Four Truths for Life

Thank you so much. Can you hear me? Okay I want to say, thank you for welcoming us both to this very exciting meeting. I’m very accustomed to being in school auditoriums. For five years I was principal of a college for training African teachers in Kenya in East Africa. I feel very much at home in this kind of atmosphere.

Let me tell you the lady on my right is my wife, and when you invite me (applause) I tell you you get two for the price of one. So here we are. We always begin our ministry by making a proclamation from the Scriptures, because we have learned by experience through many years, that one of the most effective ways you can release the power of God into a situation is by proclaiming His word. So we always begin that way and we are going to involve you. So be ready. We’re going to proclaim Matthew 24:14.

“This gospel of the kingdom shall be proclaimed in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end shall come.”

You understand the end of the age cannot come until we’ve obeyed the Lord’s command to bring His gospel to every nation, people, tribe and tongue. We’ve hung around for nearly two thousand years, and the job is still far from complete. And Jesus will not come back until we’ve fulfilled His command. So now we want you to say it this time after us, phrase by phrase.

“This gospel of the kingdom shall be proclaimed in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end shall come.”

Now let’s see if we can say it altogether, if you can remember it.

“This gospel of the kingdom shall be proclaimed in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end shall come.”

Amen.

Now when I was invited to speak here I was given my topic which was “Bridging the Generation Gap.” You know what my response was? What gap? You see it from one perspective, I see it from another. I look back over more than eighty years, and for me there’s hardly any gap between the generations. I picture it something like a vast auditorium with multitudes of people. They are gathered in different sectors of the auditorium. There’s the children, the young people, the mature men, the older men and then people in my age bracket. The auditorium is dark, but there’s a searchlight that moves across the people, and it just moves from one group to another, just a second or two in between. And that’s the way time passes. It passes very quickly. And I don’t believe that we should spend too much time emphasizing the gap between the generations. I’m more disposed to emphasize the things that are in common to all of us.

And so I want to speak to you about those things. In the book of Ecclesiastes, if you know where to find that and it you don’t know all right, I’ll quote it. In the 11th chapter and the 10th verse, right at the end of the verse it says:

“...For childhood and youth are vanity.”

Does anyone have the NIV here? What’s the word they use for vanity there? Meaningless. That’s all right. It doesn’t completely represent it. Vanity has completely changed it’s meaning. For meaning like you it means being proud of your appearance. But in the time that the Bible was translated, it meant something that is empty, meaningless, insignificant. Well as far as I’m concerned, that is true. The distinctions between childhood and youth and maturity and old age are really very empty. They don’t contain the real important truths of life. The really important things, especially in the Christian life, are equally real for children, young people, older people, and even people like me.

I just want to speak about four of those things which are part of the Christian life and which are just as real for people in the age group of some of you, as it is for my age group. The first thing I want to speak about is loyalty. Now that’s not a very religious word. It’s not often used. But it’s a very biblical concept. What we call faith, in some ways is better understood as loyalty. In both the Hebrew of the Old Testament and the Greek of the New, the word for faith also means faithfulness. There’s no distinction. So you cannot be a person of faith without being a faithful person. This is a false distinction. We have a picture of faith as believing a set of sentences. Now it’s important what we believe, but that is not the full story of faith. Faith is believing in a person. Being loyal to a person. In the midst of every kind of pressure and temptation, faith is loyalty. It’s loyalty to the Lord Jesus Christ.

If you only have a “what” that you believe, in times of pressure that won’t see you through. The Apostle Paul was in prison awaiting trial and probable execution, and he said, “I know Whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I’ve committed unto Him against that day.” He didn’t say I know what I’ve believed. He said I know Whom I’ve believed. There’s a big difference. Any faith that’s stops short of personal believing in Jesus is not biblical faith.

I find that young people, children, are just as capable of loyalty as older people. In fact, sometimes more. I find children, many of them not all of them, are very, very loyal to their brothers and sisters, to their parents, to their home. Some people are loyal to their school. They’re loyal to some football team, or other group that they’re committed to. So loyalty is a better way for you to understand at this time what faith is. And it’s not a matter of age. Little children can be just as loyal as older people, and in fact sometimes I think more loyal. Their lives are less complicated. They just know who is their mother, their father, their friend, whatever it may be.

