Transcript of a published sermon by Marrell Cornwell, transcribed from YouTube. An attributed primary source — not Acts 2:38 Life doctrine text.
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Summary
Summary prepared by Acts 2:38 Life from the transcript below — the preacher’s words follow in full.
You shall have whatsoever you say
- He started this declaration practice about six years ago, when Wichita was in the heart and throes of a deep recession and people were losing their jobs; the Lord spoke to him to do it, and it works — you shall have whatsoever you say, according to Mark 11. We are going to learn how to prophesy: we prophesy all the time, especially mothers, who tell their kids to be careful going out in the street until the kids go out and get run over and wonder why — because you prophesied it. So prophesy something good: turn to five people, look them square in the eye, shake their hand, and say, you are going to get a raise on your job.
Scriptures: Mark 11
Glad to be in Missouri: this church can double in one revival
- Seating them, he says he is so glad to be here with the host pastor and his wife (the captioned surname stands unsettled in the transcript) — that sounds like a law firm to him — and very glad to be in the state of Missouri. He has had a burden for Missouri for a long time, though it has been quite a while since he has been in the state. The Lord spoke to him and said he wants to pour out the Holy Ghost in Missouri, that there is coming an outpouring and a great revival to the state — and, exactly what the Lord said: I want this church to double in one single revival.
Wichita 1977: the first sermon, from Genesis 13
- He first went to Wichita in 1977 and took the church with 20 people. It was depressed: they hold the record for the most church splits in a six-month period — three major splits — with very large indebtedness and no money, and a deacon board he cannot always tell from a demon board. His first sermon he preached in Wichita was from Genesis chapter 13 — Abraham separated from Lot, and the Lord said to Abraham, lift up now thine eyes and look from the place where you are, north, south, east, and west, and I will give you all the land that you see — and in that sermon, in August of 1977, he said this church will be running well over a thousand people in a very short time. The deacon told him he didn't have sense enough to run a thousand people, and he agreed: he was only 27, with more zeal than knowledge, sermon notes that read "shout like hell — the point's very weak." In less than three years they were averaging a thousand in Sunday school. The issue is not whether he has the knowledge to pastor a thousand — he doesn't, but he can learn — it is whether the members can make the transformation from what they are to what God wants them to be. In the next year or two, churches all over Missouri are going to experience revival like they have never experienced, and with it the outside criticism — the pastor accused of being a liberal, of letting down on the standards — which they will have to learn to reject while they do God's will: it is not the will of God for you to stay where you're at.
Scriptures: Genesis 13
The pews that would not move, and the Bible studies that filled them
- The 20 who were left all sat on the back four rows, with 14 rows of empty pews between them and him — most of them from Missouri, stubborn as the mule Kansas borrowed. Three times he stood to pray and asked them to move up at least one pew; three times he opened his eyes and not one had moved. So he started filling every pew between them and himself, one family at a time — and as fast as he won a family, the old members got to it and it never came back: they loved a small church, family owned and operated. So he started teaching home Bible study and would not let the people he was teaching come to church: 15 Bible studies a week made into groups, 157 adults in about nine months, while he was still preaching to 20 people on the back four rows — and the studies were paying more tithe than the church was paying him, against $3,000 a month of church bills on $1,000 a month coming in. In one group of 37 adults, a man who learned that Cornwell and his wife hired a babysitter to come teach them stood up, emptied a Folgers coffee can into his garbage compactor, punched a hole in the lid, and passed it: $2,000 that night, and $2,000 the next week and the next — they started paying their tithe through a Folgers coffee can. He has been drinking Folgers coffee ever since.
Small-church syndrome
- "Now I'm setting you up": you can have a small-church syndrome — the singers don't want new people coming in who might sing better, the deacons don't want men prayed through who might be better deacons, the musicians don't want rivals. You have to develop an attitude of: we have got to grow; our future depends on our ability to grow. They had 3,000 get the Holy Ghost on the day of Pentecost — back then that was a small church, and it could have developed the syndrome, could have bottlenecked the growth. His own bottleneck lady: fantastic at her job, but nobody could do it as good as she could, so she tried to do it all herself until her whole department bottled up; he split it in two, and her half grew back and the new half grew the same — they doubled again. The worship leader who said there was no room for two more chorus singers, because the platform was crowded: we'll build whatever room you need — they are new converts, they need a job to do, and you are going to facilitate them. Nobody is a sole owner of this church; this church belongs to the Lord Jesus Christ. You have got to want to grow.
Three parables read: the sower, the labourers, the virgins
- He reads three passages and talks about the three parables of a soul-winning church. From Matthew 13, beginning at verse 1: Jesus by the seaside, the multitudes, the ship — and the sower who went forth to sow: some seed by the wayside, some on stony ground, some among thorns, and some on good ground. The bad news first: there is absolutely no more good ground left in Missouri — the Baptists beat us to it, and the Methodists, and the Presbyterians, and the Catholics. The good news: God left three-fourths of the ground for us. The people who come into his church come in divorced or about to be, in debt, filing bankruptcy, just out of jail. The example: preaching a revival in Ferriday, Louisiana, he and his wife picked up a hitchhiking girl of about 19 or 20 on her way to Joe's pool hall — she had never been to church, asked what a revival was, and rode with them instead, followed his wife to the front row, got the Holy Ghost at the altar, and brought 12 or 15 more young people the next day, to a church that had run 80 in Sunday school for 40 years because it kept looking for good ground. From Matthew 20, verse 1: the householder who hired labourers for a penny a day and went out again at the third, sixth, ninth, and eleventh hours — why stand ye here all the day idle? Because no man hath hired us — and at evening paid every man a penny, a fair day's wage for the day. From Matthew 25: the ten virgins, five wise and five foolish, the foolish taking no oil, the midnight cry, and the wise refusing — the saddest verse in the whole Bible, he says: we come to church and get just enough for us to survive until the next service, but God wants us to have more than enough, enough oil to share with somebody else. These are the three parables of a soul winner, and he will examine them one at a time.
Scriptures: Matthew 13:1-8; Matthew 20:1-9; Matthew 25:1-9
The wayside: everybody has been walked on
- Back to Matthew 13. The wayside is the turnrow — the edge of the field the animals and the traveler packed hard and left unplowed — and in his pastoring he has found that everybody he meets has been walked on: done wrong by an ex, stepped on by a boss, betrayed by friends, cheated, cursed. They hear the word preached, but before they can leave the building the devil comes and steals the seed, because it has no depth of earth; the ground is too hard. This church does not need better preachers — Pentecost does not need better preachers; Billy Graham doesn't even qualify to tote some of our Bibles around — and no preacher is good enough to get hold of a man's heart from 75 feet away in a single sermon. The 37 who got the Holy Ghost in one revival and were gone the next week — the same 37 who had been getting it in every revival — one woman had backslidden five or six times before she got to the back door, and he told his wife he would put a sledgehammer in the pulpit and whack her while she was talking in tongues, since that was the only way she would be saved. Instead, after the next revival he went to every one of their homes and fixed them up with Bible study — some studies lasted seven, eight, nine months — and all 37 lived for God for years. It doesn't mean they are bad people; it means somebody stepped on them and their heart became hard. Sometimes, according to Jeremiah, you have to take the gospel plow and break up the fallow ground — the farmer's hardpan, a few inches below the topsoil, that only a chisel on heavy equipment will break. The word has to be talked to a man 18 inches from his face. Just having church is not enough: you have relied on three services a week to save your children, and three services a week is not enough against the hounds of hell attacking them every day.
Stony ground: the 90-day wonders and the hammer drill
- The second soil is the 90-day wonders — they live for God 30, 60, 90 days, and then you don't see them again, and the congregation starts placing blame: the preacher's fault, the choir's fault, the person who sat beside them. The truth is they have stony hearts and the word never got in; when the sun rose, the root went down, got blocked by the rock, and withered away. In Israel, on the tour bus with the guide Moshe, he had them stop at an orchard in full bloom on rocky ground and told Moshe the orchard was contrary to the word of God. Moshe explained: Israel cannot sell its poor ground to the government and plant it in CRP as Kansas does; when they came back in 1948 they were given desert, and they took hammer drills, drilled a three-quarter-inch hole down through the rock, set the orange seedling in the hole, and the root went down under the rock, grew, and broke the rock open. "I don't care how hard you are — you let me teach you the Bible long enough and I'm going to take a hammer drill on you." Then the California preacher — older, uneducated, not the kind you would want on a Sunday — who insisted God had given him two sermons for Cornwell's church, for Cornwell himself: the first, on a Sunday morning before 850 or 900 people, turned his back on the congregation and preached at the pastor — the depth of your revival is going to depend upon the depth of your repentance — and Cornwell made his way to the altar. The second, that night, to the congregation: some of you are going to leave this church; preacher, you are going to lose a lot of people. In the next 30 months they lost 90 families — not one run off, not one mad — a dark recession scattered them to St. Louis, Kansas City, Florida, California, New York, Detroit, and Denver. But for every family that left, God replaced them with seven, and at the end of the 30 months they were running 1,200. God doesn't need you as much as you need God.
