I'm not playing with words, but we're going
to look at Luke.
Luke chapter 17.
Luke 17 and reading from verse 26.
And as it was in the days of
Noah, so shall it be also in the
days of the Son of Man.
They did eat, they drank, they married wives,
they were given in marriage, until the day
that Noah entered into the ark and the
flood came and destroyed them all.
Likewise also as it was in the days
of Lot, they did eat, they did drink,
they bought, they sold, they planted, they built
it.
You know I put the emphasis on all
the days in those two verses?
Let's go back and read the other one
again.
It was in the days of Noah, so
shall it be in the days of the
Son of Man.
They did eat, they drank, they married, they
were given in marriage until the day that
Noah entered the ark.
Likewise also as it was in the days
of Lot, they did eat, they drank, they
bought, they sold, they planted, they built it.
In other words, God wasn't in the plan
at all.
They satisfied every desire that they had.
And some of those things are good.
It's not wrong to get married.
It is if you marry the wrong person.
If you get married to the right person,
it's heaven and if you don't, it's the
other place.
Likewise also as it was in the days
of Lot, they did eat, they drank, they
bought, they sold, they planted, they built it.
But the same day that Lot went out
of Sodom, it rained fire and brimstone from
heaven and destroyed them all.
As it was in the days of Noah.
What was it like in the days of
Noah?
Chapter 6 of Genesis.
Let me read those three from chapter 6.
The Lord said, My spirit shall not always
strive with man.
I think that applies to individuals.
I believe it applies with nations.
This week I've been thinking of that scripture
which I call a limitation to intercession.
It says there is a sin unto death
and ye shall not pray for it.
I guess you think it's nice to preach.
Well it is sometimes.
But I believe in every meeting, whether there's
an altar call or not, if the Spirit
of God is there, somebody's born or somebody's
quickened.
And by the same token, I think some
people cross the deadline.
God talks for the last time.
As I say, what does God owe you?
What does God owe America?
Some of you have heard the gospel a
hundred times.
I doubt if one of us responded to
Christ the first time he spoke to us.
We would have to say, was it Theo
Monod that wrote, I had long withstood his
grace, long provoked him to his face, would
not hearken to his call, and grieved him
by a thousand falls.
Depth of mercy, can there be mercy still
reserved for me?
I'm staggered every day.
I think of the majesty of God, the
love of God.
But right now we're living on mercy.
If we weren't, we'd be burning like Sodom
and Gomorrah.
We've out sinned Sodom.
We've out sinned Gomorrah.
I'll tell you about that in a minute
or two.
My spirit shall not always strive with man.
For that he is also flesh, yet his
days shall be a hundred and twenty years.
There were giants in the earth in those
days.
And also after that, when the sons of
God came unto the daughters of men and
bared children to them, the same becoming mighty
men that were of old, men of renown.
And God saw that the wicked man was,
wickedness of man was great in the earth.
Now look at this.
Every imagination of the thoughts of his heart
was only evil continually.
Every thought without interruption.
Every thought without mixture.
Every thought without intermission.
Every thought of his mind.
If there's such a thing as pure sin,
here it is.
His heart meditated only on sin.
And the Spirit of God ceases to strive.
Verse six, he repented the Lord, he had
made man in the earth, and he grieved
him at his heart.
And the Lord said, I will destroy man
who have created from the face of the
earth, both man, beast, and creeping things, and
the fowl of the air.
And he repenteth me that I made them,
but nor found grace in the eyes of
the Lord.
Let me find a scripture here a minute.
I put markers in and I forget them.
That one I've got.
I think you've got the oven up a
bit too hot tonight.
As I say so often, I'm not losing
my mind, I'm losing some of my memory.
Look in the book of Proverbs, please, in
chapter one.
Verse 20, wisdom crieth without.
She uttereth her voice in the streets.
She crieth to the chief place, or concourse,
in the openings of the gates.
And the city she uttered her words, saying,
how long ye simple ones.
Will ye love simplicity?
And the scorners delight in their scorn.
And the fools hate knowledge.
Turn you to me at my reproof, and
I will pour out my spirit upon you.
I will make you know my words known
unto you.
But here's the rebuke of God.
Verse 24, because I have called, and ye
refused.
I have stretched out my hand, and no
man regarded.
Ye have set up nought my counsel, and
would have none of my reproof.
Now that's their side.
Here's God's side.
You see, we're toying with God in these
days.
We're toying with eternity.
We're toying with salvation, as the people did
before the flood.
Now, people say sometimes, wasn't God rather cruel
to cut them off?
No, he wasn't.
For what reason?
For this reason, before them there had been
a prophet.
The antediluvians, as we call the people before
the flood, had been some of the most
favored people that ever lived.
They had had a man by the name
of Enoch.
And Jude goes on to say, Enoch the
seventh from Adam, because there was another Enoch
before that.
And Enoch walked with God.
And there at the beginning almost of creation,
he prophesied, the Lord shall come with ten
thousand of his...
He must have had a revelation, a hole
through the sky into eternity.
