Evidences of Salvation — A.W. Tozer

Jesus Christ, the Light of the World

In the chapter of John, John 8, the beginning of verse 12, let me read a rather extended passage. Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world. He that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.

The Pharisees therefore said unto him, Thou bearest record of thyself, thy record is not true. Jesus answered and said unto them, Though I bear record of myself, yet my record is true, for I know whence I came and whither I go.

He cannot tell whence I come and whither I go. Ye judge after the flesh, I judge no man, and if I judge, my judgment is true, for I am not alone, but I am the Father that sent me. It is also written in your law that the testimony of two men is true.

I am one that beareth witness of myself, and the Father that sent me beareth witness of me. Then said they unto him, Where is thy Father? Jesus answered, Ye neither know me nor my Father. If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also.

These words spake Jesus in the treasure, as he taught in the temple, and no man laid hands on him, for his hour was not yet come. Then said Jesus again unto them, I go my way, and ye shall seek me, and shall die in your sins.

Whither I go, ye cannot come. Then said the Jews, Will he kill himself, because he saith, Whither I go, ye cannot come? He said unto them, Ye are from beneath, I am from above. Ye are of this world, I am not of this world.

I said therefore unto you, That ye shall die in your sins, for if ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins. Then said they unto him, Who art thou? Jesus saith unto them, Even the same that I said unto you from the beginning.

I have many things to say unto a judge of you, but he that sent me is true, and I speak to the world those things which I have heard of him. They understood not that he spake to them of the Father. Then said Jesus unto them, When ye have lifted up the Son of Man, then shall ye know that I am he, and that I do nothing of myself, but as my Father hath taught me, I speak these things.

He that sent me is with me. The Father hath not left me alone, for I do always those things that please him. As he spake these words, many believed on him. Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed, and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

They answered him, We be Abraham's seed, and were never in bondage to any man. How sayest thou? Ye shall be made free. Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is a servant of sin.

But the servant abideth not in the house for ever, but the Son of Man abideth ever. The Son abideth ever. If the Son, therefore, shall make you free, you shall be free indeed. Let us pray. Our Father, we are here between heaven and earth, between the peak of eternity past and the high peak of eternity to come.

The world spins on, and time wears itself out, and the judgment draws near. We would be serious-minded Christians and seekers after thee in this hour of threat and danger. We pray thou wilt help us to know that we may listen to thy word with great concern.

Speak to us, O Lord, and give us the will to obey, the courage to do, and the faith to believe. In Christ's name. You know, in the passage which I have read in your hearing, we find the only one who knows talking about the only thing that matters, the only subject that matters is salvation.

Salvation as the Only Matter of Ultimate Importance

If we miss salvation, what else possibly can matter? Before the fact of sin and of human mortality and coming death, before the fact of God and heaven and judgment and hell and man's responsibility to God and the long, long reaches of eternity, what do politics and science and art and even health or life, what do they matter at all?

They matter, certainly, but they don't matter when set over against these tremendous issues that matter so tremendously. Now, I say salvation and my relation to God and your relation to God, that's the only thing that matters.

And the only one who knows is talking about it here, Jesus Christ our Lord. He's the only one who knows. All others are of the earth, and they speak of the earth, Jesus said, but he alone came down from heaven, he alone, he alone heard words of the Father and spake from the Father, and he alone was the Word and is the Word, and he alone was and is God among men.

He alone is the Savior and the light of the world. So this man is speaking, and he's speaking about the only thing that ought to matter until we get it settled. Now, for each one of us, these words of our Lord Jesus and other such words that he spoke to us are words of destiny.

If we will not hear these words, then there are no others, you may be sure of that. There is no alternative, no second choice, there just isn't anything else. The words of our Lord, the appeal, the explanation, the proclamation, the teaching of our Lord and his apostles, there isn't anything else, there's no place else to go.

And our reception or rejection of these words of our Lord bring consequences. These words of our Lord, to me, they're terrible as well as wonderful, for they're here unobtrusive and quiet, but if you don't like them, there's no place else to go, no other choice.

If you don't like one country, you may go to another, but if you don't like these words of Jesus Christ our Lord, then there's no place else to go, short of these words or apart from these words or beyond these words, there's only darkness.

