Ezra chapter 1. Thank you for being in the church tonight. Thank God for the good Holy Ghost singing. Right in the midst of all the turmoil and trouble, I'm glad I'm saved. I'm more glad tonight than I've ever been. Now, in the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled. The Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia, that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom and put it also in writing, saying, Thus saith Cyrus king of Persia, The Lord God of heaven hath given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he hath charged me to build him an house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Who is there among you of all his people? His God be with him. And let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and build the house of the Lord God of Israel. He is the God which is in Jerusalem. And whoso remaineth in any place where he sojourneth, let the men of this place help him with silver and with gold and with goods and with beasts beside the free will offering for the house of God that's in Jerusalem. And then Nehemiah chapter 1. The words of Nehemiah, the son of Hacaniah. And it came to pass in the month of Cheslu in the twentieth year, as I was in Shushan the palace, that Hanani, one of my brethren came, he and certain men of Judah, and asked them concerning the Jews that had escaped, which were left to the captivity, and concerning Jerusalem. And they said unto me, the remnant that are left of the captivity there in the province are in great affliction and reproach. The wall of Jerusalem also is broken down and the gates thereof are burned with fire. And it came to pass when I heard these words that I sat down and wept and mourned certain days and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven. And said, I beseech thee, O Lord, God of heaven, the great and terrible God, that keepeth covenant and mercy for them that love him and observe his commandments. Let thine ear now be attentive, and thine eyes open, that thou mayest hear the prayer of thy servant, which I pray before thee now, day and night, for the children of Israel, thy servants. And confess the sins of the children of Israel, which we have sinned against thee, Both I and my Father's house have sinned. We have dealt very corruptly against thee, and have not kept the commandments, nor the statutes, nor the judgments, which thou commandest thy servant Moses. Remember, I beseech thee, the word that thou commandest thy servant Moses, saying, If ye transgress, I will scatter you abroad among the nations. But if ye turn unto me, and keep my commandments, and do them, though there were of you cast out into the uttermost part of the heaven. Yet will I gather them from thence, and will bring them into the place that I have chosen to set my name there. Now these are thy servants and thy people, whom thou hast redeemed by thy great power and thy strong hand. O Lord, I beseech thee, let now thine ear be attentive to the prayer of thy servants, and to the prayer of thy servants, who desire to fear thy name and prosper, I pray thee, thy servant this day, and grant him mercy in the sight of this man, for I was the king's cupbearer." I want to preach tonight, if God would help me for a little while, on, We Can Go Back. And I think there's nobody here tonight but what understands at least in part of the mess we're in tonight. And there's a cause for it. And I want to deal just a little with that, but I'm mainly concerned about being captive to the devil and his ways, and being a captive to modernism and liberalism spiritually. The reason America is where we are tonight is not because of the power of another country, or because the Democrats or the Republicans did wrong. It's that people did evil in the sight of God that know God. And the wrong is not laid at the political door, but at the religious door tonight. But worse than all of that, America's gone down the drain. As far as I'm concerned, there's no hope and no help for America. It's over as far as I'm concerned for America. I see no hope absolutely, but things are getting worse and worse. I can see signs now that I've never seen before that we are certainly coming under tribulation on the people of God. Make no difference what you believe. I'm not interested in all of that. I'm just telling you we're in for trouble. But worse than all of that, down at the house of God, I see a wandering and a straying away from what we know is right. Israel had did evil in the sight of the Lord, and God had given them up to captivity. and prophesied that they'd be in captivity 70 years. And those 70 years now, in the reading that I read to you tonight, is coming to an end. And there's an opportunity for the Israelites to go back to Bethlehem, Judea again and make a new start. But there's a whole lot of folks there that can't go back because they've never been there. You can't go somewhere again that you haven't been. And these Israelites now have a desire, and I read in your hearing the prayer of the upfront people of the people of Israel, began to pray and beg God to hear them concerning the days and the glory of yesteryear. They remembered a few of them did. They've been gone now seventy years. the glory of how it was before they turned away from God. But there are some of them here that don't know. They have no understanding. And I can't blame them because they don't know. They don't know, but what they are now is better than what it used to be. I'm going to tell you tonight, there's a few