<TITLE>07. Par 27-30</TITLE>L-27 Did you know we got... The Christian church has its greatest buildings its ever had? Do you know it's richer than it ever was? Do you know that they got the best theologians they've ever had? It's standing and its great spires reaching towards heaven, with a half a million dollar pipe organ, its robed choirs; its scholars come polished up from the seminary to the very latest...?... who can walk to the platform and not make one grammatic mistake, who can limit their sermons to so much time with so much psychology in it, that can hold the people's minds to that thought that they've got.
But yet the Bible said that we are poor, and we are wretched, and we're blind, and naked, and don't know it. Now, if a man was out on the street, could you imagine a person going down the street, poor, miserable, blind, wretched, and naked? Now, if the man knows his condition, he will try to better hisself. But the sad part is, when he don't know it. He doesn't understand that he's naked. He thinks he's rich, and he's--he's dressed all right, and he's in his best condition.

L-28 Now, if that's the way Jesus described this Church in this day, the latter day... I don't mean just this group. I mean... I'm talking universally, the Church universal. It is in one of the most miserable conditions, and it doesn't know it. They think, "We're faring all right. We're doing good. Why, this year we--we paid so much for missionaries overseas." I don't mean to be light.
I'm a missionary myself. But the miserable part is when some old mammy washes over a washboard to help support a missionary on the field, and when you get over there to find them riding around in an air-conditioned Cadillac, and preaching at a compound. I wonder how many David Livingstones I'd find. Frankly, I've only seen one what I called a missionary, a little crippled boy from Rhodesia.

L-29 One of the greatest churches that I know of in the Protestant realm... I was coming down out of--of Southern Rhodesia, and I'd been up there in a meeting. And I seen that American passport. There was three little girls and a boy.
And I said, "I see that you got American passports."
He turned and said, "Oh, you speak English."
I said, "I'm an American." I said, "What are you?"
He said, "Oh, we're missionaries."
I said, "That's fine." And I said, "Where you from?"
And they was from my backyard almost, where the great seminary's at. And I said, "That's good." I said, "I'm from Jeffersonville, Indiana."
"Oh," he said, "you are?"
I said, "How long you been over?"
He said, "Going on two years."
And I said, "How many souls have you won to Christ since you've been over?" Ducked his head.

L-30 And I said, "Sisters, have many have you won to Christ since you been over?"
But just before I did that, he said, "What's your name?"
I said, "Branham."
"Oh," he said, "you're the one that caused that big stir down in Africa down there, down in South Africa."
I said, "I don't know whether there was any stir or not."
He said, "Well, we heard that you was a holy-roller."
I said, "Thirty thousand raw heathens come to Christ day before yesterday." I said, "That's more than all of our churches has done in our missionaring in a hundred and fifty years over there. And I found missionary, or natives coming in with a tag on their neck as missionary of--as Christians, packing an idol in their arm."


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