A Sower Went Forth to Sow
by Marrell Cornwell
1989 · Louisiana Camp Meeting (75th anniversary / diamond jubilee)
Kind: conference session
Scripture: Matthew 13:1-9, Matthew 20:1-7, Matthew 25:1-10, Acts 10

Source: https://acts238.life/repository/sermons/marrell-cornwell--a-sower-went-forth-to-sow
Published by Acts 2:38 Life from the sermon transcript on that page.
Free to copy and share with attribution.

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Praise the Lord everybody. Brother Tenny has such a unique way of smoothing things over. But it's good to be in the house of the Lord at the Louisiana 75th camp meeting. And I know it's diamond jubilee, but I'd like to say that my burden being here today goes far deeper than that. We must never forget the past, but we must never be bound by it either. Amen. Thank you, brother Cupid, for the invitation to be here today. I'm reminded of a story that I heard not long ago about the lie and the truth went swimming together in the old swimming hole. And the lie got tired of swimming with the truth. And so he went to the shore and he saw the truth clothes laying on the bank. And so the lie put on the clothes of the truth. After a while, when the truth got through swimming, he came to the shore and found his clothes gone and the clothes of a lie laying in its place. and he said, "I cannot put on the clothes of a lie." And so he headed towards town uh in the buff. And after a while, the town's people looked up and saw the truth coming and they said, "Look out. Here comes the naked truth." So I'm here with a naked truth today. Can any good thing come out of Faraday? Hallelujah. Open your Bible with me, please. And I won't have you stand for just a moment because I've got two hours to go in 45 minutes. Chapter 13 of the book of Matthew, reading very quickly. The same day went Jesus out of the house and sat by the seaside. And great multitudes were gathered together unto him, so that he went into a ship, and sat, and the whole multitude stood on the shore. And he spake many things unto them in parable, saying, Behold, a swer went forth to sow. And when he sowed, some seed fell by the wayside, and the fowls came and devoured them up. Some fell on stony places where they had not much earth, and forth with they sprang up because they had no deepness of earth. And when the sun was up, they were scorched, and because they had no root, they withered away. And some fell among thorns, and the thorns sprang up and choked them. And other fell into good ground and brought forth fruit, some 100fold, some 60fold, and some 30fold. Whoath ears to hear, let him hear. And this is one of the greatest misinterpreted passages in the Bible. Chapter number 20 of the book of Matthew. And it came to pass when Jesus had finished his saying, I'm sorry, chapter 20. For the kingdom of heaven is liken to a man that is a householder, which went out early in the morning to hire labors into his vineyard. And when he had agreed with the laborers for a penny a day, he sent them into the vineyard. And he went out about the third hour, and saw others standing idle in the marketplace, and said unto them, "Go ye also in the vineyard, and whatever is right, I will give you." And they went their way. And again he went about the sixth hour and 9inth hour and did likewise. I want you to notice. And about the 11th hour he went out and found others standing idle and saith unto them. And and I wished I could ask this question the way he did when he said, "Why stand ye here all the day idle?" But I wished even more that I could say it the way they replied back to him when they said unto him, "Because no man hath hired us." Chapter 25 of the book of Matthew. Another very familiar passages of of scripture. Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened to 10 virgins which took their lamps and went forth to meet the bridegroom. And five of them were wise, and five were foolish. And they that were foolish took their lamps, and took no oil with them. But the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps. And while the bridegroom tried, they all slumbered and slept. And at midnight there was a cry made, "Behold, the bridegroom cometh, go ye out to meet him." Then all the virgins arose and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said unto the wise, "Give us of your oil, for our lamps are gone out." And the wise answered, saying, "Not so, lest there be not enough for us in you. But go ye rather to them that sell and buy for yourselves." I want you to notice

