When we make one announcement for the benefit of those who might be visiting here just for the day, the first general Bible conference of the season begins, God willing, this coming Saturday evening and continues for two weeks. And Brother Wiley, whom you have just heard, will speak, God willing, next Saturday evening at seven thirty. I don't know whether he thought this will be nothing, but I'm sure we're all at grief. He has said much about nothing. Also during that conference on the weekdays, the Mondays and Saturday of those two weekdays, there will be children speaking here at nine o'clock, best by our brother Mr. Alfred Gibbs. And if any of you in the area would like to have children brought or could bring children, please see me. Thank you. All right. All right. I'm asking you to take your Bibles tonight and turn back to Psalm one hundred and forty-four. We'll read the opening few verses and then a word of prayer together. Psalm one Blessed be the Lord my strength, which teaches my hands to war and my fingers to fight, my goodness and my fortress, my high tower and my deliverer, my shield, and he in whom I trust, who subdues my people under me, Lord, what is man that thou takest knowledge of him, or the son of man that thou makest account of him? Man is like to vanity his days are as a shadow that passeth away. Bow thy heavens, O Lord, and come down, touch the mountains, and they shall smoke. Cast forth lightning and scatter them. Shoot out thine arrows and destroy them. Send thy hand from above. Rid me and deliver me out of great waters from the hand of strange children whose mouth speaketh vanity. And their right hand is a right hand of falsehood. I will sing a new song unto thee, O God. Upon a sultry an instrument of ten strings will I sing praises unto thee. It is he that giveth salvation unto kings, and delivereth David his servant from the hurtful sword. God will bless the reading of Scripture to our hearts for his name's sake. Now shall we spend our quiet moment in prayer? each one of you lifting up your hearts to God. Our Father, we hush our hearts before thee, hearing thy voice saying, Be still and know that I am God. Draw near to us in blessing. Everything is open and naked before the eyes of him with whom we have to do. Minister to our needs. If we are hungry and thirsty for thy truth, feed us with food convenient, let the willows of water flow in our hearts. If we are cold and dead and backslidden, and we breathe thee, draw near in love, and put out thine arms again and draw us to thyself, And if we don't yet know thee as our Saviour and friend, O God, let not Jesus pass by without calling to himself some sinner. May that sinner receive tonight the Saviour who draws near and speaks. Take this hour and make it full of thy blessing. May the Spirit of God be our teacher and our guide, for the Lord Jesus Christ's sake. Amen. Now tonight we are going to continue our serial story in this psalm, and the good friends who've gathered with us must try and pick up the threads. You know, we have discovered that this little boy who was born on a farm in Bethlehem was greatly favored. He had a father who feared God and knew God, and there's every evidence that he had a mother who counseled him in early days in the things of God. He was the youngest boy, the baby of the family, little David, and he saw his older brothers going out to school, to college, called into the forces, going out to be soldiers. He was left atoll. A very handsome boy, awfully gifted with music and other things. He used to love to help his dad on the farm and go up on the back hills and mind the sheep as they grazed over the pastures. And it's every evidence that from an early day in his life he could look up and whisper, The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. And as he looked at the sheep and he learnt lessons with the sheep, again and again he would look up into the face of the great shepherd. Perhaps he didn't know him as the good shepherd or the cheap shepherd, but he was the great shepherd. And as an under shepherd, minding sheep, he felt he was one of the sheep of the pasture of the Lord. And he learned to know the Lord. And he began to coin new names for the Lord. And as he grew up the battles increased and the problems and the difficulties and the sorrows, for life is full of those things. Don't expect life to be full of a bed of roses. It can't be in a sinful world where selfishness reigns. And God allows these things to come to us all. They come from different angles. And somehow as David faced it all, he brought God into every experience of his life, and he learned to know God in new ways, and he coined new names for God, just as every Christian should today. This is life. He told that they may know thee, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. And there comes a day in your life and mine and oh how I pray God tonight. It will come to every soul in this audience when you can look into the face of Jesus and say, My Savior, and you've coined a new name for Jesus, born of a personal experience as a sinner with that Savior who loved you and died for you upon the cross. But that's only the beginning. As you begin to enjoy the great salvation, you will begin to coin names for Jesus, my friend, my guide, my counselor, my helper, my strength. And just like David, the names will begin to, as it were, pour over your lips