And then another thing that is vital in the Christian life is friendship. All people, I believe, have a desire for friendship—for a personal relationship with somebody. One of the tragedies of our contemporary society is that so much of that has been broken down. Maybe it is true in the lives of some of you. You really don’t have those close personal relationships. You don’t have somebody that you trust completely. Somebody to whom you’re committed. Because of the breakdown of the family structure, many, many young people—and I’ve met many of them—are going through life like isolated islands. They’re not connected to anything. They don’t know what it is to have a friend, a real friend. That’s part of Christianity, is friendship.

Then very closely related to that is commitment. You cannot be a real Christian without a personal commitment to Jesus Christ. And commitment is not easy for anybody. But I think actually, it’s easier for young people than older people. Because the older you grow, the more you’re entangled with the things of this life. You’ve got a job, you’ve got a home to live in, you’re paying on a car, you’ve got a lot that holds on to you. To make a real commitment is a struggle. But people in the age bracket of some of you, you don’t have too much to hold onto. You can make a commitment. You can say, “Here I am Lord Jesus. I’ll serve You. I’ll do what You call me to do. I’m committed to You, Lord Jesus.”

I’ve counseled so many people who struggle with problems. Things don’t seem to be working out. They say they believe, but they don’t get the results of faith. One reason very often is they’ve not made a real personal commitment to Jesus. He’s not a convenience. He’s someone who demands our absolute loyalty. He demands that we put ourselves totally and unreservedly at His disposal. And when we do that, we get the benefits of it.

And then a fourth thing that is common to all human beings, I believe, is the desire to succeed. I’ve never met a person who wanted to fail. I’ve men hundreds of people who have failed, but not because they wanted to. Everybody, I think in a sense, has a yearning for success.

I want to give you, free of charge tonight, the key to success. And I can give it to you confidently because it has worked in my life. It’s just one verse in the first epistle of John, 1 John 2:17. It’s a very simple verse. Most of the really important truths in the Bible are simple. I was a professional philosopher for a long while. That was a way I got a job and made my living. You’re not a professional philosopher unless you can make your living by it. The business of philosophers as I see it, is to make things complicated. And the more complicated you make things, the more people think you’re clever.

Well, when I met the Lord Jesus sovereignly in the middle of the night in an army barrack room, all of that changed. I was used to reading philosophers who wrote sentences that went over two pages without a period. The philosopher Kant is an example. What impressed me about the Bible was it was so simple, so down to earth. And I realized there’s a different kind of wisdom that doesn’t make things complicated. I think sometimes we make things complicated because we don’t want to face the truth. The truth is too clear, too powerful, too cogent.

Anyhow here is my simple recipe for success, and I make no charge. You can have it the way I got it, for free. “Freely I receive, freely I give.” But I want to tell you, it’s worked in my life. 1 John 2:17:

“And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever.”

You need to understand what’s meant by the world. The world is all of society that is not submitted to the righteousness government of God’s King Jesus. The world can be very religious, very intellectual, even in a way very moral. But they are not submitted to the Kingship of Jesus. They seem good, but you begin to speak to those people, those moral religious people about a personal unreserved commitment to Jesus and something rises up in them, the old rebel. And you discover that beneath all the morality there’s rebellion. So we have to learn what it is to live in a different way. That’s the way the world lives. It’s not all evil. It can be moral. It can be really quite good in its own way. But it is not submitted to the Lordship of Jesus. And God has made Jesus King. Anybody that’s not submitted to God’s King is a rebel. He may be a very religious rebel, a very intellectual rebel, a very wealthy rebel. But he’s still a rebel. And that whole system that rejects the government of Jesus, is passing away. It’s on the way out. The world is passing away and every desire that’s associated with the world.

We’ve been staying in downtown Cleveland and I’ve been looking at all those big towers—what do they call it—the Terminal Tower, and the other towers. And you know it always comes to my mind when I see such buildings, it’s a phrase in the Prophet Isaiah which speaks about, “...the day that the towers fall.” And I believe there’s a day coming when the surface of the earth’s crust is going to ripple and every tall building in every part of the earth will fall. It’s a symbol of God’s rejection of man’s arrogance and pride and self-dependence. It doesn’t impress me any longer. I’m content to use the facilities, but I don’t trust in it. There’s a day coming when all of that is going to pass away. The only thing that will remain is he who does the will of God. Because of the will of God is unshakable, unchanging, eternal, undefeatable, and when you unite your will with the will of God, you become like the will of God—unshakable, unchanging, undefeatable. That’s the key to success. It’s to find God’s will for your life and commit yourself to it.

