Dying to Self — Bill McLeod

I suppose it would be the most natural thing in the world for me to bring a message on the subject of prayer, especially after we viewed that particular film. It's the first time I've seen it, I've heard about it, and of course I was greatly blessed and challenged by its message.

And I had a little message on prayer that I was half planning to bring this morning, and the Lord very clearly indicated this was not what he wanted, and so I will not do that, and I will bring the message God has laid in my heart.

But before I do that, God has also indicated that I should share briefly something about the kind of prayer preparation we had in Saskatoon prior to 1971. Some of you will be aware of this, and some of you perhaps will not.

Five years before October 13, when the meetings began in our church with Ralph and Lucitara, five years prior to that, on a Saturday, we began a deacons' prayer meeting. We had ten deacons in the church, and we rarely had all ten out, some because of their work could not be there.

But we usually had six or seven men. But that first meeting, there wasn't anything unusual about the meeting. But the next day was Sunday, and that Sunday we had a new revival, indeed speaking cautiously, but had I known then what I know now, it's possible that we might have had a revival then.

I was more or less, I'm ashamed to say it, but I was more or less glad when the movement subsided the way it finally did, and it kind of petered out and things went back to normal. Then a couple of years later, now this prayer meeting we carried on, remember, for five years, and two or three years later, I don't remember exactly when, but we had the same kind of thing happen again, only this time it was among the deacons, I mean, God just blew into the meeting and the men began crying and getting right with each other and getting right with me.

One deacon, I remember, he grabbed another deacon and dragged him out of the room into another room, and they got this whole mess straightened out, and it was a wonderful thing, and I didn't know what to do with it.

And the following day, of course, was Sunday, and I feel quite sure that had I taken those deacons into the pulpit Sunday morning and had them share, we probably would have had a revival then. But I didn't know what to do with it.

Frankly, I was scared. And so we went on. Then we began, prior to the revival, a round-the-clock prayer meeting, and we had for some months before October of 1971, we had, well, any time of the day or night, somebody from our church was on their knees praying.

People took 15-minute slots for prayer. We had, so I say, for some months this prayer wheel going, then we had cottage prayer meetings, particularly for ladies. Different parts of Saskatoon to make it convenient for ladies to attend.

Then we closed all of our Sunday evening services with a half-hour of prayer for those who wanted to stay. We usually never had more than maybe 30, 40, 50 people, but we'd have at least a half-hour of prayer for a revival.

This went on for months before the revival began. And then we had two separate young people's meetings in the church, and they ended all of their young people's meetings with a season of prayer. And then we had a family prayer meeting in the church, and when I came, if I remember right, it was running around 35, something like this.

We had about maybe 140 or 150 resident members in the church at the time. We had more than that on the books. But we had a prayer meeting, and after I'd been there a while, we introduced the idea of a family prayer meeting, so people could bring their children.

We had two separate children's prayer meetings every Wednesday night. Each one had their leader or leaders, and the children were trained in the art of prayer. Then the young people had their prayer meeting Wednesday night.

We all met together for the opening song or two. The young people stayed for the message, and then they broke up into these various prayer groups all over the church, women's meetings, men's meetings, and so on.

And then the prayer meeting began to grow. We'd get up to 60, we'd get up to 70, we'd get up to 80, it went up to 100. And I could see prior to the revival, it seemed every Wednesday night there was a few more people or a half a dozen or so people more each week.

And then God began, on the 13th of October, began to work. We had 150 people out that first meeting, and I think there was one or two responded, and that was Wednesday night, and by Sunday we were packed out.

I think Saturday night we were packed out, and then of course you know something of the story from there on. And so prayer certainly had a definite place. Some of you have heard or read of the praying men of Barvey, an area in the Hebrides, and Duncan Campbell told us something of these men personally, men who were revived and then began to pray.

And these men, here's what they would do. They would come home from work, have their supper, and go to bed and sleep until nine o 'clock at night. And then they would rise at nine and pray until two or three o 'clock in the morning, then they would go to bed until seven o 'clock when they got up and had their breakfast, then they would go to their job.

And they did that every day of the year, except on Sunday when things had to be different because of the nature of the day. And these men had wonderful power with God. Duncan Campbell told us he went one time to reopen a church on the Isle of Skye, I believe it was.

