Living Under Open Heaven — James A. Stewart

The Hope of Christ’s Return and the Open Heavens

Oh, our gracious God and our Father, we thank Thee for the theme of the solar at just sound. Some golden day, great, Jesus will come. Oh, we thank Thee one day He's going to cleave the heavens, and He's going to burst into view.

And oh God, we thank Thee that in the second stage of His advent we're going to be admired with Him. And He'll be admired in us with all that believe as we come back to reign on this earth. And oh, we're looking, we're anticipating, blessed Lord, for that day when the heavens will open.

And oh, there'll be the trump, there'll be the sound of the archangels and the voice of God. And we'll be caught up right through clouds and clouds of believers from every part of the earth. Clouds caught up together to meet the Lord in the air.

And then we're going to go right through the open heavens. And we'll be transfigured and transformed and be like a Redeemer forevermore, fully sanctified. Glory, hallelujah. Oh God, we thank Thee that the captain of our salvation is bringing His Son safe home to glory.

Prepare us for the glory land right now at this convention, this moment. Now Holy Spirit of God, will You give me the message. Take me from verse to verse or incident to incident. And let there be nothing of man.

Oh Father, we're so tired of man. Let there be nothing of man. Lord, even respectable man. Let nothing be of man in this service right now. Holy Spirit of God, will You speak. It's Thy divine prerogative, it's Thy ministry.

You came on the day of Pentecost to inhabit Thy church, to speak through Thy church and to speak to Thy church. And to make known the glories and the wonders of the living God. And the wonders and the beauties of the Son of God.

Oh, do this work this morning, we beseech of Thee, for Christ's sake. Now, I would like you to keep in touch with God in prayer for the little while we are together this morning as I speak on the ministry of Revival.

Now, many friends have asked us about different books on Revival. And the best book I have on Revival, I'm sorry it's not with me because it's published in Great Britain by Marshall, Morgan and Scott.

And it's entitled Open Windows. I haven't got any with me, but I may be able to secure some copies. And the message of Open Windows, it's the best seller just now in Sweden, in the Swedish translation.

And Open Windows is God opening the heavens and coming down and giving us Revival. But I have two books just now. One, Dynamite in Europe. And there are two photographs there of the two mightiest Revivals I have known in Europe apart from Reverend W .P. Nicholson of Ulster, whom I mentioned to you last night, a Presbyterian Revivalist.

You have a precious photograph of a man of God there, a Russian Baptist pastor who was used by God to start 200 new Baptist churches in his lifetime. And he was the founder of the first Baptist church in Moscow.

And I labor with him in Revivals among the Russian people. And then the eldest daughter of General William and Catherine Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army. She lived in the atmosphere of Revival.

And this tells you a little about one of our leading British authorettes, the story of part of a Revival ministry in Europe. Of course, she couldn't tell all, because she only traveled with Mrs. Jurini for about seven months.

But she let you in to Revival meetings. And then, we just finished this, printed last week, an exposition of Acts 1 and 2 about what happened on the Day of Pentecost. And that really whets your appetite for Revival.

Because we believe that Pentecost can be repeated. And it may not have all the same signs that we had in the Day of Pentecost. But we believe, friends, that Pentecost can be repeated. Calvary was once and for all for this age.

And Pentecost was once and for all for this age. And we are now living in the dispensation of God the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of God has never been withdrawn from the Church of Jesus Christ. The Comforter has come.

The Comforter has come. Then why is He a stranger among us? Why is He not performing His many mighty works? Now, it's the devil's business in these last days to send us counter-thieves. Now, even in the Welsh Revival, which began so pure from the throne of God, we discovered later, Satan says, Now, I cannot destroy that Revival, but I will try and imitate the Revival.

And the Antichrist, you see, actually that word Ant, as you know, doesn't just mean against, but also means like. And we are told by Timothy that in the last days, just as these emissaries of Satan, they tried to imitate everything that Moses did, so the devil in the last days will try to imitate everything that the Holy Ghost is doing, you see.

And so you have counterfeit conversions. That's the devil's master stroke in evangelism. There are millions of deluded souls in America who believe they are going to heaven and all the time they are going to hell.

And there are also tens of thousands of Southern Baptist churches who have a counterfeit conversion. They have never been truly supernaturally born again of the Holy Ghost. And the pastors and the evangelists have to blame because they do not demand a supernatural change.