The Radical Difference Between the Christian and the World

Now what our Lord is teaching us here is that a Christian is another kind of being altogether. A Christian, if he's a true Christian, is wholly different from other men. I know that this sounds bigoted, and I know that in this day of brotherhood and togetherness, when everybody would brothers be for all that and all that, I know that I will be put down as a bigot, and people will say, he's all right, but he's narrow and very bigoted.

All right, that will not matter to me. But I ask you to notice that our Lord has said that the man who is born from above is wholly different from the man that's born from below. That which is of the flesh is flesh, and that which is of the spirit is spirit.

And the difference between the two is basic and biological. It's deep and as basically different as the difference between species and nature, between creatures. This is a difference. A Christian is not somebody that has joined a church, though Christians do join churches.

A Christian is not somebody who has been baptized, though Christians do get baptized. A Christian is not someone who tithes his money, though Christians usually do tithe their money. A Christian is a being totally and radically different biologically from what he was before and from what the other members of his family are who aren't Christians.

So radically different are they that two shall be sleeping in one bed and one shall be taken and the other left. So radically different are they that if the Christian dies, he will be carried by angels to Abraham's bosom, and that sinner in the family, though related by blood, will perish and be without hope.

Now there are differences and similarities between people, as you well know. Human beings are basically like each other. We are, as human beings, basically like each other. That is, if you peel off the skin of a red man, you won't know whether you're looking at a red man or a white man after skin is peeled off.

We have different colored skins. I suppose God made us that way and intended it to be so. We say that makes us different when actually it's not any difference at all. We're basically alike. And everywhere in the world, wherever human beings are, there are certain fundamental likenesses between them.

But there are differences that are not basic. Those differences are incidental. They have to do with social levels and cultural levels and educational levels and food differences. You go to South America, Mexico even, and they like their food hot.

Americans like it rather pale and without much heat in it. And I think Canadians somewhat the same. But you go to Spain, they tell me you'll find they like hot stuff there. Well, that's a difference, but it's not a basic difference.

That's an acquired difference. That's all. And the clothing. Go to India and you'll find them dressing one way, and go to, well, go to the United States and they'll dress every way. But go where you will and people dress differently, but that's not a basic difference.

There's no difference in the man, whether you wrap him in silk or wrap him in burlap. He's the same man. You can put steel armor on him, he's the same man. Put him in a space capsule and he's the same man.

Everybody is like everybody else, basically. But the differences are incidental. So there are tall men and short men and fat men and thin men and dark men and white men and bald-headed men and bushy-haired men and kindly men and brusque men.

Those are not basic differences. Those are incidental differences. Acquired differences or temperamental differences that are not basic to the man. But the difference that separates a Christian from all other men is a fundamental difference.

It is not an incidental difference. What they're wanting to do now is to make religion an incidental thing. They get on the radio and have debates about religion and talk it over, or it gets into magazines and newspapers and they talk back and forth about it, and they begin by having an understanding that religion is an incidental thing and that we can be one and still have our different religions.

You can, of course. You can have a society composed of Buddhists and Mohammedans and Buddhists and Christian scientists and atheists and Jews and Muslims. You can weld a society like that together, and because they don't make a radical difference, they're only an incidental difference.

A Jew goes to his synagogue on Saturday and a Christian to his church on Sunday, and on Monday they meet and work together. But when you come to a true Christian, a Christian that has been born of God from above, you find that there is a distinction.

There is a radical, profound, and basic difference that the Christian is different from other men. The Christian is different in a great many ways from other men. He is different in that he has another kind of life.

He is different in that he has another kind of spirit. He is different in that his source is different. He that is born from below is from below, and that born of the flesh is flesh. He that is born from above is spirit, and is born from above.

He has a different allegiance altogether. He has a different destiny. And yet he may have, along with other people, he has and does have incidental likenesses. People are alike, basically, and are different incidentally.

But when a man becomes a Christian, he is different, basically, and alike only incidentally. Do you get that? And that's why Christians are what they are, and that's why they're different from other people.

That's why they're a minority group in a society that doesn't understand them, because they're born from above, they're born of the Spirit, they have the nature of God, they're a follower of someone other than any man in this world, a follower of a man who came down from above and became incarnated and became one of us.