The doors had been closed for five years, no witness on the island, and it began on Sunday night. There were five people out. Monday night there were five, Tuesday night there were five, nothing was happening.

And so he got a message across to this group of praying men. And Mr. Campbell told me, he said, the first night after those men had prayed the night through and taken the burden of the Isle of Skye on their hearts, there were 250 in the church, and he did tell me how many people found Christ in that meeting that night.

In some respects, Finney, the great revivalist, was a radical, and here's something he said that you might think is radical, but maybe not. He said, I hope the time comes when the Church of God will employ on a full-time basis prayers as well as preachers.

He had two men, Abel Clary and Father Nash, as he was called affectionately, who spent eight and ten hours a day praying for Finney. When they knew Finney was going to go to a certain area for meetings, they would go perhaps ten days or two weeks or three weeks before he came and begin their prayer ministry.

And Finney said, by the time I got there, the revival was in progress. I said something like that in a church in Detroit, and afterwards the preacher came and said, Hey, tell me that again. Did Finney really say that?

And I said, Yes. He said, It sure cleared something up for me, and I said, What did it clear up for you? I said, I have a friend, a preacher friend, and about a year ago they hired a man from the congregation on a full-time basis as a prayer.

He thought that was crazy. But he said, You know what? My friend told me that from that very week, revival began in the Church. He said, Everything just took a turn spiritually for God in the Church. He said, The thing that was cleared up for me tonight was the fact that, you see my friend is a great admirer of Finney, he's read everything Finney ever said.

Oh, by the way, may I say this, that the praying men of Bar-Vey were asked to take our Church and my personal ministry on their hearts prior to the revival in 1971. And I have no doubt that they were men that God used, and you've heard about the men in India that prayed for three years for revival in Saskatoon and didn't know anyone in Saskatoon, and then God put the whole thing together in his own way.

But wouldn't it be wonderful to see something like Dr. Orr was talking about, where the whole nation is swept and hundreds of thousands are converted? That would be wonderful, and it's certainly possible, and let's look to God for guidance here.

That's the way you might have us do. Now I want to speak from a very familiar passage of scripture, and some of you may have heard this particular message, at least part of it before, I don't know. But very clearly this morning, God laid it on my heart, John 12 and 24.

The Kernel of Wheat and the Law of Dying to Self

Jesus Christ is speaking, and he says, Verily, verily, which means, In truth, in truth, I say unto you, Except a corn, that is, except a kernel of wheat, fall into the ground and die, it abides alone.

But if it die, it brings forth much fruit. And sometimes people think that Jesus was talking about his own death on the cross. Well, there's no doubt that was partly in view. But the next verse makes it very, very clear that Jesus Christ was talking to his people.

Because notice what he says in the next verse. He that loves his life shall lose it. And he explains that if we lose our life for his sake, we'll find it, we'll save it. As it says elsewhere, for my sake and the gospel's.

Sometimes people ask questions like this, they'll say, Do you know of a simple formula, a plan that even someone as stupid as I can understand, whereby I can have spiritual power that's real and lasting?

I say yes, John 12 and 24. If a kernel of wheat will not fall into the ground and die, it will abide alone. If it dies, it's buried in the ground, it will bring forth much fruit. People do you know of anything simpler than that?

Especially in an agricultural community, we ought to be able to understand this truth. You know, if you have a kernel of wheat and you don't plant it at the end of a thousand years, you will still have just one kernel, that's all.

I did some figuring one time, and I'm not the greatest mathematician in the world by any stretch of the imagination, but I figured out that if you planted a kernel of wheat and then each year you took from that one stalk, you took the kernels that came and you replanted those, and everything that came you kept replanting, and if all of Canada was a wheat field from coast to coast, from north to south, there were no lakes and there were no musk eggs and no rivers and there were no people and no cities and no highways and nothing, just one vast wheat field, it would only take 10 years until all of Canada was covered with wheat, starting with one, providing you buried that one.

But if you didn't bury it, at the end of 10 years you would have exactly one kernel of wheat. Now then, Jesus said, now there are two laws he introduces here, they are absolutely, what shall I say, we talk about the law of the Medes and Persians, they are stronger than that, the law of gravity stronger than that, they are absolute, except the kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies and abides alone, number one, that's the first law, that if I as a Christian believer am not willing to die to myself, God is not able to use me.

