It will be my privilege over the next
weeks to bring you messages from the book
that sets forth the eternal word.
I wanted to say that it was going
to be a pleasure to expound this book,
but a sense of inadequacy has come over
me, so stunning, almost paralyzing, that I am
not able at this juncture to call it
a pleasure to preach.
Perhaps this will be God's way of reducing
the flesh to a minimum and giving the
Holy Spirit the best possible opportunity to do
his eternal work.
I fear that sometimes our very eloquence gets
in our way, and the unlimited ability to
talk endlessly about religion is a questionable blessing.
So that, with this sense of the impossibility
of a man like me saying anything worthwhile
about the writings of a man like John,
has me, literally after all these years, paralyzed.
But maybe I say, and repeat, that will
be God's opportunity.
Man's extremity is said thus to be.
Now, I am going to relieve you of
a long introduction.
John scarcely needs any introduction.
The passage here in the first verse of
the first chapter, in the beginning was the
word, and the word was God with God,
and the word was God.
I am not going to read any further
because you know the verses too well.
This is introduction enough.
Now, this John who wrote the book that
bears his name is the mystic of the
New Testament.
I started to say that this John was
the mystic of the New Testament.
But we must be very careful not to
put a was where God puts an is.
We must be very careful not to put
God's children into the past tense.
For there are no past tenses with the
people of God.
Jesus argued for immortality on the grounds that
God is not the God of the dead,
but of the living.
And the dead are past.
And when we talk about a dead man,
we say was.
But when we talk about a living man,
we say is.
It is therefore not theologically proper to say
that John was the mystic of the New
Testament.
We say, rather, that John is the mystic
of the New Testament, as Paul is the
theologian of the New Testament.
Now, I have used two words, mystic and
theologian.
And naturally that brings the two very closely
related words, mysticism and theology.
And there is in the minds of some
people the idea that there is a contradiction
between mysticism and theology, the mystic and the
theologian.
The mystic has earned himself a bad reputation,
or rather, he has had a bad reputation
earned for him, so that we shy away
from anybody that is said to be a
mystic.
But John was the mystic of the New
Testament, as Paul was the theologian.
For I want you to know that in
Paul's theology there was much mysticism, and in
John's mysticism there is much theology.
So that you do not have a contradiction,
you have a complement, a supplementing of each
other.
The man Paul had a great brain, and
God could pour into this great brain the
great basic doctrines of the New Testament, and
think them out, and reason them out, and
set them down logically.
So that Paul has earned the reputation of
being the theologian of the New Testament.
But in the mind of John, God found
something different altogether.
He found a harp that wanted to sit
in the window and catch the wind.
He found that John had a bird-like
sense about him that wanted to take flight
all the time.
And so he allowed John, starting from the
same premises as the theologian Paul, to mount
and soar and sing.
Shakespeare, in one of his sonnets, says, "...like
to the lark at break of day arising
from sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate."
And John was like and is like.
In his book he wrote it, and we
say was, but John is, still is, like
the lark that rises at the break of
day and shakes the dews of the night
from his wings and soars to heaven's gate
singing.
Now, he doesn't soar any higher than Paul,
but he sings just a little bit sweeter
than Paul and gets your attention more.
So that Paul is the theologian who lays
foundation strong, and John gets on the parapet,
flaps his wings and takes off.
That's why it's difficult to preach John.
For the two did not contradict each other,
nor cancel each other out.
They complemented each other, so that we might
say that Paul is the instrument and John
is the music the instrument brings.
Now, the man Robertson, the great expositor, he
was a Baptist.
And this great expositor says something about the
book of John, which I want to give
you, if you will allow me, after saying
I wouldn't give an introduction.
To give you this introduction, it's very brief,
and here is what the expositor says.
He says, The test of time has given
the palm to the fourth gospel over all
the books of the world.
If Luke's gospel is the most beautiful, John's
gospel is supreme in its height and depth
and reach of thought.
The picture of Christ here given is the
one that has captured the mind and heart
of mankind.
The language of the fourth gospel has the
clarity of a spring, but we are not
able to sound the depths of the bottom
of it.
Lucidity and profundity challenge and charm as we
linger over John's book.
Lucidity and profundity.