I made that commitment in 1941 when I was a soldier in the British Army in World War II. I didn’t make it in a religious setting. I didn’t go to a church. I was confronted by the Person of Jesus. I didn’t see Him but I knew He was there. And I felt that I was wrestling with some invisible Person. I don’t suppose most of you remember the story of Jacob, how he wrestled with a man all night. And he couldn’t overcome this man, but in the end he broke and he clung to him. And he said, “Unless you bless me, I will not let you go.” And I found myself in direct relationship, not visible, but direct with Jesus in the middle of the night in an army barrack room. And as I clung to Him I began to say, “Unless you bless me, I will not let you go.” I became so determined that I kept saying, “I will not let you go, I will not let you go.” And the power of God came upon me, struck me down to the floor, and I spent an hour or more in the middle of the night in an army barrack room under the power of God. There was nothing intellectual in my conversion.

But the next day, I discovered to my surprise, I was a totally different person. I was, I’m sorry to say this, but you know the British Army is the most foul-mouthed group of people in the world. There’s no one else quite like it. And I was one of them. Next day, I didn’t have any doctrinal explanation. The night before I couldn’t pray. I didn’t know what to pray, I didn’t know how to pray. The next day I couldn’t drink a mug of water without thanking God for it. I mean it was extraordinary to my mind, but it was there. I was a fairly—I wasn’t an alcoholic but I was a drinker. And in you know in the British world the pub is the center of everything. So about six o’clock every evening when I was released from duty, I would go down into the local pub. So this day following the day I met Jesus, I didn’t have any prejudices about drinking, and I still don’t in a way. So I walked down to the local pub and when I got to the door, my feet locked. They would not walk inside that door. And I stood there having an argument with my feet for quite a while. Then I realized something. I had no interest in going in through that door. The things that would have drawn me there the previous day didn’t mean anything to me. I was a totally changed person. Not through original doctrinal assent, but through a personal encounter with Jesus.

I tell people everywhere I go, you can join a church, you can say a prayer, you can go forward in a convention and sign a card, and be the same. But when you meet Jesus, you will never be the same. That’s very sure.

Now I want to speak about one particular aspect of success that I learned. Now I had a very highly intellectual education. From the age of nine to the age of twenty-five I was in different boarding institutions. Eton College, Cambridge University and so on. My intellect was over-crammed. My knowledge of people was pretty thin. So the Lord didn’t sent me to a Bible college. I mean, I’m all in favor of Bible colleges. I didn’t need one and He knew what I needed. He put me in the Army.

When I was actually converted, I was a local acting unpaid Lance Corporal, if you can believe there’s such a thing. I was that because I did not want to be a combatant. So I entered the Army on the condition that I didn’t have to carry weapons, which was not on Christian grounds, but on philosophic grounds which I don’t have to go into. And I’ve defined that particular. In the Army order it’s L-A-/U/CPL—local acting unpaid lance corporal. My definition of that is it’s as near as you can get to being a worm without being one. And that’s where the Lord met me. I had turned my back on the gleaming spires of Cambridge and King’s College which is so famous for its chapel and its beautiful backs (?). And I met the Lord as a local acting unpaid lance corporal in an army barrack room in the middle of the night.

Well, then I needed training. I didn’t need intellectual training. Many people do, but I didn’t. My mind was over trained. What I needed was to learn to relate to people, and God provided that in the British Army. I didn’t ask for it. I wouldn’t have applied for it, but for five and a half years I lived next to people who very different in their background, their economic status, and their lifestyle from me. In fact when I went into the army I didn’t know how ninety percent of the people in Britain lived. I never had anything to do with them. But I did when I went into the army. I had to live with them everyday.

And in that way God began to train me for the ministry. I didn’t know. He didn’t tell me in advance. I was in the deserts of Egypt and Libya for two years. I was somewhere in the background of the Battle of El Alamein. But I was medical personnel. And then I developed a disease in my feet which was because I was in the medical corps, I had all the doctors that I needed. Each doctor gave it a different name. But they couldn’t cure it. So I went in hospital, and I was in military hospitals for one year on end. That was a very important part of my training.

