The two passages of scripture I always put
together in my own thinking as I think
about Jesus.
One is in the second chapter of Philippians.
Let this mind be in you, which was
also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the
form of God, thought it not a prize
to be gained to be equal to God,
but made himself of no reputation, and took
upon himself the form of man, a servant,
and being found in fashion as a man,
he humbled himself and became obedient unto death,
even the death of the cross.
Wherefore, God hath also highly exalted him, and
hath given him a name which is above
every name, that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bow, and think in heaven,
and think in earth, and think on the
earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus
Christ is Lord to the glory of God
the Father.
Along with those verses I put a verse
in the third chapter of John's gospel, the
31st verse.
He that cometh from above is above all,
he that cometh from heaven is above all.
Of course, if men set their minds and
their mouths and their pens and their pulpits
and their printing presses and their quaffs, fully
to portray all that Jesus was, is, and
evermore will be, in his glory, his greatness,
his goodness, and his grace, they set themselves
to a task that puts men and angels
to an eternal nonpluss.
How much may be said about Jesus in
one century, and still more in other centuries,
still he peniteth himself will not suffice, fully
to portray all that Jesus was, is, and
evermore will be, in his glory, his grace,
his goodness, and his greatness.
Can one little coal of fire warm a
thousand cold hearthstones?
Can one little rosebud perfume this stifling atmosphere
of a polluted city?
Can one little cup of water cleanse a
thousand dirty hands?
Can any musician play Beethoven's Night Symphony on
a tin whistle?
You say, no.
And I say, no more can all the
words of the wisest of men, most skilfully
combined and most eloquently spoken, set forth Jesus
as he deserves to be set forth in
the minds and hearts of people today.
No mortal can with him compare among the
sons of men.
Fairer is he than all the fair who
fill the heavenly train.
As I said before, Jesus today is heaven's
bread for us hunger, heaven's water for us
thirst, heaven's light for us darkness, heaven's glory
for us shame, heaven's grace for us guilt,
heaven's forgiveness for us sins, heaven's beauty for
us ugliness, heaven's wisdom for us folly, heaven's
peace for us strife, heaven's comfort for us
sorrows, heaven's justification for us condemnation, heaven's salvation
for us damnation.
Oh, who can paint him?
Let the sweetest tone that ever trembled upon
the harps of heaven be discord.
Let the enchanting seraphim whose anthem is eternal
be done by wonder, praise, adoration, all militant
to the newness as it reached to the
Christ, the only perfection earth has ever known,
one eternity above all.
I love to think how Jesus is above
all in his source.
In the seventeenth of John's Gospel, Jesus, in
that marvelous prayer he prayed to his Father,
testified that he had grown with God before
the world was but loved by the Father
before the foundation of the world.
Meaning what?
Meaning that he was co-existent, co-essential,
co-eternal, co-equal with God.
And Jesus himself said, The Father and I
are one, O any one.
No husband was ever so one with the
wife of his bosom.
No wife was ever so one with the
husband of her heart.
No child was ever so one, O any
one, with its mother from the moment of
its conception as was Jesus with God, and
the glory they had, the love they had
with and for each other before this world
ever was.
No beams of light ever came so brightly
from the sun.
No fragrance ever issued so sweetly from flowers.
No crystal streams ever came so purely clear
from crystal fountains as did the delights of
the Holy, Holy, Holy Father's Son, and the
love they had, the glory they had with
and for each other before this world ever
was.
Father's love and glory, the Blessed Holy Spirit
himself, was never excluded.
And again Jesus is above all in his
relation to this physical universe in which we
live, this material universe, because he conceived it
by his wisdom and created it by his
power.
And he's the designer behind all the designs
of this universe, the lawmaker behind all of
God's laws, the great creator behind all creation.
How do I know this?
I know it from this blessed, marvelous Word
of God.
John 1 says that all things were made
by him, and without him were not anything
made that was made.
Paul, the great Aristotle and Demosthenes of the
Jewish race, the great apostle of the gospel,
wrote this to the Christian at Colossae.
All things were created by him, things in
earth, things in heaven, things visible, things invisible,
whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities
or powers.
All things were created by him and for
him, and he is before all things, and
in him all things hold together.
What a wonderful cluster of all things there.