because from experience you've learned to know Jesus in some new setting. You know, I was with a bunch of youngsters at a camp and we were having a simple Bible quiz and they were told to take their pencils and paper and from a certain goal they were to write down all the names of Jesus that they could think of and soon they began scratching the way, the truth, the life, the door, the shepherd and so on the lists grew. And when we checked them all over and we found the winner, I was very interested to look down those papers, and I couldn't help the next night saying to those youngsters, you know, you missed one name to Jesus that is very precious to me, and their ears perked up, and they said, what's that, Mr. Wildish? And I said, well, there's a name in the Bible for Jesus that has become very precious to me the last few years. It's... the same. And many of them looked a bit startled, a bit surprised, but I said, just as you can say that Jesus is the door, or the way, or the good shepherd, or the vine, or all these lovely names you've found in the Word of God, Jesus Christ is the same. Yesterday and today and forever the unchanging Christ. And when he comes back it will be the same Jesus. This same Jesus that was taken out from you into heaven shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go. And I wonder, I wonder if you are coining new names and finding out new names born of battles and warfare and conflict and sorrow and experiences in life that have driven you back into the arms of Jesus and you've come out of the experience knowing him better. You know, it flashed into my mind that very charming story of the American preacher who had to go preaching all over the country, and he had to be away from his home, his wife and his children, a very, very great deal, one of the biggest problems in an itinerant preacher's life. And you know when he came back home he tried very wisely to make up to his growing boys and girls the missing hours. He gave himself to them. And the story is told that they lived in quite a big old house and one of the games that He used to love to play with his children and his children loved so much was a very strange game that they had invented called the grizzly bear. Daddy dressed up as a grizzly bear, he put on a big sort of mask and cowl and dressed up like a bear with big paws. And they made in the corner of one of the rooms a very nice den, a sort of den, you know, chairs with blankets and things thrown over it where Grizzly could hide. And the idea of the game was that the children got walking sticks and sticks and they drew near and they poked at old Grizzly's den and inside they heard a great big roar and they were treated And the game went on until all of a sudden Grizzly came out of his den, and the pursuit began, all over the house, through the bedrooms, underneath the beds, into the cupboards, round the kitchen. And this was the great game that he played with his children. One day they were in the midst of this game, and Grizzly was hotly pursuing one of the boys. And the boy, with all his artfulness, couldn't get away, and at last he was cornered in one of the corners of a room, and grizzly, with his big arms out, drew in for a kill. And the boy, entering into the game very realistically, he shrank back into the corner with fear written on his face. He knew he was cornered, and he shrank back. And then all of a sudden something happened. The look on his face changed and springing forward into the arms of Grizzly, he said, You aren't a stupid man, you are my darling daddy. And the big arms were around him, not the arms of a Grizzly that would hug him to death, but the arms of darling daddy holding his boy. And I tell you, it's a tremendous day in the life of any man or woman or boy or girl when they can look up into the face of the living God and whisper, Abba Father, because they know the Son he sent into the world to win our redemption and salvation at Calvary. because they have received that Savior into their heart and the Holy Spirit has made Jesus real as Savior and born the cry of a new relationship, Abba, Father. Yes, these are experiences that are priceless because they're spiritual experiences. These are experiences that coin new names that I honestly believe are going to last for eternity. How you and I, many of us, pity the man or the woman who doesn't know God, who doesn't know Jesus Christ. Or isn't it wonderful when you can look the world in the face and say from ringing confidence, I know whom I have believed. I am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day. There will be many a battle, many a conflict, but every battleground if the victory is won will lead you on to a bigger battleground. And written into your experience, there will be a knowledge of God, and there will be the making of a Christian character that will abide. And this is just the school days of faith for the great eternal future that we are going to spend with our lovely Lord. Oh, I beg of you, I plead with you, as I speak to my own soul. Don't miss these experiences now. They're never going to be given to us again. There's only one life down here, and it will soon be passed, and only what's done for Christ will last. And you know, sometimes God has to thank you. And sometimes God has to rebuke you. And sometimes God leads you into a situation where you are completely deficient in the