Well, I had known the Lord by that time. I’d been baptized in the Holy Spirit. I believed in the Bible and as I lay therein the hospital bed day after day, I fell into a deep depression. I said to myself, “I know God could heal me if I had faith. But,” then I said, “I don’t have faith.” And there I was at the bottom of the valley. But one day I read a verse. Romans 10:17:

“So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”

That was like a ray of light in the darkness. If I didn’t have faith I could get it. Faith comes by hearing what God says in His word. So I decided to go all through the Bible and mark with a colored pencil, everything that had to do with healing. It was a blue pencil. And you know what I had at the end? A blue Bible. You’d be amazed. Until you do it, you wouldn’t realize. But I still had this problem. Here I am a philospher. The soul is what matters. The body isn’t really important. So God wants my soul but He’s not interested in my body.

Well then I got to Proverbs 4:20–22 and it says:

“My son, attend to my words; Incline thine ear unto mine sayings, Do not let them depart from thine eyes; Keep them in the midst of thine heart; For they are life to those who find them, And health [or medicine] to all their flesh.”

When I read the word “flesh” I said, “That settles it.” Not even a philosopher can made “flesh” mean “soul or spirit.” And God said His word would be medicine to all my flesh. So I made a decision. I was going to take God’s word as my medicine. Now I was a medical orderly, so I knew how people take their medicine; three times daily after meals. So I said to myself, “I’m going to take God’s word as my medicine three times daily, after meals.” And I did from then on.

After a while I was discharged from the hospital on my own responsibility. The doctors wouldn’t accept responsibility for me, but everywhere I went, three times daily, after each main meal, I would go away somewhere, open my Bible, bow my head and say, “God, You’ve said these words will be medicine to me and I’m taking them as my medicine now.”

Well, Egypt was a bad climate, but I was sent to a worse climate, to the Sudan which is south of Egypt, hotter and drier and basically a pretty miserable place. And there God healed me. God proved to me that His promises do not depend on circumstances. They depend on meeting His conditions. Now I have a little book. I don’t know whether it’s available but it’s called God’s Medicine Bottle. And it’s the story of how I was healed through taking the Bible as medicine.

Well, then I was posted from Khartoum, which is the capital, to a place called Atbara which is on a railway line north of Khartoum. And being a British soldier I traveled in a compartment to which no local people were admitted. I mean, I wasn’t responsible. I consider that a rather unfair treatment, but that’s the way it was. We got to this station somewhere north of Khartoum, and I looked out on the platform and it was just a sea of living beings. Men, women, old men, children, babies, donkeys, mules, camels, chickens, everything. And quite without planning it I said to myself, “I wonder what God thinks of all of these people.” And I got an immediate answer. I wasn’t expecting it. This is the answer He gave me. “Some weak, some foolish, some proud, some wicked, and some exceedingly precious.” That’s how God views humanity. Some are weak, some are foolish, some are proud, some are wicked, but in the midst of them all there are those who are exceedingly precious.

Well then I ended up in charge of what the British Army calls a Reception Station, which is just a little kind of holding thing for people that are going to hospital. I was in sole charge of it. It had two beds with mattresses and they also provided flannel night dresses for the patients. Well, there were no patients and this was the first time I’d had the opportunity to sleep on a real bed for years. So I indulged myself. Also it was the first time I didn’t have to sleep just in my underwear. Because the British Army, unlike the American Army, never provided us with pajamas. So I put on one of these white night dresses, and lay down on a real mattress. But the Spirit of God came upon me sometime in the early hours of the morning and I had this tremendous burden of prayer for the people of the Sudan, the northern Sudan who are totally Muslim. It had nothing to do with my human emotions, because they are not very lovable people. In fact, they are rather fierce people. The name of the particular tribe I ended up with was Hudunduwa (?) and the British had had a war with them some previous generation. The British soldiers called them Fuzzy-wuzzies, because the men did their hair up with mutton fat about nine inches above their heads. They carried spears and they would just soon throw a spear at you as say, “How do you do.”

Well, I found myself in a totally sovereign attitude of intercession. My heart poured out for these people and I had a supernatural experience. As I looked down at my white night dress, it was glowing with a supernatural light. I realized I had touched the heart of God.