And turn to the first chapter of Hebrews,
you'll find another verse that gives us the
all things.
Listen, God, who has sent the times and
dollars, manners and times past, taken unto our
fathers by the prophets, hath in these latter
days spoken unto us by his Son, whom
he hath appointed heir of all things, by
whom also he made the worlds.
And again, he is above all in the
way he came in, the universe he conceived
by his will and created by his power,
being the designer behind all the designs of
it, the lawmaker behind all its laws, and
became a human being without any earth or
father.
In eternity Jesus rested on the bosom of
the Father without any mother, and in time
he rested on the bosom of the Mother
without any earth or father.
He is above all in which he came
in the world and became a human being.
I love to think of ideas above all
as the reveal of God.
John 1.18 says this to us, No
man hath seen God at any time, but
the only begotten Son, who dwelleth in the
bosom of the Father, he hath revealed him.
He hath exegeted God.
In Jesus' silence of God broke into full
voice.
One day Philip said to Jesus, Lord, show
us your Father, and thou shalt satisfy us.
That will be sufficient.
I think Jesus had rebuke himself in his
voice when he answered Philip.
He said, Have I been so long time
of you, and yet thou hast not known
me, Philip?
He that hath seen me hath seen the
Father.
How sayest thou then, show us the Father?
Philip, you have seen me work, you have
seen the Father work.
You have seen me walk, you have seen
the Father walk.
You have heard me speak, you have heard
the Father speak.
He that hath seen me hath seen the
Father.
How sayest thou then, show us the Father?
And what Jesus was in the days of
his place on this earth, to the prodigal,
the publican, the harlot, the hypocrite, the saint,
the sinner, the disciple, to the devil, to
rich, to poor, to men, to women, to
boys, to girls, to scholars, and soldiers, and
peasants, and philosophers, and kings, and queens, and
beggars.
That is God always, everywhere, to everybody.
Jesus was God manifest in the place.
And I love to think how he is
above all in his supernatural power.
He is perhaps super above all the powers
that men know anything about.
We have a little hell-bound human race
that can strut sitting down, boasting about its
power.
Locomotives of power, planes of power, armies of
power, navies of power, satellites of power, bombs
of power.
All this power we boast about.
And we do have power, because human beings
discovered something that Jesus put in the universe,
nuclear power.
But Jesus said, All power is given unto
me in heaven and on earth.
And his glorified body in heaven today, which
body we are going to see some blessed
day, thank God, one finger of his glorified
body in heaven, and we will have more
power in it than all the hydrogen bombs
men could invent and explode in fifty years.
All power, he said, is given unto me
in heaven and on earth.
He is above all in his supernatural power.
Then I love to think how he is
above all as a teacher.
I've had some teachers in my life I
wish I could forget their names.
One or two of them were educational donders
trying to break into the house of my
faith, trying to get me to doubt some
things in this book.
But you know how far they got?
Just as far as a canary bird was
trying to fly across the Atlantic Ocean with
a Washington Monument tied to its tail.
One or two teachers I've had I wish
I could forget.
But Jesus was the greatest teacher of all,
and he stands out above all teachers as
a great palm tree in a desert of
mediocrity.
He stands above all teachers as a thousand
-bulb chandelier over a little crust of people
in flickering canals.
He falls among all teachers as a deep
crystal-clear river in the middle of a
shallow desert.
I remember I was babbling in the day
sometime from Muddy Brooks.
The hypocritical religious authorities of Jesus' day sent
some officers to take him and outlanguish to
arrest him.
These officers came back without taking him, without
arresting him, without handcuffing him.
These religious authorities, who were rebuking that word,
said, Why didn't you bring him?
And here's the answer given.
Never may a man speak like this man.
Yes, Jesus is a marvelous teacher.
Jesus believed all the Bible said.
He used the Bible to illumine the midst
of his cross.
He used the Old Testament scriptures in knowing
what the New Testament would be when it
should be written.
He said, Sanctify them by thy truth, thy
word is truth, all thy word is truth.
If one part of the Bible isn't so,
then another isn't so.
If I can't believe all the Bible, I
can't believe any of it.
I believe it all.
I wrote a book.
I believe it all.
If you haven't yet, don't claim to be
educated.
That's what I tell college faculty and students.
My book at first was called Lord, I
Believe, published by the Broadman Press, and they
dropped publishing of it.
