Abide Above
Mike Doyle · Jun 12, 2005
Abide Above, No. 09
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/48262327524751

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

OK, we're working through Chapter 10, which has to do with the literature. Did you guys do your homework? Did you find any books? We'll talk about books in a minute. I got a bunch. I am actually, that's what I'm going to do. I'll explain it when we get through the questions. Okay, true or false, the good is always the friend of the best. And we're talking about spiritual literature. If it's good, it's a friend of the best. I don't think that's false. Yeah, it's false. Absolutely. It's always been the enemy of the best. Why? Because you're still dealing with the wrong source. This is the best. Right here.

I actually think that the Word of God should be the basis on which our study and reading is, and then the other books and things that we become acquainted with should all be verified via the Word of God. It's never the other way around, and there are a lot of people that do it the other way around, that they read what they consider to be good authors or good literature and then one day they find in the Bible that the Bible contradicted what their favorite author said. It makes them nervous. So you should always seek to learn the Word of God. Two, true or false, in conjunction with deeper life literature as an aid to spiritual growth is the Word. So I really just turned the question around is what I did. That the greatest aid to spiritual growth comes through deeper life literature.

Now, the problem today is that you cannot, it's hard to find good material. And as you'll see some of those books I brought today that I've searched on the web and found some of them are pretty ratty. They're pretty well used. So it's hard to find the literature, although I'm of a mind that every believer, especially a group like us who has spent a year going through the complete Green Letters, we should have in our possession at least a basic, deeper life library of maybe the books I'll talk to you about today, plus some good commentaries and things like that. John Darby, some of the Brethren guys, just so you have reference material, not only for yourself, but to lend to somebody else. It's really important, I think, to have decent literature.

Now, Miles' stuff is good, and it's readily available. You know, Miles Stanford's stuff. And he not only has green letters and stuff, but he has lots of other materials. And so if you need him, see me. I'm the guy. The supply is replenished. I do miles of stuff. I keep them in print. You know, that's what I do. But and you'll find that there are other guys around. Like there's a couple of people in the United States that keep T. Austin Spark stuff available.

Some of the there used to be more brother and distribution houses and the laws of the printers and those kept a lot of stuff, but they're out of business. So the great asset is the internet, to go on the internet and find where this stuff is available.

Because sometimes a hundred page book can explain something to somebody much better than you could. True or false, once the best books are discovered, the reader's discernment and requirements keep him from dropping to the level of the secondary. What do you think? Absolutely. Now, let's talk about that for a minute. How long do you think it would take for a young believer who a hungry heart has developed in them, and they begin to enter into the understanding of identification truths, positional truths, deeper life truths, how long do you think it would take them in their study and searching before they could reasonably be able to do this? because it's, you know, early on when you're growing, I think you want to read fairly pure stuff, you know what I mean? But then later on you're going to find books that have certain jewels in them, but not everything in the book is a jewel. So you have to be able to discern to take the good stuff out and disregard the rest.

How long do you think it takes to get to there? What do you think? 10, 20 years? With the 10th study, I think about five years. I'm going to give you a break. I think two years. Two years? I think two years. Now listen to the prerequisite. Hungry heart. You're serious and you're reading and your appetite for growth material is really there and stays there. A couple of years and 25 books later and Bible studies and that kind of thing, I think you at least begin to be miles used to call you safe in the sense that you could read something and say, oh, I found a really good chapter in here. But the next three weren't very good.

You see that? And that that comes with. knowing the truth and being able to separate what's of the truth and what isn't. It's the old theory, if you work for the government and you're in a secret service in counterfeiting, what do you study? You study all the counterfeits? No. You study the real thing. And the reason you do that is because when the counterfeit comes, you can recognize it. The earthly viewpoint would be to study all the counterfeits.

No, that's not true. If you know the real thing, then you know what isn't. It's the same thing with personal intimacy with Christ. As you grow in the knowledge and grace of the Lord Jesus, you'll reject what's not of Him. Not because it's legal, it's just because it isn't of Him. And it may not necessarily be sinful, but it isn't Him.