The signature soul winner
- The number one greatest soul winner in America came right out from under their noses — from Joplin, Missouri, a suburb called Goodman: Arley Foresight (the caption forms stand unsettled in the transcript). He has an incurable disease; he has to take steroids every day, and if he goes 72 hours without them he is a dead man — his flesh falls off his bones, breaks, peels, and oozes, and Cornwell has found him in his office stiff as a board, rushed him to the hospital for liquefied steroids. He came to work at Boeing aircraft, got laid off, and came to Cornwell a quiet man full of reasons he can't work for God. He has just taught his 31,000st Bible study — on Cornwell's staff full-time for 35 years, an ordained minister who has preached three sermons from the pulpit, and he has won more people to God than everybody in the state of Missouri combined and the state of Kansas combined. A church has got to have that one signature soul winner. But a calling to be a soul winner is not enough — you have to have a burden strong enough to reject other things in order to work for him. This whole parable of the four soils is not talking about how only 25 percent can be saved; it is talking about how much work it is going to take to save some people.
The convert who won the preacher's own family
- A few years ago he decided to quit traveling and stay home in Wichita — until a Louisiana pastor talked him into one more unadvertised home-Bible-study seminar. In that crowd sat a brand-new convert of about 25 with a notepad, who took in the whole parable of the four soils. The seminar town was 30-some miles from Cornwell's hometown, where he has nine brothers and sisters and a mother and father, none of them in church and none of them saved, though he had tried to witness to them for years — it wasn't for them, from him. The young man drove to the hometown, knocked on his daddy's door, and asked if he would take a Bible study from him; surprised, his father said yes. He drove 35 miles every week, sat at his mother and father's table, and taught his mother and father and brothers and sisters a Bible study — and every one of them was baptized in the name of Jesus. You never know when you reach out to do something for God for somebody else, that God will send somebody to you to do the impossible. You never know who will make a good Bible teacher — you don't have to be dynamic; you may be a slow, methodical plodder.
Matthew 20 examined: the harvest that will not wait
- Back to the 20th chapter of Matthew (the parable recounted and examined, not re-read). If Matthew 13 tells us how much labour it takes to win souls, Matthew 20 tells us the man's vineyard could not wait: he hired at the first hour, the third, the sixth, the ninth, and at the end of the day still hadn't got the harvest done, so he hired more for the one hour — and paid every man a full day's wage. Why hire people under those circumstances? In Delano, California, coming off the mountain into Bakersfield, he saw migrant workers rolling what looked like freezer paper down the rows of a vineyard, five and six hundred yards long, and drove out to ask. The superintendent explained: when the weatherman says there will be 72 hours of very low humidity, they cut every cluster of grapes in the whole field in one single day, lay them on the paper for 72 hours until the skin toughens, then roll the paper up in huge bales and finish the drying in the Sun-Maid sheds — put them in boxes or trucks and the grape ruptures and is no good for a raisin. In the old days the raisins were packed in boxes under sawdust, re-swelled and pressed for fresh grape drink year-round, even iced in goatskin bags in the ground. The householder of the parable would go at daylight to the northwest corner of his field, wet his finger, and count: if it was still wet at ten, no harvest today; the morning it had dried by two, he would scream "Harvest time," run to the marketplace, and keep going back — at nine, at noon, and frantic at the eleventh hour, because every grape he doesn't harvest today is going to be lost. The Lord's harvest is more important to him than his money, more important than General Motors, more important than Boeing — and in this eleventh hour he needs soul winners; he needs labourers.
No excuse left: his mother, and the lady who could not read
- "You say I'm too old": his mother got the Holy Ghost when she was 75 — taught a Bible study, then came to his home church, walked down the aisle, and instantly spoke in tongues when he met her halfway and laid hands on her. She had only gone to the second grade and could barely read or write, but she got a conviction to be a soul winner and became the greatest soul winner Ferriday has ever known — she filled the Ferriday church up at 75. She called him and made him buy a taping system for the church (they started taping all their services in 1977) so she could have his sermons; every month the secretary sent her a shoebox of tapes, and she ran a route — Concordia Bank and Trust, where the president got first choice, the doctor's office, the drugstore, the neighborhood — collecting yesterday's tapes and leaving new ones, until she had won 40-something families out of one neighborhood just by delivering tapes. And the little old lady whose picture he carries in his Bible (her caption-garbled name stands unsettled in the transcript): she cannot read or write, worked as a janitor in a nursing home for 35 or 40 years, and has never missed a tithing check in 38 years. At his seminar she stood weeping at the altar: I want to be a soul winner so bad, but I can't read or write — do you think God would help me? "Where there's a will, there's a way." About three months later she walked in with a beautiful young family: "That's my Bible study." She had found the tapes a man had made of Cornwell's own Bible study, borrowed them, and taught the study by playing the tape and turning the chart pages where the page-turn sounded on the tape. The family cross-examined Cornwell — baptized in Jesus name? Holy Ghost in the baptistery? speaking in tongues? holiness? — and let him baptize them. I want to remove every excuse anybody had: you may not be able to read, you may not be able to write, you may not be able to talk, but there's a way to win a soul if you'll get the love of God in your heart and a burden for your church to grow.
Matthew 25 examined: oil enough to share
- In Matthew chapter 25 it talks about five wise virgins and five foolish virgins (the parable recounted and examined, not re-read). He realizes it has biblical eschatology involved, that it is talking about the end time — but it has another message: they all slumbered and slept, all of their lights went out at midnight, and when the cry was made the five foolish said, give us of your oil, and the wise said no, I don't have enough for you and me. Here he stops: he has been in Wichita 38 years and cannot think of any time in 38 years when they have not been in revival — 38 consecutive years of growth, financially and numerically, from one bus to 25 and fixing to go to 40; right now the church is teaching somewhere around 125 different Bible study groups around the city of Wichita; once a year they mail 250,000 brochures to every door within a 35-mile radius and touch 750,000 people, reaching for the 80 of Kansas's 108 counties that have no church because the community is so small. In the United Pentecostal Church he has taught seminars for 38 years, with more than 10,000 people a year committing to home Bible study. If the Lord asked of you some oil to give to somebody else, would you have enough? Sunday morning we are going to have church — will you drag in Sunday night and wait for the song leader to get you pumped up, or will you obey the gospel and enter into his courts with thanksgiving, come in on fire for God, ready to share your oil with somebody else? The first parable talked about how much it is going to cost you, labour-wise; the second, how important the harvest is; the third is talking about the urgency — God has to have labourers in the vineyard.
The close: give us a burden for souls
- All standing: he realizes he has gone very lengthy tonight and they have not had a break, and he prays — for a congregation he believes God has already moved upon, a people ready for revival, ready for an end-time gathering, ready for the greatest revival God is ever going to send to Lebanon, Missouri. Reach over and lay your hand on your neighbor's shoulder: Lord, you've given us the calling — now give us that burden for souls. Every head bowed one more moment: if the Lord was to bring somebody across your path in the next 90 days that you could win to God — maybe through Bible study, maybe through a tape, maybe through a friendship — and you would be willing to say, I will try to win them to God, if you would be willing to be a vessel for the Lord, come down this aisle and stand here with me: I will be a soul winner; I will be what you want me to be.
One more story: the eleven-year-old's Bible club
- Can I tell you one more little story. There was a little girl in his church, 11 years old, somewhere in the fourth or fifth grade (she is named in the verbatim; her name is redacted in the cleaned text and withheld here — a minor named by a third party; see packet.md). He had done a seminar in their church, and she got under a burden to win somebody to God. She asked her teacher if she could teach her classroom a Bible study — no, honey, we can't do that in the classroom. She would not take no for an answer; she went to the principal — no again — but as she started to walk out he said, we can give you a classroom before school or after school, and you can start a Bible club. She chose the morning: an hour before school, three or four kids at first, and within a few days the classroom was full; she had to do it every day because everybody wanted in. The principal wrote Cornwell a letter — he has it in his file at church: the girl brought two rows of kids to church, every one of them got the Holy Ghost, and every one of them is still living for God today; the school was a troubled school, and this little girl, an 11-year-old teaching a Bible study in a classroom, transformed the entire school single-handedly because she wouldn't take no for an answer. You can be a soul winner — all you have to do is love the Lord and learn how to love people. In the morning at 9:00 he is going to be teaching them on how to have a breakthrough in teaching Bible studies and being a personal soul winner. God bless you, brother [host pastor — captioned surname stands unsettled in the transcript]; thank you for letting me come. God bless y'all.