And this man Enoch walked with God.
He marched up and down the streets, he
prophesied.
This is the voice that we read about
here in this chapter.
He's calling to foolish, he's calling to people
that stop their ears.
Then right after that marvelous man Enoch, you
have another man.
If I say no to you, by the
law of association, your mind says, arc.
But that's not what the Bible remembers him
for, except on one occasion.
You know, the name of Noah was an
amazing name.
It occurs fifty-five times in the Bible.
Forty-five of those times, I believe, I
had some notes which are on my desk,
I can't see them right now.
Forty-five times in Genesis.
And three times, I believe, in the Gospels
and once in the Epistle.
What is he known on God's side?
On man's side, he's known for building an
ark.
You get a little ark and you make
little toy things for children to put in
them.
But on God's side, he's known, it says,
what?
Nor a preacher of righteousness.
Now, they'd had a man storming up and
down the street.
Can't you imagine him crying?
It says he cried in the gates.
You know, it says, the Scripture says, the
gates of hell shall not prevail against God.
I remember talking, Dave Wilkes and I had
been talking with Miss Kuhlman.
And she said, well, you know, one day,
if you do happen to go past the
gates of hell, going to heaven, on the
bottom of the gates, it says, made in
Pittsburgh.
I don't know if she's right or not.
Any Pittsburghians here?
You won't unhook to it anyhow.
But the gates of hell, it doesn't mean
physical gates.
It says of Lot, he sat in the
gate.
That's where the government officials sat.
And it says, the gates of hell, all
the councils of hell, all those who lifted
up their voices against God, will not prevail
against God.
Doesn't matter what breaks loose on the earth.
If it gets a thousand times worse than
it is, the gates of hell will not
prevail against God.
Well, they had Enoch walking.
He lifted up his voice.
He cried to the sons of men, in
season and out of season.
Then Noah comes up.
The time is getting shorter and shorter and
shorter.
And we remember that Noah built an ark.
We say, well, God, of course, cut these
folk off.
Sure he did.
How long was he building the ark?
Pardon?
How many years?
120.
A hundred and twenty years.
Do you wonder that Peter talks about the
long-suffering of God, when Noah built the
ark?
A hundred and twenty years.
That's 43,800 days.
God watched men rebel against him.
He watched them do evil things for 43.
You can do that with your children for
43,800 minutes.
You'd skin them.
Perhaps you'd put them over your lap and
beat the daylights out of them nearly.
Aren't you glad God isn't as short-tempered
with you as you are with your children?
Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, but
so often we do.
We rationalize on this level.
I like what Paul's kept saying repeatedly during
the last few weeks.
By the way, he's away.
He and his dear wife have some very
serious things to decide this weekend, so pray
much for them.
By the way, Community Christian Church next Sunday—they
don't sing as well as we do, but
you could go.
Betty's looking at me.
I won't be preaching.
The best preacher—Paul's going to preach there next
Sunday morning, so pray for him.
But they have some very critical things to
decide, and I want you to pray for
them.
And don't phone them, don't talk to them,
just pray for them.
It's very, very critical in their lives right
now.
Forty-three thousand—I staggered.
I got Martha to work this out for
me today.
Talks about this hundred and twenty years.
Forty-three thousand, eight hundred days, and God
watched in patience.
He didn't pull the switch on them.
He let them go on and on and
on, but then eventually he dropped the booms,
we would say.
Now what did Jesus say?
As it was in the days of Noah.
He's the teacher tonight, not me in that,
in one sense.
As it was in the days of Noah,
so shall it be in the days of
the coming of the Son of Man.
I watch very little TV.
I don't think you go to hell if
you have one.
I don't think you go to heaven if
you don't have one.
It's dangerous.
It's dangerous to teach your children to read.
They might get pornographic literature.
It's not what you possess that concerns me,
it's what possesses you.
I wish, if you find one, let me
know.
You know we've got a birthday coming up
next month, by the way, but anyhow.
I'm looking for a clock with 28 hours
every day.
If you find one, will you let me
know?
I want a calendar with about 565 days
in the year.
I don't have enough time.
It's running away from us as quickly as
ever it can.
I know these are evil days in which
we're living.
As it was in the days of Noah,
even so shall it be in the days
of the coming of the Son of Man.
I preached to some hundreds of preachers two
weeks ago.
At night, I guess we had about 1
,200 there, and God did some real work.
But one night, a big shop professional preacher,
I won't give you his name.
Anyhow, he said, oh here's a conference with
about 2,000 people the first night.
He said, there's only one hymn we can
sing to start this revival.
I thought, oh he'll sing, All Hail the
Powers of Jesus' Name.
Do you know what he sang?
America the Beautiful.
If he hadn't have been so big, I'd
have pushed him off the platform, I think.
What in God's name do you start a
conference, a revival conference singing that?
So I had to have my pennies worth,
you know, next day.
I said, what do you mean America the
Beautiful?
Our jails are packed, our divorce courts are
packed, we're broken in mind with drugs, we're
broken in body with sex perversion, we're broken
with drunkenness.
