Christians are called to be witnesses for Jesus Christ, a role that is intrinsically linked to martyrdom and requires a heart overflowing with love for God. The sermon emphasizes that true witnessing stems from an abundance of the heart, using examples of individuals passionate about cars or life insurance to illustrate how readily people speak about what they love. It challenges the notion that one must possess all theological knowledge to witness, asserting that knowing the basic facts of a person's lost condition and Christ's redemptive work is sufficient. The message concludes by urging believers to actively engage in various methods of sharing the gospel, from personal conversations and literature distribution to hospitality and organized outreach, rather than relying solely on passive living or institutional efforts.
Restored with Diffio
Audio restored with Diffio. Diffio processed the original archive recording to reduce noise and produce a cleaner listening version; the original stays available.
Speech quality score (model-estimated, SCOREQ): before 2.45 → restored 4.11
Well, a little bit about the book table. I have no financial interest in the book table. For that matter, neither does anybody else. Books are not very profitable. It's hard to make ends meet when you go to a conference and carry books, I can assure you. It's not a matter of commerce at all. It's a matter of trying to get the Word of God into the hands of the Lord's people. you make a long trip to go to a conference and hear some good ministry and you could take home with you some very excellent ministry and get it over and over again I mentioned that John had with him some of these sets of vines writings four books for seven dollars and a half the ones he brought with him are sold he still has some in Kansas City You want them, give him your name and address and seven dollars and a half and he'll send them to you and be happy to, I know.
This is way under what they were. And I mentioned Mr. Gibbs' latest book, The Lord's Supper. There hasn't been much response. People don't seem to realize what this book really means. One fellow said, well, I bought the one on worship, so I figured I had everything he had to say about it. Well, you're mistaken. I think Mr. Gibbs' book on worship is very fine. I've given away a good many of them because I think it's been a real help to Christians who have never learned what worship really means. But I believe that you need this book from the Lord's Supper because I'm afraid that we have some misconceptions about the Lord's Supper.
There are Christians who don't know the difference between the Lord's Supper and the Lord's table. There is a difference. There are Christians who don't know the purpose of the Lord's Supper. In fact, one told me, I'm not sure if I'm going to come anymore, because he said, I don't seem to get very much out of it. I said, do you ever go to birthday parties? Oh, yes, he said. My family usually have them. I said, do you get much out of them? You go to a birthday party for the benefit of the person in whose honor it's held. And you take a present for him. You don't come home disappointed because you didn't get an armload of presents. And a Christian who doesn't understand the Lord's Supper is just he isn't getting what he isn't understanding what God has told us.
The purpose of it and well the chapters are very wonderful. The purpose, the participants, the procedure, the day and the frequency of it. and your responsibility and all of these things in this book which I would like to see you take home with you Brother Williams has some paperback copies and some cloth back and this is a cloth back one three dollars and a half cost you more than that every time you fill your car gas a good bit more than that you haven't got anything to show for it cost you more than that and you take your wife out to dinner once a year So you ought to do a little something for your soul's good and get some of the good ministry that's here.
Now, I've only mentioned these two books. That doesn't mean that I wouldn't like to say many of the same things about the others. In fact, I bought eleven dollars worth of stuff off the table. I just, I can resist anything, but temptation. Temptation to buy books. And I just, I think it's wonderful when you can come to a conference. and get a chance to pick out good books. Don't just buy them for yourself. I bought one for a Jewish friend of mine. His brother is the superintendent of the largest seminary for Orthodox Jewish rabbis in the world, in Brooklyn, New York.
His brother operates a store in Colorado Springs, and he and I are good friends. We go in and discuss the scriptures together until his wife catches me there and then she runs me off. He's open for the light. So I bought a nice book for him about the problem that the Jews are facing, and I hope it'll be a help to it. And you could find books that would be helpful to young Christians. Don't be selfish about this thing. Think about what some pamphlet even or booklet would do for some young Christian if you'd take it home with you for them. Let's pray again. Our Father, we acknowledge our weakness and we turn to thee for divine strength.