verse 10. And while they went to buy, there was no hesitation. There was no pause. It it indicates that there was a great rush to buy oil. But even in their great rush, by the time they got back, the bridegroom had come and the door was shut and they were lost. You may be seated. I read to you three familiar passages of scripture today because I wanted to save time uh here today and not read things that were you were not familiar with. The first parable that I read to you speaks of four types of soil. And the second parable that I read to you spoke of 50% of the virgins were wise and 50% were foolish. Now, I've been around long enough that I have heard many a sermon on these and uh especially here last year when the little white book came out. Uh the 88 reasons why Jesus was going to come back last year. Uh these parables were even expounded to a greater extent. And I heard preachers say that that uh there are four types of soil and there's only one type of soil that does any good to put the seed on. And uh only 25% of the people uh are worthy of the gospel. And then our the parable of the 10 virgins in which uh uh five were wise and five were foolish. And we put percentages on this thing that only 50% of the church is going to make it. And we do a great injustice when we preach like this because I believe that we are missing the message that Jesus Christ is really trying to give to his church in this hour. Amen. Now in in the first parable, the scripture says that uh the sword went forth the soul and some of the seed fell by the wayside. Some fell on stony ground and some fell among the thorns. And uh all of us who are pastors or we are soulwinners or we are leaders in our local assemblies, we try to judge people when we come in contact with them that well I I'm not going to waste my time on this particular person because you know their heart is just so hard. And uh I have heard uh preachers when the visitors would walk in their building and they would preach the gospel and they would even change their text and to meet uh the challenge of the visitors. They would come and challenge them with Acts 238 and they would get out of their seat and walk out the building and the preacher would go home and say, "I want you to know I preach the gospel to them tonight. Bless God." And when they stand before God, they're they're not going to be able to say that they never heard anything because I preached it straight and I preached it narrow. But you see, God is trying to give us a different message in these parables. First of all, I want you to know that in in in the parable of the sors, I believe the Lord is trying to tell us how difficult each person is going to be if we are going to win them to the Lord Jesus Christ. And most of us in the tabernacle today, we would like to be able to knock on a door and say, "I'm from the First United Pentecostal Church, and I'd like to invite you to our revival." and they would just fall out of the screen door and fall upon you and say, "Praise God. I've been praying. I've been asking God to send me somebody and you're here today and I'm going to run down to your church. I'm going to fall in that altar. I'm going to get baptized in Jesus name. I'm going to get the Holy Ghost and then I'm going to pop my neck and do the whirly bird and jump up and down and shake a while." And it almost irks me sometime when I hear these testimonies about knocking on a door and they're all ready to be saved and they come to the house of God and the first time they come to a Pentecostal church, they receive the Holy Ghost. Well, that may happen in Louisiana, but that doesn't happen very. We have got the most stubborn, obnoxious, hard-headed, bullheaded people in the world, right in the center of the United States of America. For a fact, I want you to know they'll come and smile at you while you preach and never hear a word you say and walk out and not respond to the gospel. And I have found out that their heart is hard. And before they get out the back door, the devil has come and even stolen that which they have already heard. So what do you do about it? You just let them die and go to hell because of no reason of their own that their

heart is hard. No. Oh no. That's where you say, "Look, Lord, you sent me here to these stubborn people and this is the only people I've got to work with. I'm going to reach them somehow with the gospel of Jesus. Amen. Someone came to our church some time ago and after the service was over, they walked out and we didn't see them for a long time. But that Monday morning after that service, my wife and I drove about 45 miles to where they lived and we knocked on their door. And when we knocked on the door, the lady of the house came to the door. And uh they weren't dressed exactly like Pentecostals or decent folks. Uh they could have put a few more clothes on before they came to the door. And I had to look at the ceiling while I talked to this lady. And uh I had my Bible with me and my Bible study chart and I said, "Uh, lady, we would like to teach you a home Bible study." Hallelujah. Oh, praise God. You can get in some bad situations preaching the gospel. And uh she was a soloist in a local assembly there in her town. Her husband uh had some kind of leadership position, but they had been to our church. And uh I asked her, I said, "Why did you come to our church?" and she said, "I was driving by your church and uh we stopped at the red light there in front of your church and the Lord spoke to me and said I was going to be healed in in this in this place in this building." And we was building our building. And uh she said for a long time we would drive by and this voice would speak to me and say, "You're going to be healed in that building." She had chronic pancreatitis, incurable by the doctors. And so one day we finally afforded could afford to put up a a signed future home of First Pentecost church. And she told her husband, she said, "My