Where's America beautiful?
Where's England beautiful?
None of them.
I say, I don't watch TV much, but
last Tuesday night, I think it was Tuesday
or Monday, there was a play on TV
called Samaritan.
Any of you seen it?
I think there's a book to that title.
Mitch, Mitch Snyder was the fellow that, it
was all wrapped round.
He lived in Washington.
The second title to the book was Miracle
on, I don't know, was it 2nd Street
or 42nd Street?
Anyhow, it's just a few weeks before Christmas.
Here's an ordinary man going down the street.
And he went round and he saw a
little old lady squatting over those grids, you
know, where the heat comes up.
And he went night after night after them,
until he got such a burden he couldn't
sleep.
And before long he started fasting.
I don't know, he's the same man.
He fasted 52 or 53 days, until his
wife sat at his bedside, darling, take something,
take something.
But he was determined to break down the
boys in City Hall.
Well, he gathered together 740 derelict characters.
I don't know if you've seen Celia, or
Cecilia Tyson.
She played last year in a play liberating
the slaves going to Canada.
She's a black woman.
She was 103 last year.
She knocked 78 years off that.
But she's still an old woman.
And she played the part of a little
derelict old black woman.
Nobody loved her, nobody cared.
These were unloved, unsought.
And dear God, in the distance you can
see the spire of churches.
And I thought, well, what in God's name
are these people rescuing the perishing?
What's the church doing for them?
No good giving them a tract and saying,
we'll be praying for you.
Forget it.
We're to do something more than that.
And he was determined to do it.
And he went to the city fathers and
they said, you can't do this, you can't
do that, you can't do the other.
He said, there's a building there.
It cost 10 million.
He said, what's 10 million compared to 740
perishing people?
The weather's going to drop 20 degrees tonight.
And some of the men eaten all day.
And they haven't been in a bed for
months.
And he really poured it on, you know.
He told them just everything he could.
Eventually those stony-hearted old boys broke down
a bit.
They wouldn't give him the 11 million dollar
building.
They gave him the disused railway station.
It looked like, it looked like, what am
I trying to say?
Cathedral.
Westminster Avenue, those big old arches in it,
you know.
And he crowded those people in.
He got 500 beds, if I remember right.
Got the blankets, got the food.
And he set them up.
But I was telling Brother Dale, as I
watched that.
Here are these derelicts.
Doctors that got on drink.
People that got on drugs.
Some were shaky.
Mostly were old.
Over 50, if that's old.
But anyhow, they got over that.
That's to get some of you off the
hook.
But there they were in such awful condition.
Shaky.
One man is dying.
The other guy has a bottle with whiskey.
About so much.
Take it.
No, you take it.
One crippled man is pushing another in a
wheelchair across the road.
And he falls down.
He collapses.
The fellow in the wheelchair is half paralyzed.
He's had no food.
He dies.
They give him a military funeral.
Why?
Because in Vietnam, he went out on the
shell fire and rescued so many dying men.
And here he is, the man says, in
God's name.
What are we doing?
The richest country in the world.
And we've hundreds of thousands of people through
the nation dying.
But I transferred that.
Instead of seeing those old shaky black and
white people and all the other people, ragged.
I sat there and instead of watching that,
I was weeping, sure.
I wasn't seeing old men and women who'd
had their innings.
Who'd had their day.
And somehow got into the devil's clutch and
it stripped them and robbed them of manhood
and womanhood.
And so the mentality and virtue and everything.
They were wrecks walking around on two legs.
I wasn't seeing them.
I was seeing Main Street in Tyler.
Not with stacks of derelict folk, but young
smart kids.
Many, many of them, scores of them from
the schools, finished, maybe graduated this summer.
They're well-dressed.
They've got these fancy, what do you call
these?
Things your ladies like to wear with a
badge on.
Martha, come on, help me there.
No dear.
Designer clothes.
My wife doesn't wear them.
We get our designer clothes that came out.
But anyhow, I could see those young people
going down the street.
Free, happy, they pocket money, they've got homes,
they've had education.
They're not ragged, they're not dirty.
What are you upset about?
Because I was looking in their hearts.
They're just as ragged as those people out
outside.
They're dark, they're polluted, they're in bondage, they're
captives to drink, they're captives to sin, they're
captives to every devilish thing there is.
But the church doesn't care.
As I've told you, we're broken in our
minds through drugs, we're broken in our bodies
through sin, we're broken in our divorce rate.
Everything's broken except the church.
The church isn't broken-hearted about it.
Jesus is, but we're not.
Well, here's some statistics for you.
A brother down in El Paso phoned me
tonight, and I asked him for these statistics.
They come from a paper, I think it's
called, is it New Morning Ministries?
And it's associated with the assemblies of God,
so it must be true.
Come on now, this is America the beautiful,
forget my English tongue.
Statistics.
There are 1 million runaway teenagers every year
in the U.S., but the majority of
them are never reported by their parents.
Thirty-five percent of the runaways leave home
because of incest.
You know what that is?
They tell me America's a beautiful?
