Now, in the Gospel according to John chapter,
we've been very laborious as we've gone over
this, that is, we've gone slowly, because this
prologue to the Gospel of John is so
profound and so highly packed with truth, that
I would, I'm afraid, affront the spirit of
truth if I were to hurry through it.
So, I take verse 10 for tonight's talk.
He was in the world, and the world
was made by him, and the world knew
him not.
Now, that pronoun him refers to that which
is spoken of in the first verse, in
the beginning was the Word, and the Word
was with God, and the Word was God.
And he was in the world, and the
world was made by him, and the world
knew him not.
And remember that all this refers to pre
-incarnation times, and does not refer to the
coming of Christ at Bethlehem, but refers to
the world of mankind from its beginning, before
the incarnation.
And here we have, happily associated, two English
words, world and word, very much alike with
the addition of L to the word word,
you have the word world, and we have
the world and the word related in this
prologue, as cause and effect.
And remember that the world is always an
effect, and the word is always a cause,
and there never is any time when the
world is a cause, and there never is
any time when the word is an effect.
The word was, and the word made the
world.
The Logos, but I'll not go into Greek
because I don't pronounce it correctly, nobody does,
only some people think they do, but in
our English it's word, and we'll stay by
it.
So, the word and the world, they are
related as cause and effect.
The world you see around about you did
not come into existence of itself, but it
is an effect of that which the Bible
calls the word.
Now that word world needs a bit of
definition, so I want to mention that the
word world has three meanings in the Bible,
only two of which concern us tonight.
The third one means ages, but we're not
concerned with the ages because the prologue is
not concerned with the ages as such.
And the prologue here to John uses the
word world in two of its meanings.
It means nature and mankind, and it's the
very same Greek word, and they're used together
without clear distinction, so that when the Bible
says he was in the world and the
world knew him not, you have two meanings
of the word world, and the context has
to tell you which meaning it is because
it's the precise word in the original.
Now, in the Bible, the word world means,
it comes from a root meaning to tend
and to take care of and to provide
for.
I'd know that, I think, just from reading
the scriptures, even if I never looked in
the Greek lexicon.
I would know that the word here, the
word world, comes from an ancient root meaning
to tend, to look after, to care for,
and provide for.
And then it means something else.
It means an orderly arrangement plus a decoration.
Brother, everywhere you look, you see God, and
everywhere you see God, you get delighted.
Every place you find God, your soul's delighted.
And I'm delighted when I look into a
dry, old book that looks like a telephone
directory gone mad, called a lexicon, and I
find that in the New Testament, the word
world means an orderly arranged system, highly decorative,
which is tended, cared for, looked after, and
provided for.
Now, all that's crammed into the word world,
and I defy any Greek student to say
nay.
It's all there.
Now, persons who know God even slightly would
expect God to make an orderly world because
God is orderly.
God never was the author of disorder, neither
in society, nor in a home, nor in
a mind, and I don't think even in
the body.
Some people let themselves go to seed, thinking
it makes them spiritual, but I don't think
it does.
I think that a combed set of hair,
if you have any, and a pair of
pants that have a modicum of press in
them, I don't think agrees God very much.
It's being orderly, and I don't think a
service where you know what you're going to
do, and you know what you're going to
preach, and what you're going to sing particularly
agrees God because God is a God of
order, and the word world has the idea
of order in it.
And so we could expect God to be
orderly because it's necessary that God be orderly.
The world is a mathematical world, and the
essence of mathematics and order has got to
be, two has to be before three, and
three before four, and so on.
And then they that know God better will
expect God not only to make an orderly
world, but to make a beautiful world.
And that's exactly what the Bible teaches.
It teaches in the very word itself that
God made a beautiful, orderly world, and that
he's looking after it, providing for it, and
tending it.
Now, isn't that a charming thing, brother?
Even God can take an old, dry word
that's been dead for hundreds of years and
speak to the bones, and they get up
and stand and sing a solo.
And that's what God's done here with the
word world.
One of these times we're going to be
singing for the beauty of the earth, for
the beauty of the skies, for the love
that from our birth over and around us
lies, Lord of all, to thee we raise
this our sacrifice of praise.
