Testimony in 1976 at Age 75 — Vance Havner

Nor is mercy from me. Now, if your indulgence, I would like to reminisce just a bit. That's the privilege of old folks. Anyway, at my age, I'm supposed to be retired and sitting in a rocking chair drawing my Social Security and reminiscing about the good old days that weren't so good after all.

Somebody wrote to a magazine editor and said, Your magazine's not as good as it used to be, and he answered, It never has been. Distance lends enchantment to the view. My memories begin at the old home in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina, in an old house on top of a hill, and from the front porch you could see at night the lights of five towns.

And on the west, at Table Rock, Grandfather Mountain, and all the Blue Ridge-like silent sentinels along the skyline. I never knew the day when I did not feel called to preach. Now, I don't know how you work that into your theology, but that's your problem, not mine.

At twelve, I stood in an old Corinth Baptist church and asked them to license me to preach. And three years later, they ordained me. I didn't know much. In fact, I didn't know anything. I didn't even suspect anything.

But in those days, when God called a man to preach, he didn't get out a pad and pencil and start figuring what income bracket this is going to put me into. What will be the fringe benefits? Will I be appreciated for what I'm worth?

I wouldn't call for much appreciation anyhow. A call to preach settled it. That was it. Here am I. That's all you could say if you meant business. You remember that there was one apostle who got out pad and pencil, so to speak, and that was Simon Peter.

Lord, we have forsaken everything to follow thee. What shall we have, therefore? What's the payoff? What do we get out of this? Peter has been called the most American of all the disciples. Have you noticed that nearly everything he said in the Gospels was a mistake?

Let us build three tabernacles. Why sayest thou who touch me, this shall not be in the deed. I shall never wash my feet. I'll never be offended in thee. No wonder the book says,. And Peter said, not knowing what he said.

But the same man who said, What shall we have? A little later on, thank God, said, Silver and gold I don't have, but such as I have, I give unto thee. And until a preacher makes that change, he cannot effectively say to this, Crippled world, rise and walk.

You've heard Dr. Hill, the great preacher from Los Angeles. I was with him in Birmingham last year in the conference, and he said one thing that bothers me is too many happy preachers. Well, that stunned us.

But he went on. You know what I mean. If I can put in 10 years here and then about 15 over there, I'll have it made. The hardest preacher in the world to have a revival with is the one who's just coasting to retirement.

Not expecting anything to happen. Comfortable at ease in Zion. The preacher that God uses is not the one who says things could be worse. It's the one who says things ought to be better. The prophets, if I know anything about it, were never impressed with the status quo.

And they were not in love with things as they are. I could take it easy at this age, but I remember old Alexander White. He's just about my favorite writer, that great Scotsman. And in his 80s, he said, I became concerned over whether I should continue my severe preaching or give myself to the gentler themes of the gospel.

And as I was walking along, God said to my heart, Go back and show my people their transgression and the house of Jacob their sins. Not many will risk their life and reputation to do it, and you don't have much of either left to risk.

That inspired me considerably. I started out in 1913 with no Social Security, no Financial Security. And bless God, I had eternal security. Happiest man in the world is a young preacher before he's met too many Bible scholars.

My favorite preacher was Amos, the country preacher. Went up to Bethel, that center of religion and government and just about everything else. No ministerial committee had invited him. He didn't have to send his manuscript up to headquarters where some scribe in a swivel chair who'd never done any preaching took a red pencil to make sure there wasn't anything in it to disturb the status quo.

Amos didn't know anything about that. Dr. Kyle Yates said his time had not been spent in a divinity school. He was unwilling to be classed as a member of the guilds who made their living by bowing to the wishes of the people and preaching a pleasing message that would guarantee a return engagement.

That wasn't on his mind. He didn't take the teeth out of his sermons in Tekoa and then gum it up at Bethel. And when he got there, you remember what Dr. Amazah said. Dr. Amazah was the head man up there.