You see that? I still think after two years you don't have it and then it can go off into never, never. I think you still have to have the grounding all the time. I agree. It's written, you know, teaching of the foundational truths and going through that all the time. It's a constant process of maturing, I guess. But what I think what you said was true, to be able to answer these questions and see what's true and false, it takes about two years. Here's one of the books that every believer ought to have, and it's a Newell's Commentary, verse by verse, by W.R. Newell.

This is a new one. This is my copy. And I have been through this thing so many times. Look at it. That's what you're talking about. Here's another thing. When you hang around like I do with Vern and Hal and Roger, we are constantly contacting each other and saying, well, what do you think about this? This is what I think about this subject.

What do you think? And so what you find is as you grow, you become much more submissive to those that you respect, that study, like you do. And you may ask their opinion and not agree with them. But you understand what I'm saying? Like I may call up Courtney and say, hey Courtney, this is what I'm studying, what do you think about this? And just listen. So that comes. as you grow rather than being super opinionated like most of us are when we're young believers.

We think we have all the answers, you know. I think we get a lot out of our Tuesday studies is from different people who look at it and bring a different facet to it. It makes you either sharpen you or, you know, no, that's... we disagree on that. Well, like Tuesday right now, we have a challenge going and I've had a couple of emails this week about it and it's great. It's just terrific because what I find the Lord does, especially with a men's group like on Tuesday, is that we may, for two or three weeks, debate different issues and then three weeks from now or something, the Lord will just put it together and it'll go bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, and it'll all fit. It's really cool. The thing that I've learned is to let him have all the leeway he needs within the group for everybody to express whatever they think when they're really trying to learn. When are you debating? Well, actually we're debating an issue that started in here a few weeks ago.

Whose job is it to cause you to grow spiritually? Yours or the Holy Spirit's? Well, and here's the other side. Well, I've got to live by faith, so what is it? That's the basic discussion, which is a great one. True or false, in the early... Go ahead. That's right. In the early stages, the eager Christian never dreams of questioning an author who presents the identification truths. True or false? Yeah, absolutely true. And I remember when I first got introduced to the Green Letters. And then I got to meet Miles Stanford. I thought, oh man. You read the Green Letters first and then you met Miles? Let me tell you how we met Miles.

I think I was a believer two or three years. I was going to a Bible study at Cherry Hills Country Club and the guy that's taught the study... Yeah, the red-headed guy that was here, he was the teacher and he was teaching the Greenlanders. And we got about halfway through it and we got stuck.

We didn't, I mean, we were trying to figure out what Miles was saying. So one of the other guys, at that time it was published by this publisher who is Living Springs Press in Hong Kong, China. So he writes a letter to this guy and says, you know, we're trying to find Miles Stanford because we've got some questions. And the guy writes back, well, Miles Stanford is at 1430 Carr Street in Lakewood, Colorado.

We couldn't believe it. So we called him up and went over and met him. And that's how I got here, because he's recommended we come to church here. So in studying like that, a young believer who gets hooked up with the green letters, you're going to have questions because he says things in there that you think, wait a minute, what is he talking about? It's so much different than what is normally taught.

Yes. But, I mean, to me it makes me dig deeper and harder. That's right. Is this true and is it, you know, and it is, it all fits together. That's the thing I think I've expressed to you several times. You know, now everything comes together where there were different pieces that didn't fit. Right. Yeah. It almost becomes a big mathematical equation. There's no way you can disprove it. That's right. You weigh everything against the other. Yeah. That's amazing. And any untruth will root itself out. Yeah, they will.

And what you find is, is that the practical application of the positional truths you're learning actually work. Do you understand what I'm saying? That the intimacy with Christ is a reality, that the doctrine backs up your life and your life backs up the doctrine, that the Word of God is consistent, that it's everything that it's supposed to be and you don't have to tweak it and bend it and you know, shove something in there to make your theology fit. And after a while you think, boy, if I'm doing that, then I'm probably not doing what I should be doing. I'm wrong about that, you know. I should listen and even dig more, like you say.

