This I Believe — A.W. Tozer

The opinions to be expressed are those of the speaker and do not necessarily reflect the convictions of the station. Because I think I have something to say today. I think God has something to say. And I wanted to know that I consider this an honor to speak to the Lord's under-shepherds.

And I have been very almost distressed that I might have his mind for the occasion. Some years back, I received a phone call from a woman in the city of Chicago when I was still here. Some years back.

She said, Mr. Tozer, I just heard your sermon over the air. Now, she said, I am the president of the Chicago Beautiful Women's Society. She said, we're composed of the society women of the Chicago and area around about.

And we're having a meeting in honor of the Dean of American Artists. She said the mayor will be there. And there will be artists and newspaper men and representatives of the radio. A rabbi from Germany and a Catholic priest.

And she said, I'm personally a Catholic, but I want you to come and give that sermon you gave on the air. Well, I was scared stiff. I said, but Madam, you don't know who I am. I said, I'm a fundamentalist preacher.

I'm an evangelical. I said, I preach the Bible. I'm a Protestant. She said, I know that, that I want you to give that sermon that you gave on that day. Well, I wasn't going to do it. I was determined that I, in my heart, I knew I'm not going to that place.

It should be held in the grand ballroom of the Blackstone Hotel. And everybody was to be there. It was anybody. And in the social, and that's not my field. I don't move in those circles. And I was just plain scared.

I wasn't going to do it. So I said, I'll call you back. And I got on my knees. Now, I don't know whether you know what I mean. I'm not a visionary, and I don't go by voices. I stick by the word. But once in a while, God speaks to your heart, and hell couldn't shake it.

You know God's spoken. And something in my heart said, I believe it was the voice of God. He didn't give me time to pray. Something said in my heart, these are the words. If you want me to bless you when you want to preach, you'll have to preach when I want you to preach.

That was all. I jumped to my knees, phoned her. I said, I'll come. I did. And it was as bad as I thought it would be. But the message I gave was from the text, The counsel of the Lord, that shall stand.

That's a quotation from the scriptures. The counsel of the Lord, that shall stand. I made the representative of the National Broadcasting Company howling mad. And a few others, I guess, around there. And I've never been invited back.

But I gave my witness. I hope God will never make me do a thing like that again. But I'll do it. Because I wanted to purchase the right to stand up and know that God was going to be with me. Now, I'm in somewhat of a fix like that today.

Certainly not as dramatic. And I'm in the hands of friends. But I know what I should say. If I followed the emphasis as it's outlined, I know what I should say. I know what even might be expected of me to say.

But I'm not going to say it. I'm going to clear my heart of something that is on us before you, my fellow ministers. And this that I'm saying to you, of course I've woven into my preaching. But I never gave this particular talk except to a bunch of Baptist preachers in conference in Peekskill, New York, to Youth for Christ, of all places, their convention, and to some missionaries.

So this is not an old, worn-out talk. This, what I'm going to say, represents the deep conviction of my spirit. This is what I believe. Now, I begin with a conclusion. I begin with this conclusion. It is not an assumption, not a guess, but it is a consequence, or a conclusion, reached in consequence of prayer and study and first-hand observation and, I believe, also some measure of walking with the Holy Spirit.

And in consultation, like Paul, Paul had his revelation from God, but he checked with the brethren of Jerusalem to be sure it wasn't off. You remember that? It was such a beautifully inconsistent thing, but very sweet and very human.

He said, I'd just check to see if that was all right. But he'd have preached it anyhow, regardless of what they said, but he wanted to know that he was in with the brethren who were God's children, God's proper servants.

And I have done this, and you know what I have found? I have found that the holiest, the most radiant, the most worshipful, the most sacrificial, the most devoted, agree with me on this. Now, my conclusion is that evangelical Christianity has left the land of promise and is in Babylonian captivity.

Now, when Israel was in Babylon, she was not cut off from God's covenant, nor even from his favor. He still called her his, and he still protected her, and finally brought her back to the land. But she was out of the land of where she should have been, and the covenant, while it held, its full provisions were partly suspended because they weren't where they should have been.

And while they were not deserted and not rejected of God, they nevertheless were in Babylon. And they hung their harps on the willows, and they couldn't sing the songs of Zion. They were there together, but they weren't what they should have been or where they should have been.

They were God's people, but they weren't in the land. They were in Babylon. Now, I believe that we of the gospel church, now, I am not going to throw rocks at the liberals. I am not going to throw rocks at the Roman Catholics.

