said, it's obvious what's wrong with him. What is wrong with him, said the other doctor.

Well, he said, he's got yellow jaundice. The doctor said, you're fool, he's Chinese. I'm sure he's got it all right, but he's a Chinaman. He's been trying to get the colour out of the poor boy. What has gone?

Oh, he's so yellow, it must be yellow jaundice. So let's treat him. That's funny, it's rather odd. That's a bit funny, that's odd. My friend, I want to tell you that that's no worse than he's got and that's no worse than he's diagnosed and your preacher is most likely to go to church anyhow.

He did you the wrong job. If he told you where you are and what you are, maybe you'd have fired him already. But he says, well, you're all right, there's not much wrong with you really, you know, you just keep doing your best and do this and do the other and you'll get by all right, but you won't get by at all.

All right when we talk about renouncing sin, all right when we talk about being born again, that's all right. And those of us who follow John Wesley, we skip on and those of us who follow John Calvin, they take the low road while we take the high.

Poor Calvin, he's in for a bad time at the judgment. I wouldn't like to be Calvin. It's bad enough being Leonard Raisman. But there's something amazing, I'm John Calvin and they're writing from here to yonder.

Amazing what we believe because somebody said it. You know, I believe if Henry Post had written the Bible more people would believe it in America than believe it right now. He says you can't understand the nails that shape or you wouldn't scoop your soup up with your hand or something so you think he's right.