And all our lives start, from the moment
you began to witness for Christ, all your
service, all your labours for him, they're going
to be shown, oh, now listen, listen, none
of the filthy world, none of the outcasts
of hell are going to be there.
Won't it be wonderful that you get there,
or will it?
When you see all the redeemed of all
the ages, when you look there and say,
you know, there's Abraham, I didn't think he'd
look quite like that, but he's going to
be there alright.
And all the saints of all the ages
are going to be there.
A hymn writer says, from earth's wide bounds
and ocean's farthest coast, through gates of pearls,
streaming a countless host, singing to Father, Son
and Holy Ghost, Hallelujah.
You know, there used to be an old
hymn, and maybe not ten people here could
recite it or tell me the first verse,
but everybody knows the chorus, when the saints
go marching in.
You know, they dance to that down in
Bourbon Street, that hellhole, with all its prostitutes.
They dance to it every night.
When the saints go marching in, they shuffle
their feet, listen, that's for the redeemed, it's
not for that bunch of scum of the
earth.
It's for the redeemed, when the saints go
marching in, can you imagine them going in?
From earth's wide bounds, from ocean's farthest coast,
through gates of pearls, streaming a countless host,
singing to Father, Son and Holy Ghost, Hallelujah.
A multitude which no man can number.
I'm going to open the gallery and see
all the saints of all the ages.
Mine, I'll be thrilled to look on Isaiah.
And Jeremiah.
And those major prophets, and those minor prophets.
And Matthew and Mark and Luke and John
and Acts.
Well, everybody in Acts, anyhow.
And the Apostle Paul.
And Titicus, and all those strange characters.
Won't it be wonderful and say, see, those
are the men who walk with Jesus.
See, there's Paul, he gave his colossal intellect
to God.
He wrote about fourteen epistles.
He went over Asia Minor.
He didn't sit in a jet and say,
you know, how good the Lord is to
me, and I'd, no, sorry.
He was lashed to the post a hundred
and ninety-five times.
He was in weariness and fastings and painfulness
and tribulation and distress and famine and peril
and nakedness and swords.
In tribulation amongst false brethren.
In perils of the deep.
Do you think that man's going to get
two ounces of reward for a life like
that?
You'll only get rewarded.
Grace is free, but rewards are not free.
People say, you're talking about works.
Sure I am, because God did.
Jesus did.
You know that some saints, again, are going
to judge the earth.
Well, that'd be an awesome task.
I, I won't want to be one.
Maybe I never will.
Maybe I will.
Maybe, maybe God will ordain that I should
do it.
Can you see the holy dead all lined
up there?
All the saints in the Old Testament, all
the saints in the New Testament.
I, I hope the Lord, I can't give
him any advice.
I, I think I try to in prayer
sometimes, but I can't give God any advice.
I'd like to see a pocket full of
those gorgeous people who prayed.
Oh my, won't that be wonderful?
You know, when you see a political convention,
they have a sign up from Cincinnati or
somewhere.
Maybe there'll be signs in heaven.
These, these are the prayer warriors.
These are the great sufferers.
These are the travellers.
These are the missionaries.
These are the failures.
Well, anyhow, there's, there's going to be all
kinds of people listed in that great day.
It's going to be an awesome thing.
And here is a man, he, his life
is just made of wood.
Very beautiful.
Ten thousand dollars wouldn't do much for a,
a stack of mahogany these days, would it?
But when the fire goes through it, what
do you have?
All you have is that wood going down
until you've got ashes, maybe up to your
ankles.
And that's all that is left.
I heard a woman say not long ago,
Well, praise the Lord, I'm, I'm glad I
don't have to account for anything when I
go to heaven.
There is no condemnation for those who are
in Christ Jesus.
Wait a minute.
You can never isolate the scripture by itself.
There's no condemnation for past sin.
I'm you mighty glad this morning, I think
sometimes, I, I don't wonder that God keep,
have to keep saying to Israel, Remember thou
was the bondsman in Egypt.
Remember your sin, remember your iniquity.
