This is the voice of truth, the voice of God's inerrant, absolute, eternal, unbroken, verbally inspired word. The voice of truth is coming to you from the Metropolitan Tabernacle, 501 Opelousas Avenue, New Orleans, Louisiana. This is Pastor Alvin Pendorva speaking, inviting you to stay tuned to hear God's message by our late Pastor L.R. Shelton, Sr. on the subject, Travailing for Souls, and this is number 206. That's Travailing for Souls, and that's number 206. For weeks we have been asking that you join us in prayer for a spiritual awakening. Many, one here and one there, have been awakened to their lost condition. Some have gotten to the Lord and have written me that God has saved them. A spiritual revival, get it now, is vastly different from what the average individual thinks it is. As we have often said, and we repeat today, the average individual thinks only of revival in terms of numbers joining the Church. Let me go somewhere to hold a meeting, and after I've been there two or three days, you know the first question they ask me? Well, preacher, how many members have you got? How many joiners have you had today? What a trick Satan has pulled on the ministry. I wish that we could get away from that concept and think in terms of centers in and out of the church being awakened to their lost condition and realizing they are going to hell and their only hope is Christ. You may want to ask me, what do you mean by the word awakened, a sinner awakened? Well, my friends, the Bible teaches us first, sinners are dead. in trespasses and sins. Therefore, there has got to come a resurrection arising from the dead by the power of God's Holy Spirit. We preachers can't do that. Then sinners are prisoners of hell. They have got to be awakened to the fact that they are prisoners and alienated from the life of God, then they've got to be awakened to the fact that they hate God. They love sin, but they hate holiness. And they've got to be awakened unto those great facts, and we could go on showing you what the word AWAKEN means, and that's exactly, it means exactly what it says. Just like AWAKEN a person out of their sleep and the house is on fire, they don't know the danger of it, and sinners are asleep in the lap of evil one, and they do not know the danger of being asleep and dead in trespasses and in sins. Have you ever been awakened? If you haven't, you're not saved. My friends, then we must realize the majority of the members of the average church are lost, and that the revival must begin within the church. That is not to stir up the members of the church to pray or to be more loyal to the church. This seals them in their doom. It does. But that they might be awakened to their lost condition, this is the reason I don't like to hold church meetings, and it's the reason why a great many preachers don't like to have me in their pulpit. I remember a few years ago, my old pastor wrote me and said, Brother Sheldon, I want you to come and hold a meeting for me. I wrote him back frankly, and I said, My dear pastor, I don't want to come. I'm not coming. I said, you are in the closing days of your ministry, and if I come into your church, your teachers, your deacons are lost and will be awakened to their lost condition, and I do not know whether you can handle the situation after I'm gone. Will you decline the invitation of asking me to come? He wrote me back and thanked me and said we'll get someone else. I thanked him very much. Now my friends, now that's true. I don't like to hold church meetings. You see, the average individual, get it now, listen to me, the average individual in thinking of a revival thinks only of getting members into the church. Now that's true. Therefore, a real spiritual revival which will awaken the inside of the church to its lost condition, they do not want and will not have because they don't understand it. I'm not angry with them, they don't understand it. Now you ponder these statements. All right, get it. If the vast majority of our church members are lost, and they are, then the first manifestation of a spiritual awakening must come from within that church. If the majority of preachers are lost, and they are the second manifestation of a spiritual awakening in a church, and a lot of times it's the first manifestation, is not additional members, but the awakening of the lost, and the awakening of that lost preacher within the church. Now you hold that, will you, my friends? If the majority of members do know nothing about Holy Spirit conviction, and they don't, the majority of members of the average church knows nothing about Holy Spirit conviction, then what will happen in that meeting? Well, the average church, when revival comes, preachers, deacons, officers, teachers and others will be awakened to their lost condition. Now, that's exactly what will happen. They think this tears up a church instead of building a church. When this takes place, they think the church is torn to smithereens, and they get angry. They want me to go home, and sometimes I have. I've just walked out and gone home. I'm being more frank with preachers today than ever, and I want you to be frank with me. I don't want to come to your church and tear it up from that angle. But what your church needs, as well as mine, is an inside revival. There was a man who visited us Wednesday night, a preacher, and as I preached, And I asked, how many here are awakened who wants to know Christ? One third of the congregation stood up. He was literally amazed. He couldn't understand it, that we have lost folks in the