God," she said, "that's a church. We thought it was a a hospital or a medical clinic or something." And so, uh, the first week or second week we were open, her and her husband showed up on Sunday morning and and she came in, she I I think that she had an accident with either Avon or Maybelline before she got there. She had some kind of collision or maybe she ran into Miss Baker or something. I don't know what happened. And it seemed like that maybe they might have robbed the jewelry store before they got there. And here they walked in and when the altar call was given, they came straight down the aisle and they knelt there. And uh I I sit down on the altar beside her and I said, "Ma'am," I said, "What can I do for you?" And she said, a voice spoke to me and said, 'If I would come in here, I would be healed.' I said, 'All right, I'll pray for you in the name of Jesus. Be healed.' Well, when I prayed for her, she fell over backwards and uh she started weeping and all that mess started washing down over in a blouse and uh and it was just a kind of a a messed up situation. She was healed. She stood up and she began to say, "The pain is gone." for almost eight years. She'd had chronic pain in her midsection and God had healed her. Now, she was healed, but she didn't get the Holy Ghost and she didn't get baptized in Jesus name. And she had no intention of ever doing that. But when I knocked on the door and offered to teach her a Bible study in her home because of what God had done for her, uh, she accepted and I started teaching Bible study. And I taught lesson one and I taught lesson two and I taught lesson 15 and I taught lesson 24 and I taught lesson 33. You say, "Where'd you get those charts?" Right between generations and revolutions. I preached on the Godhead and they rejected it. And so I came back the next week and I preached on the Godhead and they rejected it. I came back the next week and I preached on the Godhead and they rejected it. I preached on Jesus name baptism and they rejected and I preached the next week on the godhead and the next week on baptism and my wife and I was there one uh Friday evening and as we was teaching I said uh I was teaching the word of God about to that God was in Christ reconciling the world to who himself God was manifest in the flesh seen of angels so on I preached in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God and the word was made flesh and dwelt among us I preached everything I knew about the godhead dead and if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. Suddenly both of them looked up at me and and simultaneously they said, "My God, Jesus Christ is God. I didn't hit them. I promise I didn't hit them." They both was knocked out of their kitchen chair and landed on

the backside of their pants on the floor and began to speak in other tongues as the spirit gave the utterance. Hey, that's a beautiful story. But let me tell you something. It took hours and days and weeks of a gospel middlebuster trying to break up the fellow ground of a hard heart that had rejected the gospel. But because the word is quick and powerful, it'll work if you'll work with the word. Amen. Now I I feel a preaching spirit coming on here. We don't have to compromise in this laying hour. We don't have to water down the gospel to get people to come to our church. You can preach it straight and preach it narrow if you're willing to preach it long enough. Amen. Scripture says that fell on the wayside. I was teaching a Bible study to a man in our city. I had taught him Bible study 10 years ago, but his wife was a social help us. I want to say if you'd have left him alone 10 years ago, he wouldn't be in that shape. But I didn't want to tell him I told you so. And so I went and started teaching them Bible study on Saturday night. And on Saturday night, the first time we went there, he had a cigarette in his left hand, a drink in his right hand, sitting at the head of a kitchen table with the Bible between the cigarette and the booze glass. You say, "I I I would I wouldn't teach Bible studies on those condition." then you won't be like Jesus because he sat with sinners and publicans. And it's not the whole that hath need of a physician. It's the sick that needs a doctor. And brother, we got the medicine that will cure. We got the doctrine that'll deliver. We got the word of God that'll help a man be saved. And uh so I'd teach on Saturday night and come back the next Saturday night. And after a while, the cigarette got to be putting out and there was no more liquor bottle and it was just his Bible. One Saturday night, he said, "Pastor, I I got to tell you something." He said, "You come here on Saturday night." He said, "You you you you teach this word for about an hour." And he said, "I feel so good when you leave." He said, "It just seems like that everything is just working so good." But he said, "When when you leave," he said, "It lasts till about Monday morning." And he said, and and then the week just kind of caves in on me. He said, "I don't understand it." And then God just seemed to deal with me about the parable that I'm talking to you about. The word of God falls on stony ground and it springs up, but when the sun comes out, it withers away