That is, it's so clear that you can
see through it, but so deep you can't
see clear through it.
I think that's wonderfully put.
And it charms as we linger over it.
Now, we'll never get beyond those first three
words, and I don't intend to try it
tonight.
I wonder if the preposition in would not
be as far as we ought to try
to go, but that would put the end
of the exposition, the sermons on John, somewhere
in 1968.
So that I've got to do something better
than that.
So we'll take in the beginning.
Now let me leave that passage in the
beginning, here in the New Testament.
And in order to understand it better, go
back to the Old Testament.
It is characteristic of the wisdom books of
the Old Testament.
That sometimes they contain short passages that get
lost in the sand and silt and dust
of the ages.
But passages so profound and solid that they
are literally building blocks of spiritual power.
Now, Ecclesiastes 3.11 is such a thought.
It says there, He, God, has set the
world in their heart.
Now, you could read that passage, God has
set the world in their heart, and yawn
and pass it up.
And go to a psalm for a little
help.
But if you will know what the Holy
Ghost meant here when he said, God has
set the world in the heart of man,
you will not go beyond it, you will
get your help here.
Now, hidden among the rubble of the ages
lies this passage.
He has set the world in their heart.
Let us walk around a little, because I
suspect that buried here under the shifting sands
of the desert, buried here is a palace
with many rooms and much beauty.
Let's walk around the palaces and behold the
goodly bulwarks thereof and see what we can
find.
He has set the world in their heart.
Now, Psalms 92 will give us a light
on what Ecclesiastes 3.11 means, where the
Holy Ghost says about God, From everlasting to
everlasting thou art God.
Now, I have looked up that word, everlasting.
I do that always.
I try to discover what a word means,
and then in my preaching, I don't allow
it to mean anything that it doesn't mean
in the Hebrew or the Greek.
I do that much, at least, to safeguard
you against my unlimited, unbridled imagination.
So I make this mean what it means
in the original.
So the word everlasting, twice used, says, From
everlasting to everlasting God is God.
Now, if you go to your Hebrew, and
some of you that are studying it, you
can ask your professor.
You go to your Hebrew and you will
find that this word, as the Holy Ghost
uses it here, can mean time out of
mind.
Or it can mean always.
Or it can mean to the vanishing point.
Or it can mean to the beginningless past.
So that what the Holy Ghost says here,
in the word everlasting, is about talking about
God, From time out of mind to time
out of mind thou art God.
He faces back into some imaginary past and
says, O God, from time out of mind
and turns and faces some future and says,
To time out of mind thou art God.
Or he looks back and says, O God,
from the always to the always thou remainest
God.
Or he looks back into the dim future
that won't focus in his mind or dim
past and says, O God, from the vanishing
point out yonder, down to the vanishing point
out here thou art God.
From the beginningless past to the endless future
thou art God.
Now, that's what the Holy Ghost says about
God.
And that's easy for you and me, because
we say, well, that's simple.
And if you've got one of those mousetrap,
shut and open minds, you will say that's
the attribute of God called eternity.
That's found on page 71 in a footnote
in Thus and Thus' systematic theology.
Now let's go have a soda.
And that you'll dismiss that there and leave
it.
Or tuck it away in your memory among
the unused lumber in the attic of your
soul, and it'll never mean anything to you.
But brother, if you will let it live
and the Holy Ghost will shine upon it
for you, it'll put you in the middle
between the everlasting vanishing point of a forgotten
yesterday and the equally everlasting vanishing point of
an unborn tomorrow.
And God gathers all of it up in
his heart, the eternal God is thy refuge.
Now, we can easily believe that the attribute
of God is eternity, one of the attributes.
But oh, the wonder of this passage I'm
trying to get at.
The wonder of it is that God said
this about people.
He says, Thou hast set the world in
their heart, but that word world is exactly
the same word the Holy Ghost used when
he said everlasting.
Thou hast set everlastingness in their heart, and
hast said about the heart of a creature
named man, whom God made in his own
image, he says the same thing about man
that he says about God.
He says, O God, as one version has
it, he hath put eternity into man's mind.
That's it with the period.
And so God says, he has put time
out of mind into the heart of a
man.
It says he has put the everlasting, beginningless,
always into the heart of a man.
