(Steps Towards Spiritual Perfection) - Fulfills — A.W. Tozer

Creation and the Fulfillment of Every Creature

I believe that God created the heaven and the earth and all things that are round us. Everybody that believes this is Jewish, say Amen. I believe that God made the heaven and the earth and all things that are round us.

And I'm going to believe that he made all his creatures. And he made each one his kind of life for your good. The kind of life which he chose for us. And when he adjusted that kind of life to the environment which he chose for us.

And as long as each living creature stays in its own environment and lives the kind of life God gave us. That creature fulfills the purpose for which it was made. And God being who it is, there can be nothing better than a creature higher than this.

He fulfills that for which God made him. Now that's all. You can't go higher than that. You can put statues in your parks. You can rust animations on the walls of famous buildings. You can give them prizes of all sorts.

Nobel Prizes and Pulitzer Prizes and every kind of prize. Or you can canonize them if you wish. And when it's all been proved and it's all been said. There can not be any more of this creature than this.

God made him. Gave him a certain kind of life. Gave him an environment to inhabit. And he has lived in that environment. And in that environment has lived the kind of life God gave him. Now that's all.

Angels, Judgment, and the Created Order

The angels and archangels and priests. Pharisees and serpents and saints and apostles. These prophets can't go any further than that. Now, it says here that the angels had not their place to stay. But let their own habitation.

God had reserved them a place to sleep under darkness until the judgment of the great day. And here we see a certain order of beings. Or a certain number of beings of an order that let their place to sleep.

That is, they let the place from which they have been created. And anyone, anybody, any intelligent creature, any moral creature anywhere, can leave this prophecy and escape. No one can make peace and change.

Because they're not so certain of any place from which they were created. Now, that I said generally of any living being anywhere. Incidental evidence is that you and I are willingly poverty-stricken because we're too sick.

We're afraid to use our religious imagination, and we're afraid to believe what the Bible teaches us. The Bible talks about angels and archangels, at least one, and spirits and chariot beings, and watchers and holy ones, and principalities and powers.

Humanity Made in the Image of God

And you and I insist on people, that's all. We are afraid to rise and let our faith-filled imagination encompass the wonder of the filled universe, filled with beings. Now, God created man in his own image.

And of no other creature is this closer. I cannot find any scripture where God has said he ever created a sheriff in his image, nor a chariot in his image, nor any creature in his image, nor an angel or archangel or principality or power.

But it's clear that God made man in his image. God said affectionately, Let us make man in our own image, poor in the image of God's created being. And therein came the blessed life of man that came to live in his soul, so that man

Now, here it is. You can take this out, make it quiet, misquote it, and make a radical out of me if you want to do it. But I'm sure you won't. But as originally created, man was more like God than any other creature that ever was created.

As originally created, man was more like God because of no other creature did God say it made him in his own image. And the wise old German Christian says this, There is nothing in the universe so much like God as he himself.

Now, if all of this is taken for granted and meant that man's soul is sinful and lost, and in that sense, sin is not like God in the soul, a sinner that shall die, but there is something basic in human nature and in the soul of man that can become more like God than anything else in the universe.

I wish you could believe that. I wish that we could accept that as a part of our truth and not be afraid that if we say it and say we believe it, somebody will charge us with believing man's all right.

Man's not all right. Man's a fallen creature. Man went down like an automobile that left the highway at a curve and went over a gully downing among the rocks. And man is not all right. Man is lost. Man is not damned.

I heard a preacher this afternoon talking about my poor, lost, damned soul. No, no, never call yourself damned, brother. You're lost, but you're not converted. You're lost, but you're not damned. That's another thing altogether.

But God created man to know him, and he created man to know him in a sense and to a degree that no other creature can know God. The creature that out in the presence of God may not know God as well as the man-soul which God has made in his image.

Don't you see? Don't you see that there has to be a degree of light there which enables a man to know God? Don't you see that the cat there under your table or the dog there lying on the right, you put a record on, you put on something by Mozart that they told him, and he'll never even open his easy eye, because there's nothing in that cat nature that can understand this open-their-mouth stuff.

Put on, as you have at home, some of the fine records of London, the great choir there, seen pictures show where no dog will get up and go over and sit down and gaze, in spite of that little eye that knows his master's voice.

