New Life Baptist Church - Part 6 — Paul Washer

Thank you very, very much. That was quite beautiful. Would that you'd open up your Bible to the book of Revelation, chapter 3. Book of Revelation, chapter 3, beginning in verse 14. To the angel of the church in Laodicea write,.

Christ's Message to the Lukewarm Church

The Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God says this, I know your deeds that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were cold or hot. So because you are lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I will spit you out of my mouth.

Because you say, I am rich and have become wealthy and have need of nothing, and you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked, I advise you to buy from me gold refined by the fire so that you may become rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourselves, and that the shame of your nakedness will not be revealed.

And I salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see. Those whom I love I reprove and discipline, therefore be zealous and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him and he with me.

He who overcomes, I will grant to him to sit down with me on my throne, as I also overcame and sat down with my father on his throne. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Father, I come before you and pray your help for the sake of your own glory and the benefit of your people. In Jesus' name, amen. To the angel of the church in Laodicea write,.

Whenever some preacher turns to this passage, the church begins to tremble. Because this text is usually preached in a very hard, very rebuking, sometimes even angry sort of way. And there is a need for that at times in the church to come down very, very hard and to preach a hard word from the Lord.

But if we only look at this passage in that manner, we miss so many things. You see, whenever the Lord comes to a group of people to speak to them, He is always the Lord of love. One of the ways that you can discern the difference between when Satan is speaking to condemn and God is speaking to reprove is this.

Whenever Satan rebukes or condemns you, he will always leave you without hope. Whenever God speaks a hard word to His people, even through the prophets in the Old Testament we see this. Whenever God speaks even a hard word to His people, He never leaves them destitute of hope, but always leaves them with repent.

The mercies of the Lord are new every morning. So when we look at this passage tonight, I don't want you to just think of rebuke, of something negative, of how wrong you are, of the foot coming down. I want you to look at this passage as instructive, as helpful, as a blessing, as something tremendously positive in our lives.

Interpreting What Scripture Leaves Unexplained

Now, He says to the angel of the church in Laodicea, write, who this angel is, there is no grammatical contextual way to determine. You can say whatever you want to say as long as you want to say it, but grammatically and contextually, it is just impossible to identify who He is talking about.

Some say He is referring to a literal angel, others say He is referring to the pastor of the church, others say He is referring to maybe even the spirit of the church, all sorts of different things. But the Bible is silent, and when the Bible is silent on a matter, we would do well to be silent also.

Now, we can make our inferences, we can say what we believe it might be, but when the Bible doesn't go ahead and explain it, maybe it's not that important. Maybe we spend too much time trying to explain the things that aren't explained, and things that aren't that important, and we miss what's really important here.

What's really important is Jesus Christ has sent a message to His church. That's what's important. And it's an authoritative message. Now, first of all, I want you to understand something. The greatest blessing that can be manifest in the church is God sending that church a message, no matter how hard it is, and God working in that church to discipline, reprove, and rebuke that church.

That is a sign of tremendous blessing from the Lord. As a matter of fact, in the New Covenant, it promises, some of it in Malachi, that He would come as a refiner's fire, that He would come rebuking and cleansing His church.

Divine Discipline as a Sign of God's Love

And one of the greatest acts of judgment, of divine judgment upon a people who identify themselves with Christianity, is when God no longer comes to rebuke, or discipline, or correct. There are so many, and they're not churches, but there are so many, I don't even know what you would call them, people coming together throughout this country on Sunday morning, collecting themselves together in religious buildings that are no more churches than a man on the moon.

They can commit all sorts of abominations, they can teach all sorts of heresy, but God never rebukes them, He never corrects them, He never censors them. And why is that? For the same reason, I do not discipline another man's children.

They don't belong to me. So I want you to know something, church. I want you to know something, believer. If God so zealously guards you, that you cannot get away with anything, that is a sign, a manifestation of His love and His blessing in your life.

But if you're a person, or a group of people who have identified yourselves with Christianity, and yet you're able to live in the abominations of this world, you're able to trespass the commandments of God, without God ever coming to you, ever censoring you, ever rebuking you, ever convicting you of sin, then know this, you are reprobate and on the road to hell.

So see, when we see God come to us with a message that may be very, very difficult, it is a sign that we are His people. It is a sign of blessing. It is a sign of encouragement. Now, there's something very important here that I want you to understand.