of us here, that remember how it was in the old days. What it is like in the days of glory when the power of God rang over these hills and hollers and God's people came together in worship and power and we saw souls saved by the dozens and hundreds and go through the baptismal peril and live a victorious shout and glory life. Thank God we can go back. and in a maximum condition. I love you all, but I'll preach if God will help me to your hearts. I'm so tired of hearing what old Aunt Susie used to do, and Uncle Tom, and old Brother Charlie, and Brother Jessup. I know there's good, and I know there's right, but when they died, God didn't die. He's still alive. But there's a lot of folk who don't know what going back means. And the sad thing about it is it's got nobody to show them. I get among people all over this part of the country. I don't know how many churches I know that in ten years There will hardly be anybody around the way it looks now about all the out there's old folk. And I'm going to tell you what we can do. We can let it die with us, or we can put on such a show for God that they'll know what we got. But there's a few requirements now if you're going to go back. First of all, they have to volunteer. They have to want to go back. And I'm going to tell you I'm a chicken eater. You go with me, thank God you go with me to eat chicken and you'll get to want to eat some. I love it. And I'm going to tell you what, I eat it. And if I love God, you're going to know it. Thank God every once in a while I'm going to shake loose from the moorings of this world and have me an old time Holy Ghost spit. and seeing how many you can pack a pew and ride ponies around playing golf, give away, and playing rags. I'll tell you what, it's the old-time power of God that did it back in the days of Bethlehem, Judah, and it's still available today. Woo! I don't have to wait for some team from Hal's Anderson College to come down and show me how to handle a dollop. The walls of Jerusalem have been torn down, and the glory's gone, and I'm tired of it, and I remember how it was before we fell into the ditch, and into the trap, and lost what God gave us in our hearts. I ain't be here all week, nothing happens. I'm gonna see if I can get y'all to go back with me. Some of you here have been in more than I've been in. But you ain't enjoyed it more than I have. Thank God. Some of us think it. We holler a little on Sunday. We've reached the summit. Shame on us. Us Baptist folk got scared to death they're going to call us holy. We get pumped out. Get to dancing in the house. Thank God. Like old brother Jimmy did last year, it's still in. Thank God. We've got the right. We've got the God. and not be ashamed. Amen. Hallelujah! I said it's still in. I'm a weepin' for the glory that once was. For the old time God of heaven to visit and God's people respond. Now before they could go back in glory, they didn't even have to be on the road. All they had to do was read in here. You can't shout if your name's not on the roll. There's a lot of folks that went with him, I guess, but there was not very many of them that know what it was they left, O yoner, in Bethlehem, too. And my name's on the roll. If I paid the price, God will give me what I'm looking for. Do you all believe that business? Now, I remember some things from years gone by. I was reared now. I appreciate this old time Holy Ghost more than a lot of you. I wasn't raised in it. I was raised in a liberal church. And God brought me out of that. You think about that. I know, I knew in my heart that I was missing something. And my daddy was a, he was a good man. He said God called him to pray. And I can't find that in the book, but if you'd have heard him pray, you'd be looking for it. And I asked him out on the hillside, and I was crying, here's a deacon in that liberal church, and I was enjoying the That sounds good, but it ain't going to do your young'uns and your grand young'uns any good. Thank God, know where you ought to be and get there. If you're going to travel 150 miles every Sunday, get in. If your heart's right, God will pay for your gas if he has to. God, He gets easy to find. When you're willing to sell out, thank God, and get ahold of the help of the government and beg Him for your people of your kind, He'll run the ocean dry to give you a drink. Hallelujah. I'm glad I'm saved. A great God. My pastor come by and got me I know there's something bad going on. He said, we're going to an associational meeting. And I said, and I was familiar with that. I mean, I was in that level of church. Boy, they're association folk, they was. And I said, I'll go with you. And I went in and they talked and they had a business meeting and they talked and they had a business meeting and they talked. And the two or three of them tried to preach, and afternoon is the custom that they let the newest pastor in the association preach the first afternoon message. And he got up and had suspenders on. And he said, I want to preach on the place of refuge. And he started. And he started cutting off steaks about that thick and handing them to me. And I was eating them and ready for another before he got them cut. And I said, this is what I've been looking for. They started out with him, but about after ten minutes, it wasn't but me and one other old man with him. Hallelujah! I believe if you've got your name on the roll, there's a hunger in you. You show me somebody that's afraid of old time worship, and I'm going to get worried about whether