Baker Boothouse was publishing it again under the
title, Talks About Miracles.
I wrote that book when I passed the
First Baptist Church in New Orleans.
But Tulane University students used to come to
hear me preach.
Many began to ask me up to their
student forum and let me talk 20 minutes.
That's one of the hardest things I have
to do, is to speak 20 minutes.
You've found that out already.
They had a man with a stopwatch.
If I went one second over 20 minutes
down on the stopwatch, you'd press his finger,
and a man with a Chinese gong would
go boom, boom, boom.
They'd shoot questions at me.
Sometimes they kept me there an hour.
Wonderful students they were.
One question they asked me was, and my
book talks about the miracles of actual questions
that they asked me and actual answers I
gave them.
They wanted to know me, where Cain got
his wife.
I told them I didn't know her and
I didn't care.
She suited Cain, she suits me.
I said, I know a lot of homes
and a lot of folks have been a
lot better off.
Some men let other women along, some men
let other men along.
One very beautiful Auburn-haired, green-eyed girl
asked me a question, very sweetly.
She said, Dr. Lee, do you really believe
in the whale-swallowed Jonah?
I said, my dear, I believe all that
the Bible says, all of it.
Not some of it, not most of it,
all of it.
The Bible tells me that God prepared a
big fish to swallow his runaway preacher.
I said, if God can make a preacher,
he can make a fish big enough to
swallow him.
I said, I'll tell you something if you
don't already know it, if that fish had
to hold down some of your professors three
days, it'd never hold him down.
I don't make fun of anybody's faith, I
never have, never intend to.
But there's one young man down there, had
the biggest nose I've ever seen on a
human face.
Oh, it was a waffle.
He had a little tiny mustache right beneath
that nose, sort of Hitler-like, a little
tiny mustache.
Of course the mustache was small, because nothing
grows a mustache.
And he came up to me with a
super-silly smear on his little Hitler-mustache
-lip and said, now, man-to-man, honest
to God, do you believe Balaam's ass talked?
I said, yes, I believe Balaam's ass talked,
being the female, the species she had the
advantage to start with.
I said, sir, did you ever hear Madame
Schumann-Hicks sing?
He said, no, sir.
I said, I did.
Paid $5 to hear her, worth more than
$5 to hear her sing Silent Night in
German and English.
I said, did you ever hear Caruso sing?
He said, no, sir.
I said, I did, I paid $7 to
take my sweetheart and myself to hear him
sing.
Worth more than that to hear him.
I said, I can go down to my
house, sir, start a little wax discs rolling,
and out of the point of that needle
will come Madame Schumann-Hicks' voice and Caruso's
voice.
By the way, this hadn't happened when I
talked to him, but in 1952, I was
in a Bible conference in New York.
I read one day in the New York
Times where they were having a commemorative concert
at a certain park, Amgen Park, I think.
I didn't know anything about the park, didn't
know where it was or how far it
was, but I got a cab and went
out.
There were 6,000 people there, and I
have a picture in one of my scrapbooks,
because keeping scrapbooks is one of my hobbies.
There were 6,000 people out there, and
it was just as worshipful an atmosphere as
we have in this auditorium this morning.
Do you know what we were doing there?
We were sitting there and listening to a
man sing who had been dead 30 years.
Mr. Caruso's 30th anniversary of his death.
We were sitting 3,000 miles from where
he was buried, his body.
We sat there, worshipful attitude.
Some people had tears on occasion.
For an hour and a half we sat
there and heard a man sing who had
been dead 30 years, and we heard it
by means of the phonograph.
Now, listen to me.
If man can compress Caruso in the microscopic
point of a needle, make him sing for
an hour and a half, 30 years after
he's dead, and 3,000 miles from where
his body is buried, you think God Almighty
would have any trouble making no cloth-haired,
water-eyed, Democratic donkey talk?
I don't!
I believe this book, all this book!
I don't have any trouble believing it.
And Jesus believed it.
He said, Sanctify them by thy truth, thy
word is truth.
He said, Search the scriptures, for in them
ye think ye have eternal life, but they
are they which testify of me, for Moses
wrote of me.
As I said yesterday morning, Jesus is the
theme of this book.
Take Jesus out of this book as I
tell you.