Well, you know, I think of things like Ryan's brother, Mark. You know, after Roger had given him the green letters, and I was, you know, Roger, we were talking and I says, And finally Mark came in, why isn't this taught? Why isn't this, you know, and it was like, you know, opening his eyes. I think of our daughter Caroline, you know, up in Alaska now.

And much more discernment of the teaching, you know, laws and different things. Once you start in this and it starts figuring out whether it's two years or ten or twenty, it is. Once the truth is there, you can start filtering out a lot of stuff. Well, when you start tracking grace as opposed to law, then you can smell legalism.

You can hear those handcuffs from a long way away. You can hear that tyranny coming at you. When you begin to see the grace and the privilege you have as a believer, and you read somebody who would take that privilege away from you by giving you conditions under which you are to obtain those privileges, boy, you can ferret that out right away.

You know that at least that part of that person's writing is to be disregarded. At first, you can't do that. But once you taste of the real stuff, then what the counterfeit is becomes increasingly more apparent to you. See, it's like, maybe put it this way. I think early on a young believer functions mainly on the Word of God in their conscience, right? Kind of the triggering mechanism.

And then, as you start to grow, you begin to realize that even your conscience isn't reliable. Because something in your culture say that, well, this is okay, but biblically it isn't, and it's tough for you to make that distinction. So you think, well, the initial reaction to that is that I just need to be smarter. And the answer to that is, no, you don't.

And what you begin to discover is that the whole purpose of the Word of God and Christianity is to know the Son of God, personally and intimately. And as you get to know Him, then you begin to realize that conscience isn't the answer. He's the answer, and what's ever of him, that's what you have a desire for. If it isn't of him, no matter what color it comes in, it just isn't the real thing. So you begin to, in your life, reject things that under your conscience, or as a young believer, would probably be okay.

It wouldn't be sinful, but it would be something, like Charm says, can't I go enjoy a basketball game? I said, no. That's right. And I said, there's nothing wrong with basketball. But what I'm saying is and I and what I refer to was the hymn that we sing up here all the time, you know, as as as you behold Christ face to face, the things of the world grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace. Well, the glory and grace of the Lord Jesus Christ supersedes other things you really thought you enjoyed. Not that you get legal about it, it's just that, well, I'd rather do this than that.

See? So that's what I mean. We've been having great discussions on this on Tuesday. Yeah, we have. After coming back from our dive trip. Oh, yeah. You've been beating me up routinely on Tuesday. So, okay. And literature, specifically literature, is that way. As you pick up things to read, you will find that... I mean, there's so much garbage in the bookstores today that are hardly worth going into, but you can still go to Barnes & Noble and buy the green letters.

As the Christian grows, the Holy Spirit takes him deeper into the truth presented. One of the interesting things that the author talks about, he says, and it seems as though he renews the material every five or ten years. I think that is really right, because I find I'm revisiting things all the time. All of the books that I really enjoy are all like this because I've been into them a lot of times. Something will come up and I'll think, oh, I read that someplace, so I start searching. I find that I've underlined the same thing four and five times.

We have not received the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit of God, that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. And He has revealed them unto us by His Spirit, for the Spirit searches all things, yea, the deep things of God. So the Holy Spirit is here specifically to take you deeper into the truths presented. I think sometimes we use the word deeper truths as though that's the Ph.D. plus four of Christianity. How would you describe the deeper truths? Two words. How would you describe them? Going to Christ. Yeah, that's it.

Okay, true or false? It's not important to know deeper life materials well enough in order to share share them with others. You have to be able to share what you know intelligently. Now, let me give you an example of deeper life truths that a whole theology has grown up around someone who didn't or several people, starting way back 30 years ago with a guy named Charles Solomon, that did not... they weren't thorough before they started writing books. And that's the One Nature guys. The One Nature guys began to understand identification and saw it as a freedom from self, which it is.

But they went too fast and weren't thorough enough in the sense that they didn't realize that there's this little word in Romans 6 that says they're dead unto sin. They say sin died. No, we're dead to it. They don't understand that death means separation, not annihilation.