they've got God in their heart or not. and singing and glorifying God. Amen. This is holy land. I'm going to thank God I got a taste of this, and I'm yearning for more of it. And my name's on the road. And lo and behold, it got a hold of the king. And all at once, he said, I've got to turn these people loose and let them go back to Jesus. Boy, I like that bit. As soon as you get right and get the praying right, and the devil's going to lose his grip. He's got some of you tied down, got you in his grip, and you're kind of lacking. and grandkids that work on you and want to get home and watch the afternoon ball game and get about doing their business. And so you can go in and slip in in the back, you know, and hear the preaching and say to one another, that is good, before you get home and go home and eat and think you've done the Lord's will and you're a shame and a disgrace. But when you really get to wanting the Holy Ghost of God, the Lord will work on the devil. If you want a real old-time church, you can find it. All the preachers ain't dead. All the churches are not dead. I don't care what name is over the door. If they worship in spirit and in truth, go and cut some lines. I'm going to tell you tonight, find you a place that believes close to what you do and get it. You can church shop. My daddy went trading a time or two and come back carrying a bridle. And that's what a lot of people do when they go to church hunting and church swapping. They come back and ain't got nothing. That's exactly right. That's about what they found. But I'm going to tell you if you really get to wanting it. You can, and the devil loses grip on you. I'm going to tell you, he can't keep you under bondage. When it comes time for your release, and you have prayed, and God turns you loose, there's not anything the devil can do about it. Amen. Oh, I'm glad of that. It's the power of God. Believe me. Boom! Thank God. And he said, now I'm going to tell you what to do when you get started. He said, I'm going to get folks to help you. He said, they're going to give you gold and silver. That's all right, ain't it? I'm going to tell you, there's some of you tonight, I don't know whether you all believe in tithing or not. You believe in that, don't you? Yeah, I believe in tithing. But now I want to tell you something. That's good if you want to put at least 10% in the offering plate. At least 10%. But if I owe you a debt, brother, that's what we owe God is 10%. But you pay that, that don't show no love. If I owe you $10 and come back, you can't say, oh, brother, maybe he loved me. He paid me what he owed. No. I just done what I ought to. The Lord get me. But if I borrowed $10 from him and I come and say, I'm going to give you $15, brother, just you know, another $5 just because I love you and want to help you and you've been good to me. Wouldn't that be something? If you was to give out $10, that's what you owe him. And if you don't pay him, you're a thief. And a man, I'm going to turn you into a man that robbed God. A man that robbed God robbed you or anybody else. You see, you can't go back to Judah until you pay your debt to God Almighty in every way. I know I done got out of bounds to some of you, but I'm still in the middle. But I'm going to tell you what you really need to do. Come Sunday morning, or just a little before Sunday morning, you need to get in the offering place. That's what God's really looking for. He's looking for you to get in the offering plate. Wouldn't that be something? And say, Lord, I'm giving myself to you this morning. Absolutely. I'm not talking about the real offering plate. I'm talking about God's offering plate. I'll tell you, when you get rid of that ten percent business and go to give and thank stuff to God, you're just paying your debt. But when you pass that, if you'd try that, you'd say, this is something real. You preachers, I'm trying to help you. You ought to get with me. Thank God tonight, He'll do things for you. I'm glad I'm saved tonight. Thank God I got saved. I got saved all the way. I didn't just get saved, pardon me. I got saved all the way. And I gave myself to God that morning down there on the hillside, and I've tried to back out of it a few times, but I'm going to tell you, God put the skids on me and put me in a backslidden condition, and I ran back to Him and said, I'll pay up, I'll pay up, I'll pay up if you'll bless me again. They got down there and crossed the river. I'll get off that line and you get back to me. And they came to him and said, now you need some help in the way. We'll give you some soldiers to go with you. And he said, you know, after we had told them how big our God was, after we had bragged on them how he could do anything, We're ashamed to ask him for his soldier. He said, after all how we had bragged and told him down through these 70 years, our God's a great God and full of mercy, and he's a warrior God, and he can do anything. We'd be afraid to ask for him. I'm going to tell you, if that's so, you don't have to holler at Nashville Bush to come sing. You don't have to sing Dolly Parton songs. You don't have to deal with the outside world and to help build a church and make it spiritual. Your grandpa and grandma didn't. You don't have to have day church and get people to crank it for you on Sunday morning and will will right God and crank it. Amen! I'm a longing, I'm a longing for the hills of Judah again. Be children of the Lord. I hear people stand up and say, I'm just so happy this morning. We've