Ten Indictments (A Historical 21st Century Message) - Part 1

Let us go to the Lord in prayer.

Father, I come before you in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ. Lord, you know all

things. They are all before you like an open book. Who can hide their heart from your

presence and your eye? The deeds of the most clever men are exposed before you. Your

omniscience knows no bounds and if it were not for grace I would be of all men most

terrified, but there is grace, abounding and glorious, poured out upon the weakest of men

and abounding to your glory. Father, I praise you and I worship you and I thank you for

all that you are and all that you have done. And there is no one like you in the heavens

or the earth or under the earth. You are king and there is no other. You are Savior and

you share that glory with no one.

Father, this night you know me and my great need of grace. Why am I here except that

you called the weakest among men, the most ignoble among brothers and that by your

grace, often times, the lesser teaches the greater? That is always my case and I praise

you. I worship you.

Father, help us tonight. To the wind with eloquence, to hell with the brilliant intellect,

Father. Let the truth go forward. Let me be changed that the state of your Church be

more glorious. I pray for grace upon grace and mercy upon mercy for myself and for the

hearers who are present here. Help us, oh God, and we will be helped and we will boast

in that help in Jesus' name. Amen.

It is a great privilege for me to be here this evening, an astounding privilege to stand here

before you and to speak about things such as revival, reformation, the working of God

among his people and among men. But tonight I am going to share with you an

indictment, an indictment, but it is an indictment of hope.

As I was praying through what I should do in this series of meetings I came to a great

conclusion, a great burden that was laid upon my heart. We need revival. We need an

awakening, but we cannot simply expect the Holy Spirit to come down and clean up all

the mess we have made. We have clear direction from the Word of God with regard to what he has done through Christ, how he expects us to live, how he expects us to order

his Church. And it does little good for men to cry out for extra biblical manifestations

when biblical principle is violated all around us.

I want you to know this. There is little need for the devil and evil men to oppose a man

praying for revival unless he is also laboring for reformation. We have been given truth

and we cannot simply do what is right in our own eyes and then expect the Holy Spirit to

come down and bless our labors.

As we look into the Old Testament we see that Moses is given very, very detailed

explanation how to build the temple. Now was that given for Moses' sake or for the

Church's sake? I think that what is being explained here is that God is specific in his will

and that we are not to presume that we can take the smallest detail and ignore it.

Now I know that I am frail man and I know that I am buffeted by many weaknesses, but I

have an indictment and I can't call it my indictment because who am I to indict anyone.

And I dare not call it God's indictment for how can I presume upon his name. But I will

say this. As I look around at the Church and compare her to Scripture, I see that there are

certain things that must change.

I am not Martin Luther. This is not 95 declarations nailed to Wittenburg's door, but this

is a burden on my heart and I must share it. I must share it.

Now let me say this. What I am going to say will anger some of you, but let me warn

you. It may be true that you will be able to accuse me of arrogance. It may be true that

you do not like my delivery. I have many times been arrogant and I have many times

delivered truth in a wrong way, but don't allow that to be an excuse for you. The question

is. What I am saying, is it true whether it is delivered through a faulty messenger or no?

Others of you will be rejoicing in what you hear and you will want to say, "Amen," and

maybe pump your arms. But don't do that because all of us bear a measure of guilt. And

if you have attained to some spiritual state, then I would say what my brother has said.

"What do you have that you have not received and if you have received it, why do you

boast?"1

Would it not be better to worship God in humility?

If you are a younger minister, I do not want you to get caught up in these truths and take

them back and storm your church without love. I would make one suggestion. See to it

that your knees are bleeding before you begin any sort of reformation. And if you are an

older minister serving the Lord for many, many years I beg you not to be arrogant.

An old foolish king can learn from the weakest of his servants.

And also I beg you this. Have the courage to change everything even if it is the last day

of your life, at least you can go into glory knowing that you attempted a reformation that

was biblical.

And I will say this as a warning to the older men. Now, listen to me carefully. I know the

admonition in 1 Timothy chapter five of the way I am to address you and so I address you

this way, but there is a great awakening going on in this country and not only in this

country and Europe where I have been and in South America and many other places, I

see young men going back to the rock from which we were cut. They are reading

Spurgeon and Whitefield. They are still listening to Ravenhill and Martin Lloyd-Jones

and Tozer and Wesley and it is a great, incredible movement. Just because popular

media and Christianity today hasn't discovered what is going on, I want you to know that

I would have never dreamed 15 years ago that I would see the awakening I am seeing, not

through my ministry, but as I go to different places and see what God is doing without

any of our ministries.