If regeneration is a supernatural work of God the Holy Ghost, then it is a supernatural new creation in Christ Jesus. I am a Scotsman. I don't try to be a Scotsman. I am a Scotsman. Everything I do has a Scottish aspect.

That's my family. And you don't try to be a Christian. You don't imitate to be a Christian. You are a Christian. You are a new creature in Christ Jesus. And when you are a new creature in Christ Jesus, all things are passed away and all things become new.

You have counterfeit, what I call, sanctification. A person says, I am clean everywhere. I am fully sanctified. And you just touch them in the wrong place, rub them up the wrong way, and you will find they have got a vicious bad temper.

And then you have counterfeit consecration. Over and over again. We have people who come forward every Sunday morning and say, I am fully yielded. I will follow thee, Lord Jesus. And on Monday morning they live out the lie once again.

And you can have counterfeit fullnesses of the Holy Ghost. And that is where the devil wants to send the counterfeit. People say, I am full of the Holy Ghost. And you can tell by their lives that they are not full of the Holy Ghost.

And then Satan says, I will send a counterfeit revival. Now you can have all the crowns, and you can have all the emotions, something like a revival, but not a revival. And I have known, in large meetings in America, when the Holy Ghost was nowhere near the tabernacle, that many, many people searched forward in the front to be saved, searched forward in the front to be filled with the Holy Ghost.

And yet the Holy Ghost was nowhere near. It was all something spurious, something counterfeit. And so the devil is going to try to hinder us having the real thing. But my brother, this morning, I have a message to speak to you on open windows.

Jesus Christ as the Model of Life Under an Open Heaven

Now, I have never spoken on this before. Just as I was walking up and down here a few minutes ago, this is the line that God has led me to speak on. And it is on the theme on revival. Now, I want just to speak, as the Spirit gives me utterance on, about living under an open heaven.

Living under an open heaven. Now, as we know, there was only one person who lived under an open heaven continually, and that was our blessed Lord Jesus Christ. And we know that the heavens were opened at His birth.

For unto us a Son is given, and unto us a child is born. As the Son, He was from all eternity, and as the child, He was born miraculously in the womb of the Virgin Mary. And so the heavens were opened at His birth, for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.

And the heavens were opened, and Jesus Christ came down to this sin-cursed world. And right through His life, He had that open window. Three times over, the heavens were opened, declaring, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.

The heavens were opened to remember at His baptism, and the Holy Ghost descended upon Him as a heavenly dove. And He received a mighty supernatural anointing for His ministry, as prophet and priest and king.

And the only time when He did not have an open window, was when He was bearing your sin and my sin on the cross of Calvary. And there He cried, My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken Me? But blessed be God, friend, He had an open heaven.

When the heavens were opened to receive Him, as we read in Psalm 24, Who is this King of Glory? Oh, let the King of Glory come in. And all the heavens stood, all angels in heaven, all seraphims and cherubims stood to welcome the Lord Jesus Christ home to glory.

I thank God He lived under the open sky. Now, many believers have lived under an open sky almost every day of their life. I remember hearing F .B. Meyer when he was a very elderly gentleman, had to be propped up with two nurses looking at either side of him as he spoke from a chair over the pulpit.

No loudspeakers these days. And he said, So far as I know, there has never been a day in my life that I have had not open access to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Now, he was a humble old gentleman.

Now, that does not mean to say that what he said was absolutely true. I can remember my mother coming to me saying, and my mother is very quiet and conservative, and saying to me when I was first converted, James has said, I think I have lived without sin for the last six months.

Well, I was so horrified. Living without sin for the past six months. But my dear mother has walked with God from a girl of 13 years of age to now 88 years of age. And if you would go into what is supposed to be a death room, you would find the heavens were open.

The heavens were open. And my mother has lived almost her entire life under an open sky. And you will find that holy men and women of God right through the Old Testament, they lived under an open sky.

Now, there were times when there were darkness. Now, don't get discouraged. There were, for example, Ezekiel. He saw visions of God. The heavens were open. He saw visions of God. And he saw God's prophetical truth for hundreds of years to come.

But Ezekiel also saw the Shekinah, glory of the Lord, gradually withdrawing itself from the temple. I think of the mighty Elijah, but he got in a cave. And there's many a preacher in a cave today. Preacher, have you come and are you in the cave?

You're not out in God's fresh air, and you're not looking up into an open heaven. And you haven't got the mighty anointing of the Holy Ghost upon you. And Jesus Christ is not so real, and Jesus Christ is not so precious as he used to be to you.