Do you think God doesn't look down at
every home where a man is fooling around
and having sex relations with his daughter?
Come on, it's the same in every country.
Everybody saw the flood coming on Noah's day.
What do you think they did?
Sat down and waited for it?
Forget it.
As soon as the clouds darkened, the heavy
thunder rolled.
What did they do?
I believe every man jumped on a horse
and got out of town.
They've been warned day after day after day,
year after year.
They've gone up and sneered and scorned and
ridiculed the man who was building the ark.
And then when the heavens broke and the
water came from beneath and water from above,
I guess they jumped every horse and camel
and elephant they had to try and beat
it out of the town.
But they saw the water coming in.
Noah had built an ark.
What did he do?
He cut himself off from the rest of
the world.
When he got in that ark, that ark
had to be his entertainment, his joy, his
peace, everything.
Well come on, if it's a type of
Christ, why in God's name doesn't it satisfy
people?
Why isn't Christ your all in all tonight?
As it says in Philippians, he is all
and in all.
Why isn't Christ all your joy?
Why isn't Christ all your peace?
Why isn't Christ all your happiness?
I guess if you had a favorite aunt
and she was wealthy and some of you
young guys that like nice cars, she has
two Rolls Royces and she said, you know
dear, I'm gonna leave them both to you.
And of course this mansion with all its
antiques and my yacht that I anchor outside
of New York somewhere, it's all gonna be
yours.
Don't you think at times you'd have a
little emotion and ecstasy?
Well come on, have we lost sight of
eternity?
Is it true you're going to prepare a
mansion for us?
It doesn't matter how poor you are.
It doesn't matter how uneducated you are.
It doesn't matter if you don't understand all
the Bible.
I don't.
I don't know anybody that does.
But if you know, if you can say,
blessed assurance, Jesus is mine, then you've got
your name in the Lamb's Book of Life.
You know believers say, well of course in
Revelation 20 talks about the books being opened.
But that's written to unbelievers.
Sure it is.
Oh there are no books open for believers,
are you sure?
What about Malachi where it says a book
of remembrance is written.
There's another thing you've done today you've got
away with.
You've got away for now, it's judged up
there.
What about this book as Paul has kept
saying?
We're gonna face this book.
I don't know how you'll get on.
Maybe you feel pretty cocksure in your particular
denomination of theology.
Well read Hebrews 11 and get your nose
rubbed in the dust.
Doesn't matter whether you talk about Finney or
Wesley or Savonarola, a man that never claimed
to be filled with the Holy Ghost.
Savonarola shook a whole city from center to
conference.
He toppled the papacy.
He toppled corruption.
He toppled the leaders.
He toppled the magistrates.
He toppled the noblemen.
He made the king in his castle to
tremble.
Just one man, one man.
God doesn't raise up denominations.
He raises up men.
Then out of the men maybe something grows.
God raised up Wesley, Charles and John.
Before that he raised, of course, George Whitfield
who was the torchbearer actually.
But look what happened.
They shook the world.
Luther, he shook the world.
Kerry went to India when the Baptist stroked
their beards and said, no young man, when
God wants to save you, he's omnipotent and
sovereign.
He'll save them without you.
Don't believe that.
God is sovereign but he works through human
agencies.
I believe if he told the angels, Gabriel
tonight and the rest, you can go to
earth just for two years and labor.
I guess they'd dive over the parapets of
heaven and be down here in five minutes.
Paul says we're going and I keep telling
you, dear friend, I'm not going to heaven
for the weekend.
And you're not going to go to hell
for the weekend if you don't say.
We're going forever and ever.
And Paul says, I want to tell you
the things that motivate me.
I have a home eternal in the heavens.
I have a home.
Can you imagine walking down the street one
day and meeting the Apostle Paul?
Gold streets.
You'll be able to tell the evangelist they'd
be digging the streets up.
Can you think of us in eternity?
Everlasting bliss, everlasting joy.
As the hymn says, it will be worth
it all when we see Jesus.
Life's trials will seem so small.
We'll see that we fell over match stocks.
We thought they were redwood trees when we
bumped against them.
We'll wish that we carried heavier burdens.
We'll wish that we'd lived more sacrifices.
It's too late.
There's no u-turn before the throne of
God.
Remember that.
Whether you're a sinner going to the judgment
seat, there's no u-turn.
You'll wish to God there was but there
won't be.
There's no u-turn for the believers either.
I'd better get on with this or I'll
be here longer.
The majority of this million of runaways are
never reported by parents.
Thirty-five percent of the runaways leave home
because of incest.
Thirty-three because of physical neglect.
The rest are throwaways or abandoned by parents.
This young man said to me tonight, the
police called us down to the airport.
They found a little boy from South America,
retarded, very severely retarded.
A little Mexican.
He's dumped in a corner.
His parents left him and fled.
They don't know who he belongs to.
There he is.
He's a throwaway.
And he says, we're constantly facing this.
Many of the runaways do not live long.
A hundred and fifty thousand of them a
year disappear, disappear.
We don't project that.
People sit all night looking at junk on
TV.