church. Well, I wouldn't go to his church and hold a meeting for nothing in the world. No, I wouldn't, unless God made me do it. Well, this shows one thing, that the Church is built on a sandy foundation. It is built on faith without repentance. It is built on a profession without blood redemption. It is built on Church membership without regeneration. So the revival must begin within. We need to lay a new foundation, and that foundation is Christ. You can't build a church on doctrine alone. I care not how orthodox you may be. You cannot build a church on emotions. That foundation must be the person and work of Christ. According to 1 Corinthians 3.11, you will lay that foundation. Listen. Listen. Listen, preacher. You will lay that foundation. without the sound of a hammer. Yes, you will. Just as Solomon laid that temple without the sound of a hammer, you will lay the foundation of Christ in the hearts of many women by the preaching of the gospel and the word of the Lord God of heaven and the power of the Holy Spirit. Our subject is travailing for souls. Our text is found in Isaiah 66a. If you'll listen, I wish you'd listen. Listen. As soon as Zion travailed, she brought forth her children. This means as soon as Zion was moved with deep compassion for the souls of men, sinners were awakened and brought to Christ. Every spiritual awakening or refreshing has been preceded by travailing prayer and a compassion for the souls of men. on the part of the born-again ones. It may not be but a few in that church. It may not be but one in that church. It may not be a single individual in that church until God lays hold of it. The lack of compassion for the lost marks the period of drought. A spiritual refreshing is always characterized by a compassion for lost souls. No saint will travail for souls. You listen to me, will you? No saint will travail for souls or weep over souls unless they first know their own spiritual condition. They must see and know the spiritual condition of the sinner out of Christ. And this is experimental within his own heart, my friends, that's true. Oh, we need experimental salvation today. We have so much so-called salvation that is not experimental. A man sat in my office yesterday who had been a preacher and preached for several years, and so he was awakened recently to the fact that he was lost. He sat there in my office and said, Pastor, I did not know experimentally what I was talking about. I said, I knew it. Yes, when once the born-again believer drifts away or forgets from which God brought him and what God saved him, and then his prayer light begins to dry up and his compassion for the lost begins to wane. I've noticed that some here in the church who once met for prayer no longer darken the prayer room. Something has happened. It is because their compassion for the lost is drying up. or they must have never been saved. This may be caused from several reasons, but mainly from the fact they've gotten away from what they were before God saved them. Tell me how God saved you. I had a letter from a fellow in South Dakota the other day, and he said he was talking with a preacher, and this preacher was trying to lead him to Christ. And so he said to him, he said, you tell me how God saved you, that may help me. Just tell me how God saved you. Tell me about your Holy Spirit conviction. Tell me about your heart struggle. Tell me about how you got to the Lord. He said the man turned red in the face and got up and walked off and left him. He couldn't do it. He knew nothing about it. Now, why do you quit the prayer meetings? Why do you no longer darken the prayer meetings with a broken heart? You fathers and mothers who claim to be saved, if you can sit idly by, get it now, with no compassion, no longing, no earnest prayer for the salvation of your loved ones, there is something deadly wrong. You preachers who can be taken up with everything else and let your members and your audience go to hell and not weep over them, there is something deadly wrong. I don't say that every sinner that you weep over gets saved, but brother, if they go to hell, they ought to go to hell over our tears. They ought to. What about you folks out there in the missions? Are you wrestling with God for the salvation of the lost? What about you fathers and mothers? Are you wrestling to say you're saved? Are you wrestling about the salvation of the lost? How many of you preachers in this city have wept over this city in its degradation and sin? How many? have wept over it like Christ wept over Jerusalem. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how oft would I gather thee together, as a hen doth gather a brood, and ye would not. And on the day of Pentecost, Christ saw that prayer answered. When I stand in the pulpit, or before this microphone, I preach to you as if every one of you are lost and going to hell. That's the position I take. You ask why. If ever one of you were saved but one, that one would have a chance to be saved. And that kind of preaching will bless the hearts of you who are saved, because it reminds you of how the God saved you. I'm pleading today that you and I will arouse ourselves and begin to cry unto the Lord for the salvation of the lost. If we could only hear the wailing cries of the damned, if we could only see the awful spiritual condition of lost souls and realize that salvation is holy to the Lord, we would cry day and night to the throne of God's grace as the Spirit leads us for our salvation. But, brother, many of us are taken up with making money and taken up with