I'm not a vessel that's fit for the Master to put his hand to. Now it's very simple, we can't fail to understand that. And the second law is this, if it dies, if it walks, if it dies, not if it has a certain type of personality, and not if it has a certain number of opportunities, but if it dies, it brings forth much fruit.

There are the two laws, simple as can be. Do we apply them? Do we think about them? You know, the man called Samson is a remarkable person, and I don't know if you ever noticed in the book of Judges where his story is given, but the Bible records this fact, that he accomplished more by dying than he did for the 20 years he was Israel's judge.

He slew the Philistines and said it themselves, our enemy, who slew many of us, a thousand at one time. Thousands of the Philistines died when they met Samson, this giant for God. But the Bible expressly says, and the Holy Spirit never wastes words, that he slew more at his death than he slew in the 20 years that he lived.

And you remember the story, there were thousands of the Philistines, they gathered from all over the country, and all the lords of the Philistines were there. And do you ever stop to think that Delilah was there, too?

And Delilah met her end that day. Archaeologists have discovered the temple, like the temple they had that Samson was in, and they say it was perfectly made for the very thing that happened. Crudely constructed, but sometimes large buildings, and they had these huge beams and pillars, and usually two pillars supporting the roof.

And that's what's indicated in the story in Judges. And so there were thousands of people, it says, on the roof, and all these other people down below, there were two levels of people, and Samson got them all.

And that speaks to me of the Lord Jesus. You know, he got the host of the High Ones on high. He spoiled all those principalities and powers that served the devil. He shook them off by his death on the cross and his resurrection from the dead.

And Samson pulled the pillars down, and we don't know whether he pulled them in or pushed them out. It doesn't make much difference. His arms, I think he probably had to push them out. I don't know how he got his arms around pillars that big.

So he likely just pushed them out. And so there he was, like a man hanging on a cross, a perfect picture of the Lord Jesus Christ. But notice again, he slew more, he did more for God. You know, he did more in a matter of seconds than he did in 20 years when he died.

And that's wonderful. Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abides alone, and that explains why there are Christians who are highly trained. I remember a fellow, he'd been chasing education for 15 years beyond high school.

He had so many degrees, he had to have a three-ton truck to haul him behind. And he still didn't feel he was prepared to preach. What he really needed to do was just to die, and then he'd be ready. And I'm not decrying education.

Paul was an educated man, but I'm just saying that's not the secret. The secret is to die, to myself. My ambitions, my plans, my personality, anything that belongs to me has to become wholly dispensable in the interest of the larger cause, the eternal cause of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Joseph as an Illustration of Dying to Self

And to illustrate our text, I want to direct our attention to the man called Joseph in the Old Testament, one of the most remarkable stories, as far as I'm concerned, in the whole of the Bible. You know, it takes 13 chapters, I think altogether 12 or 13 chapters, to tell the story of Joseph.

Why there are some very important people in the Bible whose story is told in six verses of the word of God. Why so much space devoted to this man? Maybe we'll better understand after we've considered some things from his story together.

There were a number of things he had to die for. Someone put it this way. They said, do you remember now there were 12 boys in the family, and he was a godly person apparently, and his brothers were a bunch of rascals.

The Bible says that he brought unto his father their evil report, and they hated him. As a matter of fact, they were wicked enough that they finally plotted to murder him and would have done it, but Reuben kind of held them off, and then something else happened.

The Ishmaelites came along in the province of God and they decided to make money on their brother rather than have his blood on their conscience, and so this is what they did. But somebody put it this way.

They said Joseph was the only man on a team of 12 that was playing the game by the rules, and yet the umpire of the universe blew the whistle on him and gave him a 13-year penalty. He was 17 years old when they sold him to slavery, and he was 30 when he got out of jail and became the ruler in Egypt.

Now, here are some things he had to die to. First of all, he had to die to youth, 17 years old, when he was sold into slavery. He became nothing. He had no rights, he lived in a foreign land, he was just another man's servant or slave, had to do what he was told.

He had nothing, and he was nothing at the age of 17. There are maybe a very few young people here today, I don't know if there are any really in that category, but I wonder how many people would buy God's program if they knew what was to happen at age 17.