For the beauty of each hour of the
day and of the night, hill and dale
and tree and flower, sun and moon and
stars of light, Lord of all, to thee
we raise this our sacrifice of praise.
And the man who wrote that was not
simply having himself a poetical time.
He was putting in harmonious language a truth.
And that truth is that God made the
world beautiful in its order.
Now, there's an argument that comes from Mr.
Worldly Wise Man, the man who has more
brains than he has heart, who thinks more
than he prays, and who tries to understand
the unapproachable glory of God with his poor
little peanut head.
And he's going to advance this argument, and
he's going to say, Now, wait a minute.
Now, don't think I'm making this up.
I've read this.
He's going to say, Wait a minute.
Now, you're talking about God making the world
beautiful, but don't you know, sir, that beauty
is a word only, and that it's a
word we've used to describe that that pleases
us.
If anybody likes the looks of a thing,
they say it's beautiful.
And ugliness, the opposite, is a word we
have coined to mean anything that doesn't please
us.
So that if we look at a thing,
and it looks as if it pleases us,
we say it's beautiful.
But if it doesn't please us, we say
it's ugly.
And that nothing is beautiful or ugly in
itself, but it's only beautiful or ugly depending
upon whether we like it or not.
So says Worldly Wise Man, and tells us
that this idea that God made a beautiful
world is all wrong.
It's the figment of an overheated religious imagination.
Now, I'm not going to blush and look
for a place to hide and say, you're
so learned, you frighten me, because I don't
think he is, he's just dumb, and I
won't explain why he's dumb.
I have an answer to that, and I'm
not going to hide any place.
God made us in his image and in
his likeness.
And there is a similarity between the minds
of man and the mind of man and
the mind of God, sin being accepted.
If you take sin out of the mind
of man, there is a similarity, because God
made man in his own image.
I repeat that if the human race could
only see that God made us in his
image, we'd stop wallowing in the gutter and
try to act like God.
For God made us in his own image
and likeness.
And when he made us in his image
and likeness, part of that was mental and
aesthetic, so that my mind is somewhat like
God's mind as soon as I get sin
out of it.
So that when God makes a thing originally
beautiful and orderly, it pleases the mind of
God.
And God made us with a mind like
his, somewhat a sin apart.
And when we look at it and it
pleases us, we say it's beautiful.
So don't come to me and say that
it's only a word.
It's not.
It's an arrangement, it's a decorative arrangement of
God Almighty, which God looked at and said
it's good.
And then God gave me a mind like
his, and I look at it and I
say it's good.
So that instead of apologizing to the learned
brother, why, he ought to apologize to us
Christians, and it's always so.
So I would recommend that instead of hanging
your head like a bulrush and apologizing because
you don't know enough to be a liberal,
thank God that you know enough to be
a Christian.
You have nothing whatsoever to be worried about.
Bacon said a little learning turneth a man
around to atheism.
But a greater depth of learning will bring
him back to God again.
That is, it will bring him back to
belief in God again.
So it's only a half-educated man that
says that beauty is only something that we
give to, or something that pleases us, a
name we give.
The simple fact is that God made things
to please himself.
And for his pleasure they are and were
created.
And so God pleases himself by what he
makes, and then says, now look.
And we look and say, that is beautiful,
and we're not apologizing because we've got ability
to like what God likes and be pleased
with what God's pleased with.
Now, God makes things orderly and decorative.
And first he makes things orderly for utility.
You see, whatever God made, he made for
a purpose.
There isn't anything in the universe that just
got here by accident.
There are no cracks in the universe that
some cosmic dust sifted in that hadn't any
meaning there, that ought to be wiped up
and brushed off and forgotten.
Everything in the universe has a meaning.
My old philosophical father used to sit and
ponder on why God made mosquitoes.
I don't know why he made mosquitoes, but
when the great showdown comes, and we know
it, we're known, we'll smile and bow and
thank God for mosquitoes.
Now, I don't know what he's for yet,
but because I don't know what he's for,
I'm not going to write him off and
say, this is a cosmic mistake, this is
a divine blunder.
No, he's not a blunder, he's just a
pest.
And God made him, and so let him
pass for something, though God knows what tonight,
I don't know.
And so are the great many other things.