What about the undercurrent?
Not just the underworld.
What about the undercurrent of sorrow and misery
and tragedy and broken hearts and broken lives?
We don't see it.
And yet isn't it our business to bind
up the brokenhearted, to let the oppressed go
free and break every yoke?
We're going to do something about it.
I am, by God's grace, within a month
or so, do something about this youth business
here in Thailand.
Two hundred and fifty thousand teenagers attempt suicide
each year, which is nearly, it's nearly a
thousand a day, a bit less.
But look, these kids have the nicest homes,
the nicest houses, the best education, they wear
the best clothes, they ride the best cars.
But what in God's name's missing?
I don't like much that H.G. Wells
said, but one, one thing he did say
sticks with me.
He said this in 1912.
He said, there is a God-shaped blank
in everyone.
You know, in 1912, he and a few
other guys got together and formed what we
call the Fabian Socialist Society.
And they laughed at the church, they laughed
at Christianity, they laughed at the Bible.
They said, we can produce a new race
of people who are talking about England mainly,
but they meant in the world.
We can produce a new race of men
by intellectual and biological processes.
The idea of some of them was to
squeeze out those who were born weak.
They were singing Swinburne's story from the last
century, glory to, glory to man in the
highest, for man is the master of things.
But right after they sung their song, World
War One came, followed by World War Two,
followed by the debacle, of course, of Vietnam.
And man just gets more and more depraved
and more and more wicked.
Two hundred and fifty thousand attempt suicide each
year.
Fifteen to twenty thousand succeed.
Well, how do you know that it wouldn't
be the most promising scientists in the world?
How do you know they wouldn't be the
best surgeons, but the devil stopped them?
How do you know they wouldn't be the
best Christians or preachers or something?
Now you can hang over that some Calvinism
and say, well, it's in God's order.
Okay.
A man told me in my office, well,
you see, everything's destined.
I said, you're telling me that a hundred
thousand babies, when they were born, when they
were in the mother's womb, were destined to
be flushed down the john as soon as
they were born?
Get out of the office.
I don't believe that.
I'm a little angry tonight.
I've got a right to be.
Fifteen to twenty thousand young people, didn't they
have this trouble in Plano last year?
Five or six or seven teenagers living in
the best parts of Dallas, with lovely homes.
Didn't a boy stand behind the door when
his daddy and mummy came from church?
He was fourteen.
He killed a pair of them because he
hadn't been getting his own way.
See, the breakdown is not in government, really.
The breakdown is in the home.
It's the home where the seeds are sown.
In one year, one million teenage girls will
become pregnant, and of them, two hundred thousand
will be aborted.
I'm not reading about Sodom and Gomorrah.
I'm reading about America, where you can't get
a prayer meeting going hardly in any churches.
Young guys phone me and say, Mr. Rayleigh,
I'm trying to get a prayer meeting in
the church, but they don't want to come.
They don't want to pray.
Do you know why they don't come?
Because they have no prayer life at home.
If they had, they'd come with something kindling
in their hearts and want to explore, and
then they'd go to a prayer meeting.
You don't have to grind something.
I want to come every night with a
burdened heart.
I want to live with a burdened heart.
I can't live otherwise.
As I say, I'm sick of the mediocrity
in the church.
I'm looking for God to start a fire.
You better hang on with me, Brother Farrar
and his wife, and Betty and Dave.
I believe God will do a new thing,
something entirely different in the next six months,
less than six months, here in the Tyler
area.
Two hundred...
One million teenage girls will become pregnant.
Of that number, two hundred thousand will be
aborted.
Think of that.
Two hundred thousand girls, teenagers, sixteen and under,
aborting their babies.
Why?
Because many of them now, at twelve years
of age, are getting pregnant.
They're only girls.
They're only children bringing to birth children.
They've no qualifications to handle children.
God didn't intend it that way.
Now it says fifteen percent of all teens...
Well, I don't quite know whether it's teens
or what it is, anyhow.
I don't know the grades in America, like
England.
But fifteen percent of all grades from ten
to twelve, and eleven percent of all others
from seven to nine, are classified as having
a drinking problem.
You know, there's nothing here.
Eighty percent of all boys, seventy percent of
all girls will have sexual relations before they
leave the high school.
Sudden.
Fifteen percent of all grades, from ten to
twelve, and eleven percent of all others from
seven to nine, are classified as having a
drinking problem.
You know, there's nothing here.
Eighty percent of all boys, seventy percent of
all girls will have sexual relations before they
leave the high school.
Sudden.
Approximately three hundred thousand female prostitutes in the
country, teenagers.
Do you think this doesn't make God sorry
and angry?
Do you just pass each other statistics?
Well, that's not the worst.
Two nights ago, I don't listen to much
TV, but I like to check where, because
the boys are on three different continents, so
I want to know what's happening.
Riots, earthquakes, what?
Two nights ago, or was it last night?
I forget.
When Peter Jennings, he was talking about the,
what do you call them?
Contras.
You know what the contras are?
He's talking about the contras.