Scripture index: Mark 11; Genesis 13; Matthew 13:1-8; Matthew 20:1-9; Matthew 25:1-9.
Transcript
I started this about 6 years ago when a witch was in a the heart and throws of a deep recession and you couldn't buy a job and people was losing their jobs and the Lord spoke to me to do this and I started doing it and it works the Bible says you shall have whatever you say y'all y'all read your Bible here yes sir you shall have whatsoever you say according to Mark 11 so I just started doing this we're going to learn how to prophesy anybody believe in prophesying amen we prophesy all the time especially mothers they tell their kids you better be careful you going to go out in the street and get run over so they go out in the street and they get run over and wonder why they did because you prophesied it amen we're going to prophesize something good okay turn to five people look them Square in the eye shake their hand and say you are going to get a raise on your job hallelujah praise God praise God praise God praise God Amen thank you you can be seated first of all I want to say I am so glad to be here with thoron and thoron amen that sound like a law firm to me amen but I am very glad to be in the state of Missouri I have had quite a burden for the state of Missouri for a long time but it seems like that people in Missouri don't like me and so I it's been quite a while since I've been in the state of Missouri but the Lord spoke to me a number of years ago and spoke very soundly to me and said that he wanted to pour out the holy ghost in the state of Missouri that there was going to come an outpouring and a great Revival to the state of Missouri Hall and I'm just going to tell you exactly what the Lord said he said I want this church to double in one single Revival anybody believe that this church can double in one revivable amen when I went how many here has ever heard me preach before would you raise your hand or we got a few when I first went to Witchita in 1977 I took the church and had 20 people and it was kind of depressed we hold the guines Book of World Records for having the most Church splits in a sixth month period of time we went through three major Church splits in six months and so we hold the guines Book of World Records for the most splits in a six-month period of time and when I went there we had no money we had very large indebtedness and one of my demons I mean deacons excuse me I can't tell the difference myself see that's the reason I got kicked out of Missouri cuz I I call a deacon board a demon board but never never mind praise God one of my deacons came and and my first sermon that I preached in wit talk was from Genesis chapter 13 when Abraham had separated from lot and the Lord said to Abraham lift up now thine eyes and look from the place where you are north south east and west and I will give you all the land that you see and so I asked the question what do you see from where you're sitting or how far can you see from where you're sitting and in that sermon in August of 1977 I made the statement I said in a very short time this church will be running well over a thousand people and that if you don't want to run a
thousand people then don't ask me to be your pastor cuz I said this church is going to run a thousand people well the the de excuse me the Deacon came up to me and he said you don't have sense enough to run a thousand people and I said you know you said that to hurt my feelings but I said you you told the truth for one I said you're right I don't have an ability to Pastor a thousand people I was only 27 years old and I had more Zeal than knowledge for a fact on several of my sermons out beside a point that I was going to make I wrote a little note said shout like hell the point's very weak so I had to shout make up for what I didn't know and so and and less than 3 years I think about 2 years and N months later we was averaging a th000 people in Sunday school and I told him I said it's not a question as to whether I've got knowledge to run a thousand people because I don't but I said I am going to learn how to Pastor a church of a thousand people I said but that's not the issue the issue is can you be a member of a church that runs a th000 people people just like the preacher has to get knowledge to know how to Pastor a thousand people you also have to make a transformation from being what you are to being what God wants you to be all right can I say that again I said we all have to make transitions as God begins to pour out the Holy Ghost we have to learn how to live in each state that God puts us in and I am very positive that in the next year or two years you're going to see a lot of churches in the state of Missouri start experiencing a Revival like they've never experienced before can I have an amen to that amen and and if you're not used to your church growing by Leaps and Bounds it's going to set some of you back and you're going to wonder what happened but the truth of the matter is that we've had people come in a few here and a few there and a family here and a family there and and we're used to having just a handful of new converts around but what's going to happen when you have 200 new converts around and your pastor starts getting accused of of being a a liberal and they start saying how much he let down on the standards and that he don't believe F meets greasy anymore and you're going to have to learn how to adjust to the outside criticism but at the same time reject that criticism and say I'm going to do God's will for my life and for this church it's not the will of God for you to stay where you're at can I have it amen am now and getting started I'm just kind of introducing myself to you when I first went to Witchita the 20 people that was left they all sat on the back four roads of the church and I had 14 rows of empty pews between me and the first person and I I think most of them were from Missouri because they were very stubborn but I got news for you how many ever heard of the stubborn as a Missouri Mule you ever heard that statement well I'm going to tell you something y'all borrowed that mule from Kansas and so I first Sunday I was there I said I'd like for y'all to move up a little closer and I said I'm going to stand and pray and I said life got to move up a few pews so I got through praying I prayed a wonderful Methodist prayer when I got through praying open my eyes and not one of them had moved and so I said okay I said you didn't hear me I said I'm going to close my eyes and pray again and I'd like for you to move up when I pray so I closed my eyes and prayed again and opened my eyes not one of them and moved and I I was smiling and so I said okay I'm going to ask you one more time I'm going to pray while I'm praying I'd like for you to move up at least one Pew I pray open my eyes not what up been moved it started in my feet this burning
sensation it worked its way up my Cals my thighs my hip my shoulders out my arm and out my tongue and I said okay I can see you're not going to move so here's what I'm going to do I'm going to fill up every Pew between you and I and then I'm going to keep adding until I shove you out in the forer and I said I'm going keep adding until you're out the back door and so I started bringing in one family at a time and and just by the time I'd win a family and bring him into the house of God they would get to that family and the first thing you know that family never came back again they loved a small Church well y'all getting awful quiet I said they loved a small Church you know in a small church you can run everything in a small church it's usually family owned and operated y'all getting too quiet can I have it amen amen and and so what I did is I I started teaching home Bible study and and when I would teaching home Bible study I wouldn't let the people I was teaching come to church I said no you can't come to church and and I was teaching 15 Bible studies a week and I had to I had to make all of my Bible studies Bible study groups and and and about nine months later I was still preaching to 20 people on the back four rows but I had 157 adults and 15 different Bible studies and I wouldn't let them come to the house of God I mean why why bring him to the house of God to have them sit among 20 backsliders where they were paying me more tithe in the Bible study than the church was paying me amen we had we had three Church payments and we had about $3,000 a month and bills going out of the church and it was only $1,000 a month tithe offering Mission billing fund Sunday School Penny marches and everything Lock Stock and Barrel there's only $1,000 a mon coming into the church and when your outgo exceeds your income it will lead to your downfall and I started getting nasty letters in the mail and W to know when I was going to go to work and help pay these Church bills and I got up and told the church I said I don't believe in working I'm a preacher all I do is sleep and eat fried chicken and and and I Don't Preach good till I get about a a a good dose of chicken grease on my lips and and and they got mad at me because I wouldn't go take a job and but yet the bills kept getting paid and they never did figure out how the bills were getting paid and the truth of the matter was I had one Bible study that turned into a group and there was 37 adults in that one Bible study and I went to Bible study one night and they said preacher you got any kids I said yeah sister Co I we have three kids they said where's your kids at I said they're at the babysitters and the man stood up and said you mean to tell me you hire a babysitter are y'all listening okay y'all hire a babysitter to come teach us a Bible study and I said yeah he said we can't have that he stands up and goes to the kitchen and gets a folder's coffee can takes that black lid off that red bucket opens the garbage compactor and P pours that coffee in the garbage compactor puts the lid back on the can Jabs a hole in it with a butcher knife walks Out Among the 37 adults says all right everybody Annie up I love those kind of offerings I think you ought to Annie up every Sunday and and so they fill that can up and gave it to my wife that was a mistake and so we left we left there you got on understand I was driving a a Toyota with 165,000 Mi on it and a quarter panel was caved in and the paint was peeling off and the tires were bald and I used to evangelize and as soon as we got down the first street light I hit the brakes pulled on the street light and I said count the loot and they had put $2,000 in that bucket and so I brought the bucket back and they put $2,000 in it the next week and the next week and the next week and they started paying their tithe through a folder's coffee can praise God and