The Fearful Responsibility of Preaching and Hearing

Preaching is an extremely dangerous thing for both parties, for the preacher and for the ones listening. Now, why is that? If what I preach here tonight is not biblical, it's not from the Lord, then on the day of judgment, I will stand and receive greater condemnation.

Not many of you be teachers, why? Teachers undergo greater scrutiny, greater condemnation. False prophets will be cast into hell. So you see, it's a fearful thing for me to preach. Because if what I say is not true, I come under the judgment of God.

But then it's also a fearful thing for you to listen to preaching. Now, if what I say tonight is not biblical, is not from the Lord, then it's not a fearful thing. You can totally discard it, walk out the door, and you're absolutely free from everything I say.

But if what I say is biblical and from the Lord, then you are bound by it and will be held accountable for it. To whom much is given, much is required. Now, I want you to understand something. This is very, very important, very important.

When I was a pastor in Peru, I would preach on a certain topic six weeks, eight weeks, three months. And then I would invite a visiting pastor or visiting preacher to come in and also preach on the same thing.

And I'd stand there at the back door and hear countless members of my own church come up to that man and say, praise God for that message, we've never heard anything like this before. And I'm thinking to myself, I have preached this for ten weeks.

Now, when your pastor gets up here, familiarity breeds contempt. When your pastor gets up here, he's not your pastor, he's hopefully God's man. And the fact that you hear him every week is a dangerous thing.

Why? Because we have a tendency not to listen much. Because we hear it every week from the same voice. But know this, if he is preaching the text, if he is being biblical, much is going to be required of thee.

Do you understand? It is a fearful thing to attend church when the Word of God is being preached and God himself is in attendance. Now, let me say something about authority, which is extremely important.

Biblical Authority Comes from Faithful Interpretation

From where does authority come to preach? We hear people, they say, well, you know these TV evangelists, they've all received a special anointing from God. A special anointing of the Holy Spirit. Well, the Bible says in 1 John that all believers have received the anointing of the Holy Spirit.

Some men, more the fundamentalist, Baptist type of men will say, I have authority because of my calling. Well, just because someone's called doesn't mean they're right. Men who are called can be wrong.

So from where does authority, true biblical authority come when someone is preaching? It comes from this, I have authority tonight to tell you about God and to tell you what to do and even command you to do certain things and stop doing other things only to the degree that I correctly interpret and clearly communicate the Word of God.

Other than that, I have no authority. So the only question here tonight is, is it true? When your pastor is preaching, the only question is, is it true? Is it biblical? Whenever the church, maybe the church leadership believes that it needs to go in a new direction or do something that no one's ever done before and people stand up and say, well, we've never done that before.

It really doesn't matter a hill of beans. The only question is, is it biblical? That's all that matters. That solves every problem. I was preaching several years ago at University Town and I had spoken at the university and I was preaching in a congregation outside of that university and some unbelievers came, rather secular fellows came just to kind of listen to me and fight with me a little bit after the meetings and I was preaching on that Jesus Christ is the only way.

When I came down, a young man was very angry with me and he said, I don't like the way you presented that. I don't like your spirit. I don't like your attitude. He went on all about all the things he didn't like about me.

And I said, young man, listen to me. I'm going to teach you something very important. I will bow before you right now and ask for forgiveness. Without even judging myself, I will ask forgiveness that I have offended you.

But young man, in the end, that really doesn't matter. Because even if I am all the things you say I am, I am arrogant, I am proud, I am quick tempered, if I am all the things you say I am, still, the question before you is this, what I said, is it true?

Because if it's true, you cannot use my sin as an excuse not to obey it. You see that? Now, when you leave here tonight or when you leave after hearing a sermon anywhere, sometimes when we preach directly about sin, I've heard people get up and walk out of the congregation and they'll say, well, I just don't agree with that guy or I just don't like what he said or who does he think he is?

You see, they're missing the point. It doesn't matter whether you like him or not and it doesn't matter who he thinks he is or who he thinks he's not. The only question is, is it true? You see, in every sermon, you have to be able to say one of two things.

The man who just preached to us is a heretic, a false prophet, completely wrong and I'm not going to listen to a word he says. Or what he said is right and it is biblical and I am bound to obey it. That's not the way people think.