And yet we have our incidental likenesses. See a man drive down the street, you don't know whether he's a Christian or not, because all kinds of men drive down the street. See a woman shopping and buying food for her body and for the bodies of her families, you don't know whether she's a Christian or not, because those things are incidental and they're not basic.

Regeneration Rather Than Religious Training

Now, I don't know whether I'm making this clear or not, but I'd like to point out one thing before I go any further, that the difference between a Christian and a non-Christian is not the result of or because of any natural goodness on anybody's part.

If I believed that Christians were people who were good by nature, then I would be open to the charge of bigotry and I couldn't defend myself. If I said that the Christians were all fine people of finer blood and finer fiber and better minds and they're better people, then I would, of course, be guilty of picking certain people and saying that they are better.

But this is not what the Bible teaches. The Bible teaches that all men have sinned and come short of the glory of God, but it teaches that to certain men there comes a visitation from God by faith, and that visitation is a new nature from God to that man, and that though he may be as bad as his neighbor was or is, he may have been as bad as his neighbor, he is now a new creature altogether.

And he is not a Christian by training him to be a Christian. The trouble with some of the denominations, their creed is right. If you go to their creed, you'll find it right, their catechism is right.

But they make Christians by training them. You might as well train a Mohawk Indian to be a Scotsman. You can't do it. You can't do it. You can teach him to roll his R's, you can teach him to wear a kilt, you can teach him even, I suppose, God save the mark, to play bagpipe.

But he's still a Mohawk Indian, he's not a Scotsman. And you might as well try to make a Christian by training him to be a Christian as to do that other foolish thing that I have mentioned. Can't be done.

You can't turn one kind of being into another kind of being by training. You can take a being and train him and make him a better being than he was before. You can take a wild horse and break him and train him and fix him so he'll muzzle sugar out of your pocket.

He's a better horse than he was before, but he's a horse still. And so you can take a man and baptize him and catechize him and write his name down in your church rolls and teach him to like good hymns and fellowship with nice people.

But you haven't changed him radically, he is still what he was before. But our Lord teaches that there is such a thing as a change that makes a Christian. But there is a change, and that change begins in the man's mind.

It begins, it's what the Bible calls repentance. It has to do with his mental life and his moral life and gets out into his conduct, but that is not enough. Repentance is not sufficient. There is such a thing as a conversion that is purely and only intellectual.

A man does not believe in God, then he is convinced there is a God and he believes in God. He has had an intellectual conversion, but he is the same creature that he was before. Slightly changed, but not radically changed.

Then the man, say, is a gambler, and he decides that's a foolish thing to do and he quits gambling. He is a little better than he was, but he is the same kind of man that he was before. Just the same as your horse that was wild on the prairie is now a gentle horse that will muzzle you and snuggle candy out of your pocket.

But he is a horse still. So your man who was a gambler but isn't a gambler is a sinner still. He isn't the same kind of sinner, he has switched his sinning, but he is a sinner still. You might go on and say that somebody never went to church and now they go to church, but they are changed in that way, but that's an interdental change, that's not the basic change.

So it's possible to have an intellectual change, it's possible to have a moral change. Many a man who has gone to prison, paid his debt to society, and come out and is doing what he calls now going straight, but he has not become a Christian in the true sense of the word, he's just a better man than he was before.

Certainly a better man to have in the neighborhood, just as your trained horse is better than your wild horse, but he's still a sinner. There is a change that completes this other change, and that is the Spirit's work that we call regeneration.

The Holy Spirit takes the truth and regenerates the man. And just as there is generation, there is regeneration. You and I are all born by generation, and we are what we are, and all of us are what we are by generation.

But there is such a thing as regeneration. Our Lord called it born again, or born from above. And when the Holy Ghost completes the act of regeneration, you've got a different being altogether. You've not got a trained being, you've not got the same man trained, nor the same man improved, you've got a different man altogether.

He is incidentally like other people and incidentally like he was before, but basically and internally now he is a different creature. He is now a man that has been born from above, and through the promises of God he has the nature of God within him.

And he is now a man who belongs in a different world altogether. He was born from above, and he belongs above. He was born from heaven, and he belongs in heaven. He was joined to Jesus Christ by the mystery of regeneration, and now he belongs to Jesus Christ.