He says that he has put the vanishing
point of eternal yesterdays forgotten to the vanishing
point of tomorrows unborn into the heart of
a man.
Now, that's what it says.
It says that God has put in the
heart of man an affinity for everlastingness.
Brethren, I have no hesitation to say that
that's what's wrong with us.
If we were of the earth only and
we belonged to the beasts, we would never
be disturbed.
I think there would never be much trouble
in the world at all.
I do not believe that Hitler would ever
try to conquer Europe, or a Stalin or
Malenkov would ever try to conquer Asia.
I do not believe that there would be
much trouble in the world if God had
not put everlastingness in us.
If there was not that in us that
appreciated the everlastingness of God and that longed
for it and wanted it and has lost
it and can't find it and wishes it
had it and longs for it and doesn't
have it and yet appreciates it and wants
it and is dissatisfied with anything less.
So man, like a caged animal, like the
eagle in a cage, roams the cage and
trots back and forth from one war to
another war, from one strike to another strike,
from one gamble to another gamble, from one
dance to another dance, from one hell to
another hell.
What's the matter with man?
Why does man, like the yellow lion, roam
and pace his cage and roar to the
heavens before he dies?
Because God has spoiled him.
He can't lie down with the beast and
be no more.
He cannot lie down with the dog and
be buried.
He cannot with the horse lie down.
God has put everlastingness in his heart.
He has put a longing for immortality in
his heart.
He has put in him something that demands
God and heaven and yet is too blind
and sinful to find him or even look
for him.
And that's the state of confusion we're in.
The beasts of the forest don't have any
wars.
The cows in the barnyard don't have any
whorehouses or gambling dens.
Why is it only man that has these
things?
Why is it only man that has murder
incorporated?
Why is it only man that has gas
chambers and concentration camps?
Why do the very serpents under the rock
and the very whales in the sea and
the very beasts of the jungle manage to
get along and kill only when it's necessary
to eat?
And then they lie down and sleep and
wait for the night to come.
Why do the beasts of the forest get
along better than people?
Why do they have less trouble?
Why are they more moral?
I have no hesitation in saying that there
isn't a dog in Chicago that's more moral
than his master.
If indeed you can attribute morality to that
which has not eternity in his heart.
But I say they live better.
They're decenter.
And when we say a man lives a
beastly life, we're insulting the beast and lying
about the man.
For no beast ever does what men do.
No beast ever kidnaps another beast and takes
it away, sends a threatening note, and if
it doesn't get what it wants, kills the
beast that it's kidnapped.
No one ever does that.
Not beastly, it's devilish.
Sin is not beastly at all, it's devilish.
And the beasts of the forest are not
bothered with the devil.
It's only people.
Why?
Because God has put the appreciation of everlastingness
in their heart.
He made them in his own image.
Once more I say that there's not enough
made of that in this day in which
we live.
Modernists have scared us out.
Modernists have frightened us out.
Oh, ladies and gentlemen, what we need in
America today is men with something here in
front except a belt buckle.
You know what I mean?
We need men with backbone and intestinal fortitude
that aren't scared all the time.
You don't dare say anything because you've always
got to be looking over your shoulder if
you're some modernist editor, some liberal editor, worried
about what some fundamentalist will say or what
some fellow over here will think about you.
What's the difference what any of them think
about us?
Now, I said that, as the brother says,
to say this, that if we had more
courage, we'd preach more on the image of
God in man.
And that doesn't mean that unconverted man is
saved.
He specifically is lost.
And except he be born again, he'll never
see the kingdom of God.
And except he repent, he shall certainly perish.
And if he dies untriven and unforgiven, he'll
certainly go to hell.
All that I believe.
But I believe the only reason a man
can be saved is that God has put
eternity in his heart.
And God made man in his own image.
And though man fell, he keeps the longing
after eternity there and the appreciation of everlastingness
there and the desire after everlasting life within
his heart.
And that upsets him.
And he goes wild.
He calls in one thing but deeply down
in him.
It's another thing that's bothering him.
I said one time in an article somewhere
that God made man in his own image
and that sin has marred the soul of
man and ruined it.
But still, when a man lifts his heart
to God in praise, he's doing the most
natural thing in the world because God made
him originally to do it.