What people do is this. They make it a personality battle. I don't like the guy, therefore I'm not listening to him. So you can't do that. You can't do that. It's the same way with Jesus Christ and C .S. Lewis' trilemma, the logical argument he put forth.

Jesus is either a liar or he's a lunatic or he's the Lord of glory, but you can't patronize him. In the same way, the preacher is either a heretic or sent from God and you can't patronize him. Now, to the angel of the church in Laodicea write, who is going to speak to this church?

Well, in this text, it is Jesus Christ. Now, the important thing tonight is that I myself preach what Jesus said. If I preach Paul Washer tonight, you are not bound to obey. But if I correctly interpret this text, you are bound to obey.

Because it is Christ himself that is speaking to you through his word. Now, one of the things my wife, she is from Spain, one of the things that she first noticed, she said when she came to this country, was this, she couldn't believe how thin-skinned that Americans were.

She goes, you can't tell anybody they're wrong in the church. They will get so offended, they're gone. She goes, in the church in Peru, we knew that was the pastor's job. To rebuke, to correct, to teach, but here in America, if you just look at somebody the wrong way, they're gone.

That's true. And it's probably true of some of you. If someone were to come and correct you, if someone were to come and tell you that possibly your teenager is lost, even though you believe they're saved, you'd get so offended, you'd go to the next church and not recognize you're leaving a church that loves you, because at least they'll tell you the truth.

Are you willing to open yourself up to biblical rebuke? Because if you're not, there's no hope for you whatsoever. Are you willing for a man of God, with the Bible open, and not just the pastor, but godly men, and even open to the rebuke of godly women in its proper context.

Are you open to rebuke? Are you open to correction? Are you open to someone walking up to you in love, and humbly telling you something that's going to hurt you, but they do it because they love you and for your benefit?

Because if not, there's no hope for you. You can't grow. One of the most important aspects of fellowship is correction and rebuke. And yet, I see none of it today in America. No wonder we don't grow. How can we grow?

Christ the Amen and Faithful Witness

Now, I want you to look at something here. The one who comes to rebuke this church, Laodicea, and the one who may come tonight to correct this church, is Jesus Christ. And look how He's described. First of all, He's the Amen.

The one who, when you open the Bible, corrects you, is the very one who is the fulfillment of every promise God ever gave. Can't you listen to someone like that? Why would you want to balk against someone like that?

Why would you want to have a stiff neck against Him? In the love of God, in the faithfulness of God, in the sovereignty of God, He is the very answer, yes, to every promise God ever gave you. Can't you listen to someone like that when He comes to you and tells you, you're wrong?

There are certain people, especially certain older men, that I don't know why, but they have taken me under their wing and they love me. They love me. They would die a thousand deaths for me. They have mentored me.

They have been a blessing to me. They have rebuked me so many times. I take it because I know them. I'll never forget one time I preached. Oh, I was just full of rage. I preached one night. Almost tore the church apart.

And afterwards, one of those dear men came up to me. I was standing almost right here at the steps of the platform. He just shot out of his chair and came right up as soon as the service was over. And he said, Paul, you preached the truth tonight.

And you preached it in the flesh. And you need to get down on your knees right now and ask God to forgive you. And then you need to stand up and ask this church to forgive you. He was right. And He saved my ministry maybe.

Most people don't have enough love to do that. Probably most of you would have walked out of here telling everybody how wicked I was. But none of you would have had enough love to come to me and tell me I was wrong.

That's typical church. But some people really do love. And they love so much they're willing to put their life on the line. And even rebuke the very ones they love. When someone comes to you in love, humbly listen.

And when someone comes to you not in love and not humbly, still listen. Because it might be true. Don't use their sin as an excuse for your own. Is it true? But here we know it is. Why? Because the one speaking to us is the Amen.

And He's not only the Amen, it says He is the faithful and true witness. He's faithful. The one who comes to you in Scripture to correct you, He has always been faithful to you. Always. Has He ever failed you one time?

Has He ever turned His back on you one time? Has He ever not come to help you one time? Has His blood ever failed one time? Well, then can't you listen to someone like that? And part of His faithfulness is this.