We leave them with the mercy of God. I'm talking about us who believe the Bible to be the word of God, and who stand by all the tenets of the faith of our fathers. Now, about 450 years ago, a similar situation, I think worse, perhaps, but a situation like this obtained, and a man arose whose name was Martin Luther.

And he diagnosed the disease that they had, and he discovered the trouble with the church, and then he published his findings. He published in the famous 95 Theses, nailed on the castle church at Wittenberg, October 31st, 1517.

He published the diagnosis. This is what's wrong with Christianity, in other words, he said, and here's where we're going to have to make our corrections and shift our emphasis back to the Bible if we're going to be right with God.

Now, we're in a critical need today of a reformer. We're in critical need of someone or ones who can come along, diagnose, analyze, and discover, and rouse, and challenge, and call, and lead. But now, just in case any of you might say, those who think he's a reformer, I want to hasten to tell you that I'm derealistic enough to know that I'm not that man.

First, I'm too old. Second, I've sinned too much, and like Moses, I've hit too many rocks on impulse. And the Lord's with me, but the Lord is just saying, if some young fellow do that, you've gone home.

And here, one of these times, I hope 20 years from now, the Lord will release me from my ministry and take me home, no sooner. But he's not going to let me do this. This is all settled. So this is not a manifesto from a man who thinks he's a reformer, major or minor.

He's neither one. But if the echo of my hammer blows, could rouse some sleeping giant, some young fellow sitting listening to me, or that you'll speak to somewhere, or that'll get to hear about this, and he'll be the man, and I'll say, Lord, let thy servant depart in peace.

For that's all I want to do, is to put some theses before you, which are pronouncement about what's wrong with us, and why we're where we are, and why we have to have an emphasis like Keswick at all. For if we were where we should be, it would be carrying coals to Newcastle to have a Keswick convention.

The very fact that such a convention as this is held is an indication that the level of the church is down, and we're trying to bring it up. Now you take these theses down. They are pronouncements which I will stand by.

And incidentally, I could easily lose some friends this morning and go out of here with fewer friends than I had when I came in. Friends are very precious, and I don't speak lightly of them. But they're not to be kept at the expense of your conscience and of what you believe to be true.

You notice? I say what I believe to be true. I may be wrong. I may be wrong on some points. I may be wrong on all points. And I would, to quote Luther again, anything here that I'm saying, or he said anything I've written, anything that I'm saying that can't check and doesn't check with the word of God, write that off.

That I wouldn't stand for. But whatever accords with the word of God, you are in conscience bound to listen to that. Now let me take two of Luther's theses. Strangely, after 450 years, these two are still valid for us.

Repentance as the Whole-Life Response to God

He said this. This is number one. He said, Our Lord and Master, when he said repent ye, meant the whole life of the faithful should be an act of repentance. Now I believe that. Let's put that down. Today we are producing Christians without repentance or with inadequate repentance or with superficial repentance.

And when Satan, my God help me not to accuse brethren of being influenced by Satan, but when some wrong brethren got the idea abroad that repentance is for Israel but it's not for the Church, we suffered a loss that was like a Pearl Harbor in the Church of Christ.

The fact is that repentance runs throughout the entire Bible through the last book and that the great saints have invariably been the great repenters. And when the devil, while in his shrewd wisdom, succeeded in brainwashing the Bible teachers and ruling out repentance in the Church of Christ and ruling out repentance as a condition getting into the kingdom of God, I say that he did us immeasurable harm.

The whole life of the believer should be a continual act of contrition. And we never should get to a place in our lives where we feel we've arrived, we've pulled the lever down and taken out the automatic thing and said now we've got it.

We should be in a state of, while we're joyful, we should be in a state of contrition and repentance of heart. For though we may have degrees and have been through school and learned to use cultured language and be called doctor and reverend and looked up to, we're still pretty human and we're still pretty bad.

Repentance Must Produce Mortification and Obedience

And we need to again bring to the Church of Christ the biblical doctrine of repentance and emphasize it until it works. Second, yet Christ does not mean interior repentance only. Repentance is void if it does not produce a mortification of the flesh.

Now it's entirely possible to go through some kind of experience of internal spirituality, to suck the sweetness out of the gospel and not have brought your whole life under the lordship of Jesus. Today we accept Christ without self-denial, without cross-carrying, and the result is of course that we're where we are.