And some tough old baby from out east
somewhere wrote to the president of the Christian
Missionary Alliance and said, I was a liberal,
a modernist, a heretic, and off on my
theology and needed to be dismissed and so
on.
He said, imagine it, saying that prayer was
a natural thing.
And she gets to heaven and she'll apologize
to certain one little bald-headed editor, I'm
telling you.
She'll apologize with a red face for her
stupidity and ignorance.
For this is exactly the fact, ladies and
gentlemen, that God made you with eternity in
your heart and when you turn your face
toward the Eternal One and say, God, have
mercy on me, a sinner, and go on
to say, our Father who art in heaven,
you're being what God intended you to be
in the first place.
But when you look down at the earth
like a beast, you're not being natural, you're
being sinful.
And when you refuse to call on God
through Jesus Christ, you're not doing the natural
thing, you're doing the diseased thing.
And sin is to human nature what a
cancer is to a human body.
And when a man has been delivered from
a cancer somewhere on his body and stands
up and breathes deep and feels no pain
and knows he's free, he's doing the natural
thing.
And when a redeemed sinner says, the Lord
is my shepherd, I shall not want, he's
doing that which goes back to the Garden
of Eden, to the loins of Adam, further
back than that yet, to the new Adam,
Jesus Christ our Lord.
So I'm neither a modernist, nor a liberal,
nor a fanatic, nor a heretic, nor a
dreamer.
I'm just an ordinary preacher.
And anybody ought to see this, and it's
no compliment to anybody that they don't see
it.
Now, God has put a longing after immortality
in our hearts.
And you know the spirit of a man
wants it.
And he dies of suffocation when he doesn't
get it.
They tell me, and I guess they still
do it, they do everything by machinery now,
but they tell me that they used to,
if they still do not, use birds to
detect gases in mines.
You know that when you go down into
the earth, after a coal, usually coal, or
any other metal, you go down there, and
after a while, the water and the seepage
and so on, creates certain chemical reactions that
create gas, and that gas can become deadly.
And many men go down in there and
walk into a pocket of that gas, and
before they can get out, they die of
asphyxiation.
Now, in some of those mines where they
weren't certain that there was gas there or
not, they took caged birds down there, and
the bird is the first creature to detect
that gas.
And he acts strange if there's a little
of it, and if the concentration is a
little higher, he falls down and dies in
the bottom of his cage.
The bird that was built by God to
miracle in feathers, a wonder with wings, was
meant to soar over the green meadows and
look into the shining sun and breathe the
sweet air of heaven, take him down and
put him in a coal mine where black
damp and gases gather, and he dies of
suffocation.
And so the soul of a man, God
made the soul of a man to mount
into the eternities and live with God and
to look back on the everlasting vanishing point
that was and on into the eternal vanishing
point that will be and feel no age,
and count no birthdays, but like God live
in God.
But sin has ruined us.
We've listened to that serpent, the devil, and
we've gone down into the slimy, dark, gas
-infested bowels of the world, and men are
dying everywhere of suffocation.
You see them, you see them, dying of
suffocation.
The Maccabee and I spent last week, part
of last week in Dixon, Illinois, at our
conference.
We stayed at a hotel there.
And I saw an old couple, I don't
think I caught Brother Maccabee's attention to it,
but I saw an old couple there.
I would guess he would have been 78
and she 75.
They were shriveled up, well-dressed, and had
a big car, I noticed.
But shriveled up and mean-looking.
They talked to each other as if they
were both in deep pain.
And they were all an old husband and
wife, I suppose.
I'm sure, quite sure they were.
And they both looked mean, and both looked
simply as if life had done them in.
Not a trace of sunshine, not a lift
of the corners of the mouth, not a
fragrance, not a friendliness.
Two tired, weary, sick, disappointed, frustrated, disgusted old
people, too mean to die and too old
and dried up to live, walked around waiting
for the undertaker.
Now, that was just an example, brethren, that's
all, just an example.
And the world is full of them.
They're in jails, they're in hospitals, they're in
insane asylums, they're out on the highway in
big cars.
The poor birds that God made to soar
and sing are being gassed to death in
the bowels of the earth, down where sin
is, in black dams, in grief and woe.