He comes to you to correct you. Let me tell you something. If you are someone's friend and you know they're in sin, and you don't go to them to correct them, it's not because you love them so much. It's because you love yourself and you desire your own self-preservation and you don't want anyone to think bad of you.

You're not being faithful to your friend. In the same way, I'm not being faithful to the congregation if I do not preach the truth. You know why most people don't discipline their little children? It's not because they love them.

Don't buy into that lie. It's because they love themselves and they want their children to like them. They feed off their own children like parasites. The one who comes to you is faithful. But not only is he faithful, he's a true witness.

Now anyone else comes to you, including myself, with a witness against you, listen, but just don't accept right off the top. If God shows you that what they're saying is true, then accept it. If God doesn't show you, if it's not clear to you, then go gather some other brothers and sisters who will be honest and sit down all of you together and say, is this so about me?

Is this true? Do I need to change? Apply Matthew 18 there. Because not every time someone witnesses something about you, not every time are they true and faithful. We can just simply be mistaken. Someone can come to you to rebuke you and they might do it in love, they might do it humbly, but at the same time they might do it and they're fallible.

And they're wrong. But when Jesus comes to you, he is the faithful and true witness. Everything he says about you is true. He knows you're rising up. He knows you're lying down. He knows you're coming in, you're going out.

He knows the deepest recess of your heart. Everything he knows is truth. He is omniscient. He knows everything completely, perfectly, exhaustively, and without effort. So when he comes to you, what he says is true.

Hearing God Through Silence, Scripture, and Self-Examination

Now let me ask you something though. Are you like so many people that you are so busy with the things of this world that you are not hardly ever before him in the Word and prayer? You are so busy you never hear his voice.

You're never before the open Word, meditating upon it. You're never before him silent and listening and reading and meditating and saying, Lord, show me my heart. Is there any wicked way in me? Examine me, O Lord.

Even the pagan philosopher said that one of the highest virtues is to know thyself. We know nothing. We're a busy, noisy people. And our Christianity is just as busy and noisy as anything you can find in the world.

A poet, songwriter, has written a beautiful, beautiful narration of Jesus Christ coming in from the wilderness and desiring to go into the temple. He says, Weak from the journey and the long passing days, hungry to worship and join in the praise, and shock met with anger that burned on his face when he entered the wasteland of that barren place.

And it talks about Christ entering into the temple with all the noise and the clanging and the music and the buying and the selling and the screaming and the hollering. And he talks about making a whip and chasing the people out of the temple.

And then it says, The noise and confusion gave way to his Word at last sacred silence, so God could be heard. There's so much noise in the church. Can God be heard? So much activity, so much just useless, vain activity.

How much time do you spend quiet before the Lord? Asking Him to examine you. Asking Him to examine you. To show you your ways. David even asked God, Show me how transient I am. Teach me to number my days.

Is there any wicked way in me? He was a man acutely aware that there was a judgment coming. Silence in order to hear. Is anybody listening? Does anyone have ears to hear? So much noise. Do you know what the church, well, you know what Christianity is in America today?

Hardly anything more than a six flags over Jesus. And the bigger the church gets, the bigger the carnival. Programs, activities, everything from ski trips to coffee shops. Why? Well, that's what you've got to do when you've got to keep the program going.

And when men out of a desire to be famous within Christianity build big churches upon the bones of unconverted church members, you need a bulldozer to knock the whole thing down. And it's coming. Probably the only thing that will save the church in America is persecution or national catastrophe or revival.

Christ as the Head and Source of Creation

He says, The Amen, the faithful, the true witness, the beginning of the creation of God. I love what the Puritans used to say. Thomas Watson, speaking of Jesus Christ and His authority and power, he would say, This is no inferior governor of some small village who has come to speak with you.

This is no inferior prince. This is the beginning of creation. This word here doesn't mean that He is the first created being, as many cults would say. No, it means He is the head of creation. He is the origin and source of creation.

The very One who holds your entire existence, every breath in the palm of His hand, comes to speak with you in the Word of God. It was said by Jesus that certain people would rise up against the people of His age and judge them.

The Queen of Sheba, a pagan, would rise up and judge the people of Israel because one greater than Solomon was among them. When I think of the countless pastors and Christians that I know in third world countries that I have served with, pastors who have planted fifteen, twenty churches, and yet they have to go to their church and ask permission to take the one Bible that they all have out of the church in order to carry it to another village and use it to preach.