Did you get up this morning and thank
God you were pure?
Huh?
Did you thank him that that devilish fever
you used to have for, for smithing cocaine
or drugs or something, that he broke the
fetter of it?
Are you really glad you're not a prostitute
now, you're going to be a part of
the bride of the Lamb?
Are you glad he's removed from your heart
covetousness, and bad temper and all those creepy
horrible things that used to master you?
A man's life, all his ministry, it showed,
you see the difference between the wood and
the hay and the stubble and the silver
and the gold and the precious stones?
Wood, hay and stubble are above the ground,
they catch the eye.
Silver and gold and precious stones are below
the ground, nobody sees them.
There's a lot of public ministry in that
day that's going to go down in ashes,
my brother.
You say, well, it doesn't say that the
Christians are going to be judged after the
book.
Yes, I think it does.
Where?
In Malachi.
It says that God has a book of
remembrance.
And I think it would do you good
before you go to bed every night this
week to ask God, what did you put
in your book this, this, today from my
life?
It doesn't necessarily have to be some outward
act, you could worship God on a tractor,
you could worship God, it's not the best
way, but you can do it still.
The fire is going to take the big
showy life of that man and burn it,
and it's only going to be a bunch
of ashes.
Wood, hay, well, if you put $10,000
in hay, you get a lot, yeah, and
you get a lot more ashes too when
the fire got to it.
And stubble, you could buy half the stubble
in Texas maybe for $10,000, but boy,
you'd have a mess when the fire got
to it.
Instead of ashes to your ankles, or ashes
to your knees, it'd be up to your
nose maybe, and you couldn't get your way
out.
But that's what lives are going to be
like, wood, hay, stubble.
I used to have trouble with these boys
always begging, you know.
And it makes you wonder if some Christians
do have hearts of flesh, that they won't
send them money to keep their jets going.
You know, I believe every dime that ever
came into a gap here, every dime that
ever came to Oral Roberts, anybody else is
going to answer for it at the judgment
seat of Christ one day.
Jesus talked about these men who go and
take widows' houses.
Well, that's what they're doing now.
They're not satisfied that you give while you're
living, they'll ask you to hand your house
over to them.
And leave this in your will, and if
you do, you'll get a better place in
heaven.
Don't believe it for a moment, it's a
lie from hell.
They're going to give an account to God
in that day, but I believe we're going
to give an account too.
A brother was telling me this week when
he got baptized, it was a kind of
a sudden thing, and he went down into
the water there and suddenly realized he had
his wallet in his pocket.
Although not many pockets get, you know, not
many wallets get baptized.
We kind of say, Lord, you look after
my sins, I look after the rest.
Every penny you earn since you became the
property of Jesus Christ, you'll give an account
of before God.
He doesn't just take your sins, he takes
yourself.
He takes the government of your life.
There's an awful lot of money being wrongly
invested.
You know what I think?
I may not be right, I usually am,
but I may not be quite right in
this, but you know what I think?
I think that now the crunch is on
the nation.
I think it's going to get worse and
worse.
This is going to be the roughest year
we've ever lived.
I told some of you three years ago
that an important man called me late at
night and said, Brother Ravenhill, the next three
weeks in American history will be the next
three weeks we're going to live will be
the most important in American history.
One of the most famous preachers in the
country called me at nearly midnight and said,
you know what?
I've come to this conclusion, God Almighty's already
taken his hands off America.
For the simple reason we've had so much
light and rejected it.
Carter can't make a move to the right.
If he makes it to the right, it's
still to the left.
Every move he makes is a counter move
that makes him sink further and further in
the mire.
And it's not only true that we live
in a world of bankrupt politics, we live
in a world, and this is the most
tragic of all, of a bankrupt church.
Isn't it awesome to think that all this
stuff, we sing, all that will be glory
for me, friend, you've got one big stumbling
block.
Let me rush through this, time's going.
Your life is wood, the fire's going to
come.
Hay, the fire's going to come to it.
Stubble, the fire's going to come to it.
But what if your life is silver and
gold and precious stones?
What is gold a sign of?