He has taken eternity into his heart, and he is another kind of creature altogether. And I want to ask you, does that describe you? I'm afraid there's an awful lot of Church anarchy, even among the Evangelicals, an awful lot that's just a second-rate Christianity that never makes any change at all, any radical change.

A cowboy decides that he doesn't want to be a wicked cowboy anymore, so he straightens up and writes himself a song and goes twanging around about it round over the country. Oh, the Church's doors are all open to him, but he's radically the same man that he was before.

He's incidentally different. But there is such a thing as a conversion that makes the man radically different, basically different, biologically different. I don't believe anybody is saved until this has happened to him.

I don't think he's saved when he's confirmed. I don't think he's saved when he is baptized. I don't think he's saved when he's joined the Church. I don't think he's saved when he starts to pray the Mohammedans pray and the Buddhists pray and the Zoroastrians pray, and they pray everywhere.

Prayer rises up all over the face of the earth by people who live the same wicked lives they lived before. The Muslims used to go out to rob camel trains, and they'd get down on their knees and ask Allah to please give them success, and they'd go out and murder people and rob the trains, camel trains.

I don't know whether they still do it. They did it. There was lots of praying going on, but the world, it says, if you pray, you're okay. Some of these shows they used to have on, they'd stop and say, now we'll have one minute of prayer.

After the one minute of prayer was over, they'd sing off-colored songs again. Give God Almighty his crumb. To hear God, here's your crumb. Pass God a crumb as though you were a dog. A crumb of one minute's prayer in the midst of commercialism and wicked entertainment and vileness.

So praying doesn't make you a Christian. Stopping doing one thing and starting doing another doesn't make you a Christian. The evidence of being a true Christian are internal, and they're spiritual, and they have to do not only with the temperament and the feelings.

They have to do with the heart of a man. If any object, if anyone judges the words of Christ extreme, then let me simply say, not to apologize, but to explain that this is Christ's way of saving people.

He saves them by regenerating them. And this is his way of doing it. And his is the final authority and the ultimate word. If you have a house, a home, you paid for it and bought it, and you bought it by the sweat of your face, and you've worked hard and labored and driven yourself to get it and pay for it, and your wife takes care of it and looks after it, and it's yours, and it's yours by every right, you haven't cut any corners, it's yours, you bought it, you paid the full price, it's yours, it belongs to you under every facet and phase of Canadian law, it's yours.

You have a house, a home, you paid for it and bought it, and you bought it by the sweat of your face, and you've worked hard and labored and driven yourself to get it and pay for it, and your wife takes care of it and looks after it, and it's yours, and it's yours by every right.

If you have a house, a home, you paid for it and bought it by every right, you haven't cut any corners, it's yours, you bought it, you paid the full price, it's yours, it belongs to you under every facet and phase of Canadian law, it's yours.

God's Authority Over Heaven and Human Destiny

Then you have a right to say who comes in and who stays out. You have that right. If I come to your door and you don't like the looks of me, you have a perfect right to shut the door and say, pardon me, sir, I'm busy.

You have that right. You might not be courteous, but you have that right to do it. Now God Almighty made his heaven and he made his earth, and he made man in his image, and man sinned, and God sent his only Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh, and he gave Jesus Christ to be the last word to mankind, and he says, This is my heaven, and I have a perfect right to say who enters it.

This is mine. By every right in heaven or for hell, this is my heaven. In the Father's house are many mansions, and the Father has a perfect right to say who will enter the mansion. My dear old mother, before she was converted, she was a good little old philosopher, and she was a moral philosopher, and she was very much on the side of sinners.

And the idea that a man wasn't going to heaven because he was a good man shocked her. Later on she was converted, but before that she'd be shocked. She'd say about a man, Now there's a good man. If that man doesn't go to heaven, there's no reason to have a heaven.

What's the use of having a heaven if he shut a man like that out? Well, the fact is, she didn't make heaven, and you didn't, and I didn't. God made it. It's God's heaven. And God, because God made it and God guards it and God sustains it and God garnishes it and God gives its ornamentation and glory, and God has a perfect right to say who goes there and who doesn't.

And according to scriptures, God has said the man who is renewed biologically goes there. There were two men once. One was a poor man, and he begged at the rich man's gate. The other was the rich man from whom he begged.