And so that little point that doesn't seem significant is hugely significant in a believer's spiritual growth. Because if your sin nature died, then why are you still sinning? Well, what they say is that you have all these memories and habits. Now, wait a minute. Sin has to have a source and it's not a memory. And it's not a habit. It's the sin nature. So, we don't think early on that that little nuance...

And see, that's where it's subtle. Because people will call you up and say, Boy, I just read this book by a guy named McVeigh. about the identification issues is terrific. Well, so I want you to read it. So you get it, and you're cruising, and you think, oh, this guy's got it made, until about the third chapter. And then he starts talking about the sin nature died, and you sin because of habits, and that kind of thing. And there's always conditions on how to read your position. And the problem with the One Nature guys is that you're stuck with your sinning. How do you get past that? See? Well, it seems like a small thing, but if you're counseling somebody or working with somebody, they're not going to grow past that until that little issue gets straight. See that? Okay.

Hey Mike, when you're talking about sharing, this is sharing deeper life material. This isn't just sharing. your faith, because the Spirit can work through you. Absolutely. It's really not you working in their life, it's the Spirit. It's just trying to explain these deeper truths. And that brings up a great question. Do you think that the Holy Spirit would use an unprepared saint to help another saint grow?

He couldn't. How could he? The person's not prepared. You understand what I'm saying? Now maybe he'll use them in the sense that, yeah, this is a good book, you ought to read it. But that person wouldn't be able to sit down and say, I'm going to buy you one of these, I have one, let's get together once a week and we're going to go through this thing. You understand?

And so that's why the thoroughness of the preparation, and sometimes you wonder why God takes so much time in your spiritual growth. That's why. Because when that person comes to you, that God is going to minister to through you, you're going to have to be ready. He's making you ready even though you thought you were ready years ago.

And you're not. It's okay. Do you see that? Now, evangelism is a different thing. The life of the Lord Jesus being manifested through you, you can give the gospel to somebody, invite them to believe, and you can be a brand new Christian and that works fine. for lack of a better way to say it, it takes a minimal amount of faith to get saved. You agree with that? But it takes precise, accurate knowledge and information and faith to grow. So you better know the facts. Not legally. You just need to. It's the principle. You've got to know.

Because the complexity of the sin nature and its deception and all the crap that goes on with it You know, you can be deceived really easily. That's why it takes so long, I think. That's why you have such a spectrum of churches which teach everything from here to there.

Yeah. And nothing which comes from the Bible. That's right. Very liberal, at least. Now, having said what I just said, it doesn't mean that someone who enters into these growth truths and has been in them a couple of years, that God won't send somebody to that person to be ministered to, but it'll be on the level that the person's on. It won't be beyond them.

Do you see that? And so as you grow, you'll find, especially as God puts you through specific circumstances to cause you to grow, that your ministry will be along the lines that you're prepared for. Do you see that? The reason I ask is because I mean, that's such a compound that so many people will use.

They'll say, well, I don't want to tell anybody about what I believe or I don't, you know, if they come and ask They won't say anything about their faith because they say, well, I'm not ready. I've not reached that point. You're never going to reach that point. You're never going to reach a point where you can say, well, I know.

Well, and one last thing. God will bring somebody to you for your growth, too. I mean, he brought Courtney in my life. It's helped me tremendously. I think they're called catfish. Are there not people that you've met with that have gone to a certain point and then just didn't get it or kind of dropped away and maybe came back later and understood?

Or they grew to a point and in their spiritual growth what had to happen is that they just had to sort of ferment there for a while. And they were frustrated because they weren't moving on, yet there was an awful lot of stuff going on. It's like the oak tree, it grows really fast for two or three months, and then there's the rest of the year for the solidification of what the growth is. And that solidification process appears to be standing still, but as much is happening there as the revelation and the quick growth part.