But I think of dear Moses. And he, he had the visions of God, and he was caught up into the most excellent glory. And there Moses, under an open heaven, he had the whole pattern of the tabernacle brought before him.

Glory to God. Every, every bit of work, every minutest detail, was given to him by revelation from God himself. And so he was left in no shadow of a doubt how that tabernacle had to be built. Because that tabernacle, every bit of it, had to speak of the glory, of the duty, of the majesty, of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

And I trust that some of you dear brothers and sisters will be caught up into the heavens these days. And that you will receive God's divine pattern for your life these coming days. There's a crisis just now.

And you've come here to meet with God, and you've come to have a revelation from God. And God is saying to you, my brother, my sister, behold, I will do a new thing, I will do a new thing. I will bring the blind by a way that the new does.

And I'm going to lead you in strange ways, paths that you've never trod before. And I want you to put your hand in my hand, and through the darkness we'll go together, until we come out into the sunlight.

Maybe you're crying like Saul of Tarsus at his conversion. Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? Lord, what is thy plan for my life, thy immediate plan now for my life? What is thy pattern for my Christian worship and my Christian service?

Revival as the Open Windows of Heaven

But I can conceive, just this morning, about the open windows in relation to revival. Now, you know that revival is nothing else than the windows of heaven open, you see. And that you needn't die to go to heaven.

You have heaven here below. And when unconverted people and the demons in hell try to shake your faith and say, there's no such a place in heaven, there's no such a place as hell, when you die, you die like a dog and that's the end of you.

You can laugh and mock and you can say, glory to God, I've been in heaven for the past few months. And you see, when revival comes, it comes because the heavens are open. And you see visions of God, and you can see right through the door, right through the window, and you can see right into heaven.

And you are also caught up into heaven. As I mentioned to you, in the story there of Evan Roberts, When the Spirit Came, he was caught up every night for several months in his little bedroom there in Wales, caught up into heaven, communing with the Lord Jesus Christ before the revival came.

And so, when the meeting started, he was a man who was a heavenly man. He was already transfigured and transformed like Jesus Christ, and he was so like the Lord Jesus that many people were astonished and thought Jesus Christ was incarnate again.

He was such a holy man, just a young man of 24 years of age. In and out of the meetings like this, Jesus Christ again was walking, walking here on earth. And the heavens are open. And in revival meetings, the heavens are open.

And the people see right up into heaven. They are there already. They hear the singing, and they join the singing of the redeemed already. Oh yes, they join the singing of the redeemed.

Now, and that is why.

That when you are in such an atmosphere, you get gazed at the glory of God. And I have known whole congregations absolutely gazed. You remember we are told in 2 Corinthians chapter 4 how that Moses, he took the veil off his face when he would enter the presence of God, but he had to put the veil on his face when he was talking face to face with the children of Israel.

Now, in 2 Corinthians chapter 4, you have the contrast between the glory of the law in the face of Moses, and the glory of the gospel in the face of Jesus Christ. And the apostle Paul says, if that ministry of the old covenant was glorious, how much more is the ministry of the new covenant?

In other words, did Moses' face shine? Oh, brother, sister, should our faces not shine even greater? And I have known brothers come out of revival meetings and gone home, and the bus people, the bus conductor, for the shock of his life when he is asking for the fare, and I have known believers drive home, and when they couldn't drive home, they had to just stop the car and say, Oh God, will you withhold thy hand?

And I have known believers go into their own home, and their wife has said, What's wrong with you? Where have you been? And she has been a bachelor, and she broke down weeping, and came back to the Lord.

She saw the glory of God in the face of her husband. Now, this is the open windows.

And that is why the meetings pass as if they were just a few minutes. You are there five hours. And then somebody says, Five hours? Impossible. I think I have only been here five minutes. You know why?

Because you see, eternity is timeless. There are no calendars. Brother Lee can go on with his calendar in the pulpit if he wants. You see? There is no time in eternity. No time in heaven. There are no clocks in heaven, you see.

Why? Because the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's enough. And when you are in His presence, the hours pass like minutes, and you simply can't believe. It is another impossibility to believe that you have been in God's presence all these hours.

Like our meetings recently in Northern Ireland. Believers would come and shake their heads and say, impossible. Impossible. What? We have been here five hours? It is impossible. It has just been like five minutes.