So he had to die to youth, and he had to die to youthful ambitions. Remember the dreams that God gave him? Obviously those dreams were from God, they were not something he concocted himself, they were from God.

And these dreams indicated something of coming greatness. There have been great men who felt that destiny, when I think of Winston Churchill, the late Winston Churchill, when he was 21 years old, he said, now I wouldn't personalize and call it God, maybe he was a little afraid of getting some criticism from some of his friends, so he used the word destiny.

He said, I feel within me the movings of greatness, and I believe that destiny has planned that someday I should occupy a very large place in world affairs. Now Churchill said that when he was 21 years old, so he felt that was within him.

And Joseph had premonitions of coming greatness through the dreams that God gave him, and he told it eagerly to his family, and they hated him, it says. They hated him for his words and for his dreams.

Well, he had to die to that, because all of a sudden he's a slave in a foreign land, and he's in a tunnel now, there's no end to the tunnel. I was in Norway not long ago, we drove through some tunnels that were three miles long.

You think you're never going to get out of that dark hole. And he was in a tunnel that looked longer than that. It wasn't three miles long, it was 13 years long before he got out of it. And I'm sure those dreams he had of coming greatness sort of faded away during that time.

He had to die to youth, and to youthful ambitions. Then he had to die to favoritism. He was a favorite son, it says, his father loved him more than all his children, because he was a son of his old age.

And this created real problems. You know, sometimes in a family situation where you have a number of children, you almost always have a child or two that's very, very easy to get along with, they're very obedient and they're so sweet and loving, and then you have children that are not that way.

And naturally you have a tendency, although you don't want to do this, but you do have a tendency to lavish more attention and affection on the child that responds, rather than the child that doesn't.

I had a daughter, and all you had to do when she did something wrong was look at her and raise your eyebrows, and she burst into tears and repented. And I had another daughter, and you could rail the daylights out of her and she would do it again.

Well, thank God they're Christians now. But anyway, that's how it is. And it was no kindness that Joseph was the favorite in the family. It only made things harder when he was wrenched rudely out of his situation and stuck in a foreign country and nobody cared whether he lived or died.

He was nobody's favorite then. And that made it harder. So he had to die to favoritism, and he had to die to freedom, living in the land of Canaan with his own boss, go where he wanted, when he wanted, do what he wanted, free as a bird.

And then all of a sudden he's a slave in a foreign land. He's got no rights at all. And the story is so remarkable because, remember this, Joseph never had a written Bible. He never had one scrap of the Bible in his hand.

He couldn't turn to the Word of God the way we can and be comforted by what he read. The Holy Spirit had not yet been given. He couldn't attend a conference like this and never did in all his lifetime.

He never had a Christian book. There wasn't one written. He never had the history that we have, 1 ,900 years of the history of the Christian Church, things like we saw in the film this morning, for example, some of the great acts of God and history past.

He had nothing like that to go on. There was no radio, there was no TV. He had no Christian friends in Egypt. He was all by himself, just he and the Lord. And somehow he survived. This is a strange thing.

You and I think we have to have all these aides to worship and aides to the Christian life to keep on going. Man, some Christians, they'd fall flat on their face three times a week if they didn't have all the aides that we have.

Sometimes we forget, sometimes we forget that all we need, really, is the Lord. I mean, Joseph certainly proved it. It's a remarkable story. Now, he didn't know, had he known this, it would have been a lot easier for him than it was.

But he did not know that his story would be written in a book called the Bible, would be read by literally scores of millions of people over a period of 2 ,000 years or longer than that, 3 ,000, 4 ,000, 5 ,000 years, and many, many people would be challenged by his life story.

If he'd known that, he could have endured, but he never knew that. All he knew was that things had really gone bad, his own family hated him, he was a slave in a foreign land, and he couldn't see the end of the tunnel.

That's all he knew. Still he trusted. You know, the story really is remarkable, because there's no indication anywhere in the story that he ever doubted God. And one thing about the Bible that's always honest about its heroes, if Abraham failed and he did twice, he lied about his wife, said she was his sister, then the Bible tells you about it.

If Samson failed and gave in to the sins of the flesh, the Bible will tell you about it. When Paul and Barnabas had a sharp dissension between them and they fought and so on, they split. The Bible will tell you about that.