We acknowledge our ignorance and turn to thee for divine wisdom. We thank you that all is found in the Lord Jesus. So we come to the fountainhead and we pray that thou wilt open thy word to us Open our hearts to receive it, and then grant that it might make a difference in the way we live. Oh, Lord, keep us from going away from this conference the same way we came. We thank you for thy dear son. He pleased thee perfectly. He pleases us perfectly. We'd like to be more like him.
We pray this in his name. Amen. Now, the Book of the Acts, chapter one again, the Lord seems to have been leading me from my part of this conference in the Acts, and so I'm going to turn to it again this afternoon. The Book of the Acts, chapter one. The former treatise, let it be the book of Luke, have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach, until the day in which he was taken up, after that he, through the Holy Ghost, had given commandments under the apostles whom he had chosen, to whom also he showed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God.
Being assembled together with them, commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which saith he, ye have heard of me. For John truly baptized with water, but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost, not many days hence. One day therefore were come together, they asked of him, saying, Lord, will thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel? And he said unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons which the Father hath put in his own power, but ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost has come upon you. Or, as the marginal reading has it, ye shall receive the power of the Holy Ghost coming upon you.
And ye shall be witnesses unto me, both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and in Samaria. and unto the uttermost part of the earth. When he had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was taken up, and a cloud received him out of their sight. And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel, which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as you have seen him go into heaven.
Then returned they unto Jerusalem from the mount called Oliver and so on. They went back to the job that the Lord had given. Ye shall be witnesses unto me. The Lord Jesus the night before he was crucified in the very wonderful discourse John chapters fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen, told his disciples that when the Holy Spirit was come, he would be a witness. And then he said, You also will be my witnesses. Now the word witness in the New Testament, they tell me, I'm not a Greek scholar, but I did learn to read English, and there are many helpful books, and you can find out the meaning of words.
Vines' expository dictionary of New Testament words is one of my most valued treasures. If you have a good concordance, not a crudence, crudence is for the crude and young's for the young and strong's for the strong, get one that's good, a concordance that will really develop words for you, and find out what these words mean. The word witness. is exactly the same as the word martyr. Now Stephen did not become a martyr when the infuriated Jews, under the guidance of Saul of Tarsus, stoned into death.
He was a martyr, that's why he became a martyr. The word is the same, a witness. He was a witness for God. And in the first century, All of those who spoke out for the Lord expected eventually that they would seal their testimony with their own blood. And yet they did it. They didn't keep seal. They put them in jail for it. They did everything they could to shut them up, and there wasn't any way of shutting them up. You couldn't stop those Christians from telling about the Lord. Simply because their hearts were full of the Lord, they had seen him. Many of them had seen Him die for them on the cross, and their hearts were tied to Him for the cords of love.
Five hundred of them at one time had seen Him as He stood before them, raised again from the dead. They knew He was alive. And a multitude of them stood and watched Him ascend up into heaven. And then the Holy Spirit came down and put a power into them that they never had before. Instead of Peter being afraid of what some girl would have to say about him, he now stood forth and accused that same mob that had put his Lord to death. He accused them of their murder, and he did it openly. And the disciples went everywhere, telling people, telling anyone who would listen, and even telling those who didn't want to listen, about their Savior.
Their hearts were full of the Lord Jesus. You talk about whatever your heart's full of. My friend Mr. Gibbs, the writer of this book, I was just recommending, used to tell about a young man whose father was a useful man for God, and he came from a family. There were quite a few among them who had been used of the Lord and were going on well for the Lord, and this young man seemed to have a dumb spirit. He professed to be saved, but he never said anything at all, and he got with other Christians. And they were having young people's discussion. And Mr. Gibbs was encouraging all these young men to take part in this discussion.
And there he sat. Not a word. After it was all over, he got him in the corner and he said, what seems to be the trouble? He said, your father, your grandfather, your uncle, they're all interested in the Lord's things, but you never have anything to say. Well, he said, that's how you, Mr. Gibbs. It's just not my gift, I guess. I'm just not the talking kind. I just don't know how to talk in front of people. Oh? But he said, fifteen or twenty minutes later, when the young people were having their refreshments, he said, I heard somebody yashing away a mile a minute over in the corner, and I looked, and who was it, but the same young fellow. So I thought, well, I'll find out what's happened. Maybe the dumb spirit's been cast out, and he said, I edged over to where I could hear, and I heard what he was talking about.