And a man or woman who would come into a meeting and growl and grunt, because the sermon was five minutes over the twelve o 'clock hour, he said, I just can't go home. I just can't go home. And wife, I am not going home.

You can go, but I am not going. I am just staying. And you see, and so many times in Eastern Europe, in our Baptist churches, we don't go home and Sunday. Who wants to have a fried chicken if you can have, glory to God, if you can have a feast with Jesus.

Oh no. Oh no. When I first came to the States, I got the shock of my life. I had just finished revivals in Europe, you know, in Poland. And when I came to preach in this great Baptist church, the pastor said to me, he said, now, Dr. Stewart, he said, you know, please remember, it is only a twenty minute message you have this morning.

I said, twenty minutes? I said, is this our church or what? What is it? I said, but do you have meetings every night? No, he said, we don't. And in fact, he says, the majority of Christians only come on Sunday morning.

And I said, do you only have twenty minutes for them? I said, is that all you can preach? No, no, he said, that's all they will listen. He said, you see, all the restrooms will fill up and they will not be able to go and have the Sunday dinner.

They will not have you up and get into these restrooms if they are all filled up. I said, my brother, I said, don't you dare to front God. Don't you dare in South Dakota to go and ask me to preach twenty minutes to please Jesus.

I won't do it. I won't do it. I said, you can encourage them, all right. I said, brother, I said, you are going to damn yourself. I said, did you get no evidence of being born again? If a person is thinking of that beautiful Sunday dinner more than the Bible study you are giving them, there is something wrong with the regeneration.

There is something wrong. And I said, they may all know all the language of Cain and sing all the hymns, but I said, they may make as much of a profession as they can, but it's hard for me to believe they are really born again.

Hard for me to believe they are born again. But my dear friends, when revival comes, the heavens are open and these people will sit spellbound for hours and hours. And you see, their eyes are off their preacher and their eyes are upon the Lord Jesus Christ and all their preachers become so small and so insignificant because Jesus Christ is so big.

They've got a big Savior they've never had before. And they are bathed in Calvary's love. They are gently taken by the Holy Ghost. I say this very reverently. They are gently taken by the Holy Ghost because in revival there are mighty tornadoes.

I know that. But the greatest thing about revival is the gentleness of God. And the Holy Ghost gently bathes you in Calvary's love. And you weep quietly over and over and over and you say, Oh, is this my God?

Is this my Savior? Is this what Jesus Christ suffered for me? Is this how much God so loved me? As to give His only begotten Son. And all you can do is weep and weep and say Hallelujah. Oh Christ, I thank You for saving my soul.

Oh Lord Jesus, Thou art so glorious and so wonderful. And you have a vision of the cross. Now you say, what has this got to do about revival? A lot, my brother. A lot, my sister. For example, Jeremiah 33 and 3.

Call unto me and I will answer thee. And I will show thee great and mighty things which thou knewest not. Now, as you know, the Hebrew word here is the hidden concealed thing. In the deeper, in the recesses.

And God is saying, if you call unto me, I will answer thee and I will show thee, reveal to thee my treasures. Hidden concealed things that you have never seen in your life before. In other words, God says, I'm going to open you the windows of heaven.

And in Malachi 3 .10, prove me now here where saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the window of heaven, and pour you out a blessing that there shall not be room enough to receive it. Windows in heaven.

And God says, prove me right now. I won't fail you. If you don't fail me, I won't fail you. God never failed a brother. God never failed a sister. God never failed a child of His. It was sincere and real and willing to pay the price.

God says, prove me now, right now, and I'll open you the windows of heaven. And I'll pour you out such a blessing that there shall not be room enough to receive it. Now friend, that's what you have never seen in your childhood.

That's what you have never seen in America. Where there has been so much blessing that you had to see, oh God, I can't stand anymore. And you didn't know what to do with all the young contacts. I always get a surprise when some evangelist tells me that there was 500 souls saved in the great campaign and then, they don't build another church building.

Where did these 500 souls go? If the church is already five, where did the other 500 souls go? I can never understand that. The pastor told me that during his lifetime they had taken in something like 5 ,000 new members.

Well I said, if you build another church seating 5 ,000 people. But no, it's still the same size as the church and it's always been full. There's something wrong about this business. Now friend, God says, I'll pour you out a blessing, there will not be room enough to receive it.