One of the reasons why we know the Bible is inspired is because the writers of the Bible never try to dress up the heroes or make them look any better than they really were. That's why it says in the book of James that Elijah was a man subject to like passions as we are.

To put it differently, he had the same kind of sinful fall in nature that we had. And he failed God. He got a little note from a woman, she was going to kill him, and so he ran away. The fear of man took over and he ran off in the wilderness and requested for himself that he might die.

But you don't have anything like this said about Joseph. Somehow he walked with God, in spite of all the discouragements that went on, and they were very, very many. Now then, he had to die to freedom, he had to die to his own family.

He never saw his family for 20 years. Supposing God came to you and said to you, now I want you, this is my program, my plan for your life, I want you to go to a foreign land, and you won't see any of your family for 20 years.

You know, today if you go as a missionary, you can think in terms at the very most of being five years separated from your family, maybe four, maybe three, and some missions now they have a policy, some agree with the airlines where they get special rates for missionaries so they can come home every two years.

But Joseph never had that. He never saw them for 20, and more than that, you know, if you're a missionary in a foreign field, and you know at the end of next year I'm going to be able to get home and see my family and friends again, boy, yeah, that really keeps you going, doesn't it?

I would think it would. But Joseph didn't know. 15 years had gone by, he hadn't had a word, not a scratch of a pen, he hadn't talked to them on the telephone, he knew nothing at all. Was his father, were his parents living or dead?

What about his brothers? He didn't know a thing. He hadn't heard anything. And still he walks with God. And it reminds me here of the Judsons when they were in Burma. Maybe you read this particular incident from their life.

He had gone away on some evangelistic tour, and she never heard from him for two years. She didn't know if he was alive or dead. She just stayed in Burma and she served God and waited, trusting God. And then the political situation got very, very difficult, and so the government ordered all Europeans, non-nationals, to leave.

And a boat pulled up in the harbor for this purpose, and we were all loaded on the boat, and she got on the boat. She didn't want to leave, because she was concerned about her husband. And they got on the boat, and as they were on the boat there, the captain got concerned, and he said, We have twenty-five people too many on this boat, twenty-five you will have to go back.

She said, I want to go. She was one of the first ones on the boat, and she went back on shore. And the next day her husband came back, and if she had gone on that boat, she wouldn't have seen him for another eighteen months, because they didn't have jet planes in those times.

But those people were so sold out to God, and I remember when I first read that story years ago and asked my son Tim to read it, and he brought it back, and all he could say was, Dad, it's a heartbreaker.

What a heartbreaker, people, the story of Adonai and Judson. Well, his first two wives he buried, his third wife buried him, and he buried some of his children over there, and the discouragement, you know, at one time the situation was so absolutely desperate that he tried to talk another Christian into jumping off a bridge with him so they could end it all.

He just couldn't stand it anymore. They were tortured so cruelly for months and months and months on end, and they saw practically nothing happening. When God talks about a harvest, he doesn't necessarily say the harvest will happen now.

But they tell us that today in Burma there are 300 ,000 Christians, and it all began when Judson went to that country and burned out for God and literally died as a colonel of wheat. I haven't had time to go into that.

You read the story of the book To the Golden Shore, or that other, I forget the name of the first book I read in his life, and he knew what John 12, 24 was, and here's Joseph. He has to die to his family, he has to die to his own country.

You know something? He only visited his native land once after he was sold at the age of 17, just once before he died. He never lived there again. The only reason he returned to his country was to bury his own father.

Now would you buy God's program if that's what he told you he wanted you to do? He wanted you to go to a foreign land, and you'd only visit your homeland once more in your lifetime. You might live for another 60 years, but you'd only visit your country once, and that would be to bury your father.

Would you accept God's program for your life? Well Joseph had to, but there's no indication whatever that he murmured against God. Then we're in Philippians 2, it says, "...work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you both the will and to do of his good pleasure.

Do all things without murmurings and disputings, murmurings against God and disputings with men, that you may be blameless and harmless, blameless before God and harmless before men. The sons of God will outrebuke in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding forth the word of life, that I may rejoice in the day of Christ, that I have not run in vain, neither labored in vain.".

Dying to Love, Family, Country, and Cultural Comfort

To come back to Joseph then, he had to die to love. You know, you can stand anything if your family loves you, if you can find at least one person that loves you. I mean, you can stand anything, you can go through a lot.