I don't know why God made them, but
remember, there's nothing accidental in God's universe.
Everything has a purpose.
God made everything for a reason, and because
I don't know what it's for, don't look
at me and say, well, you don't know
what it's for, therefore it's an accident.
Mr. Chase down here is an artist, and
sometimes I go to his studio and look
around.
I don't know what half the things are,
but because I don't know what they are,
it doesn't mean he doesn't know what they
are.
I go into an operating room in a
hospital, and I see a lot of things,
weird and ominous looking things lying around.
I don't know what they're for, but that
doesn't mean the surgeon doesn't know what they're
for.
I step into the cab of a diesel
locomotive.
I don't know what all those buttons and
bars and so on are for, and I'd
wreck it in 20 minutes.
But he knows what it's for, that's his
business.
So when God Almighty steps into the locomotive,
the cab of his mighty locomotive he calls
the cosmos, why, God knows what every button's
for and every wheel and all the rest,
and because I don't, I'm not going to
accuse God of making a lot of unnecessary
truck to clutter up the universe.
It's all got a purpose, brother.
God made everything for a purpose.
You go back to the book of Genesis,
you see that utility was God's first plan.
That is usefulness.
God called, God saw the light, said that
there'd be light, and the light saw that
it was good, it had a purpose, and
God divided the light from the darkness.
That was for utility.
And God called the light day and the
darkness night, and God said let there be
a firmament in the midst of the waters,
and God made the firmament and divided the
waters that were under the firmament.
I won't go on, but the whole two
chapters in Genesis is simply a beautiful exercise
in utility.
It is God making an orderly world for
a purpose.
Everything having a reason for existence.
And utility was first, usefulness was first, purpose
was first, and so it is with people.
When a man goes out onto the far
plains of Canada or the United States and
decides to squat and start a little place,
he doesn't think of beauty first, he thinks
of usefulness.
He wants to get a cabin up that'll
house him before the blizzard hits.
And so he builds himself.
As you see scattered even yet throughout the
United States and the West, you see plain
rather ugly places, but they're a place to
live, it's home, it's where he gets his
mail if he gets any, and it's where
he goes when he's tired.
It's a utilitarian affair, not very pretty, but
at least it houses him.
And so utility comes first.
Usefulness always comes first with God and man.
God makes it orderly for usefulness.
So man seeks usefulness first of all.
Everything primitive was useful instead of beautiful.
It was a fight to live and stay
alive with sin around us, and so we
simply grabbed the first thing we could and
used it, and it was not pretty maybe,
but it was at least useful.
So utility is first with man and God.
And then there's that in the mind of
God that wants to be pleased, not only
satisfied that it's orderly, and useful, but he
wants it to be beautiful so it'll please
the eye and please him.
So he adds decoration, and that's actually in
the Greek root.
The word decorative is in it, so that
we have decoration there, and we make first
the thing useful and then add the decoration.
We can get along without it, but it's
a lot better to have it.
And you know it doesn't cost any more
to have things beautiful, pleasing to the eye,
than it does to have them useful and
ugly.
I wish we could find that out.
We can start here at Englewood on the
New York-Central-of-Pennsylvania line, and you
can ride on out in towards Canada, and
towards our south and toward the east, and
up through Michigan and on over into Ontario.
And before you get out of this city,
or at least out of this area, you'll
wonder if there's anything beautiful left in the
world.
Smokestacks and smell, and jiggers for cracking gasoline
and making gasoline out of crude oil, and
just ugly stuff, just ugly.
Man did that.
That's utility, though.
If a war comes, we'll forget that's ugly.
We'll need that.
And we'll lick Hitler with that kind of
thing with some allies, and we can lick
Malenkov the same way.
Useful, you see.
Utility's out there in that smelly, old, ugly,
miserable, hunchback-looking affair we call the refineries.
It's not very pretty, but it's mighty useful.
I brought you here tonight to the church.
Some gasoline brought you here probably, and they
got it somewhere down there or somewhere like
it.
Useful, but not beautiful.
Maybe the day will come in the millennium
when we'll make things beautiful as well as
useful.
For it doesn't cost any more to make
things beautiful than it does to make them
useful.
It doesn't cost any more to raise a
beautiful daughter than it does a homely daughter.