Whether it is Holland, a thousand young men declaring, "Things have to change," crying

out all night in prayer for the power of God and the truth of Scripture or South America

recognizing that they have been so influenced by psychology and all sorts of superficial

techniques coming from America with regard to evangelism and now weeping and

broken are going back and evangelizing their churches, or the inner city of the United

States where I have sat up at times until two and three in the morning discussing theology

with young African Americans in the hood whom God is going to raise up to do more

preaching than anyone will ever be able to imagine on this day.

There is an awakening.

And I am going to say this with tenderness. Most men over 40 don't even have a clue

about it. Many of the young people who are turning back to the old men and the old

ways and to truths that have brought awakening time and time again in this world, most

of these young men are quite young. And they will go to their pastors, they will go to

their leaders and say, "Look at this, what we have discovered. Look what happened in

Wales. Look what happened in Africa. Look at this and look at this and look at this

teaching. It is absolutely amazing."

And most of them will either turn it away or say, "It is nothing any different than what I

have been preaching for 25 years," when, in fact, it is completely different than what they

have been preaching in 25 years.

And so we need to be very, very careful to understand that God is doing work. And he

who began a good work will finish it.2

Many people have the idea that they are going to pray in a revival. And other people say,

"Revival will come whether you pray or not."

I am not in either one of those camps. But I know this. When I see men and women and

young people all over the world praying for an awakening, to me that is the first fruits of

revival. And I can count on the fact that he who gave those first fruits will bring in the

full harvest.

Now I want to look at 10 indictments, if we have time, things that I believe that we must

change.

First of all, the first indictment: a practical denial of the sufficiency of Scripture,

especially my denomination, a practical denial of the sufficiency of Scripture.

2 Timothy 3:15 and on says:

And that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are

able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is

in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for

teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that

the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.3

Over the last several decades there has been a mighty battle with regard to the inspiration

of Scripture. Now some of you have not been a part of that battle, but many of us in

more liberal denominations most certainly have, a battle for the Bible.

But there is only one problem. When you come to believe as a people that the Bible is

inspired you have only fought half the battle because the question is not merely is the

Bible inspired, is it inerrant. The major question following that that must be answered: Is

the Bible sufficient or do we have to bring in every so called social science and cultural

study in order to know how to run a church? That is a major question.

Social sciences, in my opinion, have taken precedent over the Word of God in such a way

that most of us can't even see it. It has so crept in to our Church, our evangelism and our

missiology that you can barely call what we are doing Christian anymore. Psychology,

anthropology, sociology have become primary influences in the Church.

Several years ago, many years ago when I was in seminary I remember a professor

walked in and he started drawing footprints on the blackboard. And as he marched them

across the blackboard then he turned to all of us and said only this. "Aristotle is walking

through the halls of this institution. Beware, for I hear his footsteps more clearly than

those of the apostle Paul and the team of inspired men who were with him and even the

Lord Jesus Christ himself."

We have come to believe that a man of God can deal in certain tiny areas in the life of the

Church, but when it really gets tough we need to go to the social experts. That is an

absolute lie. It says here in Scripture that the man of God may be equipped, adequate,

equipped for every good work.

What does Jerusalem have to do with Rome? And what do we have to do with all these

modern day social sciences that were actually created as a protest against the Word of

God? And why is it that evangelism and missions and so called church growth is more

shaped by the anthropologist, the sociologist and the Wall Street student who is up on

every cultural trend?

All the activity in our church must be based upon the Word of God, all the activity in

missions upon the Word of God.

Our missionary activity, our church activity, everything we do ought to flow from the

theologian and the exegete, the man who opens up his Bible and only has one question.

What is thy will, oh God?

We are not to send out questionnaires to carnal people to discover what kind of church

they would attend. A church ought to be seeker friendly, but the church ought to

recognize there is only one seeker. His name is God and if you want to be friendly to

someone, if you want to accommodate someone, accommodate him and his glory

whether it is rejected by everyone else. We are not called to build empires. We are not

called to be excessive. We are called to glorify God.

And if you want the Church to be something other than a peculiar people, then you want

something God does not want.

I want you to listen to Isaiah just for a moment, chapter eight. Listen to what he says.

"When they say to you, 'Consult the mediums and the spiritists who whisper and

mutter...'"4 This is a perfect [?] and the church growth gurus and everything else because

every two or three years all their major theories change. Not only on what is a man or

how you fix him, but what is a church and how you make it grow. Every two or three

years there is another fad coming down the line of what can make your church into

something super in the eyes of the world.