Gold, I believe, there is a sign of
our devotion to God.
You wouldn't get much gold for $10,000
today.
And I could have a small induction crucible
here, and put your $10,000 worth of
gold and press buttons and it moves and
moves.
What happens when you burn gold?
Nothing, all you do is change it from
solid to liquid, but you don't reduce it.
Can you see all the saints of all
the ages?
And Leonard Ravenhill is standing there before Christ,
whose eyes are full of holiness, where the
praise is breeding holiness, where there's all the
majesty of an awesome God.
And he reads the record of my poor
life before all the saints of all the
ages.
And he puts the fire to my devotional
life.
Am I just a good showman?
I sure like to preach because God called
me to preach.
And I don't care how I preach, I
don't care whether you believe me either, I'm
not responsible for that.
I preach out of my heart all I
believe and I'd die for it.
But say, am I just a showman?
What's my secret life like?
We were talking just earlier, yesterday I guess,
about the woman that came with an alabaster
box of ointment.
You know I read that story for years
and heard it preached on before ever I
realised she came for one reason only, she
came to worship Jesus.
How do you know?
Because she brought the most sacrificial gift that
she had.
How do you know?
Because she never said a word while she
was there.
How do you know?
Because she said, I won't wash his feet
with water, I'll wash them with tears.
I won't dry his head, his feet with
a gorgeous towel, I'll wipe his feet with
the hair of my head.
And she poured out that costly fragrance.
And then she wiped his feet again, so
what happened?
The fragrance she poured out on him came
back on her.
Why isn't my life more fragrant?
Because you don't take time to be holy.
Because you think if you stuff all the
stuff you get in a guppy, which I'm
sure is good, or some other Bible school,
that this isn't, no, no, no, no, no.
God isn't going to measure your intellect the
size of your hat.
He's going to try with his fire, my
devotional life.
I think again of a statement Dr. Tozer
made to me once, he said, Len, you
know what?
He said, we'll hardly get our feet out
of time into eternity, and gaze on eternity
with what we bow our heads in shame
and humiliation and say, my God, look at
all the riches there were in Jesus Christ.
And I've come to the judgment seat almost
to pauper.
For God has not merely given us Jesus
Christ, he's given us all things.
And because there isn't enough joy in the
house of God, we need entertainment.
Because entertainment is the devil's substitute for joy.
Because there isn't enough power in the house
of God, people are always looking for the
last scientific development, and their hair stands up
when they see some fancy show on TV.
I think before we point the finger at
the world, we better turn to the church
and say, look, we better all get sackcloth
and ashes and humble ourselves and say, Almighty
God, when I see the church in the
New Testament, they didn't have stately buildings, they
didn't have paid evangelists, they didn't have a
lot of money, they didn't have organization, they
couldn't get on TV and beg.
But I'll tell you what they did, they
turned the world upside down.
And I'm embarrassed to be part of the
church of Jesus today, because I believe it's
an embarrassment to a holy God.
Most of our joy is clapping our hands
and having a good time, and then afterward
we're talking all the drivel of the world.
Oh, to be lost in Him, to be
consumed in Him.
We mentioned this week a little frail woman,
my dear boy that's in South America, many
of you heard him preach Paul.
I think he has every book that Amy
Wilson Carmichael wrote, about 30 of them.
He drenched himself in her teaching.
She was a fine little Irish woman.
She had a curvature of the spine.
The last three years of her life, they
had to lift her in and out of
bed, change her diapers.
She was helpless, but she loved 350 little
children.
She wrote this, from subtle love of softening
things, from easy choices and weakenings, not thus
are spirits glorified, not this way went the
crucified.
From all that dimmed thy calvary, O Lamb
of God, deliver me.
You know, we're overboard on laughter and happiness.
There's an old saying in the world, laugh
and the world laughs with you.
I change it, I say laugh and the
church laughs with you, but weep and you
weep alone.
You get so near to the heart of
God, we sang it on Friday, we did
a marvellous Friday night prayer meeting.
I wouldn't have taken that Friday night meeting
for $10,000.