because it has no deepness of earth. You know, we'd like to say that there are some people that's always in and out, up and down, in and out, up. You know, you know, it's not the up and downer's fault. It's the preacher and the teacher's fault that don't take enough time to take the stones and the rocks out of their life with the word of God. Boy, that didn't go over too good. But that's a gospel truth anyway. Amen. You want to rush to the pull pit and preach your little 30-minute canned sermon that you got out of some book in your library. And then you want God to work in that 30 minutes and bring all of heaven down. Expect God to work miracles. And when church is over, put your overcoat on, get in your Cadillac, and drive down to McDonald's and eat your burger and go home and not have anything to worry about. If there was ever a time that God's people need to get involved with the word of God, it's now. Amen. I was preaching like this one day. Uh I won't tell you what district it was in. And this lady walked up to me and she said, "I'm so glad that you're not my pastor." I said, "Ditto, lady." Amen. I said, "Bob, I got an idea." I said, "Uh, why don't you let me teach you the word of God every day for a week instead of once every week?" I said, "I'll come to your office." He said, "No, pastor. I'll do better than that. I'll come to your office where you won't have to waste your gas. I said, "All right, that's a deal." And so Monday morning after that Saturday night, he came to my office at noon. I taught him Bible study. Came back Tuesday at noon, I taught him Bible study. Came back Wednesday at noon, I taught him Bible study. Come back Thursday at noon, I taught him Bible study. And by the end of the week, we still hadn't got very far, but I could see just just a little bit of difference in his life. And I said, Bob, I said, "One week's not going to be enough for you. you you need another week of this. He said, "All right." He said, "If you can put up with

me, I can put up with you." And so he came back to my office and I taught him another. Let me tell you something. You ain't got to compromise teaching a Bible study. Let them read it for the sale. The word of God will stand on its own. You ain't got to prop it up. Just preach it. Just teach it. It'll take care of itself. Amen. You only have to tiptoe through the tithers at church, but you can preach to the center. They'll hear you. Amen. You better be careful, preacher, cuz I won't pay my tithe, honey. Shove them down your throat. Who cares? I ate before I knew you and I'll eat when I don't know you. If you're so thin skinned that you can't take the preaching of the word of God, you need to go to an altar and you need to get saved again. And there are some preachers that need to get saved again. Amen. You say, "Well, I'm not going to invite you to my church. I'm not needing invitations. I'm booked up for two years already." Amen. I said, "Another week. You need another week." So, we taught him another week. And I could see progress beginning to make. about the third week of of everyday Bible study on Friday evening, Thursday evening, at the end of that Bible study, he was shaking all over. He said, "I feel something in this office." I said, "What you're feeling is the power of God." I said, "Now, if you'll kneel right here in my office," I said, "God will deliver you from the schizophrenic paranoia that you're going through." I said, "You've been going to the shrinks." But I said, "You have now met the King of Kings, and he's greater than the shrink. He knelt in my office and I laid my hands on him in the name of Jesus. You say, "You're bragging." I'm not bragging. You ought to be laying your hands on somebody. God healed him. He didn't need the shrinks anymore. About five weeks later, teaching every day, I finally got the revelation of the name of Jes. Let me tell you something. I am so sick up to my ears with these ninkham poops that say that that uh the the the preaching of the gospel and building a church is real easy in Louisiana. It might be snap your fingers, put on a necktie, drive a Cadillac, and they'll flock out to your church. But where I'm from, honey, you got to preach. You can't hint what's wrong. You got to preach what's wrong. You can't just kind of preaching innuendos. You either preach it straight and narrow or they'll walk over you. And you got to have a backbone like a saw log and preach it. It doesn't matter who cares what you preach. Hallelujah. He walked in my office the next day and he said, "I got to be baptized in Jesus rain right now." I said, "It's January." I said, "We got the heat off in the auditorium. There's a thin layer of ice on the baptismal tank." He said, "I don't care." He said, "Something said I got to get baptized right now." And we baptized him with that ice cold water. And uh that Let me tell you something. If you're having trouble getting somebody full of the Holy Ghost, baptize them when it's cold. Amen. Best way to pray somebody through is get them chilled a little bit. Amen. He got in his XJ6 Jaguar, headed back downtown on the freeway, and uh 6:00 that evening, he called me and he said, he said, "What have you done? What have you done to me? What have you done to me?" I