We need in this hour lean, muscular, disciplined Christianity, but we don't have it. We have the other kind, and it's because we either have taught that repentance is not for us or we've thought it's a mental thing.

It is a mental thing, but it's a spiritual thing too. It's a volitional thing, but all of those are within our personality, and repentance is not valid. In fact, it is void unless it gets into my relation to my wife, my relation to my church, gets into my use of money, gets into my use of language, gets into my ethics, gets into every detail of my life, my relationship to the government, my relationship to organized society, my relationship to my people, my family.

Salvation and Discipleship Belong Together

We've got to be, have repented so thoroughly that there isn't an area of our total life that hasn't been affected by radical, painful, but blessed repentance. Two. Now three. We've got to begin to preach again, no salvation without discipleship.

You know, over the past 50 years, we have divorced salvation from discipleship, and men are actually so spiritually stupid that they will get up, and nice guys too, not mean men, nice fellows, they'll get up before audiences and teach them that they are to accept Jesus to be saved and then later on settle the matter of discipleship.

I don't believe it possible for anybody to come to the Lord and be saved unless he's ready to be a disciple. Our Lord taught that. It's in the book. It's there. It's assumed, taken for granted, underscored by the apostles.

But this division of the work, our relationship to the Lord into two sections. One, our relationship to him as the one who saves us, and two, our relationship to him as our Lord. This is all wrong, my brother.

We need to begin again to tell sinners that they are to become disciples of Jesus Christ, and accepting Christ means to become a disciple of Christ then, not 20 years later or some other time, but now.

And then we've got to start telling them again that to be forgiven, sin must be forsaken. We have learned now to live with sin, and we take forgiveness by grace, and we don't do anything about our lives.

To be forgiven, sin must be forsaken. Now, we ought to be bold enough to tell people that, but you say you keep people out. All right, keep them out then. The Lord turned people away from him by teaching the truth, and he turned to them and said, Will ye also go away?

He wasn't going to change the truth, but he was sorry they were leaving, and then Peter said, Lord, to whom shall we go? The feeling that we've got to make converts at any cost has greatly wounded the Church of Christ.

We must present the truth as we're told to present it, and let the Holy Ghost and the individual man decide on whether they'll accept it or not. This soft, pussy idea that in order to keep people coming and giving and filling the seats, we don't dare in any wise offend them, we've got to make everything smooth and soft and attractive, it's not New Testament.

This is one of the theses I'd mail out there. We've got to tell the people to be forgiven, sin must be forsaken, and we want you, but we only want you when you come by the labor and are washed in the blood of the Lamb.

Christ's Saviorhood Cannot Be Separated from His Lordship

We don't want you any other way. Then number five is there's no saviorhood without lordship. That's very close to number three. No saviorhood without lordship. You know what we do now is we tell the people, well, you take him as savior, and then later on discuss the matter of having him as your lord.

If he can't be your lord, he won't be your savior. Now you might as well settle that. Now you may not agree with this, and I could be wrong, but I don't think I am, that when we've divided the saviorhood and the lordship of Christ, we divided the substance in the language of the old tree, and we should never do it.

The offices of Christ are one. That is, they all belong and inherit the person of Jesus, and when I take him as my lord and savior, I've taken him for all he is. Now it doesn't mean that I'll know all he is, and it means that all the rest of my normal life I'll be learning new glories that shine around his head, but it means that I've got to take him as my lord if I'm going to have him as my savior.

The Way of the Cross Is Difficult and Costly

Now I stick to this, brethren, and you may not believe it, but I believe it. Six, the way of the cross is hard. Now we've been falsely representing it as ridiculously easy, and so we've disappointed millions of people who have come, signed a card, accepted Christ on the false assumption because we've unintentionally so represented it that serving the Lord was a jolly business and was very clean and nice and joyful, and the Lord would help us to do things, you know.

If we're businessmen, he'd help us to undercut our competitor and get the job, and if we were baseball pitchers, he'd help us to get a good hook on our curve, and if we're prize fighters, he'd help us to knock out the opponent, you know, all that, and we've written nice little books about how the dear Lord comes and just helps me to have my way.

Brother, you can't be wronger. There wasn't any such word up to now, but you couldn't be further off the base than that. Jesus Christ never compromises with anybody. He sees them go away as he saw the rich young ruler go away, and he grieves in his heart, but truth is truth, and our Lord is the embodiment of truth, and he will not compromise truth for anybody, and the way of the cross is not an easy way.