He's out of fire, melted out of music,
numbers out of mathematics, mind out of metaphysics,
facts out of history, fiction out of literature,
brains out of scholarly expecting intelligence, and brought
out of the body and expecting health.
This marvelous book, infallible in its authority, inerrant
in all its statesmen, immeasurable in its influence,
inexhaustible in its adequacy, regenerating power, personal navigation,
a miracle book of diversity and unity, of
harmony and infinite complexity.
Jesus believed it to be truth, and I
believe what Jesus believed.
I'm going to preach it that way.
I preached it that way down in Memphis.
The spider didn't spin in the webs of
my Baptist either.
Let me say something else.
Jesus was above all in the way he
lived.
Nobody can find any fault in what Jesus
said or did.
One day Jesus said to his enemies, and
he had plenty of them.
I have enemies.
I've told the people of my convention that
if when I die somebody gets up and
says, Dear old Dr. Lee, with some hoot
-owl voice, never met an enemy in all
his life.
I said, I hope God will raise me
to life long enough to stick my head
out of the coffin and say, That's not
so!
No man can take a stand against liquor
today and not make enemies, or communism and
not make enemies, or liberalism and modernism and
not make enemies.
No enemy?
The boast is poor.
No enemy?
You never diced a cup from a purging
lip.
No enemy?
You never hit a traitor on the hip.
No enemy?
You've been a coward in this life.
No enemy?
The man had turned the wrong to right.
Jesus had his enemies, but no one could
find any fault in what he did or
said.
Jesus' life on this earth was a very
geography of perfume.
It was a overflow of graciousness.
It was a thrill of the uncataloged.
It was a language of the unuttered.
And Jesus wore the white flower of a
blameless life in the midst of a crooked
and a perverse and adulterous generation, like the
generation in which we now live.
And Jesus was so finely strung, so unutteredly
keyed to truth, to mercy, to justice and
to love, and so quickly felt the sorrow,
the sympathy, and the indignation which wrong and
injustice invader elicits from all high souls.
Temptations never loosed the moral fiber.
Popularity never caused him to hurry.
Antagonism never caused him to delay.
He never made any apology for anything he
said or did.
He never acknowledged there was any need for
repentance on his part.
He was a sinless, absolutely holy, H-O
-L-Y, holy Christ!
And the devil could not get him to
fall.
He was above all else in life.
Did you find anybody in this world who
never said anything they shouldn't have said?
Didn't you?
Or did something they should not have done?
Jesus was absolutely sinless.
He never made a mistake.
He never said something he should not have
said.
He never stayed silent when he should have
spoken.
He's above all else in the life he
lived.
I challenge all the microscopes of skepticism, all
the telescopes of infidelic observation, all the X
-rays of investigation to find anything, anything, anything
wrong in the life of Jesus, by word
or by deed, is above all.
Let us enter a little bit into the
Holy White Sanctuary with your prayer.
Jesus is above all in the sacrifice he
made and in the suffering he endured in
our behalf.
Some man wrote a book and said the
greatest sacrifice ever made was when Solomon dedicated
the Temple of Jerusalem and killed 22,000
oxen and 120,000 sheep in the sacrifices.
That isn't so.
He wrote beautifully, but he wrote error.
The greatest sacrifice ever made in all ages
was when Jesus, the Lamb of God, died
on a cross outside the walls of Jerusalem
at the place called Ascar.
Not all have brought a beast when Jesus
ought to slain to give their guilty conscience
peace or wash away the stain.
But Christ, the Heavenly Lamb, takes all our
sins away, the sacrifice of nobler name and
richer blood than day.
He saw me plunged in deep distress and
flew to my relief.
For me he bore the sinful cross and
carried all my grief.
He suffered.
He suffered physically, but he suffered more in
his soul.
He said to his disciples, My soul is
exceeding sorrowful unto death.
I can hardly stand it.
I'm about to die.
My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death.
And soul-suffering is the most terrible suffering
in the world.
Victor Hugo in that great novel, which I
think is the greatest novel ever written, that's
just my idea.
You can have your own.
Picture that truth in John's black hair that
turned white in a single night.
White hair, black hair, turning white in a
single night!
When I was in Paris, I said to
my dear friends, Arthur and Muriel Johnson, two
of the sweet friends I have, I said,
I want to see the little room in
which Queen Marianne and Ed Spinner last hours.