That's mankind, and that's what's wrong with us,
ladies and gentlemen, that's what's wrong with us.
And I believe that apart from our animal
natures, that accounts for our activity.
That's why we do what we do.
Sin has plunged us, I say, into the
bowels of creation and marked us with mortality
so that we're a brother to the clay.
We call the worm our sister and death
our brother, when God never meant it to
be so.
God made man upright, and he sought out
many inventions.
God said, let us make man in our
image, and the image of God made he
him, and gave him dominion.
But man has sinned, and all he's got
left is the appreciation of the divine.
All he has left is a hidden wish
that he might have the eternal.
And his vital need is there, and his
craving after it is there, but he hasn't
got it.
He has not that eternal life which was
with the Father and was manifest unto us.
And man, looking for it, can find only
counterfeit.
There are three marks of the curse upon
everything.
And if this sermon tonight sounds a little
bit in the minor key, I have no
apology to make whatsoever.
I preached a series of sermons one time
where the characteristic of the preaching is a
lot of fun and thought of quips and
remarks from Reader's Digest.
And they play everything from a hand saw
to a gourd.
And it's all very funny and all very
Hollywoodish.
And I get up there and I just
preach the way I preach.
And the pastor told me that after I
was gone, his wife had said, Honey, isn't
there anything good in the world?
After listening to Mr. Tozer, I'm asking you,
isn't there anything good in the world?
No, her husband was a preacher.
And she had a Bible in her house.
And then she would ask a man if
there wasn't anything good in the world.
Foolish question number 5821.
Of course there's nothing good in the world.
And it's amazing that the wife of a
preacher should have to ask, isn't there anything
good?
Certainly there's nothing good.
There is none that doeth good, no, not
one.
And with every good there's some evil lurking
there.
And under every beautiful thing there's a serpent
coil.
When I was a lad, a very small
lad, early in the spring before the sun
had gotten things thawed out, some of us
kids went out poking around in the woods.
And I found a funny little thing that
looked like a rag rug.
Now some of you ladies know what a
rag rug is.
You braid or plait, or whatever you call
it, rags together, varying colors.
And then you sew those braids together, round
and round and round, and you have a
rug.
They don't have much anymore.
That is, they don't make them, they buy
them now, make them by machinery.
But this looked like a tiny rag rug,
flat and rather pretty, and neatly done.
And I took it out, it was about
the size, oh, smaller than a saucer.
Somewhat, quite a little smaller than a saucer.
And I took it home, and I said,
look what I found.
Isn't this a pretty thing?
It's flat, and it's just like one of
these braided rugs.
And in the house, it began to get
warm.
Now I'll give you three guesses what I
had brought home.
A snake!
It had curled up and gone to sleep,
wrapped around itself, and had been so careful
to follow protocol, and lived the way Emily
Pope would have suggested, that it didn't just
tumble itself in like an old dirty pair
of socks sewn into a hamper.
It made itself pretty for the winter.
But it was still a snake.
And as soon as it got warm, it
began to uncoil, and I began to get
out.
You can take this from me, and you
never need to come back and hear me
again if you think I'm wrong.
But you can take it from me that
there isn't a thing advertised in Siroba, there
isn't a thing sung about over the radio,
there isn't a thing in Wall Street or
London or Hollywood or Broadway or Miami, there
isn't a thing in Ceylon or Singapore or
Rome, there isn't a thing in Chicago or
in the world, that if Jesus Christ doesn't
get to it, then to you won't turn
out to be a coiled serpent in your
bosom.
I preached in the church where I'm going
to preach next week, Dr. Simpson's Tabernacle on
Times Square, some years ago.
The pastor then was a southern man, a
very delightful southern drawl, and quite a learning
fellow.
He listened to me for a while.
And then we were walking up and down
amid the hurrying throngs, as the poet said.
He turned to me and said, Brother Tozer,
he said, I've figured you out.
And I said, well, what have you discovered?
He said, I have found your philosophy, your
spiritual philosophy.
And I said, well, now what is it?
He said, Brother Tozer, he said, your spiritual
philosophy is everything is wrong till Jesus sets
it right.
And I said, thank you, Brother, that's it.
I guess you've summed it up.
And I hadn't thought about it myself, but
I think he had it all right.
And that's where I stand, ladies and gentlemen.