I've been drinking folders coffee ever since now I'm setting you up I know you know that but I'm setting you up let me tell you something you can have a small Church syndrome and the singers don't want you people coming in because you don't want to compete with new people that might sing better than you and the deacons don't want to grow because you might pray a bunch of men through that might be a better Deacon than you and you don't want to grow because you might pray some people through that can play music as good as you can Welly that quiet in the crowd now so I think you got to get a the first thing you you got to develop an attitude of we got to grow our future depends on us growing you're not listening I said our future depends on our ability for us to grow again can I have it amen amen they had 3,000 get the Holy Ghost at the day of Pentecost and and you know what that was back in then that was a small church and they could have developed a small Church syndrome right and a small Church syndrome is I don't want to grow or I will bottleneck the growth we have a lady and she is from Missouri by the way and I gave her a job to do and she she was fantastic in that job but she had one problem and that is nobody could do it as good as she could and so she Tred to do it all by herself on and and and her entire department became so bottlenecked that that we couldn't grow anymore and I couldn't take her out of it because if if I if I took her out of that position she' backslide over and I didn't want her to backslide and so what I did was I split the department made two departments out of it and G and gave somebody the other half of the department and she kept half the department well she grew back to the size she was before the split and the split grew the same size as the other group and now we've doubled again because we split the group we have a lady in our church that leads our singing and our worship and she has some chor singers on the platform and sometime we'll have 8 10 12 15 chor singers or praise singers on the platform and our platform has become very very crowded and so I brought her a couple of people to her other day and I said they going to start singing in the chorus group with you and she had to audas say well we don't need anymore and it started in my feet this burning sensation she said we don't have room I said we'll build whatever room you need I said I got two more cor singers that's going to sing up here with you they're new converts they need a job to do and and you're going to facilitate them praise God I didn't give her a choice I said we got two more singers that's going to sing on this platform I don't want anybody thinking that they are soul owners of the church this church Belongs to the Lord Jesus Christ so I get a I guess what I got to tell you is you got to want to grow that's right you got to set your mind to Growing can I have it amen amen now I'm going to read three passages of scripture and I'm going to talk about the three Parables of a soulin in church in Matthew Chapter 13 if you turn there with me for just a moment Matthew Chapter 13 and and beginning at verse number one the same day went Jesus out of the house and he sat by the seaside and great multitudes were gathered together unto him so they went into a ship and sat and the whole multitude stood on the shore and he spoke many things to them in Parables and he said behold the SE went forth to sew and some of the seed fell by the wayside some fell on Stony ground some fell on thorns and
some fell on what oh y'all do read your Bible here don't you it fell on good ground well I got some good news and I got some bad news for you now let me give you the bad news first the bad news is there is absolutely no more good ground left in Missouri one of the reason that churches don't grow is that they're always looking for good ground but the Baptist beat us to the good ground and the Methodist beat us to the good ground and the Presbyterians beat us to the good ground and and the Catholics beat us to the good ground and all these other churches have already taken up all the good ground now here's the good news God left three four voice of the ground for us when somebody new comes into my church they either come in divorced right or they're about to get a divorce or they're thinking about a divorce they come in and they they got bills they can't pay they're in debt they're filing bankruptcy they just got out of jail I I haven't had a good person come in my church in so long I don't even what a good person is anymore some of them you can tell have been among the Thorns some of them have been by the wayside some are very stonehead ston hearted can I have it amen but if you're going to reach Lebanon if you're going to reach this area you need to understand you got to quit looking for the good ground and looking for the ground that needs working anybody listen to what I'm trying to tell you I am I am not embarrassed at the way people live that come to my church amen I'll give you an example I was preaching a Revival one time in a place called Faraday Louisiana anybody know where Faraday Louisiana is it's the home of Jimmy Swagger Mickey Jilly Jerry Lewis and Great Balls of Fire and my wife and I would go to church on Saturday night and there was this girl on the side of the road hitchiking and she was about 19 20 years old and I pulled up beside her and I said you need a ride and she said yes I said get in we're going the same way you're going so she got in the back seat and and you could take all of her clothes and put in a thimble and still have room to sew it with and I said where are you going she said I'm going to Joe's pool hall Joe poolhall was the local Club in wiah it was the Juke Joint it was the dive it was the hell hole of Faraday and it was Joe's po Hall was between where we was at in our church and so I I stopped at Jo Pall to let her out it look kind of funny here here here's two holy people with Jezebel herself praise God and I'm letting her out at at the bar and she said where are y'all going so dressed up I said we're going to church she said you're going where on Saturday night I said I'm I'm an evangelist I'm a preacher and I'm preaching a Revival she said what's a Revival and I explained to her what a Revival was and how we have a series of services and I preach every night and and she said well you know what I a been I I ain't never been to church he said can I go with y'all I said oh my God I said sure and so we took her to church I was expecting her to sit on the back row but she followed my wife up to the front row every man in the church backslid we had to get goug take people right eye out and she s on the front row when I got through preaching she come to the Altar and she's standing at the altar and she looked like it it well I ain't going to tell you what it looked like you might think I'm a red blooded American if I tell you that she got the Holy Ghost and she got the Holy Ghost with almost no clothes on and all the women gathered around her because they didn't want no men praying with
her and we took her home and she said y'all going to go to church again tomorrow and I said yes she said C can I can I catch a ride with y'all I said sure and and we went to pick her up well she had probably 12 or 15 more young people with her and we brought it took me two or three car loads to get them all to church and they didn't s on the back row they s on the front row the church got mad at me because I brought all of these ill-reputed people to the house of God but see you know that church for years and years had run 80 in Sunday school for 40 years because they kept looking for good ground when the truth of the matter is there's bad ground all around you and if you ever forget where God brought you from you're in a bad situation I know where God brought me from can I have an amen I was so bad that I went to 12 years of school and Faraday and never had one invitation to attend anybody's Church Methodist Baptist Catholic Presbyterian or Pentecostal come on because they didn't want the likes of me in their clean house of God but the truth of the matter is this is where God can clean up your dirty heart all right let me give you one more Parable in the Book of Matthew chapter 20 and verse number one watch this now for the Kingdom of Heaven is like unto a man that is a householder which when out Earth in the morning to hire laborers into his Vineyard and when he had agreed with the laborers for a penny a day he sent them into his Vineyard and went out about the third hour and saw others standing idle in the marketplace he said go also in the vineyard whatever is right I will give you and they went their way and he went out about the sixth hour and the ninth hour and did likewise and about the 11th hour he went out and found others standing idle and said them why stand ye here all the day they Idol and they say because no man hath hired us he said them go you also in the vineyard and whatever is right that shall you receive so when evening was come the Lord of The Vineyard said to his servant call the laborers and give them their hire beginning from the first of the last under the first and when and when they came that were hired about the 11th hour every man received a penny and a penny by the way was a day wage that is equivalent to $275 in to day's money so that he was paying them a fair day's wage but he gave those that only labored one hour the same thing as he gave them that that that that worked the 11 hours or the 12 hours and and many times when we read this we totally misinterpret this passage and I'm going to straighten you out here in just a few minutes praise God and then there's a third parable of the Soul winner of the Soul winning Church found in Matthew chapter 25 then shall the Kingdom of Heaven be liken the 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 tarried they all slumbered and slept and at midnight there was a cry made behold the bridegroom cometh go out to meet him then all those virgins arose and trimmed their lamp and the foolish said to the wise give us of your oil our lamps are gone out but the wiv ERS saying and this is the saddest verse in the whole Bible they said not so lest there be not enough for us and you we come to church and we get just enough for us to survive until the next service but God wants us to have more than enough there's more Holy Ghost Falls in this place on Sunday night then you can shake a stick at and and somehow we still don't have enough on Wednesday night to share with anybody else come on folk we got to change our attitude we got to get enough oil that we can share with somebody else can I have an amen and so this is the three Parables of a soul winner and I want to examine them one at a time now go back to Matthew 13 for just a moment and Jesus said that some of the seed fell by the