We have made the cross into a beautiful symbol of Christianity. We put it on Easter cards and on the steeples and around our necks and all, and the cross has become a jolly, lovely thing. The fact is the cross is rejection.

The cross is ostracism. The cross is death, and we've got to tell people this, and if we don't tell people this, we sell goods under false representation. This is a serious life, this Christian life. You and I, my brethren, are in a serious fix.

Now, I might just well admit it, in spite of Edgar Gaston and all the rest, we're in a serious fix. We're bad off. Sin has done terrible things to us. Sin has ruined us, and to get out of this mess, we're going to have to go through some hard places.

You say, oh, but the Lord did it all. Now, don't fool yourself. The Lord died on the cross and said it is finished, and redemption was objectively purchased, I believe, for every man in the world. If you believe in particular, don't argue with me, but I believe that he died for all the men in the world.

But, my brethren, when he saves a Christian down here, by grace, through faith, without works, that Christian isn't in heaven yet. He's down here, and the fact that he is a Christian puts him out of joint with all society, and he's in trouble, and he's likely to be in trouble, and that's why the Lord said, if your foot gets in your way, cut it off and throw it away.

That was radical. If your eye offends you, pull it out and throw it away. If your loved ones get in the way, leave them and follow me. But nowadays, we don't dare say that to the church. That's why the church is so weak.

We don't dare say it. Uncle Sam dares say it. Uncle Sam sends a young fellow a letter. Greetings, fellow citizen. And you know what that means. That means come and get the uniform on. Go out and get shot at.

And he doesn't say, now, do you think you'd like to do this? He doesn't. I remember seeing a cartoon one time of a young fellow. He was a soldier or just a rookie, and he was mad. His face was hard, and he was packing his suitcase in the barracks room, and the old tough sergeant was standing there.

And with the mock courtesy, he was saying, Private Smith, if the United States Army has offended you in any way, we hope that you will forgive us and reconsider your plan to leave us. Well, Uncle Sam, Uncle Sam doesn't reconsider.

He says, Greetings, meet me at a certain place. And if you've got anything between here and here, they'd take you. But we're afraid of that. Now, that was the spirit of the early church. It was a militant spirit.

It was the spirit of give up and die. But the spirit now is the spirit of get and have and stay fat. The result is, of course, we're nowhere. We're in Babylon. So we're going to have to start telling the people again the way of the cross leads home, but it leads down hills and up through valleys and across thorny ways and past lions and bears.

Human Methods Cannot Govern the Church of God

And it's not an easy way, but it's wonderful. Come and follow the Lord. Then, number eight. I'm getting over my theses, and so I am to number eight. Did I skip seven? Oh, excuse me, I did. All right, number seven is, the methods of the spirit and the methods of men are diametrically opposed to each other, and you cannot run the church of God after the methods of men.

Now, the church today, the evangelical church, may be not yours. You may be an oasis in the desert, and certainly I'd be the first one to be happy for you. But I know the evangelical church pretty well.

All denominations within the fold of the gospel beliefs. And these churches are run on the methods of big business, the methods of show business, and the methods of the advertising business. Now, hear me say this thing.

There are churches by the hundreds whom the Holy Ghost could leave as he left us. Shekinah Glory left the temple in the day of Ezekiel, and the church would never find it out. They would go on preaching the gospel, Gofield Bible notes included.

They would go right on preaching the word. They'd go right on sending out missionaries and never know that the Holy Ghost had fled. Now, I personally don't believe the Holy Ghost leaves us in that sense.

He shall abide with you forever. So I'm not saying he will leave, but I am saying that he retreats into hurt silence, and for a generation won't be heard from. And yet the church will run on its momentum.

It used to say about the big old steam engines on the Pennsylvania and New York Central, they could run 75 miles on momentum on a level track, after they were doing a normal speed. Cut them loose, turn off the steam, and they could run 75 miles on momentum.

Inertia will carry us 75 years without an impulse of the Holy Ghost. This is a terrible, terrible thing to me. I began preaching on the street corner. I got on a soap box and told the story of the prodigal son.

I began there, and I'd rather end my last feeble years preaching on a soap box and telling the truth than to be caught in institutionalized Christianity and paralyzed. So I don't dare tell the truth. I want the prophetic spirit on me, or I want to die.

The methods of the Holy Ghost are pure, holy, clean methods, and they're such methods as shall humble the flesh. And they keep you sometimes in a state of suspension because God's wanting to humble you.