He was the court preacher. You've heard about General Isthmus, Chiang Kai-shek, and Franco. Well, Amazah was the preacher Isthmus up in Bethel. Sometimes we have preacher Isthmus, even today, and the trouble with them is they Isthmus more than they preach.

So Amazah said, What do you mean, preaching like this, as though things were going to pot? Where are your credentials? What school have you been to? Amazah said, I'm not a prophet by profession, not a son of a prophet by parentage.

I'm a prophet by providence. The Lord took me. That's about all the papers you need anyhow. He didn't go to Bethel to make preaching acceptable. He went up there to make it available. He didn't go to make them like it.

He went to see that they got it. Oh, Billy Sunday used to say, They tell me I rub the fur the wrong way. I don't let the cat turn around. And I have observed in my preaching that when the cat's going the right way, you're stroking the cat.

But when the cat's going the other way, the sparks will fly every time. When I started out, they said, Boy, preachers don't last. He won't last. Sixty-two years is a pretty good while to last. It seems to me.

I had fire in my bones, and I was weary with forebearing. I could not stay. But I had to learn a lot of things the hard way. My first pastorate was in a country church. That was at the end of World War I.

New ideas were going around. The Scopes trial, for instance. And it's a commentary on the state of America that today we applaud Clarence Darrow and scorn William Jennings Brown. That's not to our credit.

Harry Emerson Fosdick was just coming into the picture. I was impressed with the new approach. I thought the gospel ought to be adapted to the modern mind, which is not very modern, not much mind, but I didn't know that at that time.

But the fire went out of my bones. I gave up my church and went back to my old home in the hills. My father died disappointed that winter. People were asking what happened to the boy preacher. I was nearly 30.

No where to preach. And I remember Roy Angell was holding a meeting in that church and I was not pastor then. I'd gone back to spend a little while. I played the piano for the meetings and listened to Roy Angell preach.

One thing I remember, two lines of a poem, and I've been trying to find the rest of it and can't to save my life. Two lines that got into my soul. How sad will be the days in store when voice and vision come to more.

That got into my heart. But God who had called me knew my frame and remembered that I was this. And I got hold of a book by a Presbyterian, J. Gresham Mateson, on Christianity and liberalism, and that shook me.

And God made it clear to me, if you will get these highfalutin notions out of your head and go back and preach the gospel you preached to the boy, I'll make a way for you. I took him up on it. I did and he did.

I had to go back to that same church and preach it straight for three years. And to this good hour I've never lacked for a message or for a place to preach it. I left the novelty shop and got back in the antique shop.

And I say, we don't need something new today so much as we need something so to be new if anybody tried it. I'm sorry, but after this meeting you'll probably say, well, they told us nothing new, and you're right.

The next time you hear me, I won't be telling anything new either. The sun's old-fashioned, but without it we grope in darkness. Air's pretty old-fashioned, but without it we gasp and die. Water's old-fashioned, without it we go mad.

Don't get excited over the fact that we've split the atom and gone to the moon. Sin's as black as ever. Hell's as hot as ever. Eternity's as long as ever. Salvation's as free as ever. And nothing important has changed yet.

If you forget everything else I've said, remember that tonight. Nothing important has changed yet. And we need to make it contemporary and live and preach as though Jesus died yesterday and rose this morning and we're coming back tonight.

Now, you get going that way and something's going to happen. But it's a sad day for any preacher when voice and vision come to more. Now, he's not always a failure when that happens. He may have a big pastry.

He may be popular. He may be pastor of Ichabod Memorial Church, having a form of godliness without the power. Sardis having an aim to be alive when it's dead. You know, a mortician can make a dead man look better than he ever looked while he's living.

And you can dress up a church and do that. He may be a Sean Sampson shaking himself Sunday mornings, unaware that the Spirit's defined. The great revival, it wasn't a revival, revival's stirring up something already there.