Miles even wrote a little book called The Pause, and that's what it's about. It's like here you go and you're racing right along and all of a sudden the brakes go on and what is happening? Well, it's not because you did something, this is part of the process. Do we know anything about a long pause? What happened? You know, Paul's interesting.

He gets saved like all of us would like to be saved, you know, on the road to Damascus and the glory of God. And then he's blinded and then he's preaching right away, you know, the gospel. And then he goes to Arabia and he gets taught of the Lord specifically for three years, right? Then he goes up to Jerusalem, right? I love this part of it. And what do the leaders in Jerusalem tell him? Hey Paul, you go back to Tarsus, don't call us, we'll call you. Eleven years later, the call comes. Eleven years. That's after he spent three years with learning these truths from the Lord. So if you're eleven years in Tarsus, not a big deal. It's okay.

It's one thing to learn the truth. It's another thing to learn how and when to give them to somebody else. That's what takes the time. See that? And that does take a lot of time. Because like this comment I make about myself, I've made a career out of telling the right thing to the wrong people. In sharing, We give a person a reasonable amount of time to get it, then move on to the next principle. What do you think? True or false? I got some false and true. What do you think? The answer is false because.

Yeah, the reasonable amount of time could be 25 years. Yeah, that's right. And so, I think what you'll find is if God brings somebody into your life, regard growth truths, they may be there for the rest of your life. And so you learn to go slow. Now, that doesn't mean you're going to do it perfect every time. You're going to, you know, go too fast, not do it right, and that's okay. The Holy Spirit has that in control too. But you learn to keep your hands, as Myles would say, keep your hands off and keep your faith on, and let the Holy Spirit do the job.

And probably the most profound way that you learn this is you begin to realize how long and thorough the Lord was with you, which gives you the patience to be, you know, easy with somebody else. I mean, it took years to get to where we are, where you are, no matter how old you are, and the person you're ministering to isn't going to get it by Thursday, you know? Thursday 2025, maybe, you know, but not next Thursday. So, you learn that on the way. I have this friend who, for 10, 12 years or more, He's asked me questions and he's been interested in these things and I try to explain and he just doesn't get it. I know I don't know enough to really explain. He won't read. He doesn't have the time to read. There's nothing else I can do.

You have to read. Then all of a sudden he falls in love with this girl and they're reading The Purpose Driven Life together. I'm going, ah, no. But then he's reading. So I'm like, okay. This is good. I know, because I was there. I had to fail, and then before I understood there was something wrong. Well, and that's a perfect contemporary example.

You know, you pray for somebody and sort of minister to them for a long time, and they don't care. And then something happens. And instead of grabbing on the good stuff you gave them, they go some other direction. I mean, this year it's the purpose-driven life, next year it'll be something else. Two years ago it was the prayer of J-Biz, that kind of stuff.

And so what do you learn from that? You learn to wait until the purpose-driven life doesn't accomplish what they're hoping it will. that some circumstance comes in their life that they cannot deal with, that all of the contemporary Christian books and the church they're in can't help them, and they're really desperate.

And that's what you wait for, because you know that A hungry heart is the thing. You can give the Lord plenty of time to make somebody hungry. In the meantime, you hang with them and walk with them. Come in alongside them and just wait. Maybe you can only feed them a seed at a time, but that's okay. But if you're like me, the first thing you do is call them up and say, you've got to throw that purpose-driven life in the trash.

And of course that was a big hit, you know. And you have to backpedal and go, oh, that's a good book. Go ahead and read it. Which leads to the last question here. When you give some hungry heart the latest growth book, you expect it to have a monumental impact almost immediately. Of course. There's more dusty green letters in people's libraries Somebody told me one time that the Green Letters is the number one book in Christianity, second read. It's the kind of book that you give to somebody, it goes on the shelf, and then it comes down years later. And it just sits there, because the soul's got to be prepared for that, for what's in it. So, anyway. Okay, let's talk about books.

I found most of them. And here's what I'm thinking we ought to do. If you guys are interested, I'll create a checkout system and you can check these out and read them and bring them back. Some of them you can buy copies from me. Like I found about eight of these. Let's see. The first one was the law of liberty. I got I may have the law of liberty by even even Hopkins.