No dog ever looks into a phone address. You live with curiosity. You can't appreciate it because you haven't got the kind of light that can appreciate it. It's a two-year-old baby. We thought at first that our grandchildren were unusual, because when you play music, they show their little bodies.

Then we find that all babies do that. But everybody's like that. That is so the end of them. If God is in them, he's good. God puts them into the rhythm of the universe. Now, I'm not afraid of rhythm.

I don't go for Elvis Presley, but I'm not one afraid of rhythm, because the beat of God, the up, down, north, south, east, west, it drops them into his universe. And so the little babies are born into the stream of it, as a creature born into the water, into the stream.

And when they're old enough to hear music, they're old enough to smile and so forth, because it's the dance of life that God gives them, that kind of music. Remember this? God made us to know him in a way that no other creature can know him.

He made us to know him to a degree that no other creature can know him, because no other creature has quite the capabilities that man has. Certainly the angels have capabilities. They're holy angels, and they obey God.

And certainly the seraphim on the throne of time see the fire of God, and they know God. But they don't know God. If man will know God, redemption has been completed. For God means that man should be higher than the angel.

God made him a little while lower than the angel, so he might really be higher than the angel. And when it's all over and we know that we are known, then we shall rank higher in the hierarchy of God than the very angels themselves.

Sin, Spiritual Emptiness, and the Crisis of Humanity

But my brethren, man, by his sin, lost this knowledge. He lost it. I read about it over here in Romans, the first chapter. Because that when they knew God, they glorified him not as God. People were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their whole heart was darkened.

And even as they did not like to explain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind to do those things which were not convenient. There's one verse that says to do this graceful act.

So that man, by his sin, lost his knowledge of God, so that now man, though he has the potentialities to know God in a way no creature in heaven can know God, he still doesn't know God because his conduct is unweighted in his high origins, and his heart is filled with a huge emptiness that he knows what God means.

And so that's what's the matter with him. That's why we have these crises all the time. That's why our president, Mr. Christ, I assure you, who directed me and his pastors over into unity, they elect the next man as elected president of the United States of America, and they turn out to be anti-Muslim.

Well, what's the matter with it? They told us that science and philosophy and psychiatry and psychology and sociology and all of this could make the world a better place in which to live. Indeed, we could all, men could all be their brothers, each other's brothers.

But there's more to be said than more than ever since the beginning. There's more hatred, and more insultation, and more treachery, and more firing, and more extreme odds, and more treachery, and more telling out.

Whenever there has been since the beginning of the world, what's the matter? It's because man is filled with a vast emptiness. He was created to know God, but by his sins he chose the gutter and would like not to have God in his knowledge.

So, man is like a bird trapped in a cage, just like a fish taken from the water. So, man is simply preyed for the image, and this is it. This is the eternal being. This is the life. This is the light.

This is the friend. And that's what you never will see, you don't know it. It's like a 15-foot getting into an old banged-up car with pipes and hammers and go out on the prowl looking for anybody, not anybody in particular, but anybody because down in the deep soul of him is the knowledge that sometime they've got to die, that this world isn't enough, and there's a don't understand.

And so, it takes a win on them and turns to slay and becomes perverted like the alcoholic that feeds the gutter and loves the gutter. And what does the Bible teach about the now-knowing God, the king?

Redemption Through Christ and the Knowledge of God

Well, it teaches that God can be known. It teaches that God has not abandoned the human race, as he abandoned the angels of sin. Why did he abandon the angels of sin? Because they were never made men of God in the first place.

They were made more appropriate, capable of moral and spiritual protection. But they were not made in the image of God. Why did not God abandon man? Because man was made in the image of God. And so, God gave man a chance.

He came to redeem him. How does the Bible teach that man can know God? It teaches that in Christ and through Christ, he is given the image of the invisible God, the brightness of his glory, and the strength in his impulsive.

Our old father said this about us. I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, Lord and begotten Son of God, begotten of whom before all ages. God is God, light of light, very God, very God, begotten, not made.

He is the one substance of the Father by whom all things were made. And this is what the Bible teaches. It teaches that everything that God had is Christ's. Don't listen to the liberals who say God revealed himself through Christ.

Don't listen to the liberals who say that Christ reflected more of God than other people did. Don't listen to the liberals who say that one piece of metal might be more radioactive than another. So certain individuals are tuned to God in a way that other individuals aren't, and they are therefore religious geniuses, even if Jesus Christ was the supreme religious genius, touching and reflecting more of God than any other man.