Well, then the army sent me on to a little place over the Red Sea hills called Djibate, a miserable hole in the desert. There was a small hospital there where they were caring only for Italian prisoners of war, of whom there were thousands as a result of the war in Egypt. Though I was supposed to be caring for the sick, because I had a certain amount of education and could count and add and write, they always put me in a different job. Also, when they realized I was a Christian they would put me in charge of things that other people couldn’t handle like the beer and the chocolate because they could trust me. So I very seldom had any nursing assignments. So in this hospital I was put in charge of the rations, the food supplies, and the local Sudani laborers who were responsible for doing the menial work in the hospital.

The Sudani in charge of them was called Ali. He was a bad character. He was a brawler. He kept back some of the money that he received as wages from the people under him. He was altogether a rather notorious character. So he and I met every day in my little office to plan the work for the hospital. I just didn’t have anything in common with him, until I discovered and I could find this strange, that he believed in Satan. I said, “Well, I believe in Satan too.” So that was our point of meeting. We both believed in Satan.

Then one day he came to my office and he was limping and he was late and he said, “I had to go to the dispensary to get something. I’ve got a sore on my foot.” Well I had been reading the New Testament and I knew that you could lay hands on people and they would be healed. But I had never seen anybody do it. So I explained to him this is what the Bible said in very simple language. I said, “Would you like me to lay hands on you and pray for you?” He said, “Yes!”

Well I can still remember. I treated him like a bomb that might explode at any moment. And I very gingerly put my hands on him and said a nice formal prayer and thought, “That’s it.” About a week later he came into the office, showed me his foot. It was completely healed. Then he was very interested in my God. So I began to read to him from the New Testament. But I only had the King James Version. People had no other versions those days, and he had a very limited knowledge of English which he’d picked up from soldiers, which was definitely not King James.

So I would read the King James and interpret it into the English he could understand. He became more and more interested. Well we really became friends, I would have to say. And he was very interested in teaching me to ride a camel. I had reservations, but in the end I agreed. Now I don’t if you have ever been to the pyramids in Egypt, but they’ve got camels for tourists that are just—I mean they don’t misbehave in any way at all. But Sudanese camels are not like that. And riding a Sudanese camel is quite a test of your patience. The thing I discovered about a camel is it’s never completely stable. When one part is going up another part is going down. But I passed the test. I succeeded in riding the camel that he provided.

Well, then we decided we’d have a little picnic. Go out into the desert, take some food with us from my store and just have a picnic. So we went out quite a distance and stopped at a little place where there was a little brackish stream flowing down the hill, brought out the rations, but I’d brought no water with me. So he said to me, “Well, we (Sudanis) drink this water but you (white people) don’t.” Well I said, “The Bible says if I drink any deadly thing in the Name of Jesus it will not hurt me. So I’ll drink it in the Name of Jesus.” This impressed him. I mean I saw he really saw there’s something in this religion.

So we were at that point in John chapter three in my reading about being born again. And so we read about being born again, and then we got on our camels to ride back to the hospital. And all the way back to the hospital he was talking about being born again. “What is being born again? How can you be born again?”

And I said, “Well, God gives you a new heart.” Well he just laughed. Because all he could think of was a physical heart. But then I said to him, “Would you like to be born again?” He said, “Yes, I would.” I said, “Listen, this evening when you get to your hut and I get to my little billet, when the sun goes down you pray and ask Jesus to be born again, and I’ll be praying for you in my billet.” Well, we met again next morning and I looked at him and I said, “Did you pray?” He said, “Yes.” I said, “Did you get it.” He said, “No.” And I felt discouraged.

But then I felt the Holy Spirit whisper to me, “Remember, he’s a Muslim.” So I said, “Did you pray in the name of Jesus?” He said, “No.” So I said, “If you want to be born again, you have to pray in the name of Jesus. Will you do that?” He said, “Yes, I will.”

So that evening we made the same arrangement—you pray in your hut and I’ll pray in my billet. Next morning I met him, I looked at him and I said, “You’ve got it!” His whole face was transformed. He was a new man and because he was well-known to everybody in the hospital, it impacted the whole hospital. People came up to me and said, “What happened to your friend, Ali?” I said, “He got saved.” They said, “What’s that?” I said, “Let me tell you.”

The commanding office of the hospital sent for me. “What’s happened to your friend, Ali?” I said, “He got saved.” “What’s that?” “Sir, let me tell you.” He was a Presbyterian, a church-going man, but he didn’t know anything about salvation.