But if you won't take the humbling and you won't wait on God, then there's always methods of raising money, methods of getting things done. You can learn it from TV, you can learn it from Madison Avenue, you can learn it from businessmen.

But this idea of businessmen, and God bless the Christian businessmen, I've been with them all these years, and I tell them these things and they like it, that the Christian businessman who comes swaggering into the Church of Christ and gets on the board and then tries to run that church after the methods that he's run his business office, he's a hundred miles from the truth.

Christ Saves Us to Make Us Worshipers

The Holy Spirit runs the Church of Christ after methods that are divinely given. And they're not the same, but hostile to and diametrically opposed to the methods of the flesh. Then, my eighth one is, that Christ saves us to make us worshipers rather than workers.

And that we're workers because we're worshipers, and if we're not worshipers, we're not workers, finally. Nowadays, we get a young fellow converted, give him a tract and start him out, or a bundle of tracts, and say, now go in souls.

It's all wrong, my brethren. Jesus, our Lord, said that they were to tell the story everywhere, and Peter, of course, scooped up his hat and started. He thought he must go right then. The Lord stopped him, said, no, no, you're not ready to go.

But tarry ye until ye be endued with power from on high. Now, I know there are differences of opinion, honest, honest differences of opinion on the question of the Holy Spirit. But I believe we all agree, generally, that there is a fullness of the Holy Spirit necessary to do the work of God.

And that same Holy Ghost shows us the things of Christ and makes worshipers out of us. I think I'd have made a good Anglican if you wouldn't have insisted that I follow their ritual, because they're worshiping people, and I love to be a worshiper, love to worship God.

Those two songs, those two psalms, paraphrase our brother Lyd, had me way, way up there, not in the seventh heaven, but close. Because I worship God, and I believe that out of worship grows work. And if we try to do the work without having a spirit of worship, we only produce wood, hay, and stubble.

Brethren, one of these days, all this great show will be over. One of these days, the tents will be torn down, there'll be nothing but sawdust, and you and I will stand before Jesus Christ to receive of the deeds done in the body.

And I don't want to be faced with having done holy work in a carnal way, or having worked out of some other motive than pure love of God and love of my fellow man. Well, we have lots of workers now, and we have lots of founders, and we have lots of promoters, but we don't have many worshipers.

We ought to get back to worshiping God again. And by worship, I don't mean super-induced worship. Worship by low organ tones playing and pastor clearing his throat in a very baritone fashion and light shining in through the window, that kind of stuff, that's cheap.

Obedience, Humility, and Holiness Must Accompany Worship

Cain had that kind of worship. I'm talking about the worship the Holy Ghost produces. Then, whatever it is, tently, we must teach the people again, but, I skipped nine. Oh, yes, yes, and this is not easy either.

This, I insist upon, that evangelical Christians violate the scriptures in their relation to the world, the flesh, and each other, without compunction and without repentance and without rebuke and without knowing.

And we come to a place like this, and we want to get blessed. We want a taste of the sweetness of Jesus, and oh, how sweet our Lord is. You know, brethren, I can say this to you or your pastors. Sometimes I go to my study, and I get on my knees, and I turn out the lights, and I say to the Lord, now, I'm not asking anything today.

I don't want a thing. I'm not asking thee for a thing, and I just stay in his presence until he begins to speak to my inner heart and worship and worship. Brethren, it's wonderful to do it. And we, that's good, and I'm glad for that.

But listen, we can become worshipers of a kind and love the sweetness of religion and at the same time be careless of the commandments of Christ and the ethical teachings of the New Testament and the simple words of the Lord and the apostles to a point where we're violating the scriptures every day and all the time.

In our relation to our folks, in relation to society, the government, our business, house where we may trade. My brother, if we're going to be real Christians, we're going to have to bring our lives into accord with the commandments of Christ.

Now, I know that that's been ruled out. They ruled that out back there a few years ago, but they didn't rule it out of my heart, and they didn't rule it out of my preaching. We violate the scriptures, and then we want the Lord to revive us.

He won't revive us on those terms. And then, ten, meekness and modesty and humility make a man dear to God, but evangelical Christianity is geared to a philosophy exactly the contrary. I get into some meetings, and I just have to sit there and suffer it out until it's time to preach.

Why they invite me, I never know, but I suffer it out because a young fellow will dash onto the platform and rush up like a radio announcer just about to sell soap, and oh, it's all so wonderful, but the poor guy's never seen the face of Jesus, and he's never known that he'll never be any good till he's dead.

