He made me, he made the light, and
the light gave us the colors.
Put the light of the sun to a
prism, and it'll break up into its seven
major, or its seven primary colors, and then
out of those primary colors you get all
the colors you had.
Now, I don't believe that a woman ought
to, a Christian woman, ought to try to
look like a Christmas tree.
I don't think that.
But I don't think there's any harm in
wearing colors.
Now, some of you dear old ladies won't
like me for this, and you'll want to
pat on me good and say, What's happening
to you old man, are you breaking up?
No, I'm not breaking up.
I always believe this.
I always believe in colors.
I like to see color.
I like to see it everywhere God made
it all.
And so God's enthusiastic about it.
I find enthusiasm in the Godhead.
I see enthusiasm in energy.
I used to say back there, I used
to preach about this.
You can use it for an illustration.
They say if you take a glass of
water, there are atoms enough in a glass
of water to blow up a whole city.
And that sounded rather extreme, but one day
a little fellow, a little sawed-off fellow
with a sharp nose, gave the order, and
some men flew over Hiroshima and dropped a
bomb about as big as a glass of
water, and blew the city to bits, killed
120,000 people.
Just atoms.
Just a little atom, that's all it was.
It didn't happen to be H2O or something
else, but just atoms.
So I tell you, with so much energy
in the world, and so much ability to
come back and make good after you've killed
a thing, out in my state of Pennsylvania,
the money-greedy dogs have gone out there,
and here's what they've done.
They have gone and bought up the coal
rights in certain sections of the state.
Beautiful hills that I grew up to see
and love, beautiful sun-kissed hills, sometimes misty
blue in the setting of the sun.
And I would see them there, and I,
the boy, loved them.
And the creeks, or cricks as we called
them, that ran below, and the little runs
that ran out to the rivers and down
to the sea, it was all very beautiful
to me.
But I went back to my old place
here a few years ago, and I found
that these money-hungry fellows had sold out
the coal rights.
And do you know what they did?
They didn't dig a hole and go back
after the coal.
They took bulldozers and dragged the cloth off
of the earth.
Trees, grass, everything to get down to the
coal, and lifted the coal out.
And the result was thousands and thousands of
acres, whole hills, that used to go up
with their green to meet heaven's blue, lay
dashed like one vast grave that hadn't been
filled in.
And the state of Pennsylvania said, You've got
to fill it all in, or we'll fine
you $300.
And they looked at each other and grinned
and said, It would cost us several thousand
to fill it in, so here's your $300.
And they left it as it was.
And I went away, grief-stricken, to see
my beautiful hills, now great, ugly sand pits.
And I went back in a few more
years.
And do you know what nature had done?
Some dear, old, busy, enthusiastic, fun-loving, joyous
Mother Nature.
Do you know what she did?
I don't know where she got the seed,
and I don't know where she got anything.
But I know she began to draw a
green veil over that ugly dash.
And now if you'd go back this summer,
I think by this time, or certainly by
next summer, it will have cured itself.
God Almighty put in nature the ability, when
an evil man, loving money, would take bulldozers
and steam shovels and gouge great, ugly holes
in God's lovely creation, God gave Mother Nature
the ability to go right back and in
a few years push a curtain of green
over it and start the trees again.
And now you can see nature.
You see, she's busy, she's enthusiastic, but there's
no she.
It's God, my brethren.
It's God.
We ought to stop thinking like a scientist
and think like a psalmist.
We'll get right with God, and then we'll
think like a psalmist and an apostle and
stop thinking like a technician or a mechanic.
Because our trouble, we think like mechanics.
We say, Nature did this.
Of course, I've used the expression, but I'm
explaining.
By nature, I mean God, enthusiastic over his
work.
So there is God working with color and
sound and bodies and space out there traveling
around.
Man can make them travel 25,000 miles
an hour, but they're poor little old creeping
oxcarts compared to the speed God gets out
of them.
These are some of those heavenly bodies, the
way they go.
And why did God go out there and
say, I don't know.
God was just happy in his creation, that's
all.
He looked and, Lord, it was very good.
This infinite God was enjoying himself.
Somebody is having a good time in heaven
and earth and sea and sky.
Somebody is painting the sky all rose and
cerise and blue and pink and white.
Somebody is making trees to grow where only
gashes grew a year ago.
Somebody is causing the ice to melt out
of the river and the fish to swim
and the birds to sing and lay their
blue eggs and build their nests and hatch
their young.