Everything is wrong till Jesus sets it right.
But you say, surely there's something good somewhere.
There's a lot that's supposed to be good,
and there's a lot that's good on the
human level, but there's nothing that's divinely good.
Three curses, or three marks of the ancient
curse rest upon everything in this world.
First, it's recent.
Second, it's temporal.
And third, it's transient.
Now let's look at that recent.
You know, the brain, that is the animal
man, is at war with the heart.
The animal man says, look, look, isn't this
wonderful?
I push a button and look what happens.
Isn't this wonderful?
I pull a lever and look how fast
we go through the air.
Isn't this wonderful?
And the heart says, oh no, that isn't
it, that isn't it.
That belongs to the animal man.
That belongs to the brain.
That belongs to the world.
The heart is still crying for everlastingness.
And the heart says, that won't do.
You've got a lovely stove and I'm glad
you have.
And you set it and tell it what
to do, and then you go shopping and
come back and it has done the whole
business.
And a little bell rings and you pull
it out and took grandma the day and
a half to do what your little old
stove does and a little while all by
itself with you not even watching it.
And your animal nature says, that's progress, that's
progress.
Isn't that wonderful?
But deeper down, if you listen, you'll hear
a plaintive voice saying, no, no, no, that
isn't it.
That's not wonderful.
That is temporal.
That is recent.
That is transient.
And that belongs for one brief day.
And one of these days, another gadget, still
more wonderful than your stove that does everything
but pick your teeth afterward, more wonderful still,
will pull up in front of your door.
Two gray-faced men will get out with
a basket and they'll lug you out from
your radio and television and electric curlers and
electric massagers and electric sweepers and electric kneaders
and electric stoves and electric refrigerators.
They'll lug you out.
This thing inside doesn't win.
You'd better never have been born.
I suppose that it's more comfortable to go
to hell in a Cadillac and feed your
beastly nature while you live or your animal
nature on food cooked in a pressure cooker
automatically.
But it's hell nevertheless when you get there.
And your poor heart in which God has
put appreciation for everlastingness won't take electric cookers
and radios in lieu of eternal life.
Something inside of you is too big for
that, too terrible for that, too wonderful for
that.
God has set everlastingness in their hearts.
And the word temporal is here.
I've used it, too.
And the word transient.
Born for but one brief day.
We have something we like and think it's
wonderful, but it's like a little boy watching
a circus parade.
There comes the big wagon with the clowns,
and he almost goes wild.
But that passes on down the street and
turns a corner, and here comes the wagon
with the elephants or the lions or the
tigers.
Here comes the wagon with the acrobats in
tights and spangles.
Here comes the band, and each thing as
it goes by excites the little boy till
his eyes pop.
And he screams his delight.
But it's transient, it's temporary, it's passive.
And it goes on down to the railroad
station and trains and disappears.
And so it is with everything the world
offers you.
Don't you wish I had some trinket to
shake, some rattle to shake for you tonight?
Don't you wish I had a really just
rattle to shake and a sugar tit to
give you?
You know what a sugar tit is?
Now don't get excited.
They had them when I was a boy.
I was raised on one.
You know what it is?
It's a little cloth of hair filled with
sugar about the size of your finger and
then sewed up on the end.
And when the baby starts to squall, he
just stuck this thing in his mouth.
And the little fellow stopped squalling.
Well, sugar might not have been good for
his teeth, that's what we didn't have, but
at least he got that, that was the
way they handled him.
And the preachers in our day are adept
at the old-fashioned custom of the sugar
nickel.
So they run around, manufacture them, make them.
And there are religious houses that do nothing
else but specialize in making them.
Put out catalogs and boast about them.
Do you want more people coming to your
church?
Do you want a bigger offering?
Do you want to get famous?
Do you want to succeed?
All right, then, buy my, A-number-one
deluxe sugar nipples and take them to your
church, and believe me, they'll crowd you out.
They can go on past, as far as
I'm concerned.
God Almighty never said, young fellow, get yourself
a pocketful of sugar nipples and go out
and feed them to the carnal public.
He said, preach my word, and I'll put
my words in your mouth.
And don't you be afraid of them, because
if you're afraid of them, I'll confound you
before them.