wayside now I don't know in Missouri if y'all have cotton farms in Missouri or not y'all don't raise cotton in Missouri okay well how many knows what the Wayside is anybody ever heard of a turnrow in the old days when you get to end of the field your animals turned and went the other way and they left the edge of the fields unplowed and they call that the turnrow the Wayside it's where the traveler and the sojer rather than walked through your field he walked around your field and the ground became hard and packed and you know what I have found in my pastoring is that everybody I meet has been walked on I I guarantee if I took a census here tonight that that a vast majority of you would say to me somebody has done me wrong you know if you if you've gone through a divorce your ex has done you wrong and of course you've done the ex wrong your boss has stepped on you your friends have betrayed you somebody's cheated you somebody's barred money from you didn't pay you back somebody's cursed you and and and I can't find very few people in this world that hasn't been walk on and and they are hard and imp pack and the and the Bible says that that the word is preached to them and they hear it but before they can leave the building the Devil comes and steals the seed because it doesn't have any depth of Earth and it can't get in the soil because it's so hard you understand what I'm saying here and I'm going to tell you what there's no telling how many people come to this church on Sunday morning or Sunday night or Wednesday night and they hear the word and let me tell you something this church does not need better preachers Pentecost does not need better preachers I mean I I don't mean to be ugly but Billy Graham doesn't even qualify to tote some of our Bibles around I mean Billy Graham is one of the greatest Baptist preachers ever Liv but I've seen Pentecostal preachers preach the fire down you have too we've heard the greatest preaching in the whole world there's not going to come a greater preacher to bring you Revival you've already heard the greatest preachers that's alive and I'm going to tell you something it's about 80 ft 75 ft from the pull pit to the back row back there and there's not a a preacher good enough anywhere to preach and and get a hold of a man's heart and cause him to live for God with a sermon 75 ft away they hear the word and they walk out of this building and before they get home the devil has stolen from them everything they've heard can I have an amen tell you a little story when I went to witto I never will forget the first Revival I had and I had an evangelist come and he was he was a flaming Evangel of fire and and everybody's neighbor showed up for Revival we had 37 people get the Holy Ghost wow we shouted and talked in tongues and popped our neck and done the whirly bird Hallelujah and the next week when the Evangel was gone not one of them was back at church I couldn't figure that out so the next Revival had evangelist come and we had 37 people got the holy ghost in the second Revival but the thing is it was the same 37 got it the first Revival and come to find out the same 37 have been getting the Holy Ghost in every Revival there was one woman she aggravated me she aggravated me to death and I told my wife I said she had gotten the Holy Ghost in five or six different revivals and she backslid before she got to the back door and I said next time she come to church I'm going to get me a sledgehammer putting the pull pit and as soon as she starts talking in Tong I'm a
whacker my wife said you go to jail you'll kill her I said well at least you'll go to heaven I mean if she's going to be saved you going to have to kill her while she talking in tongue because she ever stopped talking in tongue she going to backslide and the Lord spoke to me he said I've been wanting to kill her for years so after that re the next Revival I went to all every one of them's home and I got them fixed up with Bible study and did you know we taught all 37 of those chronic backsliders Bible study some some of the Bible studies lasted seven eight and nine months in their home but when we had another Revival and they came back and they prayed through this time would you believe that all 37 of those people live for God for years before they started dying off just because somebody he's the gospel and they receive it and they walk out and they backslide doesn't mean that they're not good human beings it doesn't mean they deserve to go to hell because they don't live for God you better listen to me now praise God it means that somewhere somebody has stepped on them and their heart had become so hard sir that you're not going to win them by preaching a sermon to them on Sunday night or Sunday morning or Wednesday night I'm not interested in how many people get the Holy Ghost I'm not interested in how many people attend church I'm interested in finding out how many people that I can take to heaven with me many of your children don't live for God not because they're bad children but they have a genetic flaw in their life in that their heart has been stepped on so much and sometimes according to Jeremiah you got to take the gospel plow and you got to break up the F ground and you're not going to break up the F ground with a single sermon sometimes you have to plow and plow and plow we have a couple of farmers in our church that are large Farmers one one of men in our church they have a farm that has over 13,000 acres and they they have wheat and corn and soybeans and they have huge Machinery he and I are pretty good friends and one day I said I said I was digging a grave the other day I had a dog that died and out behind the house there was a wheat field and I was going to I was going to bury the dog in the wheat field and it it it looked like it was going to be easy ground to dig and so I got a shovel and I I went out way out behind the house and I started digging in this field and I I dug down about five or 6 Ines and it was like I hit a concrete wall and I had to go back and I had to get a pickaxe and I had to break that ground and I said I said I don't understand how that the farmer has anything to grow because I said the the ground is so shallow and he said what you've experienced is that you have broken through the the the the top soil the the 3 or 4 inches of top soil and there's a you get down so far and you get to what they call hard pan and he said what we do is we take equipment and we have a a a big piece of equipment called a chisel and when you bring it put that chisel in back that tractor it digs down deep and breaks up that hard pan that's what the Wayside is it's it's that hard pan that has has has never been cultivated it's called fow ground
or the hard pan and and you you're not going to break that hard pan by a 30 minute sermon but it's going to take some heavy equipment to get down into that man's heart in life and dig out the stuff that shouldn't be there God didn't say because you with the Wayside that you've got to go to hell because you're hard when there's a way to soften your heart and that's through the word of God being talked to you and preached to you 18 Ines from a man's face can I have an amen amen somebody asked the other day what kind of retention rate I have I told myself I don't have a r attention rate I win everybody I teach because when I latch on to you I'm not going to let you go because I know the word of God is like a chisel it'll break up any hardness of your heart can I have an amen amen somebody said amen it's important to understand that that just having church is not enough okay let me say it loud and clear you missed it I said just having church is not enough you have relied on three services a week to save your children and three services a week is not enough to save your children against the the the the hounds of hell that's out there every day attacking your children if they don't have the gospel plow in their life to break up the hard ground they're going to be lost can I have it amen amen so somehow we got to get people to get this Bible back in their hands and study this Bible for themselves can I have an amen all right let me go to the second one the Bible said some of the seed fell on Stony ground this is what I call the 90-day wonders you you preach to people they come in the house of God they live for God about 30 days 60 days and some will last 90 days and then you don't see them again and and you know what that will discourage a congregation from having Revival is when they see people come in and they stay a little while and they leave and you know what you do you start trying to place blame as to why people quit coming to the house like God I tell you what it's a preacher's fault if he is a better preacher they wouldn't have backslid oh I tell you what it is if the choir would sing a little bit harder and a little bit better they wouldn't have left out or somebody sit beside them and didn't speak to them and we you we start blaming each other for people leaving the house of God and and don't tell me you hadn't do it because I see it already on your face the truth of the matter is they got Stony hearts and the word never got in their heart for them to live for God the Bible said when the sun rose The Roots went down got blocked by The Rock and it withered away well my wife and I went to Israel and I I would suggest everybody go to Israel one time we was on a brand new Mercedes tour bus had 40 We There were 40 of us went and we was touring Israel we went to all the sites and and we had about 11 days over there and and I started getting frustrated because everywhere we'd stop I'd take my Bible and I would teach from the Bible at the place where we stop but in Israel they have orange groves banana plantations almond Orchards Olive Orchards everywhere for a fact in the springtime Israel is in full bloom it's one of the most beautiful Nations that you'll ever see and if you really want the full effect of it go to Egypt first and then fly into Israel and you'll think you left hell and went to
heaven I mean in in Cairo they tell you don't rub your face because you can get Hepatitis just from the atmosphere and rubbing your face and but when you fly into into te T aiv and you get off the airplane you get on the tour bus and and see all the Orange Groves and and the banana plantations and and the Almond Orchards and the olive Orchards it's beautiful and so we on the tour bus and I'm looking out the window and our guide's name was Moshe or Moses and I said I said Moshe I said I got a problem I said at the next Orchard I want you to stop this bus and so we pull up into this big Orchard and I said everybody get off the bus we all got off the bus we walked out in the orchard I said this Orchard is contrary to the word of God I said the Bible says that if you plant the seed on the rocky ground because it has no depth of Earth when the Sun rises it Withers away but I said this Orchard looks pretty much like it's in full Bloon and I said I don't understand this Moshe I said I said there's something wrong here he said no no no no he said where where do you live I said I live in Kansas he said would you believe even if I told you I've been to Kansas I said well if you tell me I do he said I was in Kansas and they said I was visiting some of the large Farms that you'll have out in Western Kansas to take back idea back to bring them back to Israel and he said he said I noticed that y'all have a lot of ground in Western Kansas that's planted in This Tall Grass called CRP and and he said he said in in in in Kansas we have 90,000 square miles would you believe that 75,000 square miles is cultivatable in Kansas that Kansas alone can feed everybody in the world a loaf of bread every day that's how great Kansas is but he said he said y'all got so much land he said remember y'all are 15 times larger than the entire nation of Israel and he said he said if y'all have a piece of ground that is not very fertile y'all sell it to the government plant CRP and they pay you to not plant but he said we can't do that when we came back to Israel in 1948 they gave us 5,000 square miles out in the desert and made a nation out of the desert part of Israel and they did not expect us to be able to survive but he said he said what we done was we took these huge hammer drills and a hammer drill is a drill that you use to drill through masonry and said we' get to a rock and we' take the hammer drill and we would drill a 3/4 inch hole down through that rock and he said we would take the orange seedling and we' put it in that hole and that root would go down through that hole that we had drilled get underneath the Rock and start growing and then the as the tree grew it would break open that rock what when when he got to telling us that story he didn't realize what he was doing to my faith I feel the Holy Ghost in this room right now I'm going tell you something I don't care how hard you are you let me teach you the Bible long enough and I'm going to take a hammer drill on you and I'm going to work on that Stony heart you got and I'm going to drill a hole in that heart cuz can I have it amen amen and sometimes you can't drill a hole in a in a rock in one service or one Bible study you got to keep on that hammer drill until you get that hole in that heart and you get that one little seed of God's word in their life it'll break up the Stony ground am you let the word of God start doing miracles for people you let the word of God start working on somebody else's behalf and I'm going to tell you what's going to happen you'll find them sitting on your Pew wanting more and more and more and more and