The great awakening, the great mission at Nineveh was not waiting on Nineveh to begin. It didn't start with Nineveh. It started with Jonah. And God's looking not for a place to start today. He's looking for a preacher and a person.

And if you think that getting into the will of God is going to end your troubles and your problems, you've got a lot to learn. My Lord said to Peter, Simon, Satan wants you to sit you this week. You see, the devil was having some trouble with Simon Peter.

Most of our church members are not causing the devil enough trouble to even get his attention. You start giving the devil trouble and he'll think of something. In 1938, I was preaching my way through the state of Ireland.

Went to bed one night and crushed, and I couldn't sleep. Next night, couldn't sleep. And for two years, I was bedeviled with insomnia and depression till I'd pity a dog, although I don't think they ever had it, for such an experience.

And yet God began to open doors all over the country. And I said, Lord, this doesn't make sense. I can't do this. Sleep in a different bed every week? Like this? No doctor would have prescribed it. And I said, Lord, what will I do?

I prayed for guidance. But you know, prayer works a different way. Sometimes cafeteria-style, you take what you need. It's there. Sometimes you have to send in your order and wait. And then there's a third type, like an electric-eyed door.

You walk into it and the thing will open. So I said, Lord, here I go. If I'm wrong, stop me. And he hasn't stopped me yet. I started out in 40. I got as far as Chicago. My first engagement was to be in Grand Rapids.

And I came down with the flu and nearly died. They put me in a hospital in Chicago and the devil sat on the foot of the bed and said, Now, now what? You gave up your church and you can't do this. What are you going to do?

I had turned down an invitation to Florida Bible Institute, Tampa, Temple Terrace. And I called the man, I sent him a wire and said, I'll come. The doctor said, You get out of this weather and get cells.

I went down there. I remember about the very first day or so I was there, long, lean, cold, North Carolinian, woke up to me. Excuse me. I said, I'm Billy Graham from Charlotte. Little did I know who was standing beside me there.

But I met a sweet young lady who prepared soup for me and would bring it and leave it at the door and gently knock and leave. She knew the way to a man's heart, you know. And how much I needed loving care.

It took me nearly 40 years to find her, but then the Israelites were 40 years in the wilderness before they ever got over the promised land. She was willing to start out with a half-sick preacher with very little money and not at all sure that he could do this.

But thank God for 33 years we didn't crack up. We kept it low-key and simple and still do. I don't think the Lord ever had anything big in mind when he made me to start with. Oh, Clyde Turner, years ago, J. Clyde Turner, when he was pastor of the church where I belonged, said, I want you to preach here a week.

I said, Doctor, what do you have in mind? Bible conference? Revival? Oh, just preach. I love that. Just preach. I've been running on a shoestring all these years. No organization. Don't have any foundation except the one that's laid by faith in his excellent words, thank the Lord.

I don't even get out brochures about what a great preacher I am. No secretary. Never had one in my life. Never owed but $200 in my life. Borrowed that to go to school when I was a boy, and my daddy told me that dirt, debt, and the devil were all related, and I decided to keep as far away from all of them as I could from then on.

I don't have any radio program. Not selling any magazines. Taking no subscriptions. I don't know how I make it. Never been on drugs. Not an athlete. I was down here some time ago, and a dear Christian friend of mine said, he said, Brother Hebner, I've never had any startling revelations and visions and prayers.

He said, You told my Christian experience just plain vanilla. I love that. I grew up in the country and we used to make ice cream. It was a job. It was all afternoon working on that ice cream, grinding and grinding, and finally we had something that was cold and sweet.

It wasn't like these new concoctions, old smothered in goo. But I believe I enjoyed it more than I have any sense. When they bring in these fancy things today, you know, with all the fruit and the nuts and the syrup and the whipped cream and the cherry on top, I don't know whether you're supposed to eat it or just admire it.

And it's the same way at the religious ice cream parlor today. You're sort of embarrassed to go in these fancy ice cream parlors and call for vanilla. But the religious ice cream parlors are pretty much the same way.