And yet we have a Bible for every day and it's not used. Listen to God! To hear Him! To stop! Just to stop. The only reason you were given ears is to hear Him. The only reason you were given eyes is to see Him.

The only reason you were given a heart is to love Him. But we don't have time. You will fill up your SUV with every one of your kids and you'll take them to every soccer match, football game, basketball game.

You will run them here and there, teach them all sorts of things and they never learn the ways of God. How many hours a day do they spend acquiring knowledge that has no eternal value whatsoever? And in the busyness of your home they'll never hear a word from God.

Knowing Our Deeds Before the Faithful Witness

The beginning of the creation of God says this, I know your deeds. I don't know your deeds. You don't know mine. And we take consolation in that, don't we? You wouldn't want a man to know your deeds or your thoughts.

I was preaching one time, speaking at a university, and this reporter came up to me. He was so angry because I was speaking on sin. And he said, I do not believe that men are as sinful as you say they are.

And I said, first of all, young man, it was not I who said it. I just read the passage. God said it. And I said, furthermore, man, take a test with me right now. If I could take out your heart right now and put every thought you have ever thought in your life, every deed you've ever committed, and I could put it on a DVD or a video or a film strip, and I could show it here this evening in this auditorium to this entire university, is it not true you would run out of this building and you'd never show your face here on campus again?

He could only bow his head and say, it's true. One of the things that we need to know, yes, our Lord is a merciful and gracious God. But know this, He knows your deeds. He knows them. He knows them. Some of them you know too and you hide.

But others, you're so busy and your head is so filled up with noise that you don't even know when you're sinning against Him. My people perish for a lack of knowledge. Where there is no vision, the people run unrestrained.

If I ever hear that... I've heard that passage preached wrong so many times by megachurch pastors. It's unbelievable. Where there is no vision, the people... We need a vision. We need to build a big church.

We need to have a great ministry. That is not what that passage means at all. And those men either do not know the Bible or they are twisting Scripture. You interpret the passage in its context. It's speaking of where there is no revelation of God's law, the people run unrestrained like wild dogs.

That's what it means. He knows. You need to become discerning. You need to be more than just acknowledging that yes, He knows. But you need to know. And how do you know more about yourself? By sitting quietly before Him.

By asking Him. By being concerned for these things. By getting into the Word. And allowing the Word to cut you to pieces. You say, oh, the Bible is my friend. Well, it's not mine. It's what Martin Luther said.

He said, the Bible is not my friend. The Bible is my enemy. The Bible comes against me every way I want to turn and cuts me off. The Bible is your friend. You probably haven't been reading it very much.

Because the Bible is like a hammer. It's like a fire. It's like a sword. Sometimes I just want to pour myself out on the floor before it. I know your deeds. That you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were cold or hot.

So because you are lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I will spit you out of my mouth. Now before we go into anything else, let's just look at I will spit you, literally, vomit you out of my mouth. My dear friend, does the preaching, the typical preaching in the typical Baptist church today have anything to do with language like this?

What would? I mean a pastor stands before the people and says, God's going to vomit you out of his mouth. Now anyone who preaches on this all the time is mean spirited, hateful. Yes, I'll agree with that.

But to never preach on these things? I'll never forget I was preaching a conference. Several years ago. And I preached one night on the holiness of God. Just the holiness of God. That was it. I came down out of the pulpit.

Some pastors were in the back. They came up to me. They said, Brother Paul, we need to talk to you. I said, okay. They said, we've got a problem with your message. And I said, well what is it? And they said, you preached on the holiness of God tonight and not once did you mention the love of God.

And I said, well gentlemen, I have a problem with all three of you. Because last night I preached on the love of God and not once did I mention the holiness of God and not one of you had a problem with it.

So we can preach on the love of God all day long and no one's got a problem with it. You preach on the holiness of God five minutes without explaining that that's not really what it means. You're going to get in trouble.

You see. You need to be very, very careful. This God is not Santa Claus. He's not a tame lion. He's really God. He makes alive and He kills. He lifts up and He judges. He restores and He destroys. He's an awesome God.

He really is. So when He talks and uses this language, here's what I want you to do. I had a fellow call me one time. This was on prayer. I was at a conference and we began to pray for revival and I began to weep.