And he called a man handsome, well-dressed,
smart, well-groomed, charming guy.
I said, that guy's well-educated, he's well
-fed, he's well-clothed, he's got well-stored
mind.
He said, you were in to see the
contras, weren't you?
Yes.
What do you see?
Now listen, this is horrifying.
And I couldn't sleep.
It sounds pretty vulgar, but come on, I'm
telling you, we're back to Sodom.
This well-dressed man said in the street,
he watched twenty men rape a twelve-year
-old girl to death.
Well, what in God's name did he stand
there for?
I mean, I'm not a, I don't believe
in shooting and killing people.
I couldn't, well, if one man raped a
little twelve-year-old girl, somebody should have
gone and dragged him away and dragged the
girl away.
But he stood there and watched twenty do
it.
And he's educated.
He's a product of an American university, an
English university.
Otherwise he wouldn't be in that capacity that
he was reporting there in that country.
But Jennings wasn't moved when he read it,
and the guy wasn't embarrassed when he said
it.
Do we have hearts of flesh or stone
or what?
You see, if you only see people with
a body, if you only see them on
a social standing or an intellectual standing, you're
missing it.
I tell you, I just can't go down
the street now in Tyler without seeing those
teenagers.
Some come from Christian homes.
Many of them have been to church.
They made a confession.
The preacher got baptized.
They're going to hell fire as much as
they were before.
Born again is a miracle.
A man becomes a new creature if he
doesn't, isn't born again.
He may go tithe.
He may take sacrament.
He may get baptized.
But as he had changed heart, when he
gets up from that altar, he should have
a changed heart, a changed mind, changed appetites,
changed desires, changed vocabulary.
A man is a new creation.
God doesn't patch him up where he's leaking.
He makes a new man.
And the same Spirit that put Jesus in
the womb of the Virgin Mary, the same
Spirit creates us.
We're regenerated.
We're forgiven by the Father.
We're cleansed through the blood.
We're regenerated by the Holy Spirit.
I don't know what's being taught in Bible
schools today, but I'll tell you, we need
to go back to basics.
We need to stop people going out.
I saw you kneeling there.
What happened?
Oh, I got saved.
How do you know?
I feel better.
Well, you may feel in hell tomorrow morning.
If you live by feelings, boy, you'll perish.
John Wesley preached on Romans 8.
I forget the verse.
Is it 16?
The Spirit beareth witness with our spirit.
He preached on that more than any other
thing.
The Spirit bears witness.
You can't depend on your feelings.
You can't say I've started a new leaf.
It's not a new leaf you need.
It's a new life you need.
Christianity is not just a religion.
It's a life.
And let me tell you again, Christianity is
not being weighed in the balances and found
one thing.
It's being tried, found difficult, and rejected.
When Jesus calls a man as Bonhoeffer, I
was reading a bit of Bonhoeffer yesterday.
You remember he was delivered in Germany.
Three days after they hung him, the prison
was released.
Everybody was released.
But Bonhoeffer said, remember when Jesus calls a
man, he calls him to die.
We say, come and get a new life.
He calls you to die.
Die to the old life.
Die to the old man.
Die to your own old interest.
Die to your old appetite.
Cut yourself off.
Again, no doors in the ark.
And he's there for years.
Up to that time, the preparation time, he's
scorned, he's ridiculed, they laugh at him, and
they'll do that with you.
But what do you think happened five minutes
after the door was shut?
Remember he put everything in the ark but
one thing.
God says, you put a light in the
window, put the animals, but there's one thing
you can't do.
I shut the door.
And when I shut the door, no man
can open it.
But once he got inside that ark, inside
that door, he had no fellowship with the
world.
Nobody visited him.
He didn't visit anybody else.
Even before the flood came, he was shut
up there.
And then he lived for months after the
flood had died down.
We would get up and going and say,
well, praise the Lord, he's delivered us.
The flood's gone off, I'm going.
The everybody's in a hurry to go nowhere.
What are you in a hurry about?
We're going straight ahead to eternity.
God is wanting people that find in Jesus
Christ everything he found in the ark.
He found peace there, the world was rolling,
the old ship was rolling.
It had no sails, it had no motor,
it wasn't made to sail.
What was it made to do?
Float.
And science says it's the most amazing statistics.
It's the most wonderful thing ever made to
float.
It was three stories high.
What was it, I forget the length, 450
feet long and 75 feet wide, three stories
high.
I know about 50,000 cubic feet of
space.
Well, weren't there a few that got saved
outside of the ark?
No, there were a few that got saved,
they were in the ark.
And the only reason they were saved, they
were in the ark.
They'd heard Enoch, they'd heard Noah.
A minute after when the Lord pulled the
plug as it were, and the rains came
down, and the rain came, so what did
they do?
They were screaming, screaming, screaming, open unto us,
open unto us, like the virgins.
I say not all the church is going
to the marriage supper.
Why?
Well, if they were, all the virgins would
have gone in, but they didn't get in.
Jesus says, they that overcome shall sit with
me on my throne.
Well, who sits with the king, the queen?