more somebody said amen I'm going to meddle okay I reserve the right to meddle and never service okay I had a preacher from California call me he's not a good preacher he was a kind of an older fell and he pastored a great church but not a real large church but a great church and he's not the kind of person that you want to come preach for you on Sunday morning or Sunday night I mean he's un pretty much uneducated and he stumbles over his words and I preached him a Revival in 1970 and we became friends and so I'm pastoring a big church now he calls me up and said brother Cornwell I said yes sir he said I got to come preach for you I said oh no you know I like these powerful preachers you know I like somebody that shakes their fist at you and spits on you all that kind of stuff he said God gave me two sermons for your church said I got to come preach them to you what do you do he's your Elder I can't tell him no I said well come on so he came to our church and he got us up on Sunday morning and there's probably 850 900 people in the Bible class and he turns his back on them he gets right in front of me and I thought I thought you said God gave us a sermon for the church he said God gave me this sermon for you man our congregation's ears perked up they all stood and started clapping the preacher going to get preached to Hallelujah and he said I want to tell you something preacher the depth of your Revival is going to depend upon the depth of your repentance that sucker was telling me I was a sinful man and he told me I had to repent that's my job to tell people to repent amen so I hung my head felt like a sheep killing dog and when he got through preaching I just kind of made my way to the altar he comes over and prays for me come on preach repent my congregation got to wonder what I've been doing wrong y'all got evil minds and the truth of the matter was he was right on target I was sinning and it ain't none of your business what I was doing wrong cuz I got just as much right to being forgiven as you got am that's right you got to realize that you'reall not very holy because yall got the most Unholy preacher in Kansas to come preach for you and the reason I know I'm the mosto Unholy is that they've told me I am but I I I knew he was right on Target and I I dreaded going to church that Sunday night I I dreaded it cuz if if the second sermon is anything like the first sermon I don't know if I can handle it or not and would you believe everybody and his neighbor shows up I mean they spread like wildfire come here the preacher preach to our preacher every every one of my enemies showed up and he looked at our congregation and he he he didn't face me this time he faced the audience and this was the gist of a sermon he said the Lord spoke to me and said that some of you are going to leave the church well that made me real happy I worked my heart to get them all there and now he's going to run them all off he said for fact he said some of you got attitudes that you don't think the church can run without you but he said God sent me here to tell this preacher preacher he turns around he faces
me he said you're going to lose a lot of people he said for a fact he said you don't think you're ever going to quit losing people and I'm going to jump ahead of myself and tell you that in the next 30 months we lost 90 families not people 90 families from our church that's tough we was only running about 700 at that time and when you lose 90 families and the average family has about four people to a family so that's about 350 360 people that we lost in a 30-month period of time now not one person did we run off not one person left because they was mad at me not one person left because there was something wrong with the church yeah but we went into a terrible dark recession and people left like flies to find jobs they moved to St Louis they moved to Kansas City they moved to Florida they moved to California they moved to New York and Detroit and Denver they scattered like flies and we lost 90 families out of our church but the man said he was preaching he said you're going to lose a lot of families preacher but he said let me tell you something for every family that leaves I'm going to replace them with seven anybody believe in Prophecy oo I feel the Holy Ghost here I'm I'm going to preach to you now you better listen to me let me tell you something God doesn't need you as much as you need God and when you develop an attitude that you're too important to do anything you got an attitude problem a church is a body that's fitly framed together I'm preaching to you and I know I am amen and he said I'm going to replace them with seven families and at the end of that of that 30 months we had been averaging 700 when we started we lost 90 families and when all was said and done we was running 1,200 when all was said and done at the end of that that 30 period of time God blessed us and and you know what as families began to leave and God started replacing them it's was amazing how that the people that came in were willing to work and willing to pray and willing to teach and willing to coat of the horn to the altar let me tell you something God doesn't need you as much as you need God Amen can I have it amen and and when when it says that that the the the hole was drilled in that stone it it made me realize that no matter how stonely a person is if you can work with them long enough to get the seed in their heart and get it underneath the soil of their soul they will grow can I have that amen it doesn't mean that because a man has a Stony heart he has to go to hell it doesn't mean that if you're on the Wayside you got to go to hell it talks about this whole Parable it's talking about how much work it's going to take to save some people would you believe that the number one greatest Soul winner in America came right out under y'all's nose from Joplin Missouri actually he didn't live in jop he lived in a suburb called Goodman or something like that Arley foresight Ary foresight has an incurable disease he has to take steroids every day if he goes 72 hours without steroids he's a dead man it's a terrible condition came to work at Boeing aircraft he got laid off he came to me and he he's kind of a
quiet man and he has all kinds of reasons why he can't work for God because this disease he has his flesh falls off of his bones and and and the steroids helped him retain the Flesh on his body it's a terrible disease when he has an outbreak of this disease he has sores all over his body where the flesh starts breaking and peeling off of his body and it starts oozing and the odor is virtually unbearable I have found him in his office before church many times where he had forgotten to take the steroids and he'd become stiff as a board would have to rush him to the hospital and they had to give him liquefied steroids to get him revived the man just taught his 31,000 Bible study since he has been on my staff he he has taught 31,000 Bible studies I believe that is a world record he has won more people to God than you could even imagine it tells me one thing that a church doesn't need everybody involved in Soul winning it would be nice but a church has got to have that one signature Soul winner and one Soul winner can bring more people into a church than most churches can run off brother foresight he's slow he's methodical he's been he's been fulltime on my staff for 35 years he has preached three times from the pull pit he's an ordained minister and he's only preached three sermons from the pulpit but he has won more people to God than everybody in the state of Missouri combined and the state of Kansas combined you say how does he do it he has a calling to be a soul winner but a calling to be a soul winner is not enough you have to have a burden to be a soul winner everybody here is called to work for God but has God give you a burden strong enough to reject other things in order to work for him can I have it amen this whole parable of the four soils it's not talking about how only 25% can be saved or just the good ground can be saved but it's talking about how much work it's going to take to save some people can I give you one more story a few years ago I come under heavy criticism because I was traveling a lot promoting Soul winning and I made a decision that I was not going to travel anymore I'm going to stay home I'm going to stay right here in Witchita I'm going to work for God on my Halfacre and I'm not going to travel anymore well I got a call from a pastor in Louisiana he said brother Cornwell we want you to come do us a seminar I said nope I ain't going I ain't coming he said yes you are I said no I'm not he said yes you are I said I've quit traveling I'm not traveling anymore he said you're going to travel one more time and you're going to come do me a seminar I said I tell you what I'll do if you promise not to advertise it and not tell nobody I'm coming I'll sneak down I'll teach you a seminar and I'll come home and I'll live happily ever after said it sounds good to me come on so I went and it was about this size crowd at that seminar maybe a few more
