The Eleventh Hour - I'm Going Out Again

Summary

Summary prepared by Acts 2:38 Life from the YouTube recording's caption track, read through the transcript panel — published in summary form; watch the full sermon at the source.

Because of the Times 2016 · The Pentecostals of Alexandria, Alexandria, LA Topics: Missions and Evangelism · Prayer · The Church

Vesta Mangun opens the service herself, greeting the house in the words of the identity text and having the congregation answer her through it, clause by clause: a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people, called out of darkness into his marvellous light — in time past not a people, but now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy. If anybody asks you who we are, she says, that is who we are. (The packet ships this performed greeting as a sustained voicing of the text; the book is never named in the sermon.)

Scriptures: 1 Peter 2:9-10

The legacy.

She speaks as one of the last voices of her generation, alongside the honored pioneers she names — the Tenneys among them — who evangelized their world through brush arbors, storefronts, tents, and city auditoriums, lied about, betrayed, persecuted, and stopped by nothing; their passion was souls, and they bore the marks of that mission in their bodies. (The packet prices that marks-of-Christ wording, applied to the pioneers in narration, and does not index it.) Her own father was a pioneer of that company across East Texas, and his dying charge to his family was that nothing be said at his funeral of anything he had accomplished — just tell them I was a sinner saved by grace. Six weeks shy of ninety years of living, she means to keep talking about the one thing anywhere she can, as often as she can, to as many as she can: there is nothing — nothing — except God and his eternal purpose that is worth all that we are, nothing that perishes that can be a fair price for what never dies. She wants her limited days and fragments anointed and used, and she wants thousands awakened who do not yet know why we are here: we are solemnly responsible, as Ezekiel's watchman teaching makes clear, if men are eternally lost without a witness.

Scriptures: (none in this movement)

The examples of the Master.

To win souls is to do as Jesus did from the first day he was introduced — the Mighty God in Christ who stopped along the road, dragged a bloody, half-dead man out of a ditch, and took him to be cared for: that is what every church should be, a sanctuary, a place of refuge, a center of deliverance, like the Samaritan's house of mercy on the Jericho road. The rich young ruler had it all and went away sorrowful; do not leave, she warns, until you get a burden for souls — you are worth nothing until you do. Follow Jesus and hear him say he must needs go through Samaria: she sends the house to read the background for themselves in John chapter 4, and tells what that woman became — the first to recognize him as the Messiah, the one who woke an entire city and prepared the way for a revival recorded in the book of Acts. (The chapter is named as the hearers' own reading, and the wording inside her narration is priced by the packet; nothing from John 4 is indexed.) Then the woman taken in adultery, spared and delivered while her accusers dropped their stones; then Zacchaeus, the little tree-climber, chief among the publicans, whose life was wonderfully changed and who went beyond what the law required in restitution. (She closes that story by sending the house to "Luke 17"; the story told is the Zacchaeus account, and the packet records the mismatch and indexes nothing from it.)

Scriptures: (none in this movement)

The value of one soul.

All the riches and empires of this planet are nothing — nothing — in comparison with the value of one soul. "Just one," she says; she does not have a church house full at POA — just one. She voices Jesus' own assessment of profit and loss, a man gaining the whole world and losing his soul, and his word that he must be about his Father's business — and his business is souls. (The packet prices that wording, voiced without a location, and does not index it.) The eternal flame at a president's grave in Arlington cannot compare with the flame that burns in her for the lost. If she were the one lost sheep, she would not want the shepherd ever to give up searching; if she were the lost coin, she would not want the woman to quit sweeping; if she were the prodigal, she would want the father still watching at the gate, and to run and fall on her neck before she ever made it to the house. She tells of a woman she had won to the Lord more than half a century before — the wife of an officer at England Air Force Base, whose funeral in the G. A. Mangun Auditorium that past year filled its middle section with family and friends that one woman had won: one lock on one door, one woman, one knock. (Her name is garbled in the recording at both soundings, and the packet carries her unnamed.) It should be happening every day, in homes and marketplaces, airplanes and restaurants: there is a massive harvest still to be reaped, and we are responsible, and it is time.

Scriptures: (none in this movement)

Her text: the eleventh hour.

She prayed and fasted for her message for Because of the Times — told God she would admit herself to the hospital before she would come without one — and announces her text and subject from Matthew 20: and about the eleventh hour he went out, and found others. Others — lost, hurting, hopeless, confused, directionless, screaming for a life jacket, going down for the last time — and the divine appeal never quits. It is the eleventh hour for her, just before the clock strikes twelve, her ninth inning, her times in his hands; and this is all she wants remembered about her: about the eleventh hour she went out and found others, and she just kept going out, and as long as she lives she is going out again and again, seeking to find and to save others, discipling them and releasing them to go and find others. She takes up the sower who went forth and sowed beside all waters, not regarding the clouds or the soil — it was not the skill of the sower, it was the seed — and voices the sowing promise herself: they that go forth weeping, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing their sheaves with them.

Scriptures: Matthew 20:6; Psalm 126:6

Bill's testimony.