The rich man died and went to hell. The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham's bosom. Almost everybody believes that that poor man went to heaven because he had suffered a lot in this life and was poor and deserved heaven.

And the rich man went to hell because he'd had it too easy and didn't deserve heaven. I never understood that until many years ago I heard a Canadian preacher preaching in the city of Akron, Ohio, Dr. Hallman.

I may have heard him in years gone by. He's gone to heaven now. A great Canadian preacher came down there, and he stood up there, and he held up those two men with two points of his fingers. And I've never forgotten those two men.

He said the rich man died and went to hell not because he'd been rich, but because he had a nature that hell demanded. He went where his nature belonged. And the poor man died and went to heaven not because he was poor, but because he had a nature that belonged there.

Everything will ultimately find its own place. It will gravitate toward the place it belongs. Brothers, you can fool me now, but there'll be a day when you pack your little grip and go where you belong.

And the great thing is, where do you belong? And that's the question that ought to bother you. You say, how can I know, Mr. Torser, where I belong? You belong where your nature belongs. What's your nature?

You belong where you are inside. Whatever's in there, that's where, wherever it belongs, that's where you'll go. If you belong in heaven, you'll go there. If you belong in hell, you'll go there. And anybody wants to complain about it, I don't know what he'll do about it, because God owns his heaven.

God made it. And God's been very, very patient in waiting to get people there. So, if I say to myself now, I don't like this way of doing things. I might just as well like it, because that's the way it is.

That's it. God has said it. Apostles have said it. Prophets have said it. Psalmists have said it. Our Lord himself said it. It's been repeated and said again and explained and annotated and explained some more.

So there isn't any, if you believe the Bible, there isn't any way of escaping it. Here it is, before us. Now, no one is compelled to be a Christian. Somebody says, I don't like this either-or, this sharply defined view of things.

I don't like it. Right. Nobody's compelling anybody to be a Christian. Our Lord simply says, it's up to you. He passes by and says it's up to us. Christ finds men lost and blind and bruised, and he saves them, but he doesn't compel them to be saved.

He waits for them, but he doesn't knock them out and lug them in, and then finally they wake up from their unconsciousness they found in heaven. They say when a man is drowning, or a woman, he can't swim.

That a good swimmer sometimes knocks them out, hits them hard, and knocks them into a state of semi-consciousness. And then when they float, they just take them to shore. And when they come to, they're saved.

Don't get to heaven that way. Nobody is going to get knocked out and then wake up in heaven. No. Everybody has a mind of his own. Everybody has a will of his own. Everybody can make his own decision. And our Lord Jesus Christ quietly passes by and says, Come after me, he that will come after me, let him come.

And so if we decide to come after him, we come. And in coming we accept our Lord's way of doing things. We accept God Almighty's terms for his own heaven. Only his children are going to his heaven. You know how it is in your neighborhood.

We had six sons, as I've often said. Don't count the daughter because she came too late. The sons were pretty well grown. So we really had the two families. But anyhow, we had these six boys. And you could look out almost any time out there on Prospect Avenue in South Chicago, and out in what they call the prairies.

That would be the vacant lot to the average person. But around Chicago, there are prairies. You'd look out on the prairie and you'd see anywhere from 10 to 20 kids playing. And they would run and chase each other and climb over the fence and tear down the rose bushes.

And they had themselves a time until it was time to go to bed. And then they sorted themselves out. The Valentines went over to the Valentine. Posers came into the house because posers had their beds in their rooms for them.

And the Owls family, their boys, George and Bobby, they went down to the Owls' home. And so they sorted themselves out at last. And there's going to be a terrible sorting out one of these times, or a wonderful sorting out.

Everybody's going to go where he belongs. Everybody's going to know his own father and go where his own father is. They don't like it. It's another matter. But they're going to go where they belong. He who loves sin and enjoys the world and draws back at the thought of being changed, he'll go where he belongs.

He who humbly and reverently kneels in the presence of Jesus Christ and undergoes the mystery of regeneration, he died and he will go to his place, though he's free to remain where he is until death takes him where he belongs.