And a beautiful wife doesn't need any more
than a homely wife.
And if you give a certain amount of
money to one woman and say, she'll come
back looking as if she was planning to
attend a permanent Halloween party.
She spent the same amount of money, but
she got a mess to wear around.
Give exactly the same amount of money to
another woman and turn her loose in the
same stores, and she'll come back looking like
a million dollars.
And it doesn't cost any more.
It's just a question of taste and proper
relative arrangement of materials and so on.
I'll leave that to the ladies.
But it doesn't cost any more.
You give two men a pot of paint,
and one of them will turn out a
masterpiece to hang in a gallery, and the
other fellow will turn out a horrible insult
to the human imagination.
And in just the same amount of paint
in the same amount of time, one's an
artist and one's just a dauber.
Give two architects a few carloads of bricks,
and one of them will make something as
ugly as some churches I've seen, and the
ladies and others will turn out something very
like that.
It doesn't cost any more.
It's just a question of arranging it properly.
So when God made his universe, it was
just as cheap and easy as if God
cared.
It was just as cheap and easy for
God to make it lovely as it was
to make it homely.
Of course, it would have been useful if
the clouds above were square and painted battleship
gray.
They'd be pretty.
I mean, they'd be useful, but they'd never
be nice to look at.
Nobody would ever write a sonnet to a
square cloud painted battleship gray.
But the poets have written sonnets to the
beautiful, fleecy clouds, they call them, that float
in the blue sky above.
Why did God make the sky blue, as
any old colored sky would have done?
Well, God said, that's a lovely color, isn't
it?
He liked it.
He had something in him that liked it,
and then he made you and me, and
we have something in us that like it.
God could have made a river to go
roaring right down to the sea, a plain,
straight, ugly-looking thing.
It would have fed the fish and done
its job.
Instead of that, God smiled and let it
meander around and run under trees and around
hills and look pretty and catch the blue
of the sky and reflect it.
And everybody stands and looks and says, isn't
it beautiful?
Thank God.
God says, thank you for seeing it.
I made you to see it.
Utility is one thing, beauty is another.
But God is able to make things useful
and beautiful.
That's what the word world means.
Now you say, what is this, a lecture
on art?
No, it's no lecture on art.
It's a theological talk on what the word
world means in the Bible.
And if you've missed it, don't look at
me.
I didn't make you like that.
It's there, brother.
And so don't say I'm preaching out of
my head.
I'm preaching out of the book.
It's here.
Ask any scholar who knows the original.
He'll tell you that.
That it's God Almighty's decorated order, which he
watches and tends and looks after.
So there's the world.
Now, he was in the world.
I might mention that the second use of
the word world is mankind.
And that's so well known that I shall
not say any more about it.
So when God says he was in the
world, that's his beautiful world that he made.
And the world knew him not.
That didn't refer to the clouds and the
hills and the rocks and the rivers.
That referred to the world of mankind, the
organized world of man, fallen man.
And they knew him not.
And he was in the world.
What was he doing in the world, this
logos, this word, this all-permeating word?
What was he doing in the world before
the incarnation?
The world was the Shekinah of the word,
the all-permeating will and word of God,
moving creatively in his universe.
That was the word.
And when Jesus Christ became man and he
was incarnated in a human body, he did
not cease to be the all-permeating word.
And the all-permeating word still fills the
universe and moves among us.
And we have him to deal with and
he's still here and he's still the light,
the light of every man that cometh into
the world.
And when he and his human body went
away from all of its mountains, he did
not plunge the world into night.
But the all-permeating word, vitalizing, life-giving
word is still in the universe.
Now I ask you, what's he doing?
What's the word doing in the world?
I've got some scripture now that I want
to give you.
Listen to this.
For by him that is the word, the
sun.
For by him were all things created that
are in heaven and that are in earth,
visible and 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 in
time.
And by him all things consist which is
whole together.
The all-permeating word which is in the
world is the adhesive quality of the universe.
That's why we don't fall apart.
He is to the universe the mortar that
holds it together.
He is the magnetism that holds it together.
He holds up his universe.
That's what he's doing in his universe.
That's why he's here, so that this is
not a dead world we inhabit.
Only sin is the dead thing.