They've got some new brands of religion today, pretty heavy on theology. And then some of them are charged with super fears emotionally. And you get drunk if you engage in that. And I get a little suspicious of these highly colored and richly flavored varieties of Christian experience.

I find myself saying to the great dispenser, Lord, if it's all right with you, I'll just take plain vanilla. Old J .B. Gambrow said one time the average Baptist believes in simplicity. He likes plain preaching and worship, prefers old Jordan rouges with a steady incline all the way up to the city of God, and if the choir by an imagination of the devil falls under the lead of some professional musician and turns to sing in tunes with delirium freemen, the average Baptist is grieved and solace is his soul with how firm a foundation and amazing grace.

Well, I don't know. I'm afraid the average Baptist has slipped a little bit from that to this day. But the biggest test in my life came two years and four months ago when the little lady who traveled all over America with me went home to heaven.

At the beginning of 73, I found myself deeply concerned for a quote. I want to get to the place where I can sing and quit lying about it. Once earthly joy I craved so peace and rest. Now thee alone I seek.

Give what is best. I didn't know what I was getting into. You better not pray that unless you mean business. God took me up on it. And as I went through six months of watching my dearest die with a disease the doctors didn't know much about, strange, weird, was the word they used, a weird sort of ailment, I hung on to that verse, this sickness is not unto death, but that God may be glorified.

I found it in Daily Light one morning and I said, I'm going to hang on to that. I told my pastor, Claude Bowen, I said, that's my verse. But she died. And I said, Lord, now what's the matter here? And then I got my context together and Jesus, you know, was on his way down to Bethany and he said, Lazarus is sick and is not unto death, but Lazarus died.

And of course what he meant was the main objective is not death, there's something beyond, I don't mean in the hereafter, but there's something now beyond that. Oswald Chambers, when he was dying, got hold of this same verse and thought God was going to heal him, but he didn't.

But Mrs. Chambers took his writings and put them in books and they went around the world. My utmost, greatest, highest and all the rest of it. And out of it all, I wrote a little book though I walked through the valley.

I never mention any of the books I've ever written but this one. I've written 31, I never referred to any of them and wouldn't this one except for this. I find that when you have been through a valley and identify with people in trouble, you've got a lot of company.

And I've never had so many letters in all the days of my life and I've never had such a response as I've had in the last couple of years. Just on account of this. Do you remember the psalmist said, speaks of those who go in through the valley of Bachar, make it a well.

There's a new song out, Leave a Well in the Valley. I haven't heard it yet. I hope they get that one going. When the Lord leads you through a dark valley, you dig some wells for the next fellow who's coming along.

Ah, how about Fanny Crosby? She could have said, Lord, why did that doctor get hold of the wrong medicine and put it in my eyes when I was a baby and all my life I've been blind. She started digging wells and, brother, she dug wells.

To God be the glory, blessed assurance redeemed. How I love to proclaim that all the way my Savior leads me, draw me nearer. Jesus, keep me near the cross. He hideth my soul. Jesus is tenderly calling, Savior more than life.

When Jesus comes to reward his servants, rescue the perishing. Someday the silver cord will break. I shall know by the print of the nails, fast me not, O gentle Savior. That's just a few samples. I call that a lot of wells in the valley.

And there's not a Sunday goes by but folks are drinking from some of those wells all over this world. When old John Bunyan sat in bed for jail, he may have said, is this all I get for being a soldier of the cross and a follower of the Lamb?

But he wrote Pilgrim's Progress. He dug a well in the valley. And now let me say in my 75th year to you, beloved, I've come out of it all lonely. I'm like R .G. Lee. When I go back, I don't go back home, I go back to Greensboro.

It takes two to make a home. There are some in here who know what I mean. But I have come out of it shipwrecked on God and stranded on omnipotence. It's a good place to be. I said that at the conference a summer or two ago and Billy Graham heard me over at his mountain home and he sent me a note next morning and said, I heard you.