He was telling him about hot rods. He knew all about automobiles inside to the outside, from the front to the back. He knew how to shave the heads and put on four-barrel carburetors, and that's all I know. Everything that was necessary to give them more zip and everything else, he knew all about it. And Mr. Gibbs said, then I understood. Then I understood. Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth, speaking, he said the young man's heart was a garage. Every time he opened his mouth, you could hear the clash of gears and smell the exhaust through your fumes. Now don't you tell me that you can't talk to people about the Lord Jesus. If you loved him, you couldn't keep from talking to them about the Lord Jesus.
For a good many years, my wife and I have tried to take care of young people. And one time, man was responsible for eighteen teenage girls. Of course she didn't do all the work. She had to help. But I mean, she was, she was, that was her responsibility was to be mother to them. You remember that. If one of them is driving you crazy, then think what's to do if you had eighteen of them. You never find time enough to talk to them about all of their problems. Of course, I used to help what I could, tried to be dad to them. And I found this, that when a girl falls in love, or a reasonable facsimile thereof, And she believes, anyway, that she is in love.
You can't mention one subject from A to Z that doesn't remind her of Jimmy. Everything makes her think of him. You couldn't talk about anything that wouldn't say. That makes me think. Today in school, Jimmy said, and here you go. Here you go. Now, what's the matter? Nothing the matter. Absolutely nothing the matter. She won't marry Jimmy. There'll be Billy and Joe and George and seventeen others before she finally settles on one of them and gets married. But she's in love with love and when her heart is filled with a subject, she just sees every reason in the world to talk about it.
And you never mentioned the Lord Jesus? One of the saddest things that I ever saw I visited a relative of mine who used to be active in Sunday school work, young people's work, never missed a meeting. Then she married an unconverted man. When I went to call on her, I was talking to her a little about the Lord. I saw how cold and hard she was. And I said to her, where's your Bible? Well, she said, I keep it in the dresser drawer. I'll get it. I said it ought to be out here on the coffee table where Johnny could see it.
Her husband, oh my, she said, I wouldn't dare leave it out there. It infuriates him. He gets angry when he sees my Bible. I said, but you love Johnny, don't you? You know he's not saved? Doesn't it worry you that he'll die and go to hell and you'll never see him again forever? Doesn't it bother you that he hates your Lord like that? The best friend you ever had, the one who died for you on the cross? Don't you hate to see the Lord Jesus treated like that? And very calmly, she reached out on the table between us, and she made a circle, and she said, This is my Christian life, and another circle, and she said, And this is my private life.
Now, that's the way too many Christians are living today. They've got a Sunday morning life. They've got a part of their life, which they say is devoted to the Lord. But when they go to work on Monday, goodbye, Lord, and see you next Sunday. You say you can't mix religion and business. Well, I don't suppose you can. But if you can't take Christ with you where you're going to work, then for the Lord's sake, get a different job. If you can't take the Lord with you when you go to visit your neighbors, go to see some other neighbors. There's something wrong when you can't take the Lord Jesus with you.
The early disciples took him every place they went. This was their main topic of conversation. When they first brought out the Model T automobile, none of your business how old I am. When they first brought out the Model T automobile, There was a man in Iowa who got one of them, and he was sold on them. I tell you, he thought the Model T was it. And he bored people silly with it. He talked to people about that Model T. Every place he went, everybody he saw, I talked to him about this Model T, and finally one fellow said to him, look, we're all sick and tired of hearing about your Model T for.
Haven't you got any other subjects? Yes, he said the other things to talk about, but he said, I believe when the fellow stole on something, he ought to talk it. Now, he said, let me tell you how much easier it is to handle a Model T than it is that car that you're going. And there he goes again. What's the matter? Nothing's the matter. He believes in what he's got and he wants to talk it. I have a friend who won the National Award for selling life insurance for his particular company. sold more life insurance in one year than any other salesman, in fact, than any two salesmen in his company. And I said to him, John, how did you do it?