This is the living world we inhabit.
And this is a spiritual world, basically, and
it's held together by the spiritual presence of
the invisible word.
He was in the world and the world
was made by him.
What is he doing?
Who being the brightness of his glory, as
God's glory, and express image of God's person,
this word, and upholding all things by the
word of his power, when he had by
himself purged our sins, sat down on the
right hand of the majesty on high, upholding
all things by the word of his power.
The little child lies down and looks up
at the stars and runs into the house
and cries, Mother, Mother, I'm afraid.
What are you afraid of, Johnny?
I'm afraid the sky will fall down.
Well, we laugh and pat his little head
and put him to bed.
He's tired.
But he's not so dumb as we might
think.
Why doesn't it fall down?
Why?
Why don't things tear apart and go ripping
off into chaos?
Because there is a presence that makes all
things consist, and there is one here upholding
all things by the word of his power.
So this universe can be explained only by
spiritual laws.
This is a spiritual world, and that is
why the scientist never manages to get through
to the root of things.
Never.
Because he deals only with things that he
can see and touch and take and experiment
with.
But he doesn't know why they hold together.
He throws two chemicals into a tube, and
a certain action takes place, and he writes
about it and says, Where's God?
Where's God?
God's making it do that.
God's holding it together.
He says, That star out there yonder in
two thousand five hundred and ten years and
twenty minutes will be in such and such
a position.
And then he brushes off his hands and
hangs up his typewriter and says, Now I've
done it.
I have run God out of his world.
I can predict where the stars will be.
Foolish man.
The stars would never be anywhere but dust
except God run the whole show and did
the whole business.
So God upholds all things by the word
of his power.
What's he doing in his universe?
This present?
This permeating logos?
What's he doing in his universe?
Let me read again from the scriptures to
you.
Lift up your eyes on high and behold
who has created these things that bringeth out
their host by number.
He calleth them all by name by the
greatness of his might for that he is
strong in power, not one pillar.
In our English translation, I think we miss
a good deal out of this.
But here is a figure of speech, one
of the most beautiful in the entire Bible.
It is a companion piece to the 23rd
Psalm, only it's astronomical in place of dealing
with human beings.
And the man of God says, Lift up
your eyes on high and behold who has
created these things.
What things?
These shining bright diamond things that look down
upon the country and the city and reflect
on the still waters of the sea.
These stars, yonder.
Who has created these things that bringeth out
their host by number?
Why do they bring out their host?
Why, they are like sheep.
And this is a figure of a shepherd
bringing his sheep out by number and calling
them all by names, counting them as they
come out and naming every one of them
and leading them across the green grass of
the meadows and beside the still waters.
And so this shepherd-minded poet Isaiah saw
that the starry hosts above were like a
flock of sheep and that God the Great
Shepherd called them as they came sailing out
through interstellar spaces.
He numbered them and said, They're all here
and then called them by their names.
And because he is strong in power, not
one faileth.
I think probably that this can be said
to be the most majestic and elevated figure
of speech in the entire Bible with no
possible exception.
I know of absolutely none that we look
into the starry sky and know that astronomers
have told us that the very Milky Way
is not a Milky Way at all but
simply a confusion of stars so many billions
of light years away all moving in an
orderly direction but God called them all out
and he knows their number and he called
them all by name just as a shepherd
calls his sheep.
I don't know of any loftier, more brain
-stretching figure of speech anywhere in the Bible
than this is.
So that's what he's doing in his universe.
He is here upholding it and shepherding it
and caring for it and causing it to
cohere.
Now the word world knew him not.
That's mankind.
He's in his world but mankind knew him
not.
Now the word can be known by the
humble heart.
You find that here.
Now the word, I say, can be known
by the world, by mankind.
And that is, I don't mean now this
is salvation.
I mean to say that the consciousness of
the presence of God, could I put it
like this?
In the early days of America, when our
founding fathers were writing up constitutions and drafting
laws and doing all sorts of things, we
had many men who were not Christian men
in high places.
We've made, we've been dreamy-eyed about some
of those old boys and made Christians out
of them when they were not Christian.
But for instance, Benjamin Franklin, when they were
in a tight place, old Ben got up
and suggested they have prayer and they had
prayer and got out of the tight place.