there was a young man sitting right where you're sitting he was a brand new convert he came with his notepad I went through the parable of the four soils he took all in notes and so I left that town that I was doing the seminar in was 30 something miles from my hometown I have nine brothers and sisters a mother and father none of them in church and none of them saved I've tried to witness to my father and my mother and my brothers and my sisters but it wasn't far them so this young man young about 25 years old drove to my hometown and knocked on my daddy's door my daddy came door and said yes sir he said Morel Cornwell your son he said yep he said I know when can I come in so he went in he said your son taught me a seminar on teaching home Bible study and he said I thought all come ask you if you would take a Bible study for me and my father was taken by by such surprise he said yeah I'll take a Bible study from you and he started driving 35 miles every week sitting at my mother and father's table and taught my mother and father and brothers and sisters hey Bible study and would you believe we baptized every one of them them in the name of Jesus you don't ever know when you reach out to do something for God for somebody else that God will send somebody to you to do the impossible can I have an amen amen it's very important ladies and gentlemen that every one of us we all got the calling but we need to get a burden for it we need to wait let the weight of Soul winning rest upon us can I have an amen amen you never know who will make a good Bible teacher can I have an amen amen you don't have to be dynamic you may be a slow methodical plotter like Arley foresight I asked him one day I said you want to Pastor your own church he said no I said why not he said I'm doing exactly what God has called me to do and that's to be a soul winner can I have an amen let let's all stand for just a moment turn your neighbor say I'm going to be a soul winner you can be seated oh my goodness all right go to the 20th chapter of Matthew y'all want to stand up again one more time turn to there and say he's long winded I know y'all are used to 25 minute sermons they're not hallelujah praise God all right turn you can be seated again Praise You Don't Want to Miss in the morning we're going to get into the nuts and Bol in Matthew 20 the kingom of Heaven like a man which his household which went early in the morning to hire labors into his Vineyard if if Matthew 13 is telling us how much labor it takes to win souls then what is Matthew 20 telling us the man's got a Vineyard he hires people to go out the first hour of the day to harvest the vineyard and he goes back the third hour the 6th hour the ninth hour and the 11th hour at the end of the day they still hadn't got the Harvest done he hires more laborers and send them in for the one hour at the end of the day he goes to pay up and he gives everybody body a day's wage those that work 12 hours a day's wage those that work 9 hours a day's wage those that work six hours a
day's wage those that work three hours a day's wage but he gives them that only works one hour a full day's wage now why would anybody hire people under those circumstances I was in deleno California and I was coming off the mountain coming into Bakersfield and got past Bakersfield on my way to to Delano on on you on California 99 and I looked out to my right and there was migrant workers in a Vineyard working and they were taken it looked like freezer paper it was about 6 foot wide rolls of paper and they was rolling his paper down the rows it looked like giant sheets of paper look like five and 600 yards long and every row had a row of paper down each row and I'd never seen anything like that because I wouldn't raised in grape country and I told my wife I said I'm going to find out what they're doing I pulled off the freeway drove out in the field and the superintendent was there and I said I got out of my car and I got a neck tie and a suit on you know I wasn't looking for a job and I said I'm from the south and and I've always worked in a cotton field and I've always drugg a 9ot cotton sack behind me but I said what are y'all doing here he said we're getting ready for the Harvest I said' really I said well what's all the paper down the road he said well he said as soon as the weatherman says that we're going to have 72 hours of very low humidity he said we're going to give the signal and we're going to bring our workers in they going to cut the cluster of grape and they going to lay it on the paper cut and lay cut and lay I said okay I said well what's a big deal about the paper he said we have got to harvest this entire field in one day when he said that I went to this passage I said why why have you got to do it in one day he said this field is owned by sunmade raisins company and we have a sunmade raisin plant right up the road and he said when when the the workers come in at daylight of the morning that the Harvest starts they going to cut every cluster of grape off of the vine we don't have time to put them in boxes we don't have time to put them in trucks he said we're going to cut and we're going to lay these grapes on that paper and they're going to to lay on that paper for 72 hours until the skin of that grape hardens or toughens he said if we put them in boxes and put them in a truck it will puncture and and and rupture that grape and if it ruptures the grape is not good for a raisin he said they going to lay on the paper for 72 hours until that skin toughens and they start the drying process and then we got a machine that comes in it's going to take that paper it's going to roll it up in huge Bales they're going to take a machine and pick it up they're going to lay it on a truck they're going to take it to the drying sheds at the sunmade raisin plant and they're going to unroll that bail in the drying sheds and hot air is going to be blown across it and they're going to finish the drying process process in the sheds and they're going to make the finest raisins known to man and I said you mean to tell me that you're going to cut and lay everything in one day's time he said this field will be harvested in one single day I said what if you don't have enough people he said we'll make sure that we hire enough people to harvest this field in one day and he said not only that he said he said this has gone on for years and years and it dates back 6,000 years I said well explain it to me he
said in the old days talking about pre-bi days they would cut the grape and they would lay it on the ground and and and when it would dry on the ground they would take the raisins pack them in boxes and they would bury them with with sawdust on top and he said when when they got ready for fresh drink they would bring out a box of the raisins and they would hydrate the box and they would reswell the grape and then they would take it to the to the to the Vats and they would press the grape and the fresh juice would run out and we' have fresh grape drink year round and he said if we wanted cold grape drink we would reswell the grape and we would we would mash the grape and we put it in goat skin bags put it in the ground over sawdust and straw and wet it down and let the desert winds blow across it and cause the evaporation of the of the water around the bag and he said the next morning there would be slivers of ice in that bag of grape drink praise God I learned more by asking those questions that I could possibly had and I said so do you understand that what you're saying is a biblical princip principal here he said I think so he said in the old days a man would go to the northwest corner of his field and at daylight he would take his finger and he would wet his finger and he would start counting one two three and if he' count to 10 and his finger would still be wet he would go to the market place and say no Harvest today and the next morning he would go back to the nor northwest corner of his field he would lick his finger and start counting one two and it count to 10 if his finger was still wet the humidity would be too much and it couldn't Harvest but one morning he would go the the corner of his field he would lick his finger he start counting his finger would turn cold and all of a sudden he'd count to two and his finger would be dry because it had already evaporated the the water off of his finger and he would scream h Harvest Time and he would run the market and he would hire enough laborers to cut that grape and get to feel harvested in one day and he'd go back at at 9:00 in the morning and if they weren't getting the job done he'd go back and he'd hire more labors he'd go back at noon time if they weren't getting the job done he'd hire more labors and at the 11th hour he would become frantic he said because every grape that he doesn't Harvest today is going to be lost lost and he'd say he'd go to the marketplace at the 11th hour and he would be frustrated and he'd say why stand you so all day long idle but they answer him and said because no man hired us we've been here all the day long to be hired but you didn't hire us the Lord is trying to tell all of us I feel the Holy Ghost here that his Harvest is more important than his money that his Harvest is more important than General Motors it's more important than Boeing it's more important than everything else in the world can I have an amen if the Lord thinks the Harvest is so valuable how much more is he willing to hire laborers in this hour the 11th Hour can I have it amen amen the Lord needs Soul winners or he needs laborers can I have an amen amen you say I'm too old let me talk about that a minute my mother got the Holy Ghost when she was 75 years old they had taught her a Bible study I came and preached from my home Church she came and my gray-headed mother walked down that aisle I jumped out of the pull pit ran down the aisle met her halfway laid my hands on her and she instantly started speaking in tongues hallelujah praise God my mother only went to the second grade she couldn't really read and she really couldn't write and I preached a seminar in my home Church my mother got on a conviction and she said I got to be a soul winner and I said yep you do mama you got to be a soul winner my
mother became the greatest Soul winner farad day has ever known for fact she filled the far Church up at age 75 and I made a mistake she called me one day and she said you got any tape you've been preaching on lately and I said no I said we don't tape our services she said well you ought to tap your sermons so I had to break down and buy a taping system for our church to take my sermon so I can send her a copy of it and so we started 1977 of taping all of our services and every month we send were a shoe box full of tapes of sermons that I had preached that month and the secretary pack them up and send them to Mama and Mama would take those tapes downtown and and she had a little route she went she went to Concordia Bank and Trust Company because the president of the bank needed to be saved and and he got the first choice of whatever tape he wanted out of that box and then the the local doctor's office she went in there and the doctors got their choice of tapes and the drug got their share of tapes and the neighborhood that she lived in she went around until she had dispersed all the tape and then the next day she'd go back and collect the tapes that they had to listen to that night and give them a different tape so everybody in her community heard every sermon I preached and if she got sick and couldn't come they'd call her and say what day is the delivery day and my mother won 40 something families out of one neighborhood just by delivering tapes every day I'll take 40 new families in my church any day of the week I have a picture in my Bible I'm going to show it to you it's the only picture that I carry in my mind and it's not of my daughter it's not my granddaughter it's not even my wife it's a little old lady her name is naine light I don't know how old she is now she's probably close to 90 85 night she's a beautiful woman not one service goes by that I don't give her a hug I have a policy in my church that if they're under six or over six they get a hug here recently my wife said you had to up that age NY lightel cannot read or write n light will work in a nursing home as a janitor for 35 or 40 years a very humble woman na elel has never missed a tithing check every month there is a tithing check and and she's had a tithing check in the offering plate for 38 years she is the sweetest lovable kindest person I've ever known I've carried her picture of my Bible for years I preached a seminar in our church and she got on a conviction so she come to the Altar and she stand here she's praying and she's weeping and crying and every by the Le she's still standing weeping and I said lady what's you problem she said I want to be a soul so bad that I can't read or right and I didn't realize how much pressure I had put on the people to be so much and she looked at me and tears run down her face she said oh Pastor she said you think God would help me be a soul do you think I could be a solar and I said na where there's a will there's a way okay that's satisfied about 3 months later she walks in Auditorium with this beautiful young family with her I walk back and introduce myself I said he didn't who you got with you she said that's my Bible study I said your Bible