Well, he said, it's very simple. He said, they had a testimonial dinner for me, and they asked me to tell that. They asked me that very question. He said, I told them that I don't take any credit for what I did at all, that the president of the company here is the one who told me what to do. And he told all of you the same thing. He said, five years ago, At a dinner, at our annual dinner, he said, Mr. so-and-so, the president here, told us how we could sell life insurance. He said, if you want to sell life insurance, you've got to think life insurance. And you've got to make contacts. And then he said, we have devised a kind of a table. We have discovered that for every so many contacts that you make, you'll sell so many thousand dollars worth of life insurance.
It'll work out this way. It'll average out this way over the year. So the president said, you decide how much life insurance you want to sell, and then you make that many contacts, and you'll do it. So he said, I just decided I was going to sell more life insurance than anybody else in the company, and I sat down and figured out one night how many contacts I'd have to make. So he said, I got busy, and I made them, and so I sold more than anybody else. It's very simple. I'm not going to tell you that winning souls is exactly that. But I'm going to tell you one thing, you never win any souls if you don't start talking about the Lord Jesus. The early Christians talked about the Lord Jesus. We've already been saying in this conference that we need to spend time alone with God in prayer, and we do.
We've already been saying that we need to get into the Word of God and study it. I think we're more ignorant of the Word now than any time that I can remember, and I met the Lord in And I've been among those who meet in His name ever since that time, and I never saw the ignorance that I'm seeing today of God's Word. There are people who can't even find books in the Bible. I think I could ask them to turn to the book of Hezekiah, and I'd hear leaves rustling around a lot of rooms. The Lord's people are not studying His Word. Now we've been saying that you do need to pray, and you do need to study. But listen, brother and sister, your life is incomplete if you are not a witness unto Christ. You are nothing but a dead seed, taking in, taking in, taking in, and no outlets.
That's what makes a dead seed. That's what makes so many of us so useless. We don't talk about the Lord Jesus to others. Now what do you need to do in order to talk about the Savior? Well, what do these people have that you don't have? Now tell me that. First of all, lay new some facts. Isn't that right? Do you know those facts? Well, you say, no, I don't know the difference between premillennialism and post-millennialism. And what's the other one? All-millennialism. I couldn't go out and talk to people. Like some of them are going to ask me whether I believe in predestination or election. And I don't even know the difference between predestination and election.
Oh, so that's the trouble. That means, therefore, that you wouldn't attempt to bandage up your little boy's finger. because you haven't taken a complete medical course. You haven't graduated as an MD. That's what that means, does it? Brother and sister, you don't need to know all the answers. I know they'll try to trip you up with answers. They'll ask you, what about the heathen? They don't want to know about the heathen. They're just trying to throw you off the track. Don't let them do that at all. Bring them right back to the point. Now we'll talk about those heathen after a bit. Right now, you're the heathen we're interested in. You don't say it that way, but That's what you mean.
Right now we're going to talk about you. Right now you have a problem. Let's get this thing settled. I remember talking to a fellow one time and he said, well, I'd like to be a Christian, but he said there are about a dozen questions that I've got to have answered before I can be a Christian. Well, I said, I don't know whether I can answer them or not. I've got a Bible and all the answers must be in this Bible. I said, I'll sure try to find them for you. Well, he said, that's fair enough. And I said, don't you think we ought to start with the most important of all of them? Well, that makes good sense. Well, I said, don't you think the most important question that you could possibly have would be where you're going to be forever?
Well, he said, I guess I couldn't argue with that. All right, I said, let's settle that one first. So he did. We began to read the scriptures. And, you know, the Lord reached him. He was a lot more ready than he thought he was. The devil was just using his last trick. He thought he could just keep him away from the door just that much longer, but it didn't work. He accepted Christ as his Savior that day. Well, then we had a nice little visit over eternal security. I always try to feed a new baby. I gave him a little bit about the Lord's coming, and I gave him a little bit about how to feed himself from the Word, and told him a little bit about how he ought to pray today and so on. And then I said, well, now, if you still have a little bit of time, we ought to go into some of those other questions.