battle of life. But he's all doing it to one end, that you might come out of those experiences, not trusting in yourself anymore, but trusting in him and knowing him. And many of you know this, that sometimes even in the hour of sorrow and testing and deep trial, God's deepest work is wrought in a soul. We've often heard the story of the Eastern Shepherd, who wanting to get his sheep across the running, swirling waters of the small river will pick up a little lamb in his arms and take the little lamb over to the other side, because he wants the ram and the mother sheep to follow. Sometimes in the hour of sorrow when little ones are taken, and sometimes in the hour of deep distress when we can't understand God's dealings with us, it's a great loving God who's drawing near and putting out his arms and seeking to draw us to himself, that he might lead us to across the river into the better land, that he might lead us into life eternal. Now did you notice how the names poured from David's lips in verse two? Look at it. My goodness, my portraits, my high tower, my deliverer, my shield, and he in whom I trust. Now, young people, if I set you a Bible quiz, I believe most of you could find the answers somewhere back in First or Second Samuel. When did David, in his life story, coin these names for God? Take the first one, my goodness. You know, this book is a very wonderful book, and I'm so glad the young people are going to study its structure and how God gave it to us during this week of Congress. It's different to all other books I've ever read. I want to tell you quite frankly, this old book is utterly brutal in its exposure of human sin and weakness. Men of the world have come to me and they said, Mr. Wildish, you believe in the Bible. I wouldn't let my daughter read the Bible. I said, you wouldn't. When I said, if she doesn't read the Bible stories with all their living truths, she'll go out into the disgusting, sin-soaked world and see it with her eyes and perhaps taste on it. God in his great revelation of truth has revealed man in all his sinful state. God doesn't hide a thing. Let me tell you, the darling little boy with the ruddy face, who got the lovely tunes out of the harp, who whispered, the Lord is my shepherd. He knew perhaps as much as any man about the battles that produced defeat. and the battles that produced awful failure in his life. Do you know the word goodness in the margin is translated loving-kindness? My loving-kindness And if you will just turn back in the book of Psalms to that amazing Psalm fifty-one, David uses that name for God in the first verse. Psalm fifty-one, verse one, let me read it to you. And oh, what a sound it is. It makes me sob. I feel I want to read it alone in a secret place on bended knee. I see a man in the bedroom with the door shut. I hear his sobs. I see his pillows wretched to rest. I hear his heartbreak cry. Pardon me, cleanse me, against you, only I have sinned. Oh, God, God, mercy. And because he confessed, he was forgiven. The poor soving wretch came out to be still the man out to God's own heart, the man that God could reveal his proof to, the man that God could lead on from victory to victory. Yes, Psalm fifty-one, verse one, have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving kindness, thy goodness. according unto the multitude of my tender mercies, blot out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. What a psalm it is. Now to most of you, I needn't remind you of the story of two Samuel chapter eleven and chapter twelve in detail. I will simply say this to you. One of the biggest tests today is not adversity, is not poverty, is not sorrow, is not difficulty. I've seen Christians and men and women trust in those experiences again and again, but one of the biggest tests is prosperity. And there came a day when the crowned king David reigned over Israel and Israel were beating her enemies down. And there came a moment in chapter eleven of that second book of Samuel verse one where he sees Joab and the armies going out to battle. It was the time when kings go out to war and they went to fight the Ammonites, but the king didn't go. Why did David stay at home? Why did he smack about on his bed? The devil always finds for idle hands to do. The devil always finds for idle eyes to see. The lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life is as strong to a blood-bought child of God as to any unsaved person in the scrubby dirty world in which he lives. Don't think the pardon that sprang from Calvary leaves you of all temptation. It doesn't. To your dying day you will be in a world where temptations will stalk around you. Rising from his couch in the evening he goes out onto the flat eastern palace roof to look out over the city and he sees and he walks and he takes. And it was deliberate adultery. No other word for it. He had plenty of good companions and wives. In those days they had the multiplicity of wives. In fact, he had too many. It was one of his downfalls. But there in an open yard a common soldier's wife, Uriah's wife, called Bathsheba. Sheba is bathing herself. And he sees and he watches and he walks and he desires. and because he's a killer, he hates. And after his sin he tries to cover it up as human nature always does, cover it up so that no one will find out. But be sure your sin will find you out because you are dealing with God. And God