Don't listen to that, because all that amounts to is to himself, Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ was not a reflector of deity, only though he was that. He was not the revealer of deity, only though he was that.

He was, and is, and always has been, and never can keep to be God, light of life, God of God, very God, very God, begotten, not created. He told that all that God had is Christ's. He told that no Jesus Christ is to be back at the ancient fountain again.

Back at the ancient fountain again. I don't say this as a result of advancing years, because I felt this way when I was converted at 17. I certainly didn't have it developed this far, but I went back to the roots of my being.

But I tell you, my brethren, that we have switched our way on into artificiality so far that it's a wonderful thing, a wonderful, quick act of our souls' impatient care to go back to the ancient fountain of our being and start over again.

And there is no God for ourselves all over again. Back where Adam started, back beyond where Adam started, back beyond where the world began, back beyond where the angels began, back at that ancient, glorious, heavenly fountain we call the dream of God, the shining God.

And in Jesus Christ we go back there. In Jesus Christ we leave all the environment, and we go back to the ancient source of our being. Now rest, my long-divided heart, fix on this blissful center rest.

We go back at the ancient source of our being. We find the beginning. We start all over. Jesus Christ, that I may know him, said Paul, that I may know him. Now, my question tonight is why Christians know Christ so little, and know God so little.

Knowing God Personally Rather Than Intellectually

Well, I'd like to say to you this, that not all of the Godhead can be known. Jesus says that any of it will be a most wonderful thing for us, because a real good tricking down is good for Christians sometimes.

It really is tricking them back to where they belong. And if any of you have the idea that you know pretty well all that can be known about God, you're just about to burst. And the warning is just about two more of a six-pound pressure, and you'll go.

And when you go, it'll take God a long time to get you back together again. Dear brothers, not all of the Godhead can ever be known, because that being that was capable of knowing all of the Godhead would have to be equal to the Godhead.

Just as you can't pour a cup of water into a vessel holding less than a quarter, so you can't pour all of the Godhead into experience with anyone being less than God. Now, I have quoted before what some of the ancient fathers said in our doing for the Trinity.

They said, look, I didn't like this. God the eternal Father, who is an infinite God beneath me, is love, and he is love, and so the very nature of love is to give itself. And he could not give his love fully to anybody it was not fully equal to.

And so, there we have the ancient son who is equal with the father. And the eternal Father poured out his love into the son who could contain it, and contain all of it, because the son is equal with the father.

And then he said to his wives and to the old brethren, he said to the ancient father to pour his love out on the son would mean that the medium of communication had to be very close to the father and the son, and that was the Holy Ghost.

So, there you have the Trinity. The ancient father is the fullness of his love, pouring himself to the Holy Ghost. And he is equal to the intimate son who is equal to the spirit and the father. So, not all of the Godhead can be known by name.

The limitless intimate spirit being is called God, filling and surrounding and enfolding and upholding. But all that can be known of God is a willing heart. And when Paul said, when Paul said that I may know him, that I may know him, no one will know him, not intellectual at all.

You don't know God if you know the multiplication table or know the Morse code. And I, as a kid, experienced all I learned in the Morse code. And I could send me a few messages, or not too well, but I'd be working on them for a while, you know, over the old telegraph instrument.

And I didn't know almost anything, practically nothing you can't learn. But it's intellectual. And Paul said that I may know him. He did not mean intellectually. He meant by experience, personally and consciously.

He meant that I may know God personally, myself, spirit touching spirit, and heart touching heart, and conscious knowledge of God. In all the old Henry's truth, Paul, I get to heaven, I'm going to have some of these old telegraphs.

I'll be satisfied to sit in this room for a thousand years. But after that, if I get up enough courage, I'll go hunt up some of these dear old brethren. One of them will be Henry Sousa. And Henry Sousa said this.

There is a vast difference between hearing a complete truth be told and merely hearing that one has been told. Now, one thing to hear that there's been a concert is another thing to have heard the concert.

It's one thing to hear that there has been a planet suddenly discovered, but it's another thing to have been on that planet. Now, this describes almost all Christians. Not all, certainly, but a great many.

Too high percentages of Christians. They've heard things that have been sweetly said, but they've never heard them said. They know God only by hearsay. And I don't want to be harsh and hard on people, friends.