They said, I can take you to it.
It's below the Seine River.
We went down the steps below the Seine
River, and I gave $5 to the old
guy and God.
He said, Come, sir, these dungeons you see,
people starve to death, animals rot to death,
nobody cares.
No beam of sunlight ever in any of
these dungeons, sir, not a beam.
Down the corridor of the dungeons we went
to, we came to the little room, little
plank floor and little wooden swinging doors, where
Marianne and Ed Spinner last hours.
The old God said to me, that chair,
sir, she sat in just before she went
to the death wagon, and said, this little
handkerchief on the glass she used to wipe
her tears away, she had a lot of
them to wipe away, sir, and that blade
on the wall chopped her head off.
But come, sir, your feet are walking on
the same planks her little feet walked on,
your body is going through the same little
wooden swinging doors that her body went through
to the death wagon.
Come, sir.
He took me out to the place where
the guillotine had been.
He said, Here, sir, they chopped off her
head.
I remembered my history a bit, how an
executioner, when his head fell in the basket,
he picked it up with a hair as
it dripped blood in her eyes, looking like
glass marbles in her head, and his hand
was crammed full of hair white like wool,
white as snow, which three days before had
been black as a crow's wing.
What made Marianne's black hair turn white in
three days?
Soul-suffering!
That did it.
Soul-suffering.
Jesus said, My soul is exceeding sovereign to
death.
I have a sermon that's being published this
year.
Two deaths died by one man in one
day.
Jesus died on the cross.
He died two deaths, a physical death and
a spiritual death, which was absent from God,
when he cried, My God, my God, why
hast thou forsaken me?
All the days that I knew and all
my life I've had one night to them.
The old preacher Amos said to his great
congregation one day, as he preached to them,
There's coming a day when the sun shall
go down at noonday.
I can hear those folks going to their
tents after Amos preached and talking to each
other.
Well, I'm eighty-five years old.
I ain't never seen the sun go down
at noonday.
Have you, Rebecca?
No, I'm seventy years of age and I've
never seen the sun go down at noonday.
Somebody says, No, I haven't either.
I haven't either.
The sun going down at noonday, the preacher
must have been a little wrought up today.
He must have been a little bit on
high tension, a little bit nervous.
No, the preacher can't get wrought up today
and worth shooting.
One of my deacons came by one Sunday
morning when I had preached.
He said, You seem to be wrought up
today.
I said, Yes, I'm wrought up.
When are you going to get wrought up?
That day came.
Midnight came down in his black garments and
pushed noonday with her bright, resplendent garments off
the throne of the universe, and sat down
on the throne and spread his black garments
all around us, a little terrestrial ball, as
we call it, in one of our hymns.
And the earthquake, thunderously and rumblingly and grumblingly
rolled forth its gauge, and irresistibly, that there
in the temple was a man running to
from the top to the bottom.
And in that darkness, Jesus said, My God,
My God, why hast thou forsaken me?
That's when God turned Jesus' soul into hell
in those three hours of darkness.
Jesus went to hell for me.
Jesus went to hell for all of us.
Let me give you some words from a
man who had a greater mind than I
could ever hope to have, a great theologian,
a great preacher, founder of Southwestern Baptist Theological
Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, Dr. B.
H.
Carroll.
He used to preach an hour and a
half and two hours.
Listen to what he said.
It's unquestionable that Christ's soul entered hell while
he was on the cross.
He had died the spiritual death which is
absent from God when he said, My God,
My God, why hast thou forsaken me?
This must be interpreted literally.
During that time of seeming eternal duration, the
Father's face was hidden, his back was turned,
and in that awful darkness the Son of
God endured the pangs of spiritual death and
desolation.
And the devil and demons were around him,
and the thirst of hell was upon him.
But Jesus had said by the prophet these
two things.
The pangs of hell got hold upon me,
but God does not leave my soul in
hell.
Dr. Carroll goes on to say this.
Jesus was in hell.
He was not there to stay.
He came out of hell to say to
the Father, Receive my spirit.
He was no longer forsaken of God the
Father.
Christ descended to hell within the three hours
of darkness when he was God-forsaken, and
in the power of Satan, to death by
one man, one day, by Jesus, who suffered
in hell.