looked down displeased and sad to see the anointed of Israel, David, in this awful condition of sin and trying to cover it up. Do you remember how he went deeper into sin to try and cover up his first sin? He called the husband home. He sent him down to his house. And I don't know any more stirring and magnificent words of that soldier when he said, My lord the king, Joab and the soldiers are out of the open fields facing the enemy. I can't go to my home and take my ease. And he slept on the steps of the palace. And having failed to cover up his sin by getting the husband home, David goes deeper into sin and plans his murder, and he becomes a murderer. He sends him back to the forces with a private dispatch, putting him in the forefront of the battle. And then the news comes from the battlefront that they were attacking a city, and Uriah was killed in the approaches of the city. He reads the report and his hands rubbed together and he says, I've got rid of the husband, now I can have her legally. And that she was brought up to the palace and becomes his wife and the months go by and a child is born. But God moves with majestic slowness. And one day he sent a brave and earnest messenger to stand in David's court. And I tell you the drama of that chapter twelve in two Samuel when Nathan stands before the king and asks his judgment. When Nathan says, I have a case and I want you to try it and I want you to answer this case and pass your judgment, And David little knew that he was being asked to pass judgment on himself. He little knew that the parable would unfold that he would be looking into a looking-glass and staring himself in the face. And that his judgment would be against himself. As Nathan puts the parable and he says, There was a little city and in the city a rich man and a poor man. And the rich man had cattle and sheep and everything. And the poor man just had his little family and could hardly make two ends meet. And he had a little you lamb, just like a child in the family. Yes, said David, go on. And Nathan goes on with a story. A traveler coming through has to be put up and given hospitality. And of course it's the rich man's responsibility, but he looks at his prime pedigree sheep and he said, I don't want to kill one of those lovely animals to feed the stranger. My friend, my young, poor neighbor has got a new lamb. I'll go down and be rough with him. And he went down and he said, I say, Bill, I want your lamb. I've got to feed a stranger who's passing through. Oh, but master, it's the only one I have. I can't help that. It'll be wrapped with you if I don't get it. Come on now. And he wrapped him up and got it. And it was put on the table to feed the stranger. I ask your judgment on this case. And David is looking at the prophet and as he listens to the story there's a rising indignation in his heart, he sees the selfishness and the callousness of it all, the cruelty of it all. And with all the indignation, he says, you ask me to judge this case? That man is worthy to judge! He's not worthy to live! But perhaps death would be too much to ask. Now let me see. I demand that that man who took that little new lamb must give that to the poor man. So hold, fall down for the one he took. That's my judgment. A desperate case. And he looks back into the eyes of Nathan, now fleshy. And he sees the finger pointing right to his eyes. And then like a fork of lightning, like a thunderbolt, the world will come, dark, dark, the man. He slammed the door of his room. He's tested on his couch. His body is healed with sobs. Wash me, purge me, cleanse me. Against me all that I seemed, O God. He found out he's gone to the only place that sinners can ever go to. The place of confession. the place of only enough before a holy God, the sin. And out of that room he came days after forgiven the man after God's own heart, the man that God could still send into battleground after battleground to win victory after victory. And he coined a new name for God in that hour. My loving kindness. My goodness. Oh, how good God is. If I was dealing with men, I would never again sit on the throne. I would never again be entrusted with public service. I would be finished and thrown on the scrap heap. How good God is. How loving kind. God is. He's coined your bitter experience, a new name for God, and he knows God better. Now I care not who I'm speaking to tonight. It may be a poor sinner who knows he's lost and on the way to hell. There's only one way of salvation and it's to come confessing your sin to the cross where Jesus bled and died. Look into the face of the risen Christ and just tell him everything. Yes, if you will come, if thou shalt confess thy sin, he is just and faithful to forgive us our sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If you are a child of God and the Lord puts his finger upon some place where you are being utterly defeated, some sin in your life that shouldn't be there, something that's lost during that life of yours, whether you be sinner or whether you be saint, I say to you tonight there's only one thing that you can do. If you will walk in the light as he is in the light, You must know the cleansing of that precious blood that takes away all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, the truth is not you. If we confess our sin, he is just and faithful to forgive us our sin. Do you know there's a sinner here