But if you'll be fearless, I'll stand with
you, and I'll make your neck like brass.
And this little old wrinkle, neck of mine
with a 15 collar, you'd think if somebody
bumped my head it would come off, brother.
It's like brass.
God Almighty said, I'll make it like brass.
So I'm telling you that that thing you
thought you had, oh, some of you young
fellows, you got an old car with a
stepped-up noise of fire on it, and
around you go, and by a trick of
the psychology, you imagine that the noise and
power of that old car makes you more
than you are.
A jackass could run your car.
A chimpanzee could drive it.
And yet by a trick of imagination, we
think if we get in a big car,
we're a big man.
And apart from the old jalopy that's been
souped up, we have the big ones that
cost $5,000.
A little old guy without any hair left
or any backbone.
Wife has two, his and hers.
But he gets into the car, and the
deep rumble of that gorgeous motor, he feels
he's a man at last.
Until an ignorant Irish cop that never went
past the fifth grade lectures him like a
schoolboy.
But he gets the temporary lift to his
personality, a lift just like Ogleteen gives you.
Because he's got the power, the power.
But old man, you foolish old man, that
you will allow your deep soul in which
God has put eternity, you will allow it
to weep itself to death inside your bosom.
And you'll pay no attention to the cry
after God and your mortality that lies inside
of you.
And you're women with everything, everything.
You've got everything now.
Scarcely need to do anything in the day
in which we live.
And you imagine you're getting someplace.
No, you're not getting anywhere.
In you there is something that's bigger than
curls and plucked eyebrows.
Bigger than nylon and silk and fine-toothed
leather.
Bigger than a lovely home and a ranch
-type house and a garage and a car.
Bigger than anything the world can give you.
God Almighty cries, there's something cries inside of
you, the voice of God crying out of
you for everlastingness and eternal life and deliverance
and hope.
And you're smothering it like the bird in
the mine.
Smothering it under harsh duties and longing for
one thing and another.
Oh, how foolish we mortals be.
Now, I don't want to stop on that
note.
I want to tell you that in the
same chapter that says in the beginning, says
this, in the beginning was the Word and
the Word was with God and the Word
was God.
John was not the light, but he the
Word was that light, that light of every
man that cometh into the world.
He came to his own and his own
received him not, but as many as received
him.
So then gave he power to become the
sons of God.
And that great something inside of me that
appreciates everlastingness and won't be satisfied without it,
looks and says, that's what I've wanted.
Not religion, you can trace it back, it's
recent.
Not philosophy, you can trace it back, it's
recent.
Not civilization, it's recent.
My animal nature wants something recent, but my
deep heart wants something eternal.
And so God says, all right, I made
you that way and now I have what
you want.
The Word made flesh to dwell among you.
He that receives him, to them gives he
power to become the sons of God, even
to them that believe on his name.
And like a shipwrecked sailor who floated on
a raft, who now looks and sees solid
land and notices the wind is drifting him
towards solid land, shouts his joy through his
parched lips, he's found something solid and he'll
soon be on it.
And so your soul and mine, we've been
betrayed by civilization, we've been betrayed by religion,
we've been betrayed by all of the features
that man created.
But we know we're afloat and we know
that we're ready to perish.
And then comes the Holy Ghost and says,
in the beginning was the Word and the
Word was with God and the Word was
God, there's eternity.
And eternity was made flesh and walked among
us.
And whoso believeth in him shall not perish
but have everlasting life.
So I do not go to the modernist
and apologize.
I do not go to the liberal and
excuse myself.
I do not go to the philosopher and
say I'm sorry but I'm a Christian.
I go to any of these men and
say I have found it.
Eureka!
I've got what you're looking for.
This is what you need.
Something in your heart was made to appreciate
everlastingness that will never be satisfied until it
gets eternity and immortality and the promise thereof.
And I say now I have it.
Paul went to Athens and told them that.
Went to Corinth and told them that.
Went among the learned philosophers of his day
and said I determined to know nothing among
you save Jesus and him crucified.
That's the rock.
That's why we sing Rock of Ages, prep
for me.
Let me hide myself in thee.
It's the rock at last.
The shipwrecked man is on the rock now
and is not going to perish.
But the rock is solid.