said, 'What do you mean, what have I done to you?' He said, I I got down on the freeway and he said, 'I felt the same thing in my car that I felt in your office a couple of weeks ago.' I said, 'What'd you do?' He said, 'I had to pull over the side of the road. He said, it got kind of strong in there. I said, well, I said, well, what happened? He said, well, he said, I remembered you talking about deliverance and how you got to praise Jesus to be healed, but he said, I thought y'all was kind of crazy the way you said you got to lift your hands and you got to worship the Lord. And he said, "There I was on the side of that freeway." I said, 'Well, tell me what you done.' He said, 'Well," he said, "I just kind of raised my hands like this and I just kind of waited and nothing happened." I said, "Then what'd you do?" He said, "Well," I said, "I ain't got nothing to lose." I started saying, "Thank you, Jesus. Praise Jesus. Glory to God." And he said, he said, he said, "Something happened. Something you you done something to me." I said, "Well, what what happened?" He said, "Well, I got to talking and and and praising Jesus and and and these crazy words started coming out of my mouth. Now, you can't do this in Louisiana because they'll call you a charismatic. But I said, "What did it sound like?" You know, we are so holy and sanctified and self-righteous. When somebody talks in tongues and we feel like it's sacriiggious if we repeat it. When I was a kid growing up, I still remember an old preacher in Louisiana

holla. And as kids, we'd walk out and repeat what he said. My God, he's just speaking in a language we don't understand. I said, "What did it sound like?" Hallelujah. And only a new convert can do this. He said, "Well, it sounded like this." And he started ratting off in tongues. I said, "Well, sounds real to me." He said, "What do you mean sound real?" I said, "What you got is the baptism of the Holy Ghost." You say, "I don't believe in telling them they got the Holy Ghost." Then you correct Acts chapter number 10 because the Bible said the six that went with Peter when the Holy Ghost fell on them, we knew they got the Holy Ghost for they heard them speak with other tongues and magnify God. When somebody's getting the Holy Ghost, stick your ear up there and you'll know whether or not they got it just like they do in Louisiana. Glory to God. You see, sometimes you just got to take a gospel middle, brother uh Buster, and you just got to break up the foul of ground. If you're going to reach somebody, you might as well quit trying to find all the ones that are fertile ground because the churches have already sucked them in and they're already going to church somewhere. So, all that's left is the is the hardhearted and the hard-headed and the thornyheaded. And if you're going to build a church and sit on your laurels and do nothing, you you ought to go down to Western Auto and buy you a shovel and turn in your license and get out and dig a ditch and do an honest day's work. I ain't got nothing to lose. I got a ticket back to Witchah. Amen. I've already got a boarding pass. If I can't find anybody to take me to the airport, I'll catch a cab. But I'm going to say it anyway. It It bothers me when churches run 15 and 20 and 30 for 40 years and you say, "Oh, I'm just a little old struggling home mission." No, you're not a struggling home missionary. You're a lazy coward that won't get out and read the world and preach the word of God and teach people and dig out stones and break up the foul ground and cut down the thorn bushes. You want the easy life. You want to drive a Cadillac and a limousine and have the easy and strut around camp meeting like you're called to preach, you need to get out where the gospel needs to be preached. Amen. Nobody wants to come to my church. I wouldn't either. The church is going down. No, you are going down. Remind me of a story of a fella jumped out of an airplane and his parachute didn't open. And on the way down, here come a fell coming up. He said, "Say," he said, "Uh, you know anything about parachutes?" He said, "No, you know anything about hot water heaters." Amen. Get in our little huddles. Bless God. If I was a charismatic compromiser, I'd build a big church, too. No. If you'd go to a dentist, let him trim your tongue up and put a little positive attitude on it, then you'd build a church. The church is not going down. There's more healings in ' 89 than there was in 33 AD. There's more people getting the Holy Ghost today that's ever got the Holy Ghost. The church is more powerful now than it's ever been. And the church ain't going down. The church is going up with a sound of victory. If the fire burned in 1901, it's burning in 1989. I said the fire is still burning. Amen. Sit down. You say, "I'm too busy to win souls." Busy. You don't know what busy is. If you'd sell your fishing boat, buy your Bible study chart, then you'd know what busy is. Several years ago, I preached here. Many, come think of it, it was a long time ago. Well, I might not get invited back, so I might as well give you the whole load today. Amen. want to know if I ought to sell my shotgun. I said, well, let me tell you what. I wouldn't have a shotgun if I wasn't a soul winner, boy.