tonight who could go to bed and put his head up on his pillow and say it's done? The great transactions done with the peace of God in his heart, the joy of a great salvation in his life. It's possible for a sinner tonight to know the pardon of God that springs from Calvary to whosoever will come just as I am without one plea, but that thy blood would be dealt with tonight. Do you know you could go to your pillow tonight with a song in your heart, with a joy bells ringing again, knowing that you are going back to the old settings to witness for Christ with no accusing voice within, or watching eyes that say funny sort of Christian that? For they quickly find out our weakness is. Oh, I wonder if someone tonight will face the fact that the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanses from all sin that once for all finished work upon the cross, the value of it ever speaks before the throne, and the blood cleanses, goes on cleansing its continuous test from all sin. And the only pathway for you is confession. You must deal with God. And if you will deal with God, you will find God loving kindness. The goodness of God will amaze you, your lovely Savior, who came to reveal the heart of God and win our salvation. will step in all his cleansing power into that life, in the realms of defeat and failure, and bring his peace and power and joy. You know, let's look at the second name in this verse too. My fortress. Oh, I think any of you, the youngest of you, could find some story in the life of David and say, I'm sure he coined that name for God right there. You know, David knew a great deal of being chased like a partridge on the mountains. He is even pictured as a flea hopping from place to place. Sometimes he's in the wilderness or the desert and sometimes in the rocky cave at a dungeon. You never know where you'll find him. And there must be many a time when David laid down at night with his water bottle for a pillow and his old spear stuck by his side and as he looked up at the stars he knew that his few men were around him. and his stenties were watching through the night and at any time in the night there might come the call. They might have to gather their belongings and scoot off over the hills to skew. That was his life for many, many weary months. And I can see him looking up at the stars and he thinks, oh, I wish. I wish I had big stone walls around me. I wish I had solid rocks and masonry. I wish I could stand up on the buttress of the fortress and look out at my enemies and defy them and say, You can't get me in here. I wish, he says, that I had a fortress around me with a great keep and in the inner keep the stronghold I could bring all my possessions And I could feel safe and secure. And as he looks up at the stars, all of a sudden his faith lays hold upon God. And he says, but I've got God. God is stronger and bigger than stone walls. God can be my fortress surrounding me. And I can see him smiling in the dark, and I can almost feel the joy that surges through him as he gets up a new little chorus or a new little tune that he has hit the music to in the morning. And he says, Yes, God is my refuge. God is my fortress. God is my hiding place. God is my keep. And he falls asleep having coined a new name for God. There it is. my fortress he's come out of the experience with a new name for God do you do you know I used to when I was a young fellow before I went to the mission field visit a house in the outskirts of London in England. In that house there lived a Mr and Mrs Curtis and their three lovely children. I was just a big boy about eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one years of age, thinking of the mission field. And they always welcomed me, and I was able to get a helping hand with children's meetings, and it was one of my closest friendships. And I watched these precious children for those few years grow up, and they looked upon me as a sort of big, big brother. Now, Sylvia, the eldest girl, was a charming, sweet, lovely character. She was a fine Christian. I remember she came down to the ship to see me away. I remember I went to South America and I got constantly from that household, from them all. Lovely letters of encouragement. They told me they prayed for me every day. The years passed by and that eldest girl grew up to be a very lovely, charming girl, twenty-one years of age, Sylvia Curtis. One day I heard in South America that she had died at the age of twenty-one. It's a tremendous thing to bring a child into the world and train and educate that child and just as they reach full maturity twenty-one and go out into life with all its possibilities. All of a sudden the strange hand of the enemy death lays them low. And I knew it would be a half-broken family that I would meet. And it was. When I got back and I visited them the next time, I felt I just could not open up the subject. I waited for them to speak of the loss of their loved girl, but they didn't. And I noticed, especially in Mrs. Curtis, that there was a gloom on her spirit. and she couldn't take it. And she was wondering, why? Why? Why did God do this? Why did God treat us like this? Why? Why? Why? After a few days I left the home and I was away some months and when I came back, It was different, completely different. There was the old happy, radiance and peace of the Lord in that home. And I couldn't understand it, and