Just recently one of the greatest or most well known church growth experts said that he

discovered that he was entirely wrong on all his theory. But instead of turning them to

Scripture on his knees broken and weeping, he goes out to find another theory.

They give no clear word. It says here in Isaiah, "Should not a people consult their God?

Should they consult the dead on behalf of the living?"5

Should we as churchmen, as preachers, as pastors, as Christians, should we go out and

consult the spiritually dead on behalf of those whom the Holy Spirit has made alive?

Absolutely not, absolutely not.

The second indictment: An ignorance of God.

At times I am asked, "Brother Paul, please come and do a week long series on the

attributes of God."

And many times I will say this. "I am... Well, brother, have you thought this through?"

He said, "What do you mean have I thought this through?"

"Well, it is quite controversial, the subject that you are putting... you are giving to go

teach in your church."

They say, "What do you mean it is controversial? I mean it is God. We are Christians.

This is a church. What do mean it is controversial?"

I said, "Dear pastor, you listen to me. When I begin instructing your people on the justice

of God, the sovereignty of God, the wrath of God, the supremacy of God, the glory of

God, you are going to have some of your finest and oldest church members stand up and

say something like this. 'That is not my God. I could never love a God like that,' because

they have a god they have made with their own mind and they love what they have

made."

Jeremiah 9:23-24:

Thus says the LORD, "Let not a wise man boast of his wisdom, and let not

the mighty man boast of his might, let not a rich man boast of his riches;

but let him who boasts boast of this, that he understands and knows Me.6

Psalms 50. "You thought," God speaking:

You thought that I was just like you; I will reprove you and state the case

in order before your eyes. Now consider this, you who forget God, Or I

will tear you in pieces, and there will be none to deliver.7

Now, what is the problem here? There is a lack of the knowledge of God. Many of you,

possibly think, "Oh, talking about the attributes of God and theology, it is all high, ivory

tower stuff that has no practical application."

Listen to yourself speak saying the knowledge of God has no practical [?]. Do you know

why all your Christian bookstores are filled up with self help books and five ways to do

that and six ways to be godly and 10 ways not to fall? Because people don't know God.

And so they have to be given all sorts of trivial little devices of the flesh to keep them

walking as sheep ought to walk.

1 Corinthians 15:34. "Become sober-minded as you ought, and stop sinning; for some

have no knowledge of God. I speak this to your shame."8

Why the rampant sinning even among God's people? A lack of the knowledge of the

God, of God.

Now let me ask you a question. When was the last time you attended a conference on the

attributes of God? When was the last time, as a pastor, you taught for a solid year on

who God is? How much of all the teaching that goes on in America all week has

anything to do with who God is?

And then we wonder. Isn't it so easy to go with the flow, to just follow everybody else

and then one day you hear something like this and all of the sudden you go, "I can't even

remember when anybody taught on the attributes of God"?

No wonder we are a people as we are.

To know him, that is what everything is about. That is eternal life. And eternal life

doesn't begin when you pass through the gates of glory. Eternal life begins with

conversion. Eternal life is to know him. Do you honestly think you are going to be

thrilled about swinging on gates of pearl and walking down streets of gold for an

eternity? The reason why you won't lose your mind in eternity is because of this. There

is one there who is infinite in glory and you will spend an eternity of eternities tracking

him down and you will never get your arms even around the foothill of his mountain.

Start now. So many different things you want to know and do and all the books. Get out

a book on God, this one, and study it to know him, to know him.

Sunday morning, because of all of this, I would submit to you that it would be better not

even to have a Sunday morning. Sunday morning is the greatest hour of idolatry in the

entire week of America because people are not worshipping the one true God--the great

mass at least--but are worshipping a god formed out of their own hearts by their own

flesh, satanic devices and worldly intelligence. They have made a god just like

themselves and he looks more like Santa Claus than he does Yahweh.

There can be no fear of the Lord among us because there is no knowledge of the Lord

among us.

The third indictment: A failure to address man's malady.

When I look at the book of Romans which is one of my favorite books of the Bible, it is

not a systematic theology, but if you could say any book in the Bible was a systematic

theology the book of Romans would be the closest. Isn't it amazing that Paul spends the

first three chapters of that book seeking to do one thing? Bring all men into

condemnation, bring all men into condemnation.