Who's the queen?
The overcomers.
Who are the overcomers?
Those who are pure.
It's too late, dear friend, when you're gasping
on your deathbed.
You pull out of an automobile wreck, you
can make all kinds of promises, but today
if he will hear his voice, Hebrews says,
today we've got to redeem the time every
day.
The old devil will cheat us, he'll get
fascinated with something.
We had a man in the church, I
pass it, he's a brilliant Greek scholar.
He lost his anointing, he lost his power
with what?
Nightclubs, no, collecting stamps.
You say, what?
Collecting stamps?
Yes, he invested a fortune in them.
He stayed up all night with a pair
of tweezers, sticking them here and turning them,
until he got volumes and volumes of stamps.
He used to stay up till midnight and
study the Word, but he got fascinated with
the stamps, and he lost, it's a very
simple thing.
As I've said to you often, the good
is often the enemy of the best, and
you've got to keep on your alert.
The days of evil, we've got to be
in the arc of safety.
Christ has to be my full satisfaction.
It's easy to sing, Jesus, you lover of
my soul, isn't it?
Until you realize what's in it.
Is it the second stanza that says, thou,
O Christ, art all I want, and more
than all in thee I find?
Is that true?
Why do you prefer?
I'll get my head in my hands, or
I'll say it anyhow.
Going out for a horse ride, if you
haven't spent time with God.
You love the horse more than you love
God.
Playing racquetball, doing some other thing, which in
itself may not be evil, but God is
a jealous God.
Why can you spend so much time without
hobby, or that situation, and you spend in
his holy presence, contemplating eternity, where we're going
before long?
Well, it says concerning Noah, he was a
preacher of righteousness.
You can preach anything today, preach the second
blessing, preach the second coming, preach the second
death.
No, we don't talk about the second death,
but it's there in the book.
And time is running out, and I'm sick
to death, as I've said more than once,
of the devil having monopoly of our young
people.
He's got them where he wants them.
Otherwise these statistics are a bunch of lies,
and they're not.
They've been carefully filtered.
They've come from a work which is very
much like Teen Challenge.
I'm going to get them printed out.
I'm going to write an article, put some
of these things in.
You see, if we're not careful, we'll see
as other men see.
Remember the man in the Bible, and God
touched him, Jesus touched him, but he saw
men as trees.
You'll see people, oh, that girl, she's an
honor student.
That boy's the quarterback.
Come on, forget it.
That's how the world thinks.
He's either saved or lost.
He's either fuel for the flames of hell,
or he's a person that's going to wear
a diadem in the presence of Jesus forever.
And once we get eternity conscious, all our
values change.
All our interests change.
We won't be seduced by trivia.
We won't be occupied with trivia.
We say, God, I want to live a
hundred percent.
As I've told you, I want to live
so that without a minute's notice, I could
walk straight into heaven.
I don't have to say, well Lord, hold
off.
I have something to put right.
I have some repentance to make.
I had a grudge against somebody.
I want to say, no, no, no, no,
no.
I want to walk in the light as
he gives it to me.
As I've told you, these guys right now,
see me.
In fact, a lady said this week to
someone, I'd like to be in, I'd like
to be in, where do we live, dearie?
Linde.
I'd like to be in Linde when Brother
Ray Mill dies.
She'd like to wear my mantle.
Isn't that nice?
Why are so many people wanting my mantle?
I need it a few more years, yeah.
When these guys say, Brother Ray Mill, ask
the Lord if you'll let me have your
mantle.
I'll say, no, I can't send you my
mantle.
I'll send you some of my sackcloth.
I'll never hear from them again.
They don't want sackcloth.
They don't want to carry the burden of
Jesus.
You say, you hear people say, I'm saved,
I'm sanctified, I'm spirit-filled.
When did you last hear somebody say, I've
had my Gethsemane?
Crucifixion in itself isn't death.
I'm crucified with Christ.
But did you die?
Did you stay long enough?
A man could hang on a cross for
12 hours without dying.
But Paul says, I'm crucified, yet I live.
Because he said, one sin dwells in me,
now Christ lives in me.
You know, once I start living like Christ,
thinking like Christ, seeing the world in the
eyes of Christ, seeing material things in the
eyes of God, the world looks insane.
It's a madhouse.
I get up every day and say, dear
God, this world's stark mad.
It's breaking your laws and you hold your
peace.
But he said, as it was in the
days of Noah, there's a vengeance coming.
There's a day of vengeance of our God.
The moon hasn't yet turned into blood, or
the sun turned into darkness.
But darkness covers the earth even now.
And God is wanting everyone of us to
be living 100% for him.
Totally careless as to what we were, whether
it's valuable or not.
Only as we live in righteousness and peace
and joy in the Holy Ghost.
You see, the trouble with the kids, I
don't like to call them kids.
You do, I don't.
I wouldn't like to go behind my boys
and hear them trying to say, the old
goat's coming.
Well, if they're kids, I must be an
old goat.
My children, your children, are you a role
model?
Are they seeing you totally consumed in the
will of God?