That I I upset your high and holy day, didn't I? Boy, I can tell right now next October when you go squirrel hunting, you're going to be cussing Cornwell. Bless God. I don't believe what he believes. I don't care. I said, 'If I wasn't a soul winner, I'd sell him a shotgun. And I'll tell you something else. If I wasn't a soul winner, I'd sell him a fishing boat. And I'd sell my rod and reels. I'd sell Oh, let me really get on the white collar preachers now. I said, if I wasn't a soul winner, I'd sell my golf clubs. We spend more time golfing and fishing and hunting than we do in knocking doors and teaching Bible studies and having revival and praying. And you know, it's the God's truth. I'm not preaching false doctrine in Louisiana. Amen. Let me I'm I'm going to meddle for a minute. Okay. I had been media, but I'm going to meddle. We get in a prayer room and we have got a concept of a mystical revival that's not proper. We're going to get in a prayer room and hide oursel and we're going to pray revival down. Well, honey, what do you think the disciples did in the upper room? They prayed it down for us. I can't find where revival's left. I can't find where God quit pouring out the Holy Ghost. And we get in our prayer rooms and we pray, "Oh God, give us a sovereign move of God." What other kind of move of God is it besides a sovereign move of God? Pray. Tell me what other kind of move of God you're going to have if it's not a sovereign move of God. Well, and and and you say, "Well, I'm just going to believe that God's going to move in my city." Honey, when the Apostle Paul was smoked down on the Damascus road, the Bible said that Paul looked up and said, "Who art thou, Lord?" And I found in our scriptures where he said, "I am Jesus whom thou persecutest." It's hard to kick against the pricks and and and the Lord said, "Go to the street called Straight and you'll find a preacher there and he'll tell you what you ought to do." Jesus Christ is not going to preach the gospel to your city. I beg your pardon if you believe that. He's not going to do what he's already told you. You got to do a dispensation of the gospel is committed unto us. By the way, Louisiana, I was praying for y'all. Y'all need a lot of prayer down here. The water and the economy and the oil crisis and all the things that y'all going through. And y'all are having a pity party. Y'all the worstest acting saints I've ever heard of, crying and weeping because the the oil prices have gone down to $20 a barrel and the economy has gone bonkers. You ever stop to think that the greatest revivals have always come in an economic recession? You ought to pray that your saints lose their fishing boats and their hunting equipment and their jeeps and their four-wheel drives and their recreational vehicles and their golf carts and then they'd have time to get up a Bible study chart and the word of God and start preaching. We're not in a a crisis. We just need to double the church. We just need to double the auditorium. We just need to double the tabernacle. You're not the only ones that's got unemployed. In a matter of three weeks, Cesna laid off almost 15,000 people and they don't even build the the single engine aircraft in Witchah anymore. And Lear Jet almost went bankrupt and Beachcraft had to sell out in order to survive and people was unemployed and on top of all that somebody got to squabbling in the church and in one year we lost 37 families. Talk about how bad things are. You ought to be thanking God that you got some time on your hands now because people are not so busy that they can get out and do a work for God once in a while. Oh, I'm never going to get invited back, but I'm not through yet. God is the author and the finisher of our faith. He's not going to put more on us than we can bear. I'm going to tell you, God does not forsake his people. I've never seen the righteous forsaken or his seed out begging for bread. It's time to stand up and say it's revival time. We need to fan the flames of a fire that used to burn and get it back red hot again. I was in Israel four years ago.