Shipwrecked on God and stranded on omnipotence. That's where I want to be, he said, when God calls me. It's a mighty good place to be, brother. And then I learned and a dear young song leader brought it to my mind the other day as we were riding along in Georgia.

He said, Brother Havener, and he'd been through a lot of trouble for a young fellow, he said, I don't believe that we can really say Jesus is all I need until first of all he's all we've got. Now you think that one over.

You've got to get the holy desperation to find this out and then you'll be all you need and you'll have nothing and possess all things. Did you know you could have nothing and everything both at the same time?

I don't know what kind of arithmetic that is, but I believe in it. And the devil can't do a thing in this world with a fellow that's got everything and nothing both. The devil said, if you will follow me I'll give you this and I'll give you that.

And the Christian says, you can't have got everything. The devil gets mad then and says, well, I'll take this way and I'll take that away. And the Christian says, you can't. They don't have anything. What are you going to do?

When he's all you've got, he'll be all you need and thank God he'll be all you want. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. I was in a Bible conference during the time of great stress and the director of the conference was teaching the 23rd Psalm every morning at breakfast and he said, now remember you're the Lord's lambs.

You're not his goats. He said, don't go around the Lord is my shepherd. But, and I'd been butting for dear life that very morning up on top of the mountain and said, Lord, I know you're my shepherd but who's going to pay all these bills?

What's going to happen to me? Nobody to look after me. The Lord is my shepherd. But I told that man, I said, you didn't know you had the prize winning old goat sitting right at the table while you were saying all that?

Well, they asked me out to Travis Avenue in Fort Worth some time ago, the single adults were having a conference out there and they said, we want you to talk about loneliness for one thing. Well, I certainly was qualified for that and I talked to them about grace for all gears.

Isaiah 40, 31. Flying grace, running grace and walking grace. When we've exhausted our store of endurance, when our strength has failed ere the days hath done, when we reach the end of our hoarded resources, our Father's giving has only begun.

His love has no limit. His grace has no measure. His power no boundary known unto men for out of his infinite riches in Jesus he giveth and giveth and giveth again. The last two years and four months have been the loneliest years of my life.

I have shed more tears than all the other years before them. But I want to bear testimony tonight that there has been compensation from my Heavenly Father. I have had more friends than ever, more open doors than ever, more preaching than I can do.

God has added in you, and the last can be the best. Will you allow me, you preachers, a word from an old-timer who could be the grandfather of many of you? I want to say to you, my brethren, don't ever ask God to use you.

He's using you now all he can, but not all he could. You get more usable, and he'll wear you out. You'll see he'll say, Lord, you're about to kill me. I didn't know you were going to use me. The eyes of the Lord run through and fro throughout the earth to show himself strong, not you strong in his behalf, but himself strong in your behalf.

Get it straight. And if I speak to some ministers and other Christian workers here tonight with whom the voice and the vision have grown faint, then sometimes you're the last one to find it out. Sometimes your dear wife begins to discover it.

Sometimes the congregation. And maybe through physical weariness, church difficulties, complacency, sin in your life, the wrong spirit, the vision growing faint, ask God to give you a new touch and a new message and an open door.

It may cost you sorrow. It may cost you loneliness, but I want to testify tonight that doors that were closed at thirty have been opened. And God has to almost half kill us sometimes to teach us some precious lessons.

But it's worth it. And I covet there's something better for you than you now have. And I covet it for you. And remember that we don't have only answers. I've been preaching a sermon on why all over the country, why.

Every one of our wives and my mother, ten thousand wives in this crowd tonight, that unanswered question, Lord, why, why, why,. Walk through a children's hospital and come out and say, Lord, why. And old folks come and look at all those poor vegetables and come out, Lord, why.