She calls an Alexandria policeman, Bill, to stand beside her on the platform, and reads his written testimony aloud herself, just as he wrote it. In 2003 two Alexandria policemen were tragically killed, and officers from all over the state came to help the department through the crisis; Pastor Anthony Mangun helped in one of the funerals, and the POA hosted a special service honoring the two slain men. Walking up the steps to that service, laughing and talking with the other officers, something hit Bill and he began weeping uncontrollably; a tall, gray-haired lady stepped off the platform, put her hand to his face to turn his eyes to hers, and whispered that God had sent her to tell him he had spared his life because he had divine purpose for him, and that if he would listen to God's voice and yield to his will, God would direct and lead him. Seven years later, after his father-in-law's death, his mother-in-law invited him to church; the evangelist prophesied over her, then turned and spoke to Bill the same identical words Vesta Mangun had spoken years earlier — and he began shaking, spoke in other tongues, and was baptized in Jesus' name. And he stands here, he writes, because a woman named Gloria in Lake Charles locked her keys in her car and he was the officer called to help — and he walked up and asked her: do you know Vesta Mangun? Vesta thanks him, promises him their prayers, and charges him: now you are responsible too; you have got to help us rescue the perishing. Every one of you has got to become a soul winner — have you ever won a soul? Have you even tried? She cannot even read Fanny Crosby's "Rescue the Perishing" without weeping. Her prayer request is not for things but for people: laborers. The Lord is saying he needs sowers, reapers, weepers, warriors, harvesters — and the storm of the ages is about to break, and time is running out: break your alabaster box; you will not need it much longer anyhow.

Scriptures: (none new in this movement)

Warfare, groaning, and Caleb.

She pauses for the house to sound off a saying of the late J. T. Pugh — that sounds just like him, she says, acknowledging his grandson in the congregation. Then her own warfare: years ago, covering this city in prayer and teaching her class, the devil tormented her that what she was doing and saying would turn people off and make them worse — until the Holy Ghost spoke to her: they are already lost; can you make them any worse than that? This is not preachers' monopoly; fear not — from now on you are going to be a fisher of people. She pleads for help to gather the golden grain before it wastes and is burned in the place where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched — he said that, she notes, at least three times. (The packet prices that refrain clause and does not index it.) That is why God never gives up: his mercies are new every morning and his compassions fail not; there is a mercy seat of pure gold on the ark, where God told Moses he would meet with him and speak with him — and he is not willing that any should perish. (The packet prices the mercy-seat wording, the mercies fragment, and the not-willing fragment, and indexes none of them.) Then the eleventh hour again, in the fourth watch just before daybreak: Jesus walking on the angry sea, getting into the boat, and immediately they were at the land. Daniel, greatly beloved, at ninety spent the night with hungry lions rather than go thirty days without praying. And her own groaning: in prayer a couple of weeks before, out of words, she heard in the spirit that God had heard her words and seen her inner stirrings — all he needed now were her groans; and when she told that experience from this pulpit at the New Year service, and the groans came forth, the Lord spoke to her of his own groaning at Lazarus's grave, and then speaking the name until Lazarus came forth. It is groaning time; ancient mantles are being poured out; it is never too late — and she points them to Caleb at eighty-five, and voices his ask herself: now therefore give me this mountain — the Anakim are there, and the cities are great and fenced, but if the Lord is with me, I shall be able to drive them out. And drive them out he did.

Scriptures: Joshua 14:12

Gather up the fragments.

Here is her punchline. After Jesus fed the five thousand — men, besides women and children — with five barley loaves and two fishes and they were filled, he said: gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost. (That wording sounds once, inside her telling of the miracle; from here on the refrain is her own adaptation, and the packet prices the verse and does not index it.) Gather up the fragments — preachers, Sunday school teachers, all of us: Samson will win again; Naomi's bitterness will turn to joy; do not count David down and out. Take my fragments today, God; take what's left of me; the worms are not going to get all of me. She tells it in the story of a little boy with his slice of watermelon who would not give his watching friend a bite, and would not give him the rind either: in that little boy's language — there ain't going to be no rind. She is not leaving a bone for Satan to growl over, not leaving anything for him to laugh about. If she had ninety more years she would invest every one winning, saving, restoring, discipling people; she prays it plainly: Lord, if there is anything valuable left in my life, gather up my fragments; don't let anything be lost.

Scriptures: (none new in this movement)

The sustaining, and the revival church.

That is why she can say it: every New Testament, Holy Ghost-baptized believer is a product of the supernatural, produced and sustained by the supernatural — you ain't seen nothing yet. She identifies herself with this dreadful hour as Noah, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther did with theirs, and those early church fathers who prayed until they shook the place where they prayed and then shook everything else that needed shaking: your book of Acts experience is worth that, or it isn't worth nothing. About a mile from where she stands is the sacred spot — a little old white church building without a sign, where the handful who gathered were transformed into the mighty few on fire, organized into a united prayer people with a chain of prayer and fasting around the clock, kept on the hot trail of souls, gossiping only the gospel, taught the lostness of man, the cost of salvation, the reality of hell, the beauty of heaven, the sure fact of judgment and eternity, their ministry integrated with the gospel, the apostles' doctrine placed in every home in Alexandria. That little church — the Old Lighthouse — soon became too small, and the rest is a rich history; hundreds who were going down for the last time there are now scattered through the world preaching, witnessing, and planting churches. Buildings will crumble and doors rot, but because of almost a half century of round-the-clock prayer in three-hour watches, and hundreds worshiping in the beauty of holiness and giving sacrificially, this church has qualified to be called what she calls it: a revival, praying, soul-winning, on-fire, book of Acts, world missions church. Jesus told her the gates of hell cannot prevail against such a church. (The packet prices that single clause and does not index it.)

Scriptures: (none new in this movement)

The final bow.

In gathering up her fragments she takes Paul's own word for it, and voices it as he said it: Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended, but this one thing I do — not five thousand things dabbled at — forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before. She thanks the house and the conference, and closes her message the way she has preached it all morning: her closing words to them, she says, would be "because of the times 2016" — and the refrain sounds over the closing music to the very end of the recording, her voice still carrying it in fragments between the songs: gather up my fragments, Lord; take what's left of me; I am going out again.

Summary scripture index: 1 Peter 2:9-10 · Matthew 20:6 · Psalm 126:6 · Joshua 14:12 · Philippians 3:13

Scriptures: Philippians 3:13