God came and we were broken and humiliated
before Him.
You get so near to the heart of
God, that you share His grief over a
world and over a backslidden church that we
have today.
Can He share His sorrow with you?
Oh yes, you'll get filled with the Holy
Ghost and get the bank balance, that's alright.
If you do, God will hold you to
account for it.
But are you big enough to say, Lord,
in this crucial hour in human history, let
me fill up the sufferings of Christ.
Are you prepared to challenge demon power and
say, listen, I've moved into the place where
the Apostle Paul was when he said, I
glory in tribulation, in necessities, in reproaches.
Because if you're going to get mature in
God, all the dwarfs around you will criticise
and sneer at you.
And say you're trying to be holier than
the rest of us, eh?
You say you don't have time for basketball
or go and see a baseball game.
No, maybe you don't, that's nobody's business but
yours and God's.
You'll discover this, the men who have been
most heroic for God have been the men
with the greatest devotional life.
I remind you again that one day I
was in the Bible School of Wales and
dear Mrs. Rees-Howes, her husband was dead
now, we stood on the terrace there and
she turned back, she said, you see the
room there?
I said, yes, I see that room.
That door, yes, daddy, meaning her husband, went
through that door at six o'clock in
the morning and he stayed there till six
o'clock at night.
Every day for eleven months except the one
day that his mother died.
There's the great test.
This isn't the greatest job on earth, it's
a good job, preaching, it's not the greatest.
I used to wonder why does the Bible
say that the last shall be first and
the first shall be last?
I'll tell you what.
I know down at Nacogdoches there, we had
six women came to our house a week
last Thursday and four of them have a
ministry of intercession and they don't strut about
it.
And they don't get their paces in magazines.
We've mutilated all the hymns, most of Charles
Wesley's hymns have thirty stanzas, now they've about
six.
We've done that with other things.
You'll see a little board up in homes,
in offices sometimes.
Only one life shall soon be passed.
Only what's done for God will last.
That's not what the poet wrote.
The poet wrote this, only one life shall
soon be passed.
Only what's done for God will last.
And when I am dying how glad I
shall be if the lamp of my life
has been burned out for thee.
You think all Christians die happy?
Not on your life.
They die as miserable sinners, some of them.
Why?
Because I've misused my time and I've misused,
Lord if you'll only spare me to do
this.
Some of you prayed that on a hospital
bed.
Some of you women when you thought you
were dying giving birth to a child said,
Lord if you spare my life I'll do
this, that and the other.
Have you done it?
The only thing that will time me in
victory continually through the blood of Christ is
my personal devotion to Him, the Son of
God.
My adoration that I give Him my tribute
every day.
It's more than my service, it's more than
giving my money.
That I love Him and I adore Him
and I magnify Him.
I take Him as it were by the
feet.
For all the people who worshipped Jesus, the
woman came and brought an alabaster box of
ointment and she was at His feet.
She was at His feet on every occasion.
That woman, if you follow the story through,
when He appeared in the upper room they
seized Him by the feet.
You get a little bit further in the
book of Revelation, or if you go to
the 6th chapter again, you'll find there it
says at the end that the 4 and
20 elders now, they fell down at His
feet.
Do you wonder Matthew Bridges wrote that lovely
hymn, Crown Him with many crowns the Lamb
upon His throne.
Crown Him the Lord of Spheres.
The potent age of time.
Crown Him the Lord of Love.
Crown Him the Lord of Spheres.
Power of scepter sways from pole to pole
that war may cease and all be prayer
and praise.
The one thing that's wrong with that world
outside is it thinks it's done with Jesus
Christ and it hasn't even started with Him
yet.
For He stands at the end of the
trail for every man, rich or poor, bondman
or free, black or white, intellectual or ignoramus.
What's your devotional life this morning?
Would you like Gabriel to hand me the
book of your devotional life for the last
month and read it to this fine audience?
The gold is going to be tried to
our devotional life.
The silver, what is the silver?
I guess you can interpret it different ways.
I like to interpret it this way.