But it is not that condemnation is his great sunum bonum in his theology. It is not his end

or his final purpose. It is a means to bring salvation to his readers because men must be

brought to a knowledge of self before they surrender self over to God. Men are made in

such a fallen manner now that you must cut away from them absolutely every hope in the

flesh before they may be brought to God.

It is as important in everything, but it is especially important in evangelism. I remember.

This was... I was 21 years old and had just been called to preach and I walked into an old

store where they would sell suits to ministers for half price. They had been doing it for

50, 60 years. And I walked in there and I was looking for a suit in Paducah, Kentucky

and all of the sudden the door opened. I heard the bell ring. It closed. There was an old,

old man standing there. I never caught his name, but when he walked in he looked right

at me.

He said, "Boy, you have been called to preach, haven't you?"

I said, "Yes, sir."

He was an old, old evangelist. He said, "You see where that building is right outside this

building?"

I said, "Yeah."

He said, "I used to preach there. The Spirit of God would come down and souls would be

saved."

I said, "Sir, please tell me about it."

He said, "There wasn't anything like this evangelism today." He said, "We would preach

for two and three weeks and give no invitation to sinful men. We would plow and plow

and plow and plow the hearts of men until the Spirit of God began to work and break

their hearts."

I said, "Sir, how did you know when the Spirit of God was coming to break their hearts?"

And he said, "Well, let me just give you an example." He said, "Many decades ago I

walked into this store to buy a suit. Someone had handed me $30 and said, 'Preacher, go

buy you a suit tomorrow.' And when I walked through the door the young clerk taking

care of the shop turned around and looked at me and when he looked at me he fell down

on the floor and cried out, 'Who can save a wicked man like me?' And I knew that the

Spirit of God had fallen upon the place."

Now we just walk in and talk to them, give them three exploratory questions and ask

them if they want to pray a prayer and ask Jesus to come into their heart and we make a two fold son of hell who will never again be open to the gospel because the religious lie

that we, as evangelicals, have spewed out of our mouth.

I will say something that Leonard Ravenhill used to say. "Now you understand why I

preach in a lot of places once." But that is the truth.

When we treat sin superficially, first of all we are fighting against the Holy Spirit. "And

He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin."9

There are very popular preachers today who are more concerned about giving you your

best life now then they are eternity. And they brag about the fact that they do not mention

sin in their preaching. I can tell you this. The Holy Spirit has nothing to do with their

ministry lest he be working against. That would be the only thing.

Why? When a man says he has no ministry dealing with the sin of men, the Holy Spirit

does. It is a primary ministry of the Holy Spirit to come and convict the world of sin.

And so know this. When you do not deal specifically, passionately, lovingly with men

and their depraved condition, the Holy Spirit is nowhere around you.

Also we are deceivers when we deal with the malady of men lightly like shepherds of

Jeremiah's day. "They have healed the brokenness of My people superficially, Saying,

'Peace, peace,' But there is no peace."10

We are not only deceivers, but we are immoral, like a doctor who denies his Hippocratic

oath because he doesn't want to tell someone bad news because he thinks that person will

be cross against him, will be angry with him, will be sad. And so he does not tell them the

news most necessary to save their life.

I hear preachers today, they say, "No. No, no, no, no, no. You don't understand, brother

Paul. We are not like the people of the day of John and Charles Wesley. We are not like

the culture that Whitefield addressed or Edwards. We are not as hearty as they are. We

are broken. We don't have as much self esteem. We are feeble. We can't bear such

preaching."

Listen to me. Have you ever studied the lives of these men? What they preached their

culture couldn't bear it either. No one has ever been able to bear the preaching of the

gospel. They will either turn against it with a fierceness of an animal or they will be

converted.

And to give you a thing about us being more feeble and not having the self esteem, our

country and this world is overrun with this disgusting malady of self esteem. Our

greatest problem is that we esteem self more than we esteem God.

We are also thieves when we do not speak much about sin. We are thieves.

Let me ask you a question. This afternoon, this morning, where did all the stars go? Did

some cosmic giant come by in a basket and pick them all up and throw them in and carry

them someplace else? Where did all the stars go this morning? They were there, but you

couldn't see them. But then the sky grew darker and darker and darker and as that night

turned black as pitch the stars came out in the fulness of their glory.

When you refuse to teach on the radical depravity of men it is an impossibility that you

bring glory to God, his Christ and his cross because the cross of Jesus Christ and the

glory thereof is most magnified when it is placed in front of the backdrop of our

depravity.