He carries his carnality into the pulpit with him, carries his arrogance and his pride, but he's learned, of course, to make it sweet. You can't carry ugly arrogance. People will leave you, but if you're sweetly arrogant, they'll love you for it and follow you.

And men do it that way. I believe that the Lord loves meek people, humble people, simple people, yet, and that we ought to set before our people the ideal not of being a big shot or of being known in the gates, but of being among those who love the Lord, who are simple-hearted, humble, meek, self-effacing.

That's spirituality, my brother. The big boy that can get up and yell and move the multitudes, he may be God's man. I believe Billy Graham, for instance, is God's man when he gets the crowds, too. So I don't say if you're God's man, you don't get crowds.

I only say that you can be God's man and still preach to an awfully small congregation. And you can be God's layman and still not be known out of your own little church. Humility, meekness, godliness, that's what matters.

Prayer Cannot Excuse Disobedience

I mean, what matters. Now, time's getting away, but I will try to get to all of them. Eleven, is it? We cannot, by prayer, justify non-obedience. It's better to obey than sacrifice. But I've learned, found out from some of my brethren, that prayer covers everything, literally covers a multitude of sins.

And men can start out on things that God is not in in a manner that God can't approve, and yet they try to storm heaven and get God's approval on things that God hasn't approved. You might just as well go to bed as pray all night asking God to do something that God has said he wouldn't do.

God can't be coaxed. He doesn't have to be. God is ready to answer your prayer for everything in his will, but he wouldn't answer the prayer of the archangel Gabriel for anything out of his will. And yet we, a fellow, will start to do something in a wrong way, we'll have wrong relationships, wrong attitudes toward money, wrong motives, and then he'll say, now let's meet and pray.

And he'll get people on their knees and pray half a night to God. Well, bless that carnal man. I won't join a crowd like that. I'll go to bed. Because there's no use, there's no use to try to justify non-obedience by a whole lot of prayer.

Spiritual Renewal Requires Reformation, Not Mere Activity

Obey God and your prayers will get some guts in them and get you someplace. And then we can't cure our spiritual malady by more activity. That's number 12. Now, when anybody comes along and says, we're in awful shape, aren't we?

We're spiritually down. The church is morally pretty bad. Everybody jumps up, then looks around for something to do. And we think we can cure our spiritual malady by more activity. No. Evangelism, for instance, when a diseased Christianity becomes evangelistic, it merely enlarges the area of infection.

That's all. If a diseased Christianity just sits tight, that's it. But if it decides to go out and make converts, Jesus said, you compass sea and land to make one convert when you get him he's ten times worse than he was before.

It's possible to be evangelistic in a wrong way and spread a defeat and decadent Christianity. And then missions. Now, I come from a mission board, but I've told my mission board this. They know I believe it.

That you can't cover over non-obedience and wrongdoing by becoming missionary. Won't do. There is a law after its kind. And we send our missionaries out, and we'd like to think they'd go out and make Christians after the pattern of the New Testament.

But they don't. They go out and make converts in their own image. They sing the same songs, pray the same prayers, have the same spiritual philosophy, and live the same way after we've made them. The only possible thing is to raise this level of our spirituality and morality to a place where when we send out missionaries, we make missionaries after the image of holy men and women.

And missions mean something. But to take a young fellow who isn't broken, a young fellow who isn't consciously indwelt by the Holy Ghost, a young fellow who hasn't died out, and under the romance of missions and the yearning to travel and wander lust is on him, he says, I want to be a missionary.

Reformation Must Precede Enduring Revival

So he goes through the grind of getting ready and goes out hard and unbroken. He'll make converts like that out there. We need something beyond activity. Now, lastly, our critical need in this hour, in American Canada at least, is not so much revival as reformation.

Revival means, and I use the word, and I don't mean that I don't believe in revival. I do, the right kind. But we think of revival as being a big boom in religion that will give us vastly more of the same thing that we have now.

Brethren, what we need is to get rid of an awful lot that we have now. If this town would suddenly become revived and all become like us, I'm afraid it would be, in some instances, pretty much of a spiritual tragedy.

We need a reformation within us, within the Church. Not on doctrine. I'm not talking about the basic doctrines of the Church. But our emphases need to be shifted back to New Testament emphases until we have been revived, reformed, and then we'll be revived.

And when revival follows reformation, it lasts. When a man's heart has been changed, his life has been changed, his attitudes have been changed, everything's been changed, and then out from that revival comes you've got revival, and I'm for that kind of revival.