But it's my conviction, and Gloria's conviction with me, that that's what's the matter with us now. It's what's the matter with the church on earth, the gospel church. They believe in church. But we tend to know God only by hearsay.

Some I have never heard of him except by hearsay, and others have heard him and known him, but only faintly. We've heard only faint echoes of God's voice instead of ever hearing the voice of God. You can always tell a man or a woman who's been into the presence and come out.

There is a vibrancy in the testimony that you won't find anywhere else. I claim I can know as much about a place by reading about it as most people who go there. But everybody that goes and travels abroad and comes back, they always smile at that.

And if you've actually been there, you'll know it in a way you can't know if you've only read a book about it. Most Christians have only read a book about God, that's all. They've heard the faint echo of the voice of God.

They've seen a reflection of the light of God. They've seen a photograph instead of God himself. And their personal knowledge of God is very slight. And I don't want to hit your game, so I will if I ask you, but I will say that I'm afraid that a lot of us here, for all our education, we don't know God for himself very much.

Church attendants and fellowships and students lean on each other all the time. And we have faith and fellowship and religious activity, and all the various religious crops is keen on each other. But that's one thing, my brethren, that's one thing.

The Christian's Direct Fellowship With God

Jesus had that. He had his brethren. He had his work to do. He had his healing, raising from the dead and opening eyes and unstopping ears, answering questions and blessing people. He had that. But he also had a personal knowledge of God that was prominent in most individuals.

So that when he went into the mountains to pray and waited on God all night, he didn't feel that he was alone. But that was there. You know, modern Christian churches tend to do that and go here and go there.

And the result is we know God only by his face. We hear a bit sweetly, but we never hear it said for ourselves. You know, we want things instead of God. The key, God wants to give himself. God wants to impart himself in his gifts, preparations from God, earlier gifts, to danger.

Only gifts of danger. If I were to pray for all the seventeen gifts in the Epistles of Paul, the gifts of the Spirit, and I got them all, they'd be dangerous to me. Goods and goodness God didn't give himself to us then.

God Himself Rather Than His Gifts

God wants to give you himself. Wouldn't I say a wild joke? And isn't it true in the fifties that when God creates an order of life, he creates an environment for that life? And when God made man in his image and redeemed him by the blood of the Lamb back to that image, is not God the environment of the Christian?

Could they see we call the ocean his environmental world, and the air is the environmental zone, and the earth is the environment for the nightcrawler and the mole? But the heart of God is the environment for the Christian.

And God meant that we should live in that heart of God. And the great dream from heaven is that we want God's gifts and don't want God's. And even in the church today, even in the church that's detained, and if God gives you a rose without giving you God, he's giving you a rose with a thorn.

And if he gives you a garden without giving you himself, he's giving you a garden with a serpent. And if he gives you wine without giving you God, he's giving you that which is to make a story of self.

And God wants to give you himself. So, you and I, we've got to rejuvenate this modern Christian God-free benefit, something we can get out of God. You write a book, anybody can write a book now, you tell us, anybody.

All you have to do is write a book on 17 ways to get things from God, and you'll have immediate sales. Fourteen ways to have peace of mind, and a word over the tongue. How we can bring God to our service.

And the printer can't keep up with a book. We work up God for what we can get out of him. And that's the great blight that rests upon us. The great blight that rests upon us. The sovereign God wants to be loved for himself, and he wants to be appreciated for himself.

And more than that, that's only part of it, not even a half of it. The other part is that he wants us to know that when we have him, we have all the rest. Jesus said it in another way, "...the kingdom of heaven and his righteousness, the kingdom of God, his righteousness, and all your sins shall be added unto you.".

Why does God forgive sin? He forgives sin because sin is the shadow that stains between him, God, and us. And if God is ever going to know us, and we know God, the shadow has to be removed. So, God forgives sin.

Why does God pour out his spirit on us when we trust in the living that he will? It's in order that his children who come will take the sins of mine and pour them unto you. Why does God answer prayer in order that in answering prayer he might unveil his own face to us?

Scripture as a Means of Knowing God

And why has God given us the scriptures? If we read the scriptures, we might know God. The scriptures, my brethren, are not an end in themselves. You hear them talked about as though they were an end in themselves.