A man who was a preacher years and years ago, who'd gone through a great amount of discouragement and persecution, was asked one time how in the world he ever managed to maintain his equilibrium and this spiritual high he seemed to be on all the time.

And he said, my family loves me, and that was enough. When he got home, his family loved him. But Joseph's family didn't love him, they hated him. He begged for his life when he was down in the pit, he besought them with tears, and they just laughed at him.

They hated him, because of his dreams, and because he told on them, he told their father what kind of lives they were living in, they hated him. And really he had no one to love him, and no one in Egypt to love him either.

You know, sometimes we Christians think we have to have human love. A man came all the way from Florida, a man in his seventies, down to Thunder Bay when I was in the crusade there, a preacher. He had been, he was not then, because his wife had left him, she didn't love him, she told him, she just walked out on him, and he was crying, he said, Brother Bill, I don't have anyone in the world that loves me, I don't know how I can carry on.

I said, you know, we sing in one of our songs, I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus' name, and that's what God wants you to do, he's knocking out all the props. You don't have any human love, but you've got God's love, and that's a lot more than human love.

And God is trying to knock out all the props, so you will depend wholly on him. You know something, we get so concerned about having human love. We work at it so desperately, some people wind up in asylums because, you know, they try so hard to find love.

You may know that the newest approach to psychiatric counseling is based on the idea that men have emotional problems for two reasons. One, they can't receive love adequately, and two, they can't give love adequately, and then they crack up.

And we think we have to have human love. Now, if you have human love, that's an added bonus, but you don't have to have it. Joseph never had it. He just had the love of God. And that he knew, and to that he clung, and he was never disappointed.

So he had to die to love, he died to his family, to his country, to his customs, and I had a friend, and he was well briefed, very well prepared before he went to a SAM in India, I remember him telling me how it was when he first got there, man, the country was so quaint, he really enjoyed it.

And then one day he told some missionaries where they were at the station, that he was going to go down to a certain place a hundred miles away with a car, and they said, fine, plan on a couple of days.

He said, a hundred miles, I plan to come back today, probably before, oh no, they said, you plan on a couple of days. And he didn't know what they meant. So he started off, and he said he was driving down a hard surface highway, and it wasn't like highways in Canada or the States, but it was a good highway, and he's driving down the highway, and then all of a sudden he sees a cowherd up in the field, and the cowherd looks back and sees him coming, and runs all the cows up in the road.

So then he's got to drive at two miles an hour, and he said, Bill, it was so funny, he said, I just sat in the car, I just about collapsed with laughter, I was slapping my legs and just roaring with laughter, and he said, the 40th time in heaven, I could have murdered him.

And then he came to a crossing, and the train was due at two o 'clock or something in the afternoon, so at a quarter to two, the wigwags came down. Now, the train doesn't stop until 4 .30, but that doesn't make any difference, and so the traffic builds up on both sides of the crossing, until there's hundreds of people there, and they have the greatest time just visiting.

And this Canadian, he's just beside himself, and he almost never made it. We used to get letters of prayer for Brother Ernie, he's really struggling. Then on top of that, he had dysentery 60 of the time of the first five years he was.

And that's mighty rough. Well, Joseph had to adjust to a new culture overnight, more preparation, whatever, and somehow he made it. He had to forget his own language and die to that, because they don't speak his language down in the land of Canaan, or down in the land of Egypt, rather.

I mean, the minute he hit Egypt, he had to learn a new language. Nobody asked him if he wanted to, he simply had to. And he had to forget his own language, because he had nobody to whom he could speak.

Would you buy that kind of a program? Why, we would go to language school for a year, two years, before we go to the foreign field, and then gradually ease into their language over a period of two or three years, depending on the country we're in, and how difficult the language is, and how apt a student we are.

But Joseph had none of that. He simply had to adjust. And I'm sure their food was different. And they're telling me when I go to India, their food is very highly spiced and so on. I can't say I'm looking forward to it, I can't see an anticipation to that.

But I'm going to have to adjust for the time I'm there, and enjoy it, and I'm sure the Lord will enable me to do it. But for Joseph, it was such a radical and such an abrupt thing to do to people, it was just forced on him from above.