Well, then I realized, “Whosoever believes and is baptized shall be saved.” So I said, “You have to be baptized.” Well the hospital had a small swimming pool, and by arrangement, one evening I met with him at the swimming pool and he was baptized. And those were some of the happiest days of my life. Every other soldier was complaining. “Why are we in this miserable hole with nothing to do? Just sand and flies and heat.” And I was as happy as could be because I was serving the Lord.

So I want to tell you. The Lord, if you make a commitment to Him, will train you. He trained me in the army. I didn’t need a Bible school. I had all the intellectual knowledge I would ever need. What I needed was experience. And that’s how I was trained as a corporal in the Royal Army Medical Corps.

When I came out of the Army Medical Corps in 1946 I married a missionary who had a small children’s home. She had eight girls in her home, little girls. The day I married I got a ready-made family, eight girls—six Jewish, one Palestinian Arab, one English. Now I never had any brothers or sisters. I was an only child. I never had a female teacher above the age of nine. I didn’t have anybody but male teachers. And here I was thrust into this situation. There were eleven people in our household. Eight girls, my wife, our Arab maid, named Jamela, and me. And I was the only male among them. And I’ll tell you that required adjustment by everybody.

So I just want to tell you, that if you will commit your life to the Lord, if you will say, “Here I am Lord. I realize people desperately need this gospel, and You’re not going to come back until the gospel has been preached to every nation.” If you’ll make that commitment, God will take you at your word. He won’t deal with you necessarily like he dealt with me, because He deals with each of us as individuals. And if you’ve never made a personal commitment to Jesus, why not do it tonight? It will change you just like it changed Ali.

So I want to give you this opportunity. I said that commitment is something that is just as real for young people as it is for older. In fact, in some ways it’s more real. Because the older you get, the harder it is to change. So you’re in the state of life, some of you, when it’s just right for you to make a commitment. I want to challenge you here, this evening. If God is speaking to your heart, if you’ve felt something, that you will make a commitment. If you’ve never committed your life to Jesus, say, “Here I am Lord. Save me. Fill me with your Holy Spirit and I’ll serve you.” If you’ve made that commitment but you don’t know what life holds for you in the future say, “Here I am Lord Jesus. I belong to You. I commit myself to follow You and do whatever You commission me to do.”

So without any special emotion, I just want to give you an opportunity to make that kind of commitment. If you will do that right now, I want you to rise from your seat where you are and come forward and stand here at this platform, without any music. Just a personal commitment. Don’t wait for somebody else. Rise up and come.

Now if Brother Navitzik (sp) will come. Where are you? I want you to help me and any local leaders there are. It seems this side of the congregation is more responsive than that. Come on. We want some of you here too. We’re not in a hurry. And this is not primarily an emotional thing. It’s a spiritual decision of your will and you’ll never be in a better position to do it than you are right now tonight. And I want to tell you God loves you. He has a plan for your life and it’s the best plan that there could ever be. It’s better than anything you could ever plan for yourself. That’s right. Okay.

We’re going to wait a little longer. I have a feeling there are some more. Bless you. Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Lord Jesus. Thank you, Lord Jesus. Thank you, Lord. Those of you that know the Lord just be praying. This is a vital hour in the lives of people. I have a feeling there are two more people that should come. We’re going to wait a little while. There they are. Come on. That’s right. That’s right. It would be good if you were to kneel down. It’s a good attitude. Submission, commitment.

Now I’m going to give you a prayer that you can pray. Because a lot of people tell me, “I want to pray but I don’t know what to say.” You’re going to address this pray to Jesus and it will be a simple prayer. When you’ve made it, just go on. You’ll be in touch with Jesus, just go on talking to Him. Pour out your heart to Him. Tell Him about your difficulties, your problems, the things you’re afraid of. Ask Him to come to your help. So this is the prayer. I want you to say it after me audibly. You don’t have to scream or shout, but say it loud enough to hear yourself. So that when you leave here tonight, you’ll know you said these words. So this is what I want you to say.

Lord Jesus Christ, I believe that you are the Son of God, and the only way to God. That you died on the cross for my sins, and rose again from the dead. And I come to you now as my Savior. I ask you to forgive me, cleanse me in Your precious blood, wash my heart clean, and give me a totally new life from this night forward. In Jesus’ Name I thank you. Amen.

Now go on praying to Him in your own words. Thank you, Lord Jesus. Thank you, thank you. Those of you that are believers, why don’t you just stand up and begin to thank God for these people. Let’s fill this auditorium with praise. Thank you, Lord.