No man can believe more fully in the verbal inspiration of the scriptures as originally given than I do. But verbal inspiration, or any other theory of inspiration, when it makes the Bible an end in itself is a dangerous thing, because the purpose of the Bible is not to lead you to the Bible.

The purpose of the Bible is to lead you to God. And the Bible is the ladder through which you look to see our beloved gathering there, with the dew on his hair, as it was in the Song of Solomon. The Bible is the ladder.

The Bible is the means of communication. The Bible is the entrance in. The Bible is never an end in itself. If a modern vocalist knew he was God, knew he was God, oh, that God would raise up somebody that could say this.

It could make his church speak. It could make the Orthodox church speak. The Bible people, the fundamentalists, the evangelicals, it would raise up somebody that could make it speak. We've undergone for so long indoctrination and brainwashing and the kind of things that make God to be our servant instead of our being God's servant.

And we're like that somehow if we pray God change money. And he does. I'd be tired of that the first few years of my ministry if I couldn't pray money anymore, isn't it? So I believe God changed money, but it's pretty cheap when you get all excited because God changed money.

Somebody over in the Bowdoin Valley was praying for money to buy an outboard motor. They needed an outboard motor. Of course they were praying for it. Can't you see they weren't praying for it? And somebody over here heard them and told them they're sending $350 to buy them a motor over there.

I believe in that. But that's, what you might say, that's down on the level of the routine. There's something grander and higher and finer and richer than that. And if God doesn't give himself over there along with a motor, he'll wreck that motor himself.

God wants to give gifts, but every gift he gives, he wants to give himself in gift. And that's the wonder of it, my dear. He wants to give himself. But how does, use God, use God. Use God to get you jobs.

Use God to give you safety. Use God to give you peace of mind. In heaven, at last. If God is safety for those, who will say, God, I don't know. If my heart can't be, I want to be. If my heart is, if my heart is pain, nor can it be at rest, till it finds rest in me.

And I'd rather have me and nothing than to have everything rolling in my way. You can't be sure God's making you prosperous, businessmen. You can't be sure it's not. You're prospering, you say, because you're tired.

Well, go ahead and cry. That works all right with me. I think you should, but you're prospering enough to have something God can't. Maybe the economic level of the day in which you live, maybe you're pretty sharp, cutting corners.

You'd better have God in your band than have all the riches in the world and not have God with you. God is searching for those who will put beneath the cloud of forgetting the verdict that all the things that ever God has made, for he's a jealous lover and he suffers no rival.

And he doesn't want anybody to stand in there and take his place or even remotely take his place. He wants us to teach him, to teach God. And he doesn't care unless somebody asks him about teaching him.

He said, well, let me tell you something. If anybody comes preaching, he's telling you to teach them to teach them more and more love. Don't listen to them. Don't listen to them. The only teaching you ought to listen to is that which tells you more of God, which you know that's crying God.

You can't all know all that God has. You can know all that God has revealed in Christ to your soul infinitely more than you now know. And if the church of Christ would come back to this and would get so blinded and impure it would stop teaching and would begin to teach for God himself, then all the gifts of God would come along with God, and all the blessings of God would come along with God.

We want the fullness of the spirit. We want clean paths. We want the principle within. We want love divine, all love excelling. We want all of that, but if we teach those things apart from God, we've only found a rose in a thorn.

But if you find God, then you'll find all of these things. Clean God. Better I say a thousand times, may God through Jesus Christ take him away. If you say, I have accepted Christ, now he's good. Oh, very wonderfully good.

That's good. But do you know who the man Paul had been converted to? He was one of the world's great Christians when he wrote, that I may know him. And that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his suffering.

He made conformable unto his death. He was plowing on and plowing ahead, and it appeared to be that the knowledge of Jesus Christ, he had what he called the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord.

The excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord. My friends, this is what you and I are here for. Somebody wants to know what the gift of life is. I almost withdraw from the term anymore. I almost shrink from hearing it, because everybody's talking about the gift of life, but nobody seems to want God.

God's given for life. Jesus Christ's given for life. And as I plunge further into the knowledge of the kind God, my heart moves out into God's presence, and there's less of me and more of God, and the life becomes deepened and strengthened in God, so that this is the next step, that I might know him.

Pressing Forward Toward the Knowledge of Christ

And anything that keeps me from knowing him is my enemy. If it is a friend that stands between him and me, that friend is an enemy. If it is a gift that stands between him and me, that gift is an enemy.