Now, all of us in this big conference, we were all sovereign grace guys. Okay. Believe in the sovereignty of God, which I do. Now, he calls me up. He's furious. He said, I thought you believed in the sovereignty of God.

I said, well, I do. He said, then why are you weeping and crying out and begging God for revival? I knew where he was going. If God's sovereign, you can't make Him do anything, which I agree with. But I looked at him and I said, sir, let me tell you something.

Very, very important. The difference between me and you is I'm a theologian and you're a philosopher. Well, he got really mad then. I said, sir, listen to me. The Bible says that God is sovereign and there's not a maverick molecule in the universe.

The Bible also says, you have not because you ask not. Now, sir, a theologian says, God says this and I believe it. God says this and I believe it. I can't put it together, but that's really not my job.

In the same way, the Bible says, God is one. He is just one. And three persons are called God in the Bible. You know where all the heresy about the Trinity came from in the first five centuries of the church?

Either from those who sought to deny the Trinity or those who sought to explain it. Now, the Bible says that I am before the Lord, I have the righteousness of Christ, that I have been redeemed. It talks all those beautiful verses and chapters about my position before Him and I need to take that seriously and I need to stand in it and also when the Lord says to a church, I'm going to vomit you out of my mouth, I need to listen to it.

I can't put those two things together, but He says both of them and I believe it. You see that? We always go from one side to the other and we don't seem to be able to maintain a balance, do we? There is a balance.

I have nothing to fear from God and I have everything to fear from God. And when you get off into a tangent on either side... Let me tell you something, an old preacher told me. I've learned a lot from old preachers.

As a matter of fact, I learned this from an older preacher who learned it from an even older preacher. And it was this. He said, Son, falsehood is a very broad path. You can walk a thousand miles that way and be in falsehood.

You can walk a thousand miles that way and be in falsehood. But being in the truth is like walking on the edge of a razor blade. It's very narrow. That's true. You hear a preacher that's always preaching things like God's going to vomit you out of His mouth and that's all he's ever preaching on?

He's probably a very bitter, angry, spirited man. You listen to a preacher who never warns the church about judgment or discipline? Be very careful. He may be a wolf in sheep's clothing. Now, he says, I know your deeds.

You are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were cold or hot. But because you are lukewarm. Now, most of you have probably only heard one interpretation of this passage and I want you to know that there are actually two viable, grammatical possibilities here.

Lukewarm Faith as a Lack of Zeal

I'm going to give you first the customary, traditional interpretation of this passage which may be true. I'm also going to give you the other. First of all, you have heard it, haven't you? I'd rather you be totally against me or totally for me but because you're halfway, you have no zeal, you have no passion, you have no heart about this thing, I'd just as soon spew you out of my mouth.

And that is a warning to us about what? It is a warning to us about the lack of zeal. A lack of passion. That you can get so passionate about so many things and not be passionate about Jesus Christ and the work of God.

We have the horrifyingly magnificent ability to turn absolutely everything into an idol. To get caught up in every tomfoolery, every vanity on the face of the earth and neglect the glory of God. What's your God?

Well, I'll tell you. What do you think about most? There's your answer. What do you think about most? To most people, Jesus is like a little accessory they add on to the end of their life. And I hear preachers promoting that.

Here's the way it goes nowadays. Modern day preaching. Look, yuppie couple that I want in my church because obviously you've got money. Listen, you've got everything. You've got it all. You've got a great job.

You've got a great house. You've got great kids. You've got a great wife. Man, you've just got it all. You just lack one thing. You need Jesus. Let me make this little preaching this guy just did a little bit more biblical.

Everything you have is dumb if you don't have Jesus Christ. Everything you have is going to burn. And Jesus Christ is not some little accessory you add on to what already is a sort of full life to complete it.

He's not a part of your life. He is your life or you're going to hell. Not into marketing Jesus. He's not something that tops off the rest of the good things you've already gained without Him. It's like the Chinese Christian when he went back to China.

He said, I'm just utterly amazed at how much American Christians can do without God. How much they can accomplish without God. My dear friend, these things should not be so. Zeal. Now, I don't want to leave you there because if I were to interview every one of you, you would all say along with myself that you lack zeal and you lack love and you lack passion.