Saying, God, something has to happen entirely.
I'm not responsible.
It's easy to go up the Amazon.
There's dear Spencer again, this full-blooded Indian
from this country.
Praised with brokenness, there are two and a
quarter million Indians in this country, and hardly
anybody's reaching them except the Mormons.
I have to be away next Friday night,
and Paul too, we're going to, up to
Bethany.
If you remember Dick, Ray, what's his name?
Ray Dorsey is going to come and give
us another talk about India.
I'm going to ask her, we pray for
three things.
The Indians in America, the Indians in India,
and if you take Reader's Digest, this month
there's an article there about the Jews.
Thousands of them want to leave Russia, and
they can't.
Why does God look down on Russia?
Why does God look down on Afghanistan?
Dear God, most of you haven't thought of
either of them today.
You're concerned about the biggest hamburger, or your
wife burned the bacon.
Well, everybody has a cause.
I'm trying to get you grown up too
quickly, some people think.
No, I don't want you to be walking
around as cripples ten years from now.
I want you to get some spiritual muscle,
some spiritual strength, some spiritual vision, some spiritual
intelligence.
The devil's running away with the world because
the young Christians aren't standing up as they
should.
So tonight we're going to pray for these
two.
Pray for the Indians, pray for the Jews
in captivity.
We're told to pray for the peace of
Jerusalem, and pray for India with it.
Yeah, the boy, the fellow in Greece, what's
his name?
Stevens.
This is the third day of his trial,
so I think he's another to come, so
let's pray for him tonight.
Pray for those who are bound as being
with them, the Word of God says.
Well, are you glad you're free tonight?
How free are you?
Are you free from sin?
Are you free from doubt?
Are you free from fear?
Are you free?
You can say, my chains fell off, my
heart was free.
I like the hymn, and I'm through with
this.
The fellow that wrote the hymn, O love
that will not let me go, he also
wrote a hymn, make me a captive Lord,
and then I shall be free, like the
railroad.
While the train runs there, it's captive to
the lines, but it's free to go to
speed.
He says, make me a captive Lord, and
then I shall be free.
Force me to render up my sword, and
I shall conquer thee.
I sink in life's alarms, when by myself
I stand.
Imprison me within thine arms, and strong shall
be my heart.
And my heart is weak and poor, until
it must find.
It has no spring of action, sure, it
trembles with the wind.
It only stands unbent, amid the clashing strife,
when on thy bosom it is lent, and
found in thee its life.
God wants us to be a holy people.
If we're not holy, we'll go to hell
anyhow.
He says, without holiness no man shall see
the Lord.
I say again, God doesn't know any of
us, owe us anything.
We've had this book, we've all the light,
we've all the privileges, and yet with all
the mechanization we have, we're not moving this
generation to God.
God wants men, He wants women, full of
the Holy Ghost, purified until they've no will.
Take my will and make it thine, it
shall be no longer mine, in perfect unison
with Him.
I want you to cry out to God,
come on now, don't leave the praying just
a three or four, and don't pray forever,
pray and quit, don't go round and round,
say it and believe it.
But somebody pray for these youth tonight.
Can you think of a million girls this
year that have run away, and most of
them have been lost, forgotten?
Girls being sold to prostitution, you can see
that on West 42nd Street in New York,
and the other great cities.
And the devil's just putting a bigger cancer
in this country, the whole world, in what's
called humanism and freedom, and it's bondage, and
it's death, and it's disease, and it's damnation.
And it should make us angry.
And once we get really angry, in the
Spirit, there is a holy anger, human anger,
there's bitterness, holy anger, there's sorrow.
I see George here.
Are you from Zimbabwe?
Where?
Pardon?
Oh, Nigeria, good.
Well, it's good to see you anyhow, George.
Let's get some burden, forget all about yourself,
Lord, I'm weak, I'm this, forget it.
You should have come and got that straight
before you came to church.
This is where we plead, this is where
we beg, this is where we come and
implore God, and ask that our faith may
reach out to bless a dying world, and
begin at Jerusalem.
I turn offers down to go to other
countries, and so for sure I do.
Someone asked me where I live, I live
in Thailand, am I having revival?
No.
Why should I go to another city to
try and get revival when my own city
is dying?
I want to see God Almighty do something
in this community, and I believe he's going
to do it.
I write little aphorisms every few days, and
one I wrote this week was, love has
blood on it, there's no true love without
sacrifice.
I'm not going to sing, we're going to
go, well, maybe we'll sing this without the
book.
Go to prayer, I hope you can stay,
well, nearly an hour, if you can't, it's
okay, you can leave, but pour your heart
out.
Young guys, some of you have been drunk,
some of you have been on drugs, you
know it, pray for the captives, that God
will liberate them, that we'll have a holy
crusade, we'll get a stronger hatred towards sin,
and we will if you get a stronger
love toward God.
I want this place to blaze on Friday
nights, blaze until we're full of holy fear,
full of holy joy.
Well, as we know, let's sing, draw me
nearer, nearer, blessed Lord.
Draw me nearer.