If it is an ambition that stands between him and me, that ambition is an enemy. If it is a rebuke I had once, and I allow that rebuke to get me down and stand between him and me, I'm the forget pack. Forgetting all the things that are past, I plow forward and press on.

And if it's a victory that I have back there, that victory stands between me and the knowledge of God, I've got to put that victory behind me. Well, I suppose I'm not as well stayed in bed. I don't know whether anybody knows what I mean.

I know everybody goes to God with who I think some of you do. But, dear friend, do you see what I mean? That, that, that all of this heathening of the gospel by banishing God out of church, God running around with a basket giving away presents, a throne of dimes, like John the Rockfeller, and he scrambled for the dimes, ten huge dimes, and then writes facts about it.

I found the dimes, had the image of God on it. Wonderful, isn't it? But, no. And thirdly, the default is the God himself. Knowing, knowing, you know this knowledge of God, nobody's out of you. Nobody's going to have you out of it.

They can come and point that sick, angry finger at you and call you every name the law permits. And when they see you, you feel bad about it, but you still know there's no God. They can come and argue with you, and give you scripture to prove you're all wrong, and when they see you, you can say, well, you're pretty good at torture, but I happen to know God.

You got these too late. And some of you prove I can't, and I met God before you ever came to see me. So we can know God for ourselves, that I might know him. The good thing is, some of you are finding him, I know that.

Some of you are finding me. I've gotten letters, I've gotten phone calls, I have had personal conversations, and I know that some of you are finding the Lord in a new, rich, deep, and wonderful way in these last weeks.

And I'm glad. But, how about a direct one? Gently speaking, I'll explain. Now, before we do say, and now before I really do say, I want to say my name to you. You are, you're not sure, maybe, quite about it all, intellectually, but your heart has a God.

Invitation to Seek God Personally

Do you want to know what Paul knew? Do you want to know what God has revealed and given? It's an experience of his sins down the years. And you say, pray for me, Mr. Tozer, that I might have this spiritual courage and faith to rise and put behind me and under my feet for everyday friendships, for ambitions, for victories, or anything that prevents me from knowing the Lord Jesus.

Would you raise your hand and be afraid for me? Anybody here would be afraid. I do want to know. Just say one word. Say, yes, I do. Do you want to know? Yes, I say, I do. Yes. Do you want to know? Yes, I have to the hands of the government.

Prayer for Deeper Knowledge and Spiritual Renewal

Now, let's have a little prayer. Lord Jesus, Lord Jesus, Jesus, Lord Jesus, Lord Jesus, Jesus, Lord Jesus, God, Lord Jesus, Lord Jesus, when we come to you, we go back to the beginning. We go back as Paul, and back as Moses, back as Abraham, back as Adam.

We go back to the beginning, the life of Christ, and the life of every man. Indeed, we see the power. Indeed, we know the power. We pray to you, as a mother, as a son, Jesus, we pray the power. That thou would take these young and these older ones, and leave them to be pastors and dream pastors, and see them in ways that may be rough and hard, and leave them painful and shaken, but leave them, Lord, leave them until all is behind them, everything's behind them, and they put behind them everything, everything, what they were, and what they are, and what they're proud of, and what they're ashamed of, and what the victims have had, and the retreats they've had, and the mistakes they've made.

Oh, may we leave these things on and teach them how to look forward and not backward, and keep right feet. You know, Father, that when you talk about these things, some come because they feel that they'll be given a capsule, that they can swallow, or a text they can memorize, or some one little tip they can do.

Oh, God, it is not just received, but rather by the preservation of the knowledge described in Christ Jesus, by faith and humility and prayer and trust and confidence and obedience, and pressing onward until at last the mountain top appears in view, and up out of the mist we come to the sunlight, come, Holy Spirit, heavenly God, come with all our sickened power, and we pray thee, we pray to God, we pray thee, Lord, that we may take an hour to pray for all of these, and we pray, Lord, to come and give them the strength to pray for anything that they should have and who perhaps have this night without even salvation.

And we pray for all the churches that are coming, bringing their service details right now, and all will be within half an hour or so. Bless them all, Lord, and grant we pray thee that every mess may have peace, and that every shepherd may find lost peace, and every harlot may find some home.