Somebody is running the universe, and I believe
I know who it is.
I believe it's the Eternal Father, strong to
save, whose power rules the restless wave.
I believe that it's the Trinity, that it
is our Father, who art in heaven, Jesus
Christ, his only Son, our Lord.
God is having a good time in his
world.
And so let us not think anymore of
God as being heavy-browed and gloomy.
I repeat that when God made the heaven
and earth, they sang together and all the
sons of God shouted for joy.
There wasn't a funeral at the creation of
the world, there was an anthem.
And all the creature creations sang.
And at the incarnation they sang.
I know some of these textualists, they shut
you right up.
They put a clammy, pasty paw over your
happy mouth and say, Now, the angels didn't
sing, Peace on earth, good will to men.
According to the Greek, it says they said,
Peace on earth, good will to men.
But all you have to do is read
that, brother.
You can't read that without getting a little
fee.
Something begins to move in you and you
get a rhythm.
You get music in your heart.
Peace on earth, good will toward men, they
said.
That was singing.
There was singing at the incarnation.
And then at the resurrection there was singing.
I will sing among my brethren, said Jesus
in the psalm.
And when he rose from the dead, he
doesn't tell us in the New, but it
foretells it in the Old that one of
the first things Jesus did was to sing.
And one of the last things he did
before he went out to die was to
sing a hymn along with his brethren.
I'd love to have heard that hymn.
You'll identify it.
It's found in the Psalms.
I don't know which one.
And think about the rapture.
Have you ever stopped to think about the
rapture?
Some of you have got so far from
prophecy, you've been scared out and intimidated and
chased down the alley until you don't believe
in the coming of the Lord anymore.
The pre-tribulationists and the post-tribulationists and
the amillennialists and what have you have all
scared a lot of you people, and scared
me.
I still believe Jesus Christ is coming back
to the world he made and died for.
I still believe he's coming back and his
feet will stand on that day where they
stood once on the Mount of Olives.
You believe that?
I believe he's coming back.
Now, I'll admit that I don't go with
everything I see in the scope of the
notes, and I'll admit that I don't go
along with everything that everybody puts on the
chart and stands up with a long stick
and says, Now, this is this, and that's
that, and the other thing is the other
thing.
That's carrying it too far, brother.
I don't want to know more than Isaiah.
I'll be satisfied that I'm just a shade
under Isaiah, but not more than Isaiah.
So I'm not trying to know more than
Daniel and Isaiah and John on the Mount
of Olives.
Yeah, well, I knew John was somewhere, but
I'm getting tired and forgot where he was.
Well, brethren, I believe he's coming back again.
You know, everybody knows how to die, but
have you ever stopped to think you'll be
all mixed up when you come to rapture?
You know, it's going to be something that's
never happened before.
Lots of people have died.
Old Jacob pulled his feet into bed with
him and leaned on his staff and gave
up the ghost and slept with his father.
That was a dear, quaint, old way they
had it in doing those days.
They slept with their fathers.
Everybody slept with grandpa.
And there they are, row on row, sleeping
together.
And that's the way they died.
They knew how to die.
You know how to die.
You just lie down, and when it gets
so that you can't live, you die.
So we're not too much worried about dying.
But the rapture, I'll tell you that, that's
a hard one.
What's going to happen?
Here you are, sleeping out here, dear Mrs.
Deet, sleeping over here, Brother Wood and Brother
Moore, and all out here, Brother Gately and
all of these that we've known during the
years.
They lie sleeping all around.
And if the Lord, Terry, while you now
join them, we'll go.
We can't live forever.
Down here, I mean.
And you'll die, but then coming up out
of there, getting up out of there.
And if you're walking around on the street,
and the Lord, you hear the sound of
the trumpet that's louder than the horn of
a diesel engine, and you recognize that timber
isn't earthly at all, it's heavenly, and it
isn't even the music of the spirits, it's
the music of the voice of Jesus, the
Son of God, and suddenly you're transformed.
You don't know what to do.
You don't know how to act.
You can't find out anywhere.
When they're going to be presented before the
Queen, they know how to curtsy.
I couldn't do it, I'd fall apart.
But they do it.
They curtsy.
And they know how to approach kings and
queens and presidents and all other VIPs.
But nobody's told us what to do when
we get older or younger.