I think this is available. on the web, because this is a brand new book, Christian Literature Crusade. This was the textbook. Remember we talked about the Keswick Movement? This was their textbook. This is what they taught in five days. So it's got all the right material in it, but as we discovered, it to absorb this material would take 10 years. So that one's available. Born Crucified by Max.

Yeah, it's the first one. Oh, I'm sorry. Romans verse by verse. I thought I already talked about this one. This one's available from Craigle and you can get it on the web. It's about 18 bucks. I have a book. This one, too. Right. I've got two or three copies of this, so if you want to buy them from me, you can. I don't know what, whatever I paid for them, you can have them. But I usually keep two or three of these around because if a hungry heart shows up in your life, There's no peer in terms of commentaries on the Book of Romans than this guy. This is the best.

There's only one error that I find in this, and I'm not even going to tell you what it is. You'll have to find it yourself. But it's really good, as evidenced by mine. Then the Law of Liberty. Born Crucified is a really good one, but it's hard to find. It's totally on identification. This one came from the book nook in Mexico, Missouri. But if you can find this one, if you can find this one, this is one this will really. How do I say this? This does a good job. Partnered with the Green Letters, this is all born crucified, as the title would say. Bone of his bone, Hugo, now this is good but let me give you a warning on this.

Our friend Gene Edwards, anybody know who Gene Edwards is? He has bought the publishing rights to this and he has a group in Georgia called the Seed Sowers. Gene Edwards is a guy that writes about identification but isn't equipped to do so. But he liked this book, so he bought, or got the copyrights, and he's printing it. But I don't recommend any books by Gene Edwards, even though if you get this, it'll talk a lot in the introduction about Gene Edwards. I don't recommend anything that Gene Edwards wrote.

Bone of His Bone, got that, Abide in Christ, Andrew Murray, this one was in my library, I don't know where I got it, Christian Literature Crusade or Bible Truth Publishers. There's a really good brethren distribution house in Addison, Illinois called Bible Truth Publishers. They're a good source of books and if you contact them, they'll send you a little catalog of the stuff that they distribute. Joshua, this was a new one to me and I started reading it and oh, is it terrific. It's Joshua, by a guy named Rossier.

I just love this thing. I just started reading it this week. It takes the life of Joshua and others out of the book of Joshua and relates them, showing you the types that relate to spiritual growth. Old Testaments. That's a really good one. I'm liking it.

What is Man? by T. Austin Sparks is a really good book. This isn't in new print, but you can find this if you really look at it. What I liked about this book was that it explained the old man as good as anybody's ever explained. Do you agree? Because you're a real fan of T. Austin Sparks. Most of T. Austin Sparks' stuff is pretty good. This is the one you ought to have though. Every Man Evangelism.

Here, this one. I have not read this by Conant, but he's a brethren author, and I haven't read this, so I don't know. An old book that the Lord has kept, not only valuable concerning church outreach, but contains some outstanding chapters on the subject of identification. So, where did this one come from? Vintage books in Russellville, Arkansas. Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secret. You know what? I don't have that, but that's available. Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secret.

That book is written by his son and daughter-in-law and talks about his life and how even as a young boy, like my son John's age, God put it on his heart to go to China because in his mind there were a million Chinese dying every day that had never heard the name of Jesus and that just broke his heart. So it goes through his life and how he goes to China and he ministers in China for quite some time with moderate success. And then he wakes up to what we study, and that Inland China mission just exploded. And the great comment in the book I've always liked is that he went one day to visit some guy who was a bishop of some church in Australia.

And they had, I don't know, 100,000 members or 200,000 members. And after meeting with Hudson Taylor, this guy's comment was, he said, He said, I got a couple hundred thousand souls in my back in Australia and they're about to break my back. This guy's got all China on his back and it's nothing. It's like a feather. Because Hudson Taylor understood who did the work.