And Benjamin Franklin wasn't a Christian.
George Whitfield preached to him and prayed for
him but he said in his old age,
it must not have done any good because
I'm not a Christian yet and he died
that way.
He was not a Christian but he believed
in God.
That is, he believed that there was a
God in the world and he believed that
there were divine laws in the world.
And when somebody said to, not Franklin, but
to Webster, Daniel Webster, what's the loftiest thought
that's ever entered your mind?
He said, by all means, the profoundest thought
my mind has ever entertained is my responsibility
to a holy God.
Now our fathers weren't all fundamental Christians and
weren't all born again.
But most of them were men who had
a reverent and profound belief in the presence
of God in his world.
And they can laugh at them if they
will.
They drafted some laws and laid down some
rules and regulations that remain to this day
as relics at least of the days when
men stood up on the earth and whether
they were Christians or not still believed there
was a God that didn't save them.
But it made them a lot different from
some of these happy-go-lucky wild adult
apes that run around now and laugh at
the idea of God.
Some of these poker-playing, whiskey-drinking, dirty
-storytelling rascals that we have in Washington and
other places now that are dirty-minded, dirty
-tongued, and dirty generally whose idea of God
is so cynical that they toss God asop
somewhere in their speeches but go on as
if God didn't exist.
That's what we've come to.
The word is in the world and the
world knows him not.
But it's possible to know about him.
It's possible to know.
The Mohammedan falls down on the ground five
times a day and we laugh at the
Mohammedan.
I stand with respect to that Mohammedan.
He'll perish, but he knows there's a God
in the world anyhow.
The Hindu measures himself painfully on his way
to live again.
Jesus River to bathe himself and we say,
how foolish can you get?
But I'd rather be a half-naked Hindu
trying to get free from my sins in
the filthy waters of Mother Ganga than I
would an American businessman who's ruled God out
of my business and out of my home
and out of my life and lived from
my bank account.
I don't say I'd take my chances.
No, men don't take their chances.
They're either saved or they're lost.
But I would rather go to hell from
the waters of the dirty Ganga trying to
find God than I would to go to
hell from a slick office in Chicago's Loop.
The world knew him not.
And that's the curse of the hour.
Now, the world knew him not.
I say this is the supreme sin of
the world, absorption in a godless world.
That's the supreme sin of the world.
Some of you people say, well, now there
goes the preacher.
He's trying to get me converted.
He better go down to Pacific Garden Mission,
down to West Madison Street and try to
convert somebody in Skid Row.
I don't need him.
I came here tonight because my wife begged
me to come to church and so I
satisfied her.
I'll go, she'll go to a show with
me Wednesday night.
So I'm here tonight to please her.
But don't preach to me.
I never robbed anybody.
I pay my taxes.
I pay my debts.
And I'm a decent man.
I'm faithful to my wife and taking care
of my home and I vote.
And I'm a citizen.
Why should you preach to me?
Oh, man, if you only knew how foolish
you talk.
Did you know that your great sin is
that the all-pervading presence is here and
you can't feel him.
The light shines and you can't see it.
There is a voice and you can't hear
it.
And there is a curse that lies upon
you, sir.
Not that you didn't rob a banker, did.
But the great curse that lies upon your
heart is that you have become so absorbed
in business that you can't see God.
There are dollar signs before your eyes and
you can't see God.
And you'd rather make a neat profit than
to make your way into the kingdom.
The word was in the world and the
world knew him not.
And this is the curse of the world.
And I repeat that I would rather be
a black man wearing a G-string and
living in a cootie-infested mud hut in
Africa, kneeling before a bone and mumbling some
kind of a homemade prayer than I would
be a self-satisfied American businessman satisfied with
his money and his home and his TV
and his deep freeze.
He was in the world and the world
was made by him and the world knew
him not.
To get up in the morning and there's
a presence and you don't feel it.
To get up in the morning and there
is a light and you don't see it.
To get up in the morning and there
is a voice and you can't hear it.
And then you say to me, don't preach
to me, go preach to the bum.
You're a bum, too, only on a higher
level.
And before the great bar of God your
sin is deeper than the drug addict that
lies tonight in the cool of the west
side in some gutter or alley.