I'm I'm a fanatic about the word. I just believe the word converts and and it just bothers me when somebody tries to point out a contradiction in the Bible. In Israel on that tour bus, I got to see these almond orchards, orange groves, banana plantations, and you look down at the roots of those trees be rocks everywhere. It bothered me because the Bible said that when the sun comes out, they'll get scorched. So I asked our guide, I said, "At the next place we can pull over near our orchard, I want you to stop." He stopped. We got out. I said, "You explain this to me." I said, "How can these groves be growing up in these rock beds?" I said, "The Bible says that if you plant seed on stony ground, it'll spring up, but when the sun comes out, it withers away." Haha. He said, "You Americans are all alike. Always looking for the easy way. Throw the seed, don't plant, move over to the next halfacre. You don't want to roll your sleeves up and work. But in Israel, we have limited property." And he said, "These these junky hillsides that the Arabs leave behind, they don't want them. They're no good. We send in the kabuts. We send in these communes." And he said, "We take a long drill, a hammer drill or a star drill, and we tap down till we get to the rock." And he said, "Then we keep tapping until we we make a hole in that rock." And my mind began to click. And he said, "Then we take the young plant and we put it down in that hole and put the roots underneath the rock." He said, "That's why you see all of these smaller rocks on top because once the root gets anchored, it'll break anything in its pathway. I like to had me a brush arbor camp meeting and spasm. Amen. You say if you got people in your in your congregation that there stony ground, keep tapping away at that hard heart until you get one little hole pecked in it. And then shove the word of God through that hole until they can get some root on the bottom side and you'll build a church for Jesus Christ that can stand every economic recession. It can stand every type of immorality. It can stand when the world is set on fire. We got to be willing to cut thorns down. Let me let me hurry because my time is fastly slipping away and I wouldn't want you to be late for your lunch. Chapter 20, the scripture says that the householder went out uh early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. You ever stop to think why he was willing to pay $130 to a man to work one hour in his vineyard? He went out the first hour, hired as many as he thought he needed. And then he went about the third hour and the sixth hour and the ninth hour. And then he went back to the marketplace and he found them at the 11th hour still standing there. And he was willing to hire them to go in the vineyard and work just one hour. Why? In the first parable, he's trying to tell us the difficulty of the task. Not impossible, but difficult. In the second parable, he's trying to tell us the urgency of the hour. You got to pick fruit when it's right. You can't be early and you can't be late. You got to be on time. And the church of the living God needs to be sensitive in this hour that we might be on time. When God is moving on the hearts of men, when Simon Peter was on the rooftop or when Cornelius was in his prayer room and the angel said, "Send for Peter," he sent immediately to Peter. He didn't say, "Wait a minute. I've got a golf game. Oh, wait a minute. I got a a hunting trip scheduled to Colorado. Oh, wait a minute. I gotta do this and I got to do that. Boy, that quiet in the crowd. Let me give you Let me give you a little secret. Let me let me let me regress. I was in California and I was watching the migrant workers rolling wide sheets of paper down the middleles of those great vineyards. Being curious as I am, I pulled off the freeway, found me a country road, found my way back down in them great vineyards, got out of my car, went up to the foreman. I said, "What are are y'all doing that you're unrolling paper down the aisles, the middles?" He said, 'Well, we're supposed to cut grapes. I said, "The paper. What's the paper all about?" He said, "The this this vineyard is first class raisin grapes, top quality, the best there is." And he said, "In the morning, the weather station has told us that we were going to begin a 72-hour period of prime drying time." And he said, 'We got to get these grapes off these vines in in the next 12 hours or they will not dry optimately. He said, 'We don't have time to pack them in crates, take them to the

drying sheds. He said, we're going to we're going to send the workers in and they're going to take the knives and cut and lay and cut and lay and cut and lay. It's got 72 hours that they can dry on that paper. And then to expedite time, we'll send in bailing machines and roll those grapes up in that paper. And then we'll take them to the drying sheds, but they'll have 72 hours of optimum drying conditions in the field. This is what was happening. You see, uh we got in a controversy a number of years ago about whether we ought to take uh alcohol or grape juice for communion. And being a chemical engineer that I am, I got involved in it in the chemical aspect of it. So I went to a winery in California and I I told him what I was doing and I asked him their process of making wine and he said I said by the way I said I know that they had fresh fruit of the vine year round but I said I need know how I can prove it. He said, "Preacher," he said, "What they do is they take the the the raisin grape and they dry it quickly in the fields." And he said, "They pack them in sawdust and