He said, what questions are that? I said, I don't know. You told me you had about a dozen questions that had to be settled before you could accept the Lord as your Savior. He said, I did, didn't I? He said, you know, I believe those questions are settled. Well, of course, that's what I knew had happened. That's why I was trying to get him to get the main one settled. Don't let them distract you. Stay with the job. What you're trying to do is lead his soul to Christ. Do you know the facts? Fact number one, he is a lost, guilty sinner. I used to preach with J.O. Brown. Some of you old timers will remember him. J.O.
Brown said, I'm not very gentle, but then I used to be a hog farmer. And he said, whenever I found the hog it wouldn't eat, I got him to the snout and put a capsule down his throat. He said, when I start to preach the gospel to people, and they don't want to listen, he said, I give them something that makes them want to listen. He did, too. He preached the law and judgment whenever they wouldn't listen to the gospel. And he used to say this to people, and somebody would say, yes, I know I ought to be a Christian, and I've been thinking about being a Christian, and then he'd say to them, now, I want to ask you a question or two. If you died right now, where would you be? Well, I guess I wouldn't be in heaven.
He said, I didn't ask you where you wouldn't be. I said, if you died right now, where would you be? Well, I suppose I'd be in the other place. What other place? Well, I suppose I'd be in hell. You suppose you would. What makes you suppose it? Either you would or you wouldn't. And then finally the fellow would say, well, of course, I'm not supposing anything. I know what the Bible says. If I died right now, I would be in hell. And I thought that was pretty rough treatment. But he didn't stop there. He said, I want to ask you another question. If God sent you to hell right now, would he be perfectly just in doing so? Well, that's a poser.
When anybody's willing to admit that, I tell you, he's ready for salvation. Don't try to talk people into a profession. Plow deeply enough so that you know that that soul is lost. We've had entirely too many people talked into saying that they believe. I never even used the text, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved, unless I'm talking to a person who is really disturbed, really knows that he's lost. That was said to a man whom God had awakened by an earthquake. You know that? Don't you go up to a total stranger and say to him, you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ? You say, well, sure, you think I'm a heathen?
I live in America, don't I? The thing that you've got to do is to get to the facts of their lost condition. Do it tactfully as you can, but get to the fact of their being lost. Only lost people get saved. Only thirsty people take a drink of the water of life. And then the second fact that they need to know is that the Lord Jesus did everything it was needed to take their sins away and to give them eternal life. You know how to tell them that fact, don't you? Can't you tell anybody the simple gospel? Well, if you can't do it, memorize the first few verses of First Corinthians, how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the Scriptures.
Keep them with that. Get them to that point and hold them there until they see the Lord Jesus did everything that was needed for their salvation. Now, when you know those basic facts, you're equipped to go out and talk to people about the Lord Jesus. You have the Holy Spirit in dwelling you, haven't you? Every child of God has. So you've got everything that the early Christians had. Now, I want to mention something else, which you may not have noticed. He shall be witnesses unto me. Verse eight, verse twenty-two, beginning from the baptism of John and to that same day that he was taken up from us, must one be ordained to be a witness with us.
Chapter two, verse four, they were all filled with the Holy Ghost and began to speak. They spoke with different languages, not gibberish. different languages to suit the needs of the people who were there. Verse six, the end of it, we heard every man heard them speak in his own language. The end of verse seven, are not all these which speak Galileans. Verse eleven, Cretes and the Rabians, we do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God. Verse twenty nine, men and brethren, let me freely speak. Verse forty. Many other words, did he testify and exhort?
Now, don't tell me that you're just going to live a nice, godly life before your people and let that speak, because it won't work. Witnessing is not living. Minds you, it's important that you live as you ought. But living before people will never win them to Christ. It may awaken them to a need. It may make them interested. It may make them want to be saved. But you've got to speak. He said to Peter, or he said to Cornelius, Peter will tell thee words whereby thou and thy house may be saved. You've got to deliver a message. It isn't enough for you to live before them.