Business, yes sir.
And then there are others that have fame.
They make fame their gods.
I just heard over the radio that very
soon there's going to be one of these
actresses and nightclub singers and all that.
She is going to tell over the radio,
I think, what has held her up so
long and held her together.
And do you know what it is?
I'll give you three guesses.
It's faith.
It's faith making me what I am.
She has given her life to that kind
of thing and now she's falling back on
some kind of an esoteric weird faith.
But oh brother, she's living for fame.
And she'd rather get her name on the
marquee of a theater than she would in
the Lamb's Book of Life.
And she's proud of it.
And there is a voice but she can't
hear it.
And there is a light but she can't
see it.
And there is a presence but she can't
feel it.
He was in the world.
The world was made by him.
And others are addicted to pleasure.
They've given themselves to pleasure.
Flesh contacts, nerve ends, delight, joy, anything to
take the seriousness out of living.
Anything to keep us from knowing that there
is a presence.
Keep us from knowing there is a light
and a voice.
Now I'm not acting like a mystic.
If you think that I am, let me
quote to you.
In him was light and the light was
the light of man.
And the light shined in darkness and the
darkness comprehended it not.
And in the beginning was the word and
the word was in the world.
Now there is the word, there is the
voice, there is the light and the word
was in the world.
There is the presence.
I'm giving scripture to you tonight, not poetry.
And I'm telling you there is a voice
and you don't hear it and there is
a light and you don't see it and
there is a presence and you don't feel
it.
And you're, you're, you're, that's what the old
writers called profane.
Profane, my brother.
You may dress in $200 suits and you
may drive $4,000 cars and your home
may cost $25,000 and there may not
be a thing in it more than a
year old.
You may be from your dainty skin out
dressed to kill.
You may have promotions coming up and expect
to make good in this world but remember
you're a profane man until you have waked
up to the fact that you're not alone
in this universe, that he's here, that there's
a presence and that there's a voice and
that there's a light that lighteth every man.
And realize the basis of your life is
not physical but spiritual and you owe it
to God to turn to him with all
your heart.
And then there's eating and drinking and buying
and selling.
You say, what's the wrong with eating and
drinking and buying and selling?
I don't think there's anything wrong with it.
Christians eat and Christians drink everything except alcohol,
of course and Christians buy and Christians sell.
Christians marry and are given in marriage and
it's all perfectly proper they should.
And yet, listen, did you not read that
Jesus said as it was in the days
of Noth so should it be in the
day of the coming of the Son of
Man and he didn't say one thing about
murder.
He didn't say one thing about lust.
He didn't say one thing about robbery.
He said as it was in the days
of Noth what were they doing?
They were absorbed in eating and drinking and
having fun and getting married and having homes
and planting and building running their business and
enjoying themselves so shall it be in the
day of the coming of the Son of
Man.
It's a tremendous thought that when our Lord
wanted to point to the most dangerous trap
of all he didn't mention the wicked things
he said the most dangerous trap is just
living and forgetting that God exists.
That's what's the matter with America, brother.
Sin will damn you, of course it will.
Or any kind of sin will damn any
man that doesn't get free from it for
the blood of the Lamb.
But it's noteworthy that Jesus Christ specialized in
talking about these innocent things that are all
right in themselves but when we get absorbed
in them to a point where there's a
presence and we can't feel him a voice
and we can't hear him a light and
we can't see him then we're profane men.
Woe be to us.
Far better we never had been born.
The only scripture that fits us is the
scripture of the poor Job who said, woe
is me that I was ever born that
my mother ever conceived me that the stars
of the twilight of that night be as
darkness oh that I might have been carried
from my mother's knees to the grave where
the wicked ceased from troubling and the toil
borne our grace.