Go through Arlington Cemetery, as I did the other day, where the thousands of bodies of boys' faces turned toward heaven as if to say, why, why couldn't I live out my life? Why, why did I have to sit for two days and hold the hand of a dear one already dead, only a machine keeping her heart going?

I found myself praying, Lord, help me to remember the way she did look and anticipate the way she's going to look, thank God, but not this. But I am glad tonight to tell you that every blessed one of these whys was all gathered up in one why a long time ago.

My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? And I wish you'd go home if you've got some unanswered whys, like a dear pastor's wife. With her the other day, whose husband, a noble man of God, committed suicide in the hospital, and she said, to lose him is bad enough, but why this way?

Well, I don't know, but I said, I'm talking on why over here at Gardner Webb College. Come on, it might help you. I believe it did. But I'd like to point this out. John 16, 22, 23. You go back to your room and make a red ring around that, because you're going to need it if you don't know why you're to lose him.

And you're going to need it if you don't know why you're it if you don't know why you're lose him. Him. Sometimes welcoming me, coming, I'll give you rest. Sometimes warning me, sometimes directing me, and sometimes restraining me, and sometimes chastening me, and sometimes as gentle as a mother's caress, and sometimes in the middle of the night when I long for the touch of a vanished hand, and the sound of a voice that is still with my heart, and that still heart, and the sound of a voice that still with my heart, and the sound of voice that still heart, and still with my heart, and the sound of a and the sound of a voice that still with my heart, and the sound of voice that still with my heart, and the sound of a voice my heart, and the sound of a voice that still with heart, and the sound of a voice that still my heart, and the sound of with my heart, and the sound of voice that with my heart, and the voice that still with my heart, and the sound of a voice that still with my heart, and the sound of a voice that still with my heart, and the sound of a voice that still with my heart, the sound of a voice that still with my heart, and the sound of a voice that still with my heart, and the sound voice my heart, and the sound of a voice that still with my heart, the heart, and the sound of a with my heart, and the sound of a voice that still with my heart, of a voice that still with my heart, and the sound of a voice that still with my heart, and the sound of a voice that still with my heart, and the sound of a voice that still with my heart, and the sound of a voice heart, and the sound of a voice that still with and the sound of a voice that still the of a voice that with my heart, and the sound of a voice that with my heart, the sound of heart, and the sound my heart, and the sound heart, and the sound of a voice that still with my heart, and the sound of a voice that still with my heart, and the sound of a voice with my heart, and the of my heart, and the sound of a voice that and the sound of a voice that still with my heart, and the sound of still with my heart, and the sound of a my heart, and the sound a voice that still with my heart, and the sound of a voice that still with my heart, and the sound of a voice still with and the sound of a voice that still with heart, and the sound of a voice that still with my heart, and the sound voice that still with my heart, and the sound of a voice that still with my heart, and the sound of still with my heart, and the sound of a voice that still with my heart, and sound of voice still still with my heart, and the sound of a voice that still my heart, the of a still with my voice heart, and the sound of a voice and the sound of with my heart, and the still with my heart, and the sound of with and the sound of my and the sound of my heart.

Billy was coming to Louisville, I believe, for meetings, and somebody said to this great doctor, Billy's so uncouth in his language and in his preaching, and the great doctor said, I'm willing for him to break up the king's English to him if he can break hearts while he's doing it.

Don't sit out there and say, how knoweth this man letters, never having learned? Now, I'm not preaching gullibility. We must try the spirit. I noticed today that while there's a lot of talking about the gifts of the spirit, some of them in particular, I haven't heard anybody yet say much about one of them, the discerning of spirit.

You ever heard much about that? Nobody seems to want that one. If we had that one, we wouldn't have so much trouble with some of the others, it seems to me. You can go to church with your guard up, and God can get through to you, or you can go wide open and the devil can get through to you.

Two things we desperately need, preachers who get agitated in Athens, and listeners who don't come armed just with a notebook, thy word have I hid in my notebook, but who come saying, preacher, what have you got?