But in rejecting Christ's words, and this is a serious thing, in rejecting Christ's words, any man agrees to have no part in Christ's redemption. He agrees to have no part in the Church's redemption. He agrees to forget the right to his name and all that belongs to that blessed name.

He agrees to give up all the treasures the true Church has enjoyed during the centuries. He agrees to remain a lost and fallen soul until death separates the body and the soul. He agrees to take the bitter damning consequences of not being a changed man.

And like the rich man, when he dies, he will go where he belongs. Remember, always it's so. They're dying all over Toronto. They're dying. Every day they die. Look in the newspapers. And invariably they go where they belong.

And they belong where their nature is at home. Christians go to be with the Lord because their nature belongs there. Sinners can't go there because it would be a vast cosmic incongruity to take a sinner to a heaven where he doesn't belong.

And that's why it's so foolish to say, well, he didn't go to church but he was a good man, he belongs in heaven. He belongs where his nature belongs. The Lord Jesus who came bringing gifts for suffering men.

He came and they bruised him and they wounded him and they drove him away. And they didn't discourage him. Still today he walks among us. He says again, any man will let him. If men judge money and lust and fleshly gratifications to be more desirable, than the many mansions, he can have them.

God won't quarrel with him and he won't, I don't think that he will even make trouble for him. A man called me, very marked English accent, called me last night. He was really in trouble. He said, Mr. Tozer, I have a question I want to ask you.

And I said, all right. I didn't know I could answer it but I was prepared to try. He said, now here's my question. He said, why do Christians, why have they got so much trouble? And a lot of sinners don't have any trouble at all.

He says, for instance, my wife and I live beside another couple. And he said, they're not Christians at all, don't claim to be. They are happy out in their backyard. He said, there are flowers and all the rest.

And they just seem quite restful. Everything's all right with them. But my wife and I are serving the Lord Jesus and we're having trouble. Oh, that was an easy one. That was an easy one. I said, go to the 73rd Psalm.

Psalm 73 and the Prosperity of the Wicked

David had that problem. David said that problem bothered him to a point where he hesitated even to mention it for fear he would offend some of the Lord's children. He said, I'm in trouble all the time.

But he said, the sinners, he's rich. His eyes stand out with fatness, he said. He said, nobody bothers him. He said, I'm running and in trouble and persecuted. What'll I do? He said, I'm in distress. He said, I don't like to talk about it, but Lord, you know it's true.

I, as a Christian, am having my difficulties. 73rd. If I said 37th, of course, I have this digestive reverse. 73rd Psalm. And he said, now if I should speak of these things, I should offend against the generation of thy children.

And when I thought about it, it was too painful for me. Same brother with the English accent. He said the same thing and he was distressed. He said, how about it? He said, my wife and I are Christians and we're in trouble all the time.

And he said, these friends over here have these larks and they're sinners. He said, when I thought on this, I was too, it was too painful for me until I went into the sanctuary of God and then I understood.

Surely thou did set the sinner in slippery places. Thou castest them down into destruction. How are they brought into desolation as in the moment they're utterly consumed with terror. So foolish was I and ignorant I was as a beast.

He apologized to God. He said, I acted like a fool, God, even thinking about it. But he said, for me, I am continually with thee and thou holdest me by my right hand. I'd rather have God hold my right hand and be in trouble than be out of trouble and have God ignore me.

I'd rather look into the face of God and suffer than to be without a pain or a twinge for a lifetime and be behind the back of God. He said, thou, nevertheless, I am continually with thee. Thou hast holden me by my right hand.

Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel and afterward receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but thee? There is none upon earth that I desire beside thee. That's the answer. The sinner gets it now. The Christian gets in trouble because he is a Christian.

Christian Suffering and Separation from the World

I talked last night, as I mentioned this morning, with a young brother who's just getting his M .D. degree very shortly, in June. And he said now, I'd like to ask. He'd heard me preach here and there and he thought maybe I might have some answers.

I don't have them all, but I have a few. He said, they have parties and they drink at those parties. What shall I do? He was in distress. None of the rest of them were in distress. They just went and had themselves a whale of a time, you know, the fellows that are going to look after us later on.

They're going to operate on our appendix and prescribe. But in school they're having themselves a whale of a time drinking, you know. He said, what shall I do? Well, I said, one thing. He said, oh, you don't drink.