The book of Proverbs says the tongue of
the just is its choice silver.
Yeah, every idle word you've spoken, even since
you were saved, God has a kind of,
you know He doesn't need a tape recorder,
but He has an eternal record of it.
You know the gossip, the slander, the criticism,
the prejudice.
You know when somebody upset you and instead
of being quiet, you spilled out just what
was on your heart at that moment.
Can you think of all those awesome words?
Can you think of all the words we've
preached to thousands of people over the years
and we're going to answer and the fire
is going to be put to them?
Well, will they behave and stubble or will
they abide the fire?
The fire shall try every believer's work.
Silver, gold, precious stone.
What are the precious stones?
Well, when I read that I think of
the breastplate that was on the priest, the
priest in the Old Testament.
It was divided into twelve.
Each stone was a different stone.
Each stone had the name of the tribe
on it.
And he went into the holy place to
pray with a breastplate on him.
Oh, well how do you handle this?
How do you handle this?
Do you know why the world is poor
and sick outside?
Because we really don't know how to pray,
that's why.
Because we're satisfied we've left our lousy living
and we don't drink and lust and damn
ourselves every day.
And now we're Christians and we're so content
and so happy and so satisfied.
I've said it many times, I've said it
again this morning, that no man is greater
than his prayer life.
I don't care about his organization and his,
these boys all have a, what is it,
a mailing list.
Doesn't worry me.
Let me live with a man a while
and share his prayer life and I'll tell
you how tall I think he is or
how majestic I think he is in God.
Supposing I could say to Gabriel this morning,
Gabriel, hand this book down.
Well, let's preview eternity.
Here we are, millions of people, all the
prayer warriors.
America has produced some of the greatest.
Praying patient of Portland had a floor harder
than that.
And at the side of his bed when
he knelt he used to pray and pray
and pray.
And when they washed his body for burial
he had great big hooves on his knees
like camels, like history says that James in
the Bible had camel's knees.
At least tradition says that.
Well, it's a living fact that Patience had
them.
And when they were washing him somebody said,
but what abnormal knees, they're calloused, they're heavy
with calluses.
Yeah, because he used to pray at the
side of his bed with energy.
And in that hard floor he wore two
grooves like that, about six or seven inches
long where he used to pray and make
intercession.
Praying patient of Portland.
Many of you can buy the book.
If you haven't read it, I think it's
in the bookstore there, Praying Hyde.
John Hyde.
I met somebody who used to hear him
pray and told me what an amazing thing
it was to hear him pray in India.
You know, we think we've got a message,
you've got to drop it here and run
there and catch a plane here and go
there.
No, no, that's not the greatest ministry.
It's good, God has ordained it.
But the greatest ministry, I'm sure, is the
ministry of intercession.
Let's ask Gabriel to hand the book down.
Let's look at all the apostles and all
the saints of all the ages.
There's Finney, look, there's Finney with his amazing
revival.
There's William Boole, the founder of the Salvation
Army.
There's John Wesley.
Here are all the great heroic figures, we've
all read about them.
And here they are all watching while the
book is handed down.
And somebody's going to read the record.
Would you volunteer and say, well, I'll be
happy if you read my record to this
multitude?
Supposing I say, Gabriel, hand me the record
for 1724.
When I open the book there, I read
1724.
I go down the beast, David Brainard, just
a young American, died at the age of
28.
All he possessed was a cowhide that he
had tanned and he wrapped himself in it
and put a rope around him and he
rode over the Susquehanna River there and he
followed the Indians.
And he had tuberculosis.
And he says, I got up this morning
and the Indians were still committing adultery there
and still drinking there and still beating their
tom-toms and still shouting like hell itself.
He came out of the teepee he was
sharing and he said there was nowhere to
pray.
So I went out in the forest.
And he said, I knelt and the snow
was up to my chin.
And it was a half hour after sunrise.
He weighed about 95 pounds.
No, he didn't have a heater with him
or anything else.
He was just there in the frigid snow
half an hour after sunrise.
And he said, I did so wrestle in
prayer, he says in his archaic English.