Let me say this.
He said, Above all else is death.
The Bible speaks about death being our enemy,
the last enemy that shall be destroyed.
Oh, death, whose only prize are faded garlands
on coffin lids.
Death, whose only music is a sob of
broken hearts.
Death, whose only pleasure fattens with the falling
tears of the world.
Death came into my house and left me
a lonely house, left me with a heartache
looking at the vacant chair at the table,
left me with a silence, unbroken, in which
I can't hear the voice I love to
hear for over fifty-seven years.
Death has done as much for some of
you.
And death laid hold upon Jesus.
They never did stop till they killed him.
They said, He's a king.
His enemies said, If he's a king, he
ought to have some royal insignia with high
office, so they cut his back to shreds
with a scourge.
If he's a king, he ought to have
a crown, so they crowned him with piercing
thorns.
If he's a king, we ought to say
so, so that it'd spit in his face,
and mouths that had kissed the mouths of
harlots and been placed on rum jugs and
uttered their dirty jokes and profaned words did
spit in his face.
If he's a king, we ought to reach
out our hands to him, so they beat
him up with their hands and pulled out
some of his beard.
For he fulfilled the scripture, I gave my
back to the smithers and my cheeks to
them that cupped off their hair.
They said, If he's a king, he ought
to have a throne, so they nailed him
naked to a wooden cross and lifted the
cross up.
They killed him.
You and I killed him.
Our sins killed him.
He bore our sins right on a tree.
Our sins were the scourge that cut his
back to shreds.
Our sins were the dirty sputum that befouled
his face.
Our sins made the procession where he was
loaded down with a wooden cross and fell
beneath it.
Our sins pulled out his beard.
Our sins beat his face to a pulp.
Our sins crowned him with thorns.
Our sins nailed him to the cross, and
our hearts were the hard hammers that drove
him there.
We did it!
You did it!
We did it!
They killed him.
I'm glad that Joseph of Arimathea was a
rich man.
I believe if it hadn't been for him,
Jesus would have been taken out and dumped
on the garbage heap with dead dogs and
lambs and cats and all other refuse.
I believe that.
Joseph went in to see Governor Pollack, and
here's the way I picture it in my
own mind.
The Governor's in his office.
Some soldier standing out there with spears to
guard him.
And Joseph the rich man came in, and
Governor Pollack, who had a yellow cotton string,
would have had a backbone.
Well, Joseph, what can I do for you?
And Joseph the rich man said, Governor, the
man dead on the cross out yonder, whose
death was your son, named Jesus, and he's
dead.
I said, well, I don't know if you'd
let me have his body and bury it.
Well, Governor Pollack called a Roman and sent
two of the soldiers and said, is he
dead already?
The soldiers said, yeah, Governor, he's dead, all
right, he's dead, he's dead, he's dead.
Well, Governor Pollack gave Joseph of Arimathea permission
to go take the body of Jesus down
and bury it.
The Bible doesn't tell us this, but I
think this is what happened.
Joseph went out on the street and he
met Nicodemus, who also had been a secret
disciple of Jesus.
He said, hello, Nick, hello, Joe, where you
been, Nick?
I've been to see the Governor.
What do you want to see the Governor
for?
I want to know if you'd let me
have the body of Jesus to bury it.
He said, I could.
You want to help me?
Sure, Joe, sure, I'll help you.
Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimathea, pulled out the nails,
took his body down, wrapped it in linen
clothes and put the spikes in and put
a napkin around his head, as was the
custom for the Jews to bury, and put
him in that tomb.
He went out on the solid rock, yondered
and derided him to death.
The Roman Empire rolled a big stone to
the door and sealed it with seals and
put soldiers to watch him.
Everybody said he's dead.
Blind Bartimaeus with tears in his now-seeing
eyes said, the one who made me see
is dead.
Mary Magdalene, out of whom Jesus had cast
seven devils, said, the one who took the
devils out of me is dead.
I wonder why they wanted to kill him.
The man with a withered hand reached over
and touched his wife's cheek and said, honey,
the one who made my hand old is
dead.
I wonder why they wanted to kill him.
And if old Zacchaeus was living, I think
he said, the one who changed my life
from darkness to light is dead.
All of them said he's dead.
And Mary said, the one to whom I
gave birth, the one who nursed my breast,
the Son of God, is dead.