She loved much because she has been forgiven much and she knew how much she had

been forgiven because she knew how wicked she was.11

Oh, we are afraid to tell men of their wickedness and they can never love God because of

it. We have robbed them the opportunity to boast not in self, but to follow the

admonition, "Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord."12

Our fourth indictment: An ignorance of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

I want to submit to you tonight that this country is not gospel hardened. It is gospel

ignorant because most of its preachers are. And let me repeat this. The malady in this

country is not liberal politicians, the root of socialism, Hollywood or anything else. It is

the so called evangelical pastor of our day and preacher of our day and evangelist of our

day. That is where the malady is to be found. We do not know the gospel. We have taken

the glorious gospel of our blessed God and reduced it down to four spiritual laws and five

things God wants you to know with a little superstitious prayer at the end and if someone

repeats it after us with enough sincerity we popishly declare them to be born again.

We have traded regeneration for decisionism.

First of all I am amazed after I talk about what I am going to talk about for just a few

minutes here how many godly believers of 30 and 40 years walking in the faith come up

to me with tears saying, "Brother Paul, I never heard this before in my life." And yet it is

the historical doctrine of redemption, of propitiation.

You see, when you talk about the gospel, my dear friend, let's set it up just clearly. The

gospel begins with nature of God and it goes from there to the nature of man and the

fallenness thereof. And it goes from there, those two great columns of the gospel come to

set up for us what should be called and known as, in every believer's mouth, the great

dilemma. And what is that dilemma? If God is just he cannot forgive you.

The greatest problem in all of Scripture is this. How can God be just and at the same

time the justifier of wicked men, when Scripture throughout the Bible says--especially I

will draw from one text in Proverbs--"He who justifies the wicked is an abomination to

God."13 And yet all our Christian songs boast about how God justifies the wicked.

That is the greatest problem. That is the acropolis of the Christian's faith so said Martyn

Lloyd-Jones and Charles Spurgeon and anyone else who has read Romans three. You

see, you have got to fit this before people. The great problem is that God is truly just and

all men are truly wicked, God to be just must condemn wicked man. But then God, for

his own glory, put a great love with which he loved us, sent forth his Son who walked on

this earth as a perfect man. And then according to the plan, the eternal plan of God, he

went to that three. And on that tree he bore our sin and he became, standing in the law

place of his people, bearing our guilt, he became a curse.

"Cursed is every man who does not abide by al the things written in the book of the law

so as to perform them."14

Christ redeemed us from the curse becoming a curse in our place.

So many people have this romantic, powerless view of the gospel that the Christ is there

hanging on the tree suffering under the wounds of the Roman Empire and the Father did

not have the moral fortitude to bear the suffering of his Son so he turned away.

NO!!

He turned away because his Son became sin.

And so many when he is in that garden and he cries out, "Let this cup pass from Me,"15

people speculate, "Well, what was in the cup? Oh, it is the Roman cross. It is the whip. It

is the nails. It is all this and all that."

I do not want to take away from the physical sufferings of Christ on that tree, but the cup

was the cup of God the Father's wrath that had to be poured out on the Son. Someone had

to die, bearing the guilt of God's people, forsaken of God by his justice and crushed

under the wrath of God, for it pleased the Lord to crush him.16

I was in German a while back or in a Germanic seminary in Europe a while back and this

book The Cross of Christ, now it wasn't John Stott's book, it was another. I pulled it off

and began to read it and this is what it said. "The Father looked down from heaven at the

suffering inflicted upon his Son by the hands of men and counted that as payment for our

sin."

That is heresy.

Now that physical suffering, that nailing to the tree, that was all part of the wrath of God.

It had to be a blood sacrifice. I will take nothing away from that. But, my friend, if you

stop there, you don't have a gospel.

And let me ask you. When the gospel is preached today and when it is shared in personal

evangelism today do you ever hear the things I have just said? Almost never. It is never

made clear that Christ was able to redeem because he was crushed under the justice of

God and having satisfied divine justice with his death God is now just and the justifier of

the wicked.

Gospel reductionism. We wonder why it has no power. We wonder why... What

happened? I'll tell you. When you leave the gospel behind and there is no longer any

power in your supposed gospel message, then you have got to go to all the little tricks of

the trade that are so prominently used today to convert men and we all know most of

them, all of them do not work.

My dear friend, let me say this. Several years ago graduating from seminary I had to

make a decision whether I was going to go for my Ph.D. God, in order to save my

spiritual life sent me to the middle of the jungles in Peru as far away from the academic

world as I could get. And there I began to realize something.