He may tremble and shake but the rock
never shakes in the beginning.
Here's where we start with Christianity.
Not Mrs. Eddy.
Not Joseph H.
Smith.
Not Father Divine.
Not Mr. Ballard.
Not Madame Blavatsky.
Not Zola Lester.
Not Mohammed.
Not Buddha.
They all had a beginning and they all
had an ending.
But we want that which had no beginning
and never can have any ending.
Namely the word which was with the Father
in the beginning.
And the word which was God.
And the word which is God.
He walked around the carpenter sharp on little
rubbery baby legs.
Oh, a baby is a harmless thing.
And it captures you quicker than a regiment
of soldiers.
And if you'd seen Eternity walking around on
baby rubbery legs and tumbling and falling flat
among the shavings, you'd have run and picked
him up and dusted him off and kissed
his little forehead and said, It doesn't hurt.
Be a big boy.
And little Jesus might have smiled, taken a
tear away and gone off for another tumble.
But it was Eternity walking in flesh.
It was God Almighty come to live among
us, to redeem us, to save us from
the reasons and the temporal and the transient
and to give us Eternity.
He that receives him has that eternal life
which was with the Father and was given
unto man.
Oh, how wonderful that God gives us this,
and yet how terrible that we won't accept
it.
How terrible that we have to be frightened
into hell or into heaven, that we have
to be whipped into heaven with the thongs
and whips of hell.
Why is it?
Why is it you won't repent until God
Almighty shows you the pit?
Why is it?
Because we're so bad, we're so bad.
The sin in our animal nature has ruined
us and we're so bad.
But oh, that we might turn unto God
in Christ and say, Lord Jesus, I believe
thee.
I believe that thou art the eternal word
and that in thee I have the everlastingness
that's equal to God's everlastingness, that eternal life
which was with the Father.
You see the life God offers you.
It's not a question of duration, it's a
question of quality.
And the quality of life he gives you
is that God's own life in your heart.
And that takes care of the duration and
everything else.
Believe on him tonight.
Come on, you fellas.
I'd like to take you and shake you
awake.
Paddle you until you came to your senses.
What's the matter with you?
You're a very big, good-looking fella on
your way to hell and you're not doing
anything about it.
And you pretty, graceful young lady, what's the
matter with you?
And you older people that are showing the
marks of time when you've been weather-beaten
and bumped and dinged like an old car
and you won't be around long and still
you're lost.
And if you'd listen to your heart five
minutes, you'd hear a cry coming up saying,
Why don't you do something about me?
I've got a longing for eternity in me
and time won't satisfy me.
Earth won't satisfy me.
Give me Jesus.
Let the world forgive me, Jesus, for what
we all sinned.
Won't you take him tonight?
Won't you have him tonight?
Won't you come to him tonight?
Let us pray.
Lord Jesus, Lord Jesus, thou art nearer than
our breath.
Thou art nearer than the impulses of our
nerves.
Thou art nearer than our thoughts.
Oh, Lord Jesus, thou art here walking amid
the seven golden candlesticks with eyes like fire
and a sword going out of thy mouth
and thy head white as wool and thy
face as the sun shining in strength and
thou art girt about the patch of the
golden girdle thou art the high priest of
the church.
Oh, Lord Jesus, we pray for the lost
sheep here tonight.
We pray, Lord Jesus, for the half-saved
Christians.
We pray for the backslide.
We pray for those who have turned from
the thing they knew was right.
Their first memory is a Sunday school class
and prayer at the table.
Oh, they have turned from it and only
go to church occasionally and then only to
listen and go home.
My Lord Jesus, tonight we pray thee help
such poor people who have listened to the
voice of the animal, the dull voice of
the brain, and they have ignored that in
them which cries for God in eternal life.
Have mercy, we pray thee, upon them.
And while the two voices are sounding, the
voice of Esau and the voice of Jacob,
the voice of earth and the voice of
heaven sounding, we pray that they may have
the wisdom and courage to turn their backs
on the siren voice of the world and
turn to the Lord Jesus Christ for the
call of the day.
Great God, this is thy meeting.
We don't know what to do with it.
It's up to thee, Lord.
Great God, tonight, don't let the devil have
everybody.
Please, God, save some for thyself.
Rescue some for thyself.