again I couldn't mention it. And the evening settled down and over there, you know, they don't central heat their homes very much in cold, old, bitter England. They have coal fires in one room and they gather round the coal fire at the end of the day. And as they gathered round the fire at the end of the day, after a bit the two younger children went off to bed. And then Harry Curtis, my friend, got up and he had to leave the room and I was left at the fireside with Mrs. Curtis alone. And I can see her now with tears in our eyes, with a smile upon her face, looking across at me. And she said, Harold, since you've come back, we've never mentioned Sylvia. She said, I want to tell you all about her. And with radiant joy and happiness, she spoke of that daughter that the Lord had taken at the age of twenty-one to a better land. She said, do you know after Sylvia was taken, I would sleep at night or try to sleep but couldn't, and the big question came up, why, why, why? And she said, do you know, Harold, I lost my peace and I lost my joy. And somehow my faith lay shattered. Why? Why? Why? She said, Harold, a friend that you know, named Mr. Hudson Pope, I know him well, a dear old servant of God, came to visit us in the home, and she said, My husband, Harry, at the breakfast table, picked up the Bible and handed it to Mr. Pope and said, Would you take our morning reading? And Mr. Pope took the Bible and turned over the pages, and he began to read these well-known verses in Philippians four. Now listen. Rejoice in the Lord always And again I say, rejoice. Let your moderation, your yieldingness be known unto all men. The Lord is at hand. The Lord is nearby, the constant companion who will never leave you. Be anxious, be careful for nothing. But in everything, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, that passes all understanding, shall keep, shall garrison your heart and mind through Christ yours. He stopped. He said, I'd like to reread that verse again, and he read it like this in a little free translation. And the peace of God that passes by all explanations shall take your heart and mind through Christ Jesus. And that sweet woman of God looked across at me with the tears streaming down her cheeks, and yet with a smile, and she said, Mr. Wildish, Harold, she said, I saw it, and I saw my dreadful mistake. Why questioning God? The peace of God that passes by all explanations. Not till the moon is silent and the shuttles cease to fly, will God unroll the canvas and explain the reason why? The dark threads are as needful in the weaver's scuttle plan as the threads of gold and silver in the pattern he is glad. She said, I got up from the breakfast table and she said, I stepped away to my bedroom and got down on my knees. And I said, Lord Jesus, I'll never ask why again. I trust you. You took our darling Sylvia home and you left us with broken hearts and I shall never know why till I reach the better land, but I'll trust you. And she said, that moment the peace came back. And the purpose in life came back, and the power of the Lord came back. The things that I had been robbed of for several long months came back to my soul. I don't know how God's dealing with you, but I know in the school days of faith, in the battlegrounds that he brings each one of us to, Sometimes it will be triumphs after triumphs and sometimes defeats and sometimes tremendous tests. But he's all working it out for our good. And in his great purpose and out of these experiences we should come, coining new names for our lovely Lord and be able to say, I know him. I know him better. Jesus, my Savior, my friend, my guide, my strength, my goodness, my fortress. And out of these experiences we come, knowing God. And this is life eternal, that they shall know thee, the only true God. Jesus Christ, whom thou sent. Oh, I wonder if you would look into the face of your God, into the face of Jesus and whisper, that I might know him. That's my prayer. That I might know him. And the power of his resurrection, the power of the Holy Spirit making the risen Jesus, who will in my life to live a new life. And the fellowship of his sufferings, in a suffering, sobbing world, being made conformable to his death, that I might enter into his written life, that I might know him. Now will you look into his face and do business with him in the quiet moment of prayer? Will you? Will you? Let's all do it. Shall we pray quietly? May I say to you You are amongst friends tonight and if there's one here who doesn't know the dear Saviour the Lord Jesus and in your sin and lost condition as a desire to know him, you can tonight. If there's a backslider who's completely failed the Lord and grieved him and strayed, Won't you come back to his arms of love, that lover of souls that you once trusted and knew? If you are conscious of battlegrounds where you have been completely defeated and the Spirit of God is putting his finger upon something in your life, God knows the secrets. It may be in that battleground where no one knows the secret places of your life, where again and again there is pain and sin, and sin has dominion. Oh, Christian, shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? God forbid. come to him just as you did the first time and bear that heart with all its need and say, Lord, I want the cleansing. The blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son cleanses