Excerpts from the sermon:
I believe there is a group of people—it starts happening about the time your children are grown—and the Lord begins to whisper, “I want you to get ready for the crossing”....It starts happening about the time your children are leaving home. When all that you know is the truth has happened now. There’s not a crutch that can hold you up. You can’t prop yourself up with nothing—no pride. You know the truth about it all, and you either get hard, or you don’t want to face it, or you get angry, or you take it as the hand of a loving Lord, “Follow me, follow me to the end now. Don’t willfully gird anymore. Don’t go your own way anymore. Get off your high horse, and come down here and follow me on this dirt road.” I can think of men across the years—great men, pulpiteers, outstanding men—they never knew how to get ready for the crossing. I think about all these Fundamentalists who have these big churches who used to love the old-time religion and the Bible, and their church began to grow, and they hated to let it go. And, they refused to let anybody gird them—“Nobody is going to tell me nothing. I know it.” And, you are now seeing a parade of preachers across America who do not know the language of the Lord in that fourth story. They have become self-willed.