Am I going to like you any better than I did the one we had yesterday? Such an attitude, critical. We're too smart for our own good. I heard of some fellows at a bird exhibit the other day where they had stuffed birds and live birds.

One of these smart alecks said to his friend, now look at that one. That's the sorriest job of taxidermy I ever saw. You never saw a bird in your life that held on to a limb like that. Just about then the bird flew down.

We've got a lot of that crowd today. Everything's in a mess. I talked to a doctor the other day in Peoria, Illinois, up there at Bruce Dunn's great Presbyterian church. That man can preach the gospel.

Well, this doctor, it was his day off, and we tramped around through the park. I said, now I'm not a doctor. Tell me, are we getting anywhere in medicine? I know we've licked typhoid fever and smallpox and polio and so on, but where are we?

He's studying nuclear medicine, isotopes and all that sort of business. Well, he said, yes, we have conquered some. But he said, the new medicine, the new drugs, and the new light has opened the Pandora's box, and we have new complications, new problems, new ailments we didn't even know we had before.

So I don't know just how fast we're getting. I know one thing. I know they gave me a capsule to take in case I took the flu, my adventures. And a year later, what is it? The Food and Drug Administration outlawed that very medicine.

I'd been taking the stuff for a solid year. You know how it is. You take it next year. They say, look out, it may give you cancer. You've had it for a whole year. And last week, why do you know they outlawed Listerine and as many gallons of that as I've gargled?

Now they say it might as well use warm water. Somebody said, don't believe it. I still believe it's good stuff. It tastes awful, but I still believe it's good stuff. Everything's explained away today.

These experts on child culture and how to bring up children who never brought up any themselves have wonderful books on the subject. They can explain anything that Junior does by the book. Junior bit the meter man.

Junior kicked the cook. Junior's antisocial now, according to the book. Junior smashed the clock and lamp. Junior hatched a tree. Destructive trends are treated in chapters two and three. Junior threw his milk at mom.

Junior screamed for more. Notes on self-assertiveness are found in chapter four. Junior tossed his shoes and socks out into the rain. Negation, bad and normal, disregarded the stain. Junior got in Grandpop's room and tore up his fishing line.

That's to gain attention. See page 89. But Grandpop seized a slipper and yanked Junior across his knee, for Grandpop hadn't read a book since 1893. The title of that poem is On Getting Behind With One's Reading.

I think that would be a good thing if we got behind with some of our reading these days. We're too smart. Everything, even in the church today, is organized, standardized, systematized, computerized, Xeroxed, mimeographed, microfilmed.

But we don't have any revival. Now, the Welsh revival didn't have any of that. They had no publicity, except that it was its own publicity. No song books, no choirs, no orphans, no promotion, no preacher a good deal of the time.

They had big preachers there, but they didn't get to preach. Campbell Morgan was out there and Gypsy Smith and General Booth, but they didn't preach. Evan Roberts preached some. They didn't have any of these things.

Poor folks. All they had was God. We may get around to God yet. Evan Roberts got worried, though. It got to the place where they were looking for Evan Roberts. If they could just get Evan Roberts here, now, we'd have a great revival.

He knew that wouldn't work. So he came in one night, and here was this crowd, and he walked out on the platform and said, Do you believe that where two or three are gathered in his name, he's there? Amen!

Do you believe the Lord's here tonight? Amen! Well, he said, You don't need me then. Put on his hat and coat and left. With a dramatic way of driving home what needs to be driven home. All they had was God.

And Benny Graham's getting out these buttons now with Try God on it. Pretty good idea. We've tried everything else. Prove me now and see if I won't open the windows of heaven. And Brother spread that out a little bit more beyond tithing.

That'll take in all the territory. Paul's sermon to the Greeks in Athens is a different approach from preaching to the Jews in Jerusalem, of course. He'd been bothered about that altar of the unknown God, and he said, I've got news for you.