And you'll extend right out and you'll say, oh God, say thy hand, I can't contain anymore. And we have seen often in Eastern Europe, we had to stop evangelizing. You know why? We didn't know what to do with the young converts.

There are so many thousands professing faith in Christ. We didn't know what to do with them all. And I had to ask holy men of God like Dr. R .E. Naper. He's one of the most famous Southern Baptist preachers.

Preaching with many of the giants of the Southern Baptist Convention. Very blessed man. But most of his ministry later was an independent Bible teaching work with Campbell Morgan. I invited him to help me take care of the converts in Hungary to Bible teach them.

We had to stop again and again and establish these converts in the faith and then begin evangelizing all over again. And stop again for another month. Take care of Bible studies, indoctrinate these young converts and then start all over again evangelizing.

Biblical Promises and the Open Heaven in Acts

And you see, we have the other promise. We mentioned the challenge again in 2 Chronicles 7 -14. If my people which are called by my name shall humble themselves and seek my face and pray and turn from the wicked ways then I will hear from heaven and will heal the land.

Now, when God says I will hear from heaven it means I will open the windows of heaven and I will answer prayer. Now, when you come into the Acts of the Apostles you find about the open windows everywhere.

Pentecost was the day of the open heaven. You read in Acts 2 -33 Peter's explanation of the phenomenon of Pentecost. Therefore being by the right hand of God exalted he ascends for this which you now see and hear the promised Holy Spirit.

And when the heavens are opened to receive the Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost come down to the waiting church and then we find the heavens are opened again in Acts 4 -31 and when they prayed the place was shaken and were all assembled together and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost.

Now, have you ever been in a prayer meeting like that? Tell the truth. Have you ever been in a prayer meeting like that? The heavens were once again opened. Do you remember the heavens were opened again from Stephen as he was being martyred for Christ's sake and he says I see the heaven open and I see the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.

Glory to God. And then I find the heavens open again because of Stephen's death. You find that the heavens are opened again and there you find a voice from heaven saying to the greatest God of pastures, the greatest enemy of the church, Saul, Saul, Saul, why have you forsaken me?

The heavens are opened for the salvation of the biggest sinner of the lot. And I could go on and on telling you about these open windows. Now, let me just give you one or two of our revival experiences that will whet your appetite.

So many believers have an idea that this revival business is something that we don't understand. I've had very, very precious men of God say to me, we believe that revivals happen periodically under the sovereignty of God.

Now, I believe in the sovereignty of God. I'm a Scotsman, brought up a Calvinist of the Calvinists. I believe in the sovereignty of God. But, friend, I don't believe, friend, that God sends occasional revivals as it pleases Him.

You see, I believe revival, friend, is an abnormal situation. You see, you are living an abnormal Christian life. You are an abnormal pastor. You are an abnormal evangelist. You are an abnormal Christian.

And the church that you're connected with is living an abnormal Christian life. It's not God's norm. And so we must have revival to bring us up into God's norm. As I say to you, I've been in Hungary for years and never had a Christian for you.

Oh, God sent revival. And now, you see, we didn't live the revival anymore. We need fresh anointing to the Holy Ghost, yes. But we were so elevated to the high positions in the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, let me just give you some of these illustrations what I mean about revival and what God has given us.

Because so many believers say, well, we don't know if we can have revival, yes or no. We don't know if God wants to send revival. That's nonsense. My brother, God wants to send revival. Why? Look at the Christians we know.

Is that God's New Testament standard for Christianity for them? No. Is God pleased with them? No.

Is God pleased with my ministry? No. Is God pleased with your church? No. Then it's abnormal. And so, revival, friend, is when God brings the church to the normal condition. And so, as I said the other morning, supposing you said to me, Brother Stewart, how is your little daughter sharing?

Oh, I said, she's quite all right just now, but next month she'll be done now with the little while and she'll be done again for June and September again. Well, what father would be satisfied with such a health for his child?

And we have got Christian people, and they're living up and down, up and down, up and down. I never knew so many backsliders in America right now. I never knew. I had the privilege of leading one of the most famous of America, the Evangelist of the Lord.

And that man preached to thousands night after night. Ten thousand. He won thousands of Christ. And he became a backslider. One of the leaders of Youth for Christ, the founder of Youth for Christ, preaching to thousands night after night.

Denies the blood, ridicules the gospel. And he's an emcee coast to coast in the Canadian broadcasting system, working with film stars and such like today. And I could tell you people who no longer have an open window.

