A man may have a fine physique; he may have strength; he may have greatness; he may have a beautiful home; and a church may be magnificent and faultless in its equipment; the preacher may be able to reason; the choir may rival the angels in music; but if you have not the Spirit of the Lord you are, as Paul says, as sounding brass and tinkling cymbals, and the church is merely four walls with a roof over it.
Nothing in the world can be substituted for the Spirit of God; no wealth, culture nor anything in the world. By power we do not mean numbers; there never has been a time when there were more members in the Church than today; yet we haven't kept progress in the number of members in the Church with the increased number of people in the nation. Our nation has grown to over 90,000,000 of people, but we are not correspondingly keeping pace with the number of church members. God's Church has not increased correspondingly in power as it has in numbers; while increasing in numbers it has not increased in spiritual power. I am giving you facts, not fancies. We are not dealing with theories. I am not saying anything against the Church; you never had a man come into this community who would fight harder for the Church of God Almighty than I would. I am talking about her sins and the things that sap her power—and by power I do not mean numbers. If you had an army of 100,000 and increased it another 100,000 it ought to be doubled in power.
Derelicts in the Church
In the Church of God today you know there are a lot of people who are nothing but derelicts and nothing but driftwood.
By power I do not mean wealth. We are the richest people on the earth; nineteen-twentieths of all the wealth or all the money in the United States today is in the hands of professing Christians, Catholic and Protestant. That ought to mean that it is in God's hands; but it doesn't. They are robbing God. I was in a church in Iowa that had three members who were worth $200,000 each and they paid their preacher the measly salary of $600 a year, and I will be hornswaggled if they did not owe him $400 then. If I ever skinned any old fellows I did those old stingy coots. A man who doesn't pay to the church is as big a swindler as a man who doesn't pay his grocery bill and he is dead-beating his way to hell. You let somebody else pay your bills, you old dead-beat. God hasn't any more use today for a dead-beat in the church than he has for the man who doesn't pay his grocery bill—not a bit!
By power I do not mean culture. There never was a time when the people of America were better informed than they are today; they have newspapers, telephones, telegraphs, rural delivery, fast trains. You can leave home and in five days you are in Europe. If something happens in China or Japan tonight you can read it before you go to bed. The islands of the sea are our neighbors.
A stranger once asked: "What is the most powerful and influential church in this town?"
"That big stone Presbyterian church on the hill."
"How many members has it?"
"I don't know, my wife is a member."