stud I said okay I preached that morning and the family stands up come down the a with her they stand right in front of the pull pit I Come Around the pull pit and I said what can I do for y'all said we want to get baptized I said that's great call my baptism came over she said wait a minute we got some questions to ask you they said you baptized in Jesus name I said yeah she said you think we get the Holy Ghost in the bapst I said yeah you believe in speaking in tongues yeah she said you believe in Holiness she' give me the once over I said yes she said okay we'll let you baptizes there so they take him to get ready to be baptized and N she don't have a two teeth her head she s there grinning at me I said they where did you find these people she said there's a family on you I said you been teach them a Bible yep I said I didn't think you can read them right I said did God teach you how to read oh no she said I still can't read I said you talk him a Bible study yep I said explain that to me she said you remember that family you taught a black family you taught a Bible study to I said yep she said you know remember that man that brought that ghetto blaster to the Bible study and you set your chart over that ghetto blaster and he tapes your Bible study I said yep said well I found out where those tapes were and I borrowed all those tap she said I can't read and I can't write but I play a tape record I said well how how did you know where to turn pain she said evidently you had to listen to your own Bible study she said that that that chart is right over that ghetto blaster when you turn the page you can hear it right there on the table I just listen was turning the page and I just turn the page praise God and she W that and now the grandson of that couple is the United Pentecostal P if you got a real you got real God will help you to find way to can I have it amen I want to remove every excuse anybody had you might you may not be able to read you may not be able to write you may not be able to talk but there's a way to win a soul if you'll get the love of God in your heart he get a burden for your church to grow I'm going go finished got one more Parable I want to talk about the parable of the laborers is trying to tell us how important the Harvest is to Jesus Christ I'm going say again I believe with everything in me that this church is going to double in one single Revival you better get prepared for it how do you get prepared you got to fall in love with people who has a right to come to your church everybody in this community has a right to come to the house of God there is room in the house of God for every body can I have an amen I feel the Holy Ghost in Matthew chapter 25 it talks about five wise virgins and five foolish versions I realize that this has biblical eschatology involved in it I realize it's talking about the end time but I think it has another message there were 10 virgins they all slumbered and slept five of them were wise they took oil with their vessels in their
lamps and you know what all of them's light went out at midnight the cry was made behold the bridegroom coming go out to meet him and the five wise relit their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom but as they was going the five foolish said give us of your oil and they said no no I don't have enough for you and me I'm G to stop right here I've been in witch 38 years I cannot think of any time going by where we have not been in Revival for 38 years our church has just finished 38 consecutive years of growth our church has grown financially every year for the past 38 years we've grown numerically for 38 years we've grown in buses we started out with one bus we now have 20 5 buses that run every Sunday and we're fixing to go to 40 we have taught Bible studies every week right now our church is teaching somewhere around 125 different Bible study groups around the city of witto I don't Envision a a day or a month or a year going by where we're not actively involved in Soul winning we're getting ready to do our fourth mail out once a year we mail out to every door within a 35 mile radius we mail out 250,000 brochures in one day we'll touch 750,000 people with those 200 and 50,000 brochures our desire is to reach not only wi talk but all the outlining communities we have 108 counties and we have probably 80 counties in Western Kansas does not have a church because the community is so small and we want to reach them with the Gospel of Jesus Christ this is this this is what I live for this is what I eat sleep and breathe it's Soul Many in the United Pentecostal Church I have taught seminars for 30 38 years I've had more than 10,000 people a year commit to home Bible study in the last 38 years and I'm going to do it until I fall in the grave and I die let me tell you something that's how important the gospel is to me and that's not nothing compared to how important it is to Jesus Christ they said give us of your oil and they said no we don't have enough can I ask you a question if the Lord asked of you some oil to give to somebody else would you have enough Sunday morning we're going to have church Sunday morning right Sunday morning is very important Sunday night's very important are you going to drag in here Sunday night and wait till the song leader get you all pumped up before you finally move or are you going to obey the gospel and enter into his courts with Thanksgiving into his house with praise if somebody got to pump you and Prime you are you going to come in here on fire for God ready to share your oil with somebody else the Lord is talking about the urgency of the hour the first Parable talked about how much it's going to cost you labor wise the second Parable talked about how important the Harvest is but the third Parable is talking about the urgency God has to have labors in the vineyard let's all stand
Holy Spirit I realize that I have gone very lengthy tonight I realize we've not had a break but I pray tonight in the name of Jesus I am preaching to a congregation that I believe that you have already moved upon their heart I believe that I'm looking at a people that's ready for Revival that's ready for an end Gathering that's ready oh lord for the greatest Revival that you ever going to send to Lebanon Missouri I pray right now in the name of Jesus that you would speak to us would you reach over and lay your hand on your neighbor's shoulder right now just reach over and lay your hand on your neighbor's shoulder right now Hallelujah in the name of Jesus I'm asking you Lord I pray right now in the name of Jesus that Lord you've given us the calling now Lord give us that burden for Souls give us a burden for Souls give us a burden for Souls Lord in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ hallelujah hallelujah everybody lift your hands now and praise the Lord let's Praise Him let's praise him let's praise him let's Praise Him amen amen amen hallelujah every head every head is bowed for just one more moment now one more moment if the Lord was to bring somebody across your path that you could win to God maybe through Bible study maybe through a tape maybe through a friendship but if the Lord would bring somebody across your path that you would be willing to say I will try to win them to God if the Lord was to bring somebody across your path in the next 90 days and You' be willing to say Lord use me to win them to God if you'd be willing to be a vessel for the Lord I want you to come down this aisle and stand here with me please Lord I will be a soul winner I will be what you want me to be in the name of Jesus I don't want you to hold your head down I want you to hold your head up praise God prise oh I feel the Holy Ghost here I feel the Holy Ghost here in the name of Jesus in the name of Jesus Hallelujah in the name of Jesus in the name of Jesus Hallelujah in the name of Jesus hallelujah hallelujah hallelujah hallelujah hallelujah hallelujah praise God praise God praise God sister look at me praise God I feel so much holy ghost on you guys in the name of Jesus may the Lord make your work proficient may he give you a breakthrough in the name of Jesus in the name of Jesus than thank you Lord in the name of Jesus in the name of Jesus Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah I will praise the Lord I will praise the Lord can I tell you can I tell you one more little story we have a little girl had a little girl in our church she was 11 years old and I guess that would put her somewhere in the fourth or fifth grade and I had done a seminar in our church and she got under a burden to win somebody to God and she was only 11 years old so she went to school and she asked her teacher if she could teach her classroom a Bible study and they said no honey we can't we can't do that in the classroom well she wouldn't she wouldn't take no for an answer so she went to the principal and she said can I teach the school a Bible
study said said honey you can't do that and she started to walk out and the princip said but I tell you what we can do said we can give you a classroom before school or after school and you can start a Bible club and a Bible study before school or after school and so she chose to teach that Bible class in the morning time so an hour before school she went into little classroom started off with three or four kids and within just a few days the classroom was full and she started teach in that classroom a Bible study and and she started having to do it every day because everybody wanted in on the Bible study and I got a letter I have it in my file at Church the principal wrote me a letter and said dear Pastor [name redacted] as a little girl in our school that goes to your church and she she told me the story of [name redacted] asking to teach a Bible class [name redacted] brought two rows of kids to church every one of them got the Holy Ghost and every one of them are still living for God today the principal said our school was a troubled school and said this little girl started a Bible study and she has transformed our entire school singlehandedly because she wouldn't take no financer an 11-year-old teaching a Bible study in a classroom let me tell you something you can be a soul winner I said you can be a soul way all you got to do is love the Lord and learn how to love people can I have it amen in the morning at 9:00 I'm going to be teaching you on how to have a breakthrough in teaching Bible studies and being a personal Soul winner God bless you brother thoron thank you for letting me come God bless y'all
Scripture references as spoken: Mark 11; Genesis 13; Matthew 13:1-8; Matthew 20:1-9; Matthew 25:1-9.