As Spurgeon said, "Greater men with greater minds than I have approached this doctrine

of the Second Coming, but to no avail. It is a great and mighty doctrine." He said, "I will

set myself to this: seeking to comprehend something of Jesus Christ and him crucified."

Let me tell you this. This is what... It makes me so angry when men treat the glorious

gospel of Christ as though it was the first step into Christianity that only takes about 10

minutes to counseling and after that you go on to greater stuff. That shows you how

pathetic we are in our knowledge of the things of God.

My friend, on the day of the Second Coming you will understand absolutely everything

about the Second Coming, but you will be in eternity of eternities of heaven and you will

not even begin to comprehend the glory of God in Calvary. It is what everything is about.

Young man, young preacher, listen to me. Go at the [?] on that tree, what it means. You

will need nothing to build strange fires in your oven, if you only catch a glimpse of what

he did on that tree, what he did on that tree.

I love to say this. I have said it a million times. Abraham takes Isaac up that mountain,

his son, his only son whom he loved. Do you suppose the Holy Spirit was trying to tell

us about something future? And that son put up no struggle, but laid down and when that

Father gave his will in to the will of God he brought that flint knife to pierce his own

son's heart. But his hand was stayed and it was told the old man that God had provided a

ram.

So many Christians think, "Oh, what a beautiful end to that story." It is not the end. It is

the intermission. Thousands of years later God the Father laid his hand upon the brow of

his Son, his only Son whom he loved and took the flint knife out of the hand of Abraham

and slaughtered his only begotten Son under the full force of wrath.

Now do you know why that little gospel you preach has no power? Because it is no

gospel. Get to the gospel. Spend your life on your knees. Get away from men. Study the

cross.

The fourth indictment: An ignorance of the doctrine of regeneration, an ignorance of the

doctrine of regeneration.

My dear friends, and I am going to say this bluntly, I know that there are Calvinists here

and I know that there are Arminians here and I know that there are all sorts of strange

animals in between, but I want you to know this. Although I am leaning more toward--I

guess I call myself a five point Spurgeonist--I want you to know this. Calvinism is not

the issue. No, I am going to get in a lot of trouble when this goes on the internet.

Calvinism is not the issue. I'll tell you what the issue is. Regeneration. And that is why I

can have fellowship with Wesley and Ravenhill and Tozer and all the rest because

regardless of where they stood on the other issues they believed that salvation could not

be manipulated by the preacher, that it was a magnificent work of the power of almighty

God. And with them, therefore, I stand, that I was a work of God.

There is a greater manifestation of the power of God in the regenerating work of the Holy

Spirit than in the creation of the world, of the universe, because he created the world ex

nihilo out of nothing. But he recreates a man out of a corrupt man.

It is paralleled with the very resurrection of our Savior from the dead. If you are a

preacher I understand that in preaching there is teachers and preachers and expositors and

this and that and all of them are very necessary for the health of the Church. But you

must understand this. As old G. Campbell Morgan, I have heard of him that when he

would go up that majestic tower to preach he would quote to himself, "As a lamb led to

the slaughter, as a sheep before his shearers."17 He knew that apart from a magnificent

manifestation of the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit, everything he said would be

dead. It is the Spirit that gives life and in that sense every one of us that proclaims must

proclaim as a prophet.

What do I mean by that? We are always, we are always Ezekiel standing in that valley of

dry bones and they are very dry. And we walk out there and what do we do? We

prophesy. We say, "Hear the Word of the Lord." And we know that the wind of God

must blow on these slain or they will not rise again. And when you have fully grasped

that in the innermost part of your being, you will no longer give yourself to the

manipulation that is so often carried out in the name of evangelism in this country. You

will proclaim the Word of God. You will proclaim it.

The doctrine of regeneration. Look at the Wesleys. Look what they had to face for a

moment and my dear Whitefield. What was he? Everybody believed they were

Christian, thoroughly Christian. Why? Well, they were baptized as infants, brought into

the covenant. They were confirmed. They lived like devils. Regeneration was traded for

a type of credalism that was given authority by the religious leaders of the day.

And then here comes the Wesleys. No. It is not right with your soul. You are not born

again. There is no evidence of spiritual life. Examine yourself. Test yourself to see if you

are in the faith. Make your calling and election sure.18 "Ye must be born again."19

Here in America because of the last several years, several decades of evangelism the idea

of born again is totally lost. It only means that at one time in a crusade you made a

decision and you think you were sincere. But there is no evidence of a supernatural

recreated work of the Holy Spirit in your life. If any man, not if some men, if any man be

in Christ he is a new creature. 20

cont....