our businesses and with pleasures and with many other things. Yet we claim to be saved, but there's no compassion for lost souls. There's something wrong. You're either lost or going to hell, or you're living in a spiritual condition that's appalling. That's right, my friend. I wish I knew how to preach. I wish I knew how to lay upon your hearts the burden of the lost. I wish I knew how to bring to your attention the power of intercessory prayer. Isaiah wrote this text at a time when Israel had fallen into the lowest spiritual condition possible. Yet in the midst of this spiritual darkness, there was a heart yearning on the part of a few for the coming of the Messiah. and it continued until the Lord's anointed came. We are face to face with that condition today. We have never faced such spiritual darkness, such whirliness, such unconcernedness, such deadness as we face today. All that in the midst of this spiritual dirt there go up a cry to high heaven, O Lord, O God, rend the heavens and come down, stretch forth Thy mighty arm of salvation, liber the hearts of sinners, call Thy people back to Thee, that we may be a willing people in the day of Thy power. There must first be the travail before there can be the spiritual birth, as soon as Zion she brought forth her children. Before every birth there are the birth pains. Before the child is born there is the travail of the mother." This is an established fact from history. When we open our Bibles to the first chapter of Exodus, we hear the cry of the children of Israel in the land of Egypt. The whole nation which lay in bondage under the wrath of the Egyptians cried, Listen to their cry and their plea based upon the covenant. O God, visit us, God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob. Remember thy covenant and deliver us. Darkness prevailed. It seemed that the Lord God of heaven had forgotten them. But this travail brought its results, and the children of Israel one night went marching out of the land of Egypt. If you have studied the life and psalms of King David, you'll find that they experienced a great spiritual awakening and refreshing in his day. If you'll read the Psalms of David closely, you'll find that his bosom throbbed and heaved with a yearning and a thirst after God for revival. We find that God set David as a man after his own heart. God heard the prayers of King David, and the kingdom of Israel was established and extended the farthest during his reign than any other king who was ever on the throne of Israel. Oh, I cry, O God, rend the heavens and come down in our day. This was also true in the days of Josias the king. Although young in years when he came to the throne, he found that the book of the law had been neglected. The young king's heart was broken over the spiritual condition of his people. And let me say right here, friend, if our heart's never broken over the spiritual condition of our people, you'll never have a revival under your ministry, your witnessing. Never will. Our hearts have got to be broken. If we stand alone, it makes no difference. You and I have never lived in such a day when God's Word is being laughed at, scoffed at, whittled to pieces, and denied by preachers in the pulpit, laymen in the pew, infidels in the world, as we are today. Forty or sixty-seven percent of our preachers do not believe in the virgin birth of the Lord Jesus Christ. Our only hope is a spiritual awakening. We can't win by argument. They laugh at us, but our God's able. Our God is able. My friend, our God is able. Will you lay hold of the horns of the altar by faith with me? Will you do it? They can't stand in the wake of the potent gale of God's grace. Infidelity, communism, and atheism, and neo-orthodoxy, or any other ism, cannot stand in the wake of the potent gale of God's grace. Our answer to the world today is on our face before God with a broken heart. Lord give us a broken heart is our prayer. Will you pray with me that God will give us who name the name of Christ a broken heart. My friend, they'll be broken under the power of God's Holy Spirit. All errors swept away under the power of God's grace. Brother, we can't stand against the ungodly world and the corrupt ministry in the church today. We can't do it. They'll laugh us to scorn, but I'll tell you what we can do. We can hide ourselves at the Brook Terrace and besiege the throne of God's grace until the Lord rids the heavens and comes down. And when He does, there is no power on earth, sea, or sky that can stand in the wake of God's potent gale of grace. Brethren, that is our hope. That is our only hope. May God help us in this hour. then we could go on, give you the work of Nehemiah, the work of Luther, and the Reformation, and how there was kennel of fire there, and they shook, as it were, all of Europe. We could tell you about George Whitefield, a member of the Church of England, who was saved one day, and went forth with others, and shook England with a great text. You must be born again! They put him out of the churches. He went to the fields, the graveyards, the marketplaces, the roadsides. He never compromised with the souls of men. Hearts were open. Sinners were made to weep and mourn over their sins. The gospel of Whitfield Priest is not being preached in England today very much. It's not, it's not. Whitefield never called on men for a mere decision for Christ. He preached and left men to mourn over their sins and weep their way to Christ. Whitefield never gave an invitation to walk the aisles and make a decision for Christ. You won't find it in