from all sin. And I want to walk in the light in communion and fellowship with thee. I want it dealt with. I confess it. And if you will do the confessing, he will do the pardoning. Yes, tonight you could go to your bed knowing that that area in your life where the stain has been dealt with. Loving Lord, who are walking in our midst, drawing near to some bent head and heart before thee, minister to that need, let them at this moment feel thy touch of power, of cleansing, of pardon. And Lord Jesus, do thy work, as thou only canst do it. O we pray that nothing may hinder thee tonight, sending us to our beds to lay our heads upon our pillows, rejoicing with the joy of a great salvation, conscious of nothing between our hearts and thyself. knowing that we belong to thee and in the school of God can coin new names for thee in every experience that thou dost allow to come to our lives. Lord Jesus, if there's one here seeking thee and thou art seeking that one, let them not leave as this meeting quietly breaks. May they stay in their seat to pray. May some loved friend or companion go to them and counsel them. If they have courage to do it, may they come even to the speaker to speak to him about it. O Lord, let us, let us do business with thee, and let no one go out of these doors without the joy of a great salvation. We hand over the meeting to thee, and we ask thee that nothing may distract in the coming moments to take away the impact of thy word. We rest in thee about this, and ask thee to preserve the precious seed of thy truth, and let nothing snatch it away, but may it settle down and find a root in good ground, that it may bear a rich harvest. We ask this for our good, and for the glory of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen. Now I wonder if you would just take your songbook and turn to number eighty-five, and I don't want anyone to go away without being able to say, I know, I know whom I have believed. and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day. I'm not going to ask you even to rise to sing, but just where we sit, would you read the first verse with me? And then we'll sing the second verse and one or two other verses, and then I'll pronounce the benediction. The meeting is dismissed. Let's see, do we stay right here for our next session? We do. In other words, I'm going to ask those who must leave to quietly move toward the door and leave, and those who must stay to gather up into the front for the next session. But should there be one whose anxious, troubled, longing to be sure of salvation, to know that they have rarely settled with the Lord, I think perhaps it's best to say this. If you have a loved friend, a counselor, someone you know who cares for you, your spiritual life, turn to them and speak to them. I'll sit down to the door to shake hands as folks are going out. If anyone would like to speak to me, I'm at your service. Either standing or sitting, we can find a quiet place. I would love to. For those here on the grounds that you know so much better than myself, dear Mr. Landis and Mrs. Landis and others, how glad they would counsel any who feel God is speaking to them. Don't go without being sure, without being able to say, I know. Now let's read the first verse, and then the music will come for singing the second. I know not why God's wondrous grace to me he hath made known, nor why unworthy Christ in love redeemed me for his own. Now verse two, sing it. I know not how the inflaming faith to be He may keep his word from me within myself. But I know the truth, I can't believe it, that that he Listen, I know not how the Spirit moves convincing men of sin, revealing Jesus through the Word, creating faith in Him that I know Whom I have believed? Or wouldn't you like to let those words come from your heart? I know. It's my testimony. I'm a believer in Christ. My soul with its need is resting in Christ. That miracle could take place in your heart. If you let the word come from your inner heart, I know. And just rest in Christ. Verse three. Verse four. I don't know. Dive, die, die, die! The word of prayer. Now the Congress will quietly come forward, perhaps a little, and fill up the front seats as I pronounce the benediction and the meeting closes. Many friends will quietly be slipping away, gripping each other's hands with a greeting, going out to their cars and to their homes. But should there be anyone here who knows God is speaking to you and giving you the amazing opportunity of settling with the Lord, would you like to stay in your seat or quietly go to Mr. or Mrs. Landis or to Mrs. Wildish or myself, I'll be shaking hands at the door, and we are at your service, glad to help you, if you rarely know that the Lord is drawing you to himself. There's no need to go home unsaved without Christ, still lost. You can be saved tonight. Gracious God, take this evening hour. Let thy hand of blessing be upon it now, as we commend it to thee. May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ always sufficient. The love of God our Father, that matchless love that gave his Son to Calvary, the gracious, mighty movings and indwelling power of the Holy Spirit, minister to our every need, now and ever. Amen. The meeting is over and those who are coming forward for the Congress meeting and those who are leaving will quietly be leaving. I'll be at the door shaking hands. Thank you. Thank you.