The only scripture for that profane man who's
forgotten that Jesus Christ exists and that he
has a responsibility to God that God made
him he's an effect not a cause but
an effect of a cause and that he
is in the hand of God if he
only knew it and God will poof and
blow him into hell because he's forgotten that
there is he gives lip service to the
church and mental service to religion but he's
a profane man for he can't see the
presence nor the light nor hear the voice
that says come unto me all ye that
labor and our heavy laden and I will
give you rest you can be too bright
to miss it but you can't be too
simple a seventeen year old ignorant boy walking
the streets of East Akron to a
church and heard a man say here is
my text come unto me all ye that
labor and our heavy laden take my yoke
upon me you and learn of me for
I am meek and lowly in heart and
without any biblical background much more than a
pagan I got disturbed disturbed greatly disturbed and
I began to feel the presence and I
began to hear faintly a voice and dimly
alight I was lost still but I was
getting close Jesus said as such you're not
far from the kingdom of God and then
walking down Market Street I came to Case
Avenue there at the bottom of the hill
and I saw a man preaching on the
street it was a German with a strong
marked accent and a berry colored birthmark disfiguring
the side of his face and he said
if you don't know how to pray when
he said pray he said go home and
pray God have mercy on me a sinner
and you know what I did and the
dispensationalist told me I had to hold her
own text I got into my father's house
got my feet under the table and got
a hold of a big spoon and my
brethren on the outside pound on the window
and say come out of there boy you've
got in the wrong door I got in
all right dispensational or no dispensational I got
in God will forgive a fellow if he
doesn't get his dispensations right if he's hungry
enough don't you think very well all the
Lord wants to know and Peter was falling
going down into the water he cried Lord
save me he had to consult the margin
of some old Bible to find out whether
he should have prayed like that or not
he'd been fourteen under and the bubbles would
have been coming up but he just prayed
right out of his heart Lord save me
and the Lord said sure up came Peter
amen Jonah had to go through a series
of books and consult all the marginal annotations
he'd have been in the belly of a
whale yet but he just let his heart
do the praying always let your heart do
the praying brother isn't that right Tom old
friend Tom here knows that let your heart
do the praying when he was coming to
this country got on these Irish prayer bones
and began to ask God what he ought
to tell us Americans and God said to
him Tom when you get over there don't
read up on America don't learn anything at
all don't try to fit in just tell
them what I told you right out of
your heart don't pay any attention to their
heads preach to their hearts he was wise
enough to do that that's why he's been
such a blessing over here because he preached
to our hearts and so if you'll just
get your heart down on his knees there's
an awful lot you don't need to know
to find him the light shineth and the
voice calleth and the presence is here all
this was of course headed up when it
says and the word became flesh and dwelt
among us and we saw his glory as
of the only begotten of the Father so
he's here now he went away in his
human body but as the everlasting all permeating
word he's with us still with us to
save with us oh word of the Father
light of life word of God incarnate oh
wisdom from above and he offers himself to
you tonight if you'll only believe become childlike
and say yes Lord I will yes Lord
I will just for I am without one
plea but that thy blood was shed for
me and that thou bidst me come to
thee oh Lamb of God do what your
heart tells you will you not?
let us pray Father
oh God near us here like Jacob
we're tempted to say thou art in this
place and I knew it not but we
did know it after a fashion this is
none other than the gate of heaven this
is the house of God Beth El we
will raise our altar here at this presence
we pray for men and women and particularly
young people who are charmed the serpent of
the world has charmed them like a bird
they gaze with fascination on all the showy
glamour of the world they would die to
become famous women here would give their twenty
years of their lives five years to be
a movie star great God we're sick, sick,
sick inside that we have sought the gutter
instead of the clouds that we have learned
to love and live in and admire and
imitate and follow the filthiest, lowest, most profane
element in society and there is a light
and men don't see it and a voice
and they don't hear it and a presence
and they don't feel it oh we pray
get hold of men and women and young
people and children tonight and pull them out
of this mud moral and intellectual mud get
them out of it we pray we pray
that thou will give to all of us
who have been here tonight a renewed and
vivid sense of the sacredness and spirituality of
the world that thou hast created sin we
have no truck with and there's nothing good
can be said about it no eloquence can
remove from it the ugly bestiality of sin
but apart from sin oh God thou art
in the world art here pray to help
us morning and night and all during the
day and night and wherever we may be
to keep in contact with thee knowing that
he is in the world and the great
grief of the world is the world knows
him not but oh we Christians can say
thank thee father we know thee we know
thee through Jesus Christ thy son we call
thee father we have called thee Abba father
we have stayed our hearts on thee blessed
be thy name now we trust thee through
Jesus Christ our son