place them in holes in the ground. And then when they want fresh drink, they're able to to take the raisin out of the sawdust that is a preservative and then add the water to them and re-swell the great and then they'll press the grape and they'll have fresh fruit of the vine year round." And it dawned on me that that's what this man was doing. He knew that he had to get the the the harvest out of the field in one day while it was optimum in its conditions. I can see that farmer, he would go out in the field. This is this is literally true. I'm not just telling you a story, but the farmer uh year after year had learned how to detect the humidity in the air by licking his finger and counting with his hand and one, two, three. And he was so sensitive, he would know when the spittle on his finger would dry. And if it did not dry quick enough, he knew that he could not get the grape off the vine uh that day. So he had to wait. And so one morning he would go out and he would lick his finger. One, two, and then all of a sudden he would look at his finger and it would be dry. And he knew that the atmospheric conditions was right. And he had to get his crop on the ground. And one day he rushed to the marketplace and he found all that he could that he thought would get his field harvested. And then he would he come back and he realized that they were slower than he anticipated and he went back and he hired some more thinking that's all I need. But they still did not work the way he expected them. I want to tell you this birds my spirit today that we have great men in the Louisiana district all over this nation preaching the apostolic gospel. And one man said, "If it wasn't for Louisiana, the gospel would never reach the whole world." And I halfway believe that. But I'm going to tell you something. We need to learn the sensitivity to the spirit and know what God is doing in this hour. Ladies and gentlemen, I submit to you, I'm not going to play second fiddle to a bunch of charismatics running around and just jabbering in tongues when the apostolic church is the greatest power of God that we have ever seen in this hour. At the 11th hour, he was more concerned about the harvest getting harvested than he was the money in his bank. God is willing to bankrupt heaven in this hour if we would just get in the fields and perform the harvest that God has called us to do. Hey Louisiana, somebody said that you had almost 40,000 in Sunday school this past Easter. I thank God for 40,000, but we need 80,000 in Sunday school in one year. What are you saying? I'm saying if God can raise up soul winners in this hour, it only takes one or two or three to double a church in one year. 1972. Hadn't been in church long. I went to Sunday school convention, San Diego, California. I believe it was 73. Might have been 72 in December. There's a gray-haired lady speaking. Now, you you have to forgive me, but back in those days, I didn't believe in women preachers. And uh I sit back on the back row because they had a lady up preaching. But then she said she wasn't a preacher, she was a lecturer. Well, that satisfied me and so I relaxed and started listening. I've changed my mind a little bit since then. But she talked about desire. I didn't know him. I thought that when somebody preached at a convention, you're supposed to believe them. I didn't know back in those days that preaching is a form of

entertainment. We have our Pentecostal Johnny Carson's and you know it's the God's truth. We've got our spiritual comedians and we love to hear preachers preach that can tell the best stories and we go out and we we we buy their tapes by the tens of thousands and if we would only do one tenth of what we've heard it would be all right. But we have learned to be entertained by the gospel of Jesus Christ. I thought she was sincere. I thought she meant what she said. I didn't know that she was just filling in time till we got down to Burger King. She said, "Whatsoever things you desire when you pray, believe you shall receive them, and you shall." I was ignorant. I was dumb as a stump. I When she got through, I thought, "I got a desire. I ran down the aisle, tapped on the on the thing till I got her attention. Her and her husband came over and I said, "I got a prayer request." They said, "Well, what what's your request?" I said, "I was young and foolish and ignorant." I said, "I want to be the greatest soul winner in America." They didn't know who I was. I was just some nerdy evangelist. only had one suit to my name and and I paid $29 for it and and I couldn't get it hemmed up because I didn't have any more money and my wife cut it off too short. The slick glib tonged evangelist of that hour called me a nerd. Told me I I couldn't have a revival. I didn't even look like an evangelist. Well, I got one thing to say to you. Oh my god, that's on tape. But I walked out of that San Diego convention center believing that that woman preached what she meant. And I set out to have one desire, not to be a great preacher. Not to end up at Louisiana camp meeting and preach. I I had one desire. God, I'm going to be the greatest soul win in America. I set my mind to it. God somewhere somebody's got to rise up and and and this is no offense to anybody else, but my mom and daddy not a preacher's home. And I and I'm not the a prophet or the son of a prophet. I was a nerd. I was a nobody. I I I got the Holy Ghost in in in Vidalia, Louisiana at an independent church, believe it or not. I really got it. Talked in tongue, baptized in Jesus name. Of course, I had to get it all over again when I got UPC.