Now, if you go through the book of the Acts, I don't know whether you mark your Bible or not. I do. If you go through the book of the Acts and mark all the places where he uses words for speaking, preaching, preaching, witnessing, you're going to be surprised. You'll have the book of the Acts all marked up. I won't go over them. There are dozens of them, hundreds of them, I suppose. They preached. They preached. They told. They taught. They spoke. They said, we are witnesses. This is our job. When you get to chapter eight, because the people hadn't gone out anywhere except Jerusalem, then the Lord started scattering them.
Saul was consenting unto his death, Stephen's death. And at that time there was a great persecution against the church, which was at Jerusalem. They were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles. Verse four, therefore they that were scattered abroad went everywhere preaching the word. Everybody but the preachers went out preaching the word. The preachers were in jail. I tell you one thing, I'd be glad to go to jail with all the rest of the preachers right now just to see what had happened. If I could see all the rest of the Christians doing what they did in the first century. If all the rest of the Lord's people would get out and preach, we'd be better off if the preachers were locked up in jail. I tell you, they preached everywhere.
They got the word out. The words were preached, incidentally, here in the fourth verse of the eighth chapter is not the word for herald to stand up and proclaim as I'm standing up here before you, but it's the word that means just to talk about it. I don't like the word gossip, but it's almost like that. They just talked it over the back fence, talked it to anybody they could. You can find people to talk to everywhere. I was thinking about this a little bit, and it came to me this way. God gave gifts to men. He gave the gifts of apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers. These are the permanent gifts.
That is, I mean by this, these are the gifts which followed the sign age. Now, the apostles and prophets are in the foundation age and are no longer needed now, so that leaves us evangelists, pastors, teachers. The pastors and the teachers have to do with helping Christians. The evangelists are the ones that carry the gospel to the others. And not all of us have the gifts of evangelism. But the point that I wanted to make was this. God never gave the gifts to the church. He gave the gifts to the men. And then he gave the men to the church. Now that's a distinction you need to make. God gave the gifts to the men. And then he gave the men to the church. The church cannot dispense gifts.
No church can say, I make you a teacher or a pastor or an evangelist. putting their empty hands on your empty head is not going to make an evangelist out of you. Only God can do this. But going further than that, I noticed that in the Acts of the Apostles, not once did we ever read of the church preaching the gospel. Now, you see if you can find it. In the second chapter of the Acts, it says, they continued steadfastly in the Apostles' doctrine, fellowship, breaking of bread, prayers, tells the things that they were doing together. But it doesn't say, and having gospel meetings.
Why? Because the work of preaching the gospel was the individual's responsibility, and not that of the church. I'm not against gospel meetings. I'm not against Sunday schools. I think anything that we can do to spread the gospel is just fine if it works. But, brother and sister, we are making a dreadful mistake here in the United States. We're putting up lovely buildings. and a sign out on front that indicates that this is a gospel cafeteria. Come and get it. And they're not coming. And we think that we have witnessed in that town by that simple act of putting up a building and advertising meetings where they can come and get it.
Is that what the Lord told us to do? Well, you see, if you're not going to reach them through a nice chapel in a good location, how in the world are you going to reach them? You're going to reach them by knocking on doors and ringing doorbells. That's how you're going to do it. How many times have you gone out of your way to try to talk to somebody about the Lord this last week? How many of you have a consecrated pocket where you carry some gospel tracks? I was just looking through my tracks this morning and I see that I had what I needed with me and I found out that I've got six kinds of tracks and Brother T.B. Gilbert wrote two of them. Brother Tom Olson, I think, wrote the other three, the other four, or three of them anyway.
God's given us men with gifts to write tracks. Tracks are cheap. Use these tracks. Use them as wedges. Hand it to somebody. Ask him to read it and say, I'll see you tomorrow and ask you what you think about it. That's a compliment himself to the man that you want to know what he thinks. And then tomorrow he knows you're going to ask him, and so you do ask him, and you get into a conversation. Go to homes and offer them literature, not just tracks, other kinds of literature. There are hundreds of ways you can do it. I've got down some here, which I think are very worthwhile. I know one lady who has a card file, and every time she has a few minutes, she sits down to the telephone with a card file, and she runs through it, calls up somebody, someone that she's met, someone who's been to a meeting, someone she's talked to on the bus.