And the backsliding is everywhere. You did run well, but who did hinder you from obeying the truth? And is God satisfied with these conditions? Absolutely not. And that's why I believe God wants us every mile.

And I know when I go on my knees, and I know there's no sin in my heart in life, I know God will rise. I said to, I think, Brother Robertson last night, how would you like to be in the church where nobody resisted the Holy Ghost?

I would meet in the church recently in Northern Ireland, and hundreds were coming the way, didn't know one believer, old or young, who resisted the Holy Ghost. Everyone moved on with God. Revival come that way.

Let me give you, I believe, friends, that God will send you revival, and God's willing to have revival. He wants us to cooperate with Him, and then the heavens are open. Let me give you a little experience about this open window.

Indoctrination in the Word Rather Than Religious Superficiality

I remember some years ago, when God gave us so many thousands of souls in Hungary, I had to go around different churches to have Bible studies. Now, when you get young souls, they don't have inspiration.

They're all right, but that's not enough. That's only fooling around. I believe in singing and all that way, but what the believers need is indoctrination in the Word of God. And that's what we do. We get out the Bible, and we have meetings.

And to scare the daylights out of carnal Christians, we say, we're going to speak on the five biblical offerings. And they'll never come back if they're not spiritual. So we clear the dead wood out of the place.

And we don't have anything, just the teaching of the Word. We say, no, we're singing a hymn, we're going to pray, and then we're going to expound the Word. And we may go verse by verse through Romans.

Justification and sanctification. The work of the Lord Jesus for us, and then the work of the Holy Ghost in us, you see. And I remember one night, you could only get into this meeting by admission of a ticket, where you had professed faith recently in Jesus Christ, only for young converts.

There were not many there, maybe 1 ,500 or so, but this night we were expounding a theme. And my interpreter whispered to me, he said, James is saying, please stop, please stop. I said, what's the matter?

Don't you feel well? He says, I'm going. I said, wait. I said, don't go out now. I said, I'm not even finished. I said, I haven't even started. I said, we've only been teaching an hour. He said, I just can't stand anymore.

I said, go on, God will give you grace. But then, Lord behold, I began to go out too. And it wasn't very soon. And I came down. I don't know how long I was up there. I don't know how long he was up there.

But when we come down, to my astonishment, there were all these people there. I didn't know they were there. And all I could see them was. You see, well, didn't they run round the tabernacle? There was no room to run round the church.

It was a Lutheran church. And all I could hear was, see the tears going down the cheeks. And all they were saying is, I love the Lord Jesus. And you see, you know what happened? Every one of us had gone out.

Every one of us had gone out. We weren't there anymore. We weren't in Budapest anymore. That's what I'm talking about. And I can remember in the city of Trondheim, in the largest cathedral of Scandinavia, sitting maybe 5 ,000 people.

One of the most brilliant, most beautiful cathedrals in all Europe. It was built by the Roman Catholics before the church was built. And God was giving us mighty Bibles in Trondheim with overflow meetings of 10 ,000 people in the open air.

But I can remember this night I was preaching on justification and giving a Bible exposition on justification, a gospel message actually to sinners.

That may be Lutherans depending on the ritualism, the church membership for salvation. So we give a verse by verse exposition of Romans. Justification by faith through Christ alone. And just as I was coming about the end of my message, the power of God came upon me.

And my whole body shook back and forth. And I said,.

Oh God, please take your hand. Oh God, I've got to finish this down some way. I've got to finish it some way. And then to my astonishment, I looked and my interpreter couldn't speak anymore. And he, a big fellow, seven feet, he was moved by the Holy Ghost back and forth.

And then we stopped. And I said, Let us bow our head in praise. And there was such a silence. Are you listening? There was such a silence. And that if I hadn't broken the silence and pronounced the benediction, all these thousands of people would have shrieked out aloud.

So great was the presence of God. And do you know that when I went into the vestry, where there were maybe forty other preachers of all denominations born against me, forty born-again men, because I never worked with modernists.

I would never have a modernist in my platform or let him pray with me or work with him. He may be my next-door neighbor, but he's not my brother in Christ. If he denies the virgin birth of Christ, the verbal inspiration of the script is no brother to me.

I'll only have a citywide campaign with fundamentalists. That's all. Never modernists. And if you preach the full gospel, the modernists will hate you. They won't love you. But they were forty born-again men of all groups.