got our house paid for, and I just praise His name. And somebody will say, well, my daughter's got out of the hospital. And she and I just praise His name for that, and that's all good. You ought to give Him praise. But she ought to do something Sunday morning and say, I really can't think of anything this morning, but I just want to have a fit because I'm saved. I'm glad I'm in, bless His name. I don't have to help. I don't have to help. I'll get out of the hospital in the insane asylum. Thank God, just to know that I'm born again and headed for home. Woo! I got over there and I got all that timber. They gave them timber. Kept all the enemies off of them. Now I'm going to tell you it wasn't without trouble. That guy had trouble when they got over there and they laughed at him and scorned him and that third building. But there come a day. I'm going to tell you in one place when they got that thing done and that temple, you know, one of them places them old men shouted because of remembrance of thinking how it had been. And there's others just shouting for the beauty of it. Glory to God. Glory to God. You know what the first thing they done when they got out there and figured out what it's going to take to get everything back like it was? One of them got out on a beast and rode in the night by himself and got to looking at the walls. But you know the first thing they done? They built the house of God and built an altar. Oh, tonight for altars. for families, for mamas and daddies, that it get back to old time prayer again. She said, I heard an old lady named Triplett in North Carolina, Lenora, North Carolina. She said, me and daddy got married. She said, the first night, said, daddy's working down in the Bottoms there and came in and he had a great big rock. I said, honey, what in the world are you doing? He said, I'm bringing it in the house. She said, we don't need that in the house. I said, oh yeah, we do. Brought that in there and laid it down in front of, I believe she said, in front of the fireplace. And said, that's going to be our altar right there. We're going to raise our children around this big rock and glorify God. And that old woman, that old man is dead. She said, well, she said, that's the things that come and go. She said, we got a storm in that country and we ran out of wood and nobody gave us wood. And we was trying to heat with anything we could get a hold of. And she said me and daddy went and got on that rock and got to praying for help. And she said the wind got to blowing. And she said, I believe every pine cone in that country was drifted up again in our house. When we got done playing, we just went to gathering them and burning them. And she said, the children's gone, some of them. And she said, we've had hard times and good times and hard times. Sometimes we had enough to eat and sometimes we didn't, but we still got our rock. And she said, Daddy's gone. I believe she said one or two of the kids are gone now. And she said, I've still got my rock. And that old woman did a holy dance in that altar there in that big church. And danced like a 12 or 15 year old girl. You say, wonder about that. I think it's the rock. And you know the only way for us to have revival again is anything that's new is not true. And anything that's true is not new, and anything that's new is not true. We don't need new stuff. We don't need new Bibles. We don't need anything but what we've had down through the centuries. Are y'all hearing this old wore-out preacher tonight? Thank God we can go back if we want to. If I was here and I was a preacher tonight, I'd check myself up, and if I was that much backslid, I'd get in that altar and say, Lord, I want to get back where I was. If I was a mama in here tonight, and I used to shout and quit, if I used to sing in the choir and wave my hands, and I'd kindly quieten down, I'd bow down between the seats, get in the altar tonight, and some of you big old stalwart men, work like work, perch and work horses, and come in the house of God You say, Bruce, you're trying to make us mad or anything, it'll make you get in the alter. And I wonder about where you are tonight. I want to ask you all something tonight. I just want to ask you, and I want you to respond to me. I'm going to give an invitation in a minute. I want you to listen to what I'm saying. When I give an invitation tonight, Will you just be honest with God about where you are, and if He touches you, will you respond to it? I ain't asking you. Would you do that? Would you raise your hand on that? And if God touches you, I just, I'm being honest, you know, about it. I mean, if you don't come this order, it ain't none of my business between you and God. But if, oh, tonight if He touches you and says, you know, you need to get closer, we believe in this old time. We say we do. I've asked y'all before, y'all believe in shouting? How many of you do? Okay. How many of you do it? Oh, wait a minute now. Help us, O Lord. Help us, O Lord. Help us, O Lord. Have you got enough to shout about? Has He done enough for you that it'd make you want to jump and holler? Thank God! Glory to His name! Everybody stand, Brother Jones or whoever it is you're saying. You need to draw now to God. Would you come tonight in these aisles and altars and pray and say, Lord, I want to come to you. I want to get out of the condition I'm in. Oh, I know I'm not dealing with outlawed, just folk that need the power of God in their lives again. Would you pray, would you pray, would you pray?