And suddenly you're walking down the street and
you're somebody else, and you look at yourself,
no more warts, no more wrinkles, and you
feel your face, no more hollow holes, and
you feel your head and hair.
It didn't used to be.
And you're glorified, and you look away and
see the Son of God, and you like
him!
And you don't know what to do.
The people lying in their graves, what will
they do?
Do you know I know what they'll do?
I mentioned this one time.
Where did I mention this?
Trouble with getting around so much, you forget
where you've been.
But I mentioned it somewhere, and a man
came up afterward, and I said, we were
going to sing.
Sing, arise and sing ye that dwell in
dust.
That's what it said.
Arise and sing ye that dwell in dust.
For the earth shall cast forth her dead.
And a man came to me and said,
I heard a sermon, a great sermon preached
one time called Singing Dust.
Singing Dust.
That the dead who sleep in the dust
of the earth shall rise, and they'll sing,
and it'll be singing dust.
Well, there's going to be singing after rapture.
And there's going to be singing after consummation.
And that great day.
Thou art worthy to take the book and
to open the seals thereof, for thou wast
slain and hast redeemed us.
That's the theme of the new song.
The theme of the new song isn't I
am.
The theme of the new song is Thou
art.
You notice the difference?
When you read the old hymnody of Wesley
and Montgomery and Watts and the rest of
them, it was Thou art, Thou art, Thou
art, O God, Thou art.
Then when you get down to the modern
hymns of modernism, the modern fundamentalist, it's I
am, I am, I am, I am.
It makes me sick to my stomach, all
this I am-ing.
I know we can testify, and we have
a right to, and occasionally a good hymn
of testimony is our right, too.
But we've overdone it.
We've overdone almost everything else we've ever done
anything about.
We've overdone it.
So we've overdone this I am, I am
stuff.
My brethren, let me say to you that
the joy of the Lord, the song of
the ransomed, is going to be Thou art.
Thou art worthy, O God, they said, to
take the boat.
Thou hast redeemed us to God and has
made us kings and priests, and we shall
reign on the earth.
And I heard the voice of many angels
round about the throne and the beasts and
the elders, and the number of them was
ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of
thousands.
And you put on the blackboard how many
that is, and I'll buy you a dinner.
I beheld and I heard the voice of
many angels round the throne and the beasts
and the elders, and the number of them
was ten thousand.
Well, isn't it strange that men are made,
actually made?
They've got such timber.
And when I say timber, I mean timber
here.
They've got such timber in their head that
instead of getting happy over this, they solemnly
try to figure out who these deacons were,
and these elders and beasts and these creatures.
And they write books on who they were
and what they looked like.
Isn't that strange?
How dumb can a scholar get?
We, I don't know about these creatures here,
see me five minutes after the rapture and
I'll tell you about it.
But now I just have to take it
by faith.
Thou hast made us kings and priests, and
said all these creatures, saying, worthy is the
Lamb.
Now, look at me, I'm wonderful, I'm happy,
happy, happy, happy.
No, the Lamb, the Lamb is worthy.
So that's the consummation.
Well, my brethren, the infinite Godhead invites us
into himself to share in all the intimacies
of the Trinity.
And Christ is the way in.
And all of the moon is geared this
way toward the earth.
Relative to the earth, it's geared this way.
It turns, and the earth turns.
But they turn in such a way that
we only see one side of the moon.
We never see the other.
They're hoping to go around and see the
other side.
I'm not interested.
It's the dark side.
But we see only one side of the
moon.
And I thought the eternal God is so
vast, so infinite, extends out so far into
infinitude, that I can't hope to know all
about God and all there is about God.
But God has a manward side.
Just as the moon has an earthward side
and always keeps that smiling yellow face turned
earthward, so God has a manward side and
always keeps that turned manward, and that side
is Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ is God's manward face, God's manward
side.
Jesus is the way God sees us.
He always looks down and sees us in
Jesus Christ.
Let me go back to my quotation.
Where Jesus appears, the Blessed Trinity is understood.
Now I close, and I want to ask
some questions.
Are you contented with nominal Christianity?
If you are, I have nothing for you.
Are you contented with popular Christianity that runs
on the austerity and popularity of big shots?
If you have, if you are, I have
nothing for you.
Are you contented with elementary Christianity?
The beginnings, the elementary beginnings of things.
If you are, all I've got for you
is to exhort you earnestly to press on
toward perfection.