I wrestled in prayer for about 12 hours.
The sun was setting and then I could
only touch the snow with the tips of
my fingers.
The snow was up to his chin when
he started praying.
And he makes intercession in a little body
that weighed 90 pounds until the thread of
his body melted in the snow.
Well, God pity us.
We can't get folk to our churches and
we've got velvet cushions on the feet and
we've got nice stuff on the floor so
our darling little knees won't get hurt.
And boy, we can't muster a corporal's guard
to pray in the average church.
Praying patron of Portland, John Hyde, the great
intercessor, David Brainerd.
When God opens that book of intercession, when
he puts the fire to their prayer life,
their devotional life, I'll tell you what, there'll
be nothing left.
It won't be wood, it won't be hay,
it won't be stubble.
I discovered this poem just yesterday.
It's called His Plan for Me.
I didn't have time to memorize it.
When I stand at the judgment seat of
Christ and he shows his plan for me,
the plan of my life as it might
have been had he had his way, and
I see how I blocked him here and
I checked him there and I would not
yield my will, will there be grief in
my Savior's eyes, grief, though he loves me
still?
Would he have me rich and I stand
there poor, stripped of all but his grace,
while memory runs like a hunted thing down
the paths I cannot retrace?
Lord of the years that are left to
me, I give them to thy hand.
Take me and break me and mold me
to the pattern that thou hast planned.
It's going to be an awesome day.
When I was at school, I sat about
two-thirds back there.
There was a kind of a level here,
then there were some seats up here, and
I sat in the first little gallery, as
it were.
And you know, I didn't mind school too
much, but I was very envious in those
days of the school captain.
He worked just across the aisle from me.
He was the best soccer player, and I
wanted to be that.
He was the best at cricket, and I
liked cricket.
He was the best runner we had, and
I liked running.
And he was a very good artist.
He was quite a brain.
And you know, if I could ever save
up my stomach aches, I saved them till
the day before the final examination.
But my mother was smart.
She knew I was saving them up.
I don't know how.
And I'd get up that morning and say,
Mother, oh, I don't feel good at all.
I think I should stay at home.
She'd say, OK, you can stay at home
tomorrow, but not today.
But today was the day of judgment.
And you know, the things would be put
down on the board there, and as soon
as they were down, Renton would get it.
His name was Renton, and he'd get his
pen, and he'd dash through it.
Now he was through the first two or
three subjects before I'd even got the things
read.
Oh, he and another guy that were there,
they used to say, boy, it's exams.
And they knew they'd be number one and
number two, and every year I was at
school, they were number one and number two
on the chart when it came out.
These boys were always at the top.
They had no fear of the judgment.
They were prepared for it.
I still believe in the majesty of that
eternal court, with the king of kings, and
the lord of lords, and the judge of
judges.
I still think there'll be an awesomeness about
it, so majestic.
You see, there's no possibility of any rehearsal.
And what?
There's no possibility of any repetition, because again,
this is the final judgment.
And to some, God will say, come ye
blessed, and others, he'll have said, depart from
me.
I don't believe there'll be any envy.
I won't do it, but I could remind
you that there are at least five crowns
to be given in reward.
Paul says that the lord will give him
a crown of righteousness, which he says, the
lord will not only give to me, but
all them that love his appearing.
There's a crown for the martyrs, those who
have died today and have died other days.
There's a crown to be given to them.
Crowns, crowns, crowns.
We will all be the same in heaven.
There'll be great distinctions in heaven.
You can't think that the dying thief, he'll
be in heaven all right, because he said,
remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.
And sure enough, God will do that.
Jesus said he would.
But he'd wasted his life.
Take just one character, John Wesley.
He was saved soundly when he was 35
years of age.
Turned 35 round, it makes 53.
Put 53 and 35 together, makes 88, the
time he died in 1891.
The dying thief rejoiced to see that fountain
in his day, and there have I no
violence, but he cast all my sins away.
Fine.
But are you suggesting that the man who
got in on the last tick of the
clock is going to have the same reward
as John Wesley?