his life story. He never did. Out in the fields he preached. The power of God failed. He left sinners on their faces crying, My Lord! And my God, he fought the battle almost single-handed with his God. He never compromised. That was a heaven-born revival. and a spiritual awakening. It is said that he could walk among men and just say the word, Maranatha, and the power of God would fall. Sinners would weep over their sins. Brethren, there was no organization back at Whitefield, but the power of God rested upon him. He never shook hands with a modernist. He never compromised with the infidels and the prophets. And wherever he preached, the power of the Holy Ghost fell. Men and women were stricken under Holy Spirit conviction. and brought repentance. Brethren, that's what we need today, isn't it? That's what I'm praying for. May I ask the question, why must there be a compassion or travail for souls before God blesses and convicts and saves the lost in the first place God has so appointed? That's His means. This is God's way. God has so appointed that, first of all, there must come and will come an earnest yearning for a spiritual awakening before God gives it. This is true in the salvation of every soul. Before God saves that individual, it may be you. There will and there must come a deep, hard yearning and longing in the heart for Christ. That will eclipse everything else before God saves that soul. Every soul that ever gets saved, you'll come to praise that you want Christ above everything else. before God ever saves you. Why wouldn't you? God doesn't go around giving his son to ever Tom, Dick, and Harry. He gives his son as a hiding place only to that individual that wants him above everything else or everybody else in all the world. The reason you're not saved is because you don't want Christ above everything else. You want your self-will and just let me cross your will and you want to kill me. That's right. Listen again. Then such prayer and compassion for souls creates a wholesome atmosphere for souls to be born in. Surveilling for souls. A manifested self? Well, it may start with two or three. It may start with one individual. God don't have to have a great crowd. They just start with one individual. You mean to tell me I can pray and I can hide away with the Lord? You try it and see if revival doesn't come. God's leading you. Pay the price. Separate from the world. Separate under God. Walk alone with Him, my friend, and let Him use you for His glory. And then what is the result? As soon as Zion travailed, she brought forth her children. You know, we find that God's works are not tied by time. There is no set time to pray for revival. in the midst of the darkest hours, God can give a revival. I like to pray and wait on God and watch and see whom he's going to take hold of next. I may pray for an individual a long time and seemingly God will never move his heart, and then for another individual I may breathe one prayer and immediately God will take hold of that individual's heart. Then the greatest surprise comes when God takes hold of an individual's heart, whom I've never prayed for by name, while some of whom I have prayed for ten years or more have not been saved. Salvation belongeth unto the Lord. Let us notice in conclusion a word of blessing to those who travail for the souls of men. You know the greatest thing is to be saved yourself. then the next greatest joy is to see someone awakened and brought to know Christ as your Lord and your Savior. This brings to the close another broadcast, and we want to thank you for your letters and your gifts that keep these messages going out over the Voice of Truth program each week. Again, the title of the message was, Travailing for Souls, and that's number 206 in this series, and we'll send it to you, a pre-printed copy in booklet form, if you would sit down and request it. All of these messages by Pastor Shelton on the Voice of Truth broadcast are also available on cassette tape for $3 each, and this tape includes a singing and a letter reading by Ms. Wyleen. It's a full one-hour tape. Also, let me mention that today is our Spring Fellowship Day. We hear folks have come in from all over the country. We hear fellowshipping in the Lord. We'll have a baptism after our noon service today. You folks in the metropolitan area, come on and be with us here at 501 Opelousas Avenue, here the Bible School of the Air, and then also the 11 o'clock service if you can't be here. Both of those services are broadcast live over our radio station here, WLNO and also over the internet at WLNO.com. Also, our book of the month we've been advertising is Revival by C.H. Spurgeon. All of you know Brother Spurgeon. This is a three-sermon booklet on Revival. I don't have time to give you much information about it. It's a little three-sermon booklet that sells for 65 cents. postpaid. I'm recommending that you buy a half a dozen, maybe a dozen of them. Give them to your pastor, your Sunday school teacher, or the deacons of your church, or just your friend. If you would do that, we appreciate it. And we want to tell you how much we appreciate you tuning in this morning. Also, would you pray for us, remember us, As the days come and go, our mailing address is Radio Missions, Post Office Box 6250, New Orleans, Louisiana, 70174. That's Radio Missions, Post Office Box 6250, New Orleans, Louisiana, 70174. This is Pastor Alvin Pendarvis speaking. It's good to have been with you at this time. May the Lord's richest blessings rest upon you. This is the Voice of Truth broadcast.