So I recommend you get that and that's available in a lot of places, I think. Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth. I have these and they're just a small booklet written by Schofield. Do you understand what the title is? The title has to do primarily with the divisions of scripture from a dispensational viewpoint. Why? Here's the chapter headings. The Jew, the Gentile, and the Church of God. The seven dispensations. We could debate about that. The two advents, the two resurrections, the five judgments, law and grace, the believer's two natures, the believer standing in state, Salvation and Rewards, Believers and Professors.

So it's a great little book. And I got a bunch of these if you want them. The Cross and Calvary by Jessie Penn Lewis, I couldn't find that. And Jessie Penn Lewis is one of those authors. That's about the only book of hers that I would recommend because she got hooked up with even Roberts back at the turn of the last century in what was known as the Welsh Revival. Everybody know what the Welsh Revival is? It was a huge charismatic movement in England. And it was... They ate a bunch of Welsh rabbits. And the charismatic movement ballooned in Wales. It was huge.

But the souls, the devastation from that was just awful. You know, even to today, they suffer from it. Jessie Penn Lewis understood the identification truths, but she got hooked up with this Evan Roberts, who was the guy who was the spearhead of the wealth revolution and she got polluted by him in terms of what the Holy Spirit does and doesn't do. So if you can find the cross of Calvary, grab it. The New Life by Reggie Wallace, you can get upstairs. We keep this around and we publish it here all the time.

This is a great book for young believers and if someone has come to you about just entering into identification and position of truth, this is a really good one. His side and my side by Harrison is a terrific expose in the book of Galatians. His side versus our side. The Wealth, Walk, and Warfare of the Christian by Ruth Paxson. I couldn't find it. So if you can find it someplace, you can share it with us.

Here's another really good book that's available. It's called The Christian Secret to a Happy Life. by Hannah Whitehall Smith. You should have this in your library. This is really a good book. And I found two copies of this that I didn't think you could get. The Great Doctrines Relating to Salvation. We teach this course here. But you ought to have this. Some of you probably already have this. No, by John Marchbanks.

Arthur Pearson, In Christ Jesus, not too bad. Did you guys come up with any books that you would recommend? Cost of Discipleship. The problem with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and by the way, he and Miles were friends, were correspondents, is that he's fairly good in terms of explaining that there's more to Christianity than just salvation. But if you go back and read it today, you'll find he's got a lot of conditions, lots of conditions.

That's a self way. And one other book, if you can find it, this one is called The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit by R.I.D.O.U.T. This is what we're going to study next quarter, July, August, and September. This and a couple of other things. Our study for three months is going to be on The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit.

Did you find enough copies? No. Actually, there were three of them I found and I only got one. The other two, when I ordered them, they said they're no longer. So I don't know if I can actually reprint this myself or not. 225 pages. And I got another copy of this in softback, but it's so tattered I'm afraid to open it up.

This one came from Ireland. If you can find this one... How much was the shipping? Bless you. I don't think it was too bad because of this abebooks.com. That's where I got most of the stuff. What was that one? The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit. Now, of course, she opened up a library.

Well, that's what I'm good. That's what I'm going to do next week. Next week, I'm going to come hopefully with with the ones that you can check out and you can check them out and read them and then don't keep them. Bring them back. So everybody. But these are this. This is the kind of stuff.

If you had these in your library, you'd have a heck of a library. You really would. And so if you can find these for yourself, terrific. If you can't, by next week I'll have a system where you can check them out and take them and read them. But a lot of the stuff I think you can find.

And of course, you don't ever want to discount this. Now, if you're going to give somebody a book, don't give them this one. given the little one, the principles of spiritual growth, which is the first chapter of this one. You've been here now almost over a year, and we've gone through this in a year, and we went through way too fast, as you probably recognize. A five-page chapter in this, you could spend a month on.

Any questions? This comes under the heading of TMI, right? Too much information. Let's close. Dear Father, how we thank you for at least making a lot of this material available that we might read it and through it and the word grow in the knowledge and grace of your Son. We're so thankful of your proactivity in our lives that we are coming to be ever more intimate with your dear son, and we pray in his name. Amen.