And then she puts that down. She keeps track of those who are interested. And I've been there for meetings several times, and I'll say that nine out of ten of the people who come out to hear the gospel are people that this woman has called up and talked to. Just because she does this, she's interested in nothing so as she keeps a card file on people that she thinks might be interested. I know those Sunday school teachers who have never even visited the homes of their own pupils once. Think of this. Why, the door is wide open to you. All you have to do is say, I'm little Johnny's teacher, and they say, come in. Or you say, I was the counselor at camp this summer, and your little girl was in my council group.
Oh, she's told me so much about you. Come in. The doors are wide open to her. There are all kinds of ways you can get in. Visiting hospitals. We were at the Centerville Conference. My friend Jim travels with me, went over to the hospital just a block away and got into a conversation with a man who was interested. When he went back the next time and couldn't see the man, there was a nun standing there, and so he had a nice visit with her about the Lord. You can talk to people everywhere if you're really looking for chances to talk to them. House-to-house selling. Jim doesn't know I know this, but John Williams told me that he took a handful of books written by Bill McDonnell and went around this neighborhood here and sold every one of them last night.
House to house. Just walked up to the houses. Cold. He lives in Colorado Springs. And he just walked up and knocked on the door and said, here's a book I think you folks will be interested in. You ought to have it. Is there anything wrong with that? Well, they do it in all the mission fields. Call parties work together. And we haven't got one coal porter that I know of in the whole state of Colorado. And any young person could do this. Sell them at cost or donate the proceeds to Christian work if you've got a conscience against making any money out of it. That's not the point. The point is get literature into the hands of people. Communists are doing it. Others are doing it. Why shouldn't we put something into their hands as worthwhile?
You say they don't like to be bothered. Well, they're being bothered about nineteen times a day now by politicians. You might as well get in something different. This is a good year to do it. Hospitality in the home. How many women there are who God has used for this? My dear mother was one of them. Invite people into your homes. Invite them over for coffee. If you don't feel that you can teach them something, borrow some of my tapes. I have a library of tapes that I loan out to people. Twelve-minute tapes on the whole books of the Bible. I mean, twelve minutes on each chapter or on each section. And play one of these and then discuss it. If you don't feel that you can lead a discussion yourself, there are hundreds of ways of getting into talks with your neighbors and winning them for Christ.
My wife has been doing some of this. And it's just a great joy for her to come home and say, well, so-and-so finally came to the Lord. God would use you if you were looking for places like this. The things that you can do together. I was just down to Oklahoma City and I found some of the Christians went together there and rented a booth at the fair and gave out gospel tracks and literature at the fair. And Brother Buell Andrew told me he's just been going around to these Four H Club fairs and places of this kind and giving out gospel tracks and he was only ordered out of two of them. You say, I couldn't stand to be ordered out. Well, haven't you got any courage for the Lord at all?
Most of them will let you give out gospel tracks. There are many ways you can do it. Many ways that you can do it. You can do these things together. Some of you Christian women could get together where you live and have a coffee hour after the family Bible hour at twelve o'clock. Most people don't have their dinner. It'll three o'clock anyway. They're doing this in some of the places out on the west coast and they're just reaching souls right and left. The neighbors are glad to stay and have a cup of coffee and get acquainted with somebody. Some places they do it Sunday night after the gospel meeting. And they just announced it. Now we want you all to stay and have coffee with us or tea or whatever you want to do.
And a few cookies. It isn't expensive and it isn't much trouble and you're getting acquainted with people. There are a lot of things you could do if you're really looking for opportunities to witness for the Lord. Well, I can't say anything more. I've run over my time now, but brethren and sisters, the Holy Spirit is here to use us. He's indwelling you. He wants to take your voice, your feet, your hands, your body, and use you to reach some around you. And we're too busy. We're too selfish. We're too absorbed in our families and our own interests. and we're not reaching souls.
God, forgive us for our shortcomings and awaken us to the opportunities that we have here before they're all taken away from us.