Yeah, Wesley made an awful lot of money.
Do you know what he did with it?
He built orphanages, he built churches, he printed
Bibles, he printed hymn books.
There was no time wasted in his life.
It was methodical, systematic.
He went to dinner with the greatest man
in English literature, and the man said, now
you've finished dinner, let's fold our legs under
the table, he said.
You know, cross your legs under the table
and let's just have a nice time of
conversation.
And Wesley said, I'm sorry, I have to
go.
Oh, but it is not yet 9 o
'clock.
No, it's not.
Well, why are you going?
He said, I have an appointment in the
morning at 4 o'clock.
At 4 o'clock?
Tomorrow morning?
Every morning of my life, he said.
With who?
With God.
He disciplined his life, he disciplined his body
in eating, he disciplined his hand in his
pocket.
We shall stand at the judgment seat of
Christ.
An awesome prospect for any of us.
For the hymn writer says, the eternal glories
gleam afar to nerve my faint endeavor.
So now to watch, to work, to war,
and then to rest forever.
We had a lady in a church that
I pastored, actually, I was assistant pastor.
And the lady was the wife of the
pastor, Dr. Fawcett.
And she didn't have a great voice, but
they often asked her to sing.
And she used to sing the same old
hymn every time.
And the last verse of that hymn said
this, he was not willing that any should
perish.
Am I his follower?
And can I live longer at ease with
these souls going downward, lost for the lack
of the help I might give?
He was not willing that any should perish.
Master, forgive, and inspire us anew.
Banish our worldliness, help us to ever live
with eternity's values in view.
Said that great man who birthed that revival,
God, stamp eternity on my eyeballs.
You know, if we can't live as a
different breed of people on this earth, we've
no right to live here.
We shouldn't be affected by changing customs, or
changing styles, or changing opinions, or whether the
stock market goes up or down, or whether
the clouds are gathering for, that doesn't make
any odds.
We ought to live every day as though
we come out of another world into this
world with the power of that world upon
us.
To live and speak and move and have
our being in Jesus Christ.
It's going to be an awesome day.
Have you kind of figured how you'll get
on when you stand there?
Before all the saints of all the ages,
and you and I, to stand there alone
on the dais and be judged for the
deeds done in the body, for every aspect
of our lives, for our praying, for our
giving, for our living, for our talking.
No, it's not so simple to be a
Christian.
After all, it's a majestic thing.
I remember crossing a square in the city
of Bath in the 1940s.
I saw two very fine young ladies.
Well, one was a young lady, the other
was only a girl.
And they were erect and beautifully dressed, and
they marched across that square and I thought,
there's something different about those girls.
And then when I went round the other
side, I discovered it was, they were princesses
at that time.
Our present Queen of England, Queen Elizabeth, and
her sister Margaret, it was the princesses of
the royal family.
And you know, there was a dignity about
them very different from anybody else who walked.
And the Word of God says, as He
was, so are we in this world.
We are to live eternity conscious in time,
ready to be cut off at any moment.
Supposing you were cut off in this moment,
would you like your life story read before
all the millions in eternity?
Do you think you might shrink when you
hear how God used David Brainerd or John
Wesley or some little washerwoman down there that
had a life of intercession?
Or a little woman in Ireland and she
had two shops.
And this shop, it paid all the family
expenses.
And this shop, she saved all the money
for missions.
And she sent one, two, three, four of
her children to the mission fees and she
financed them all.
Man, she's going to have a reward one
day, isn't she?
Because she was doing it as unto Him.
And I don't care, there's no burden too
heavy, there's no situation too hard for the
one that you love.
And if we're love-controlled, love-motivated, love
-energized, it'll be all right when we stand
up there.
Because if there's anything about love, one thing
about it, it's obedient.
And if we get back to a people
who are really baptized with obedience, submissive to
the total will of God, not concerned about
human opinion, not asking for more to spend
prodigally on ourselves, but say, Oh God, I
want this life of mine adjusting so when
I stand in your awesome presence, as James
says, we shall not be ashamed at His
appearing.