I hear old Sin cry out to death
with his raucous, sinful voice, hey, you got
that fellow Jesus?
Yes, Sin.
I got him, and I'm going to keep
him like I kept all the folks that
ever came in my power.
The first day.
The second day old Sin called out again,
hey, death, you still have that fellow Jesus?
Yeah, I had him, Sin, don't you worry.
And I'm going to keep him like I
kept all the kings and queens and crowned
folks of all ages that ever came in
my power.
I'm going to keep him.
The third day morning old Sin called out,
hey, death, you still there?
Yeah, I'm here.
You still have that fellow Jesus?
No.
He'd gone away.
Thank God.
Up from the grave he arose.
With a mighty triumph, oh, it's close.
Hallelujah.
The one who's above death arose.
He says to us today, I am he
who liveth and was dead, but I am
alive forevermore, and I have the keys.
And he does.
What he locks, nobody can unlock.
What he unlocks, nobody can lock.
He has the keys, because he has the
key to your life.
I'd like to ask you, incidentally, the last
thing I want to say is this, not
the last thing I want to say, but
I'm going to say it.
He's above all, and he's coming back to
this earth again, literally, visibly, bodily like he
went away!
Coming in the air first!
He's going to bring our loved ones with
him.
Oh, I'm going to see my little lady
Lee again, when she comes back with her
Savior.
And when he comes in the air, the
dead in Christ shall rise first!
What are these general resurrections going to do
with that, who say the wicked are dead
and the Christian dead are going to rise
at the same time?
It isn't so.
The dead in Christ shall rise first, and
we who are alive and who are Christians
will be given glorified bodies, and caught up
together with them to meet the Lord in
their soul, and say, Well, we'll be with
the Lord, and after a wedding in the
sky!
Dr. Peter Wolfe used to talk about it.
He's coming back to this earth.
He's going to land on the Mount of
Olives.
The whole mountain is going to split wide
open, part will go one way and part
another, and he is going to set up
his throne in Jerusalem and make real what
he promised in the Luke that the first
God would give to him, the throne of
the Father, David!
God hasn't done that yet, but he's going
to do it!
The Bible tells me that the time is
coming when little children can play with highland
moccasins and rattlesnakes and cobras and not be
hurt.
Has that time ever been?
No.
The Bible tells me the time is coming
when the terrestrial will be taken out of
wild animals, and the lambs shall lie down
together, and the lamb will not hurt the
lamb.
Has that time ever been?
This book tells me the time is coming
when men shall beat their swords in the
process, and their spears in the pruning hooks,
and men shall learn war no more.
Has that time ever been?
Look at Cyprus today, where the Turkish army
marches!
War!
No, that time never has been, but it's
going to be when Jesus comes back and
reigns on this earth a thousand years.
Oh, blessed Lord Jesus, come quickly!
When he comes, it's going to be the
Master's reckoning day, it's going to be the
Servant's pay day, it's going to be the
King's coronation day, it's going to be the
Bride's wedding day!
Amen!
He will so come quickly, Lord Jesus!
But I thank God Jesus above all.
I'd like to say to him today in
my heart, and I'd like for you to
say it too, if you will, what Shakespeare
pictures say to Bassanio, her lover.
She said, For you, my Lord Bassanio, I
would be troubled twenty times myself, one thousand
times more fair, ten thousand times more rich.
And I'd like to say to him this
morning as we turn and go away, For
you, my Lord Jesus, I would be troubled
twenty times myself.
I'd like to be a thousand times better
for thee than I've ever been, until thou
shalt come again, or until thy holy blessed
fist in hand shall open the gates of
grace to me, shall open to me the
gates of glory beyond which I'm going to
see some angels' faces I've loved long since
and lost awhile, and best of all to
see Jesus.
And I'll walk around a little while with
him in the fields of glory.
Would you like to say that to him
this morning?
For you, my Lord Jesus, I'd be troubled
twenty times myself if I could.
I'd like to be a thousand times better.
Would you like to say that?
Well, say it to him while we bow
our heads.
If I say it to him, please, he's
right there.
Say it to him.
Say it to him right now, no matter
who you are, no matter where you live.
Make him a promise.
Keep that promise, till he comes again, or
until he opens the gates of glory for
you.