Now tonight in the seventh chapter of John,
After these things Jesus walked in Galilee, for
he would not walk in Jewry, because the
Jews ought to kill him.
Now the Jews' feast of tabernacles was at
hand.
His brethren therefore said unto him, Depart hence
and go into Judea, that thy disciples also
may see the works that thou doest.
For there is no man that doeth anything
in secret, and he himself seeketh to be
known openly.
If thou do these things, show thyself to
the world.
For neither did his brethren believe in him.
Then Jesus said unto them, My time is
not yet come, but your time is all
were ready.
The world cannot hate you, but me it
hated, because I testify of it, that the
works thereof are evil.
Go ye up unto this feast.
I go up, I go not up yet
unto this feast, for my time is not
yet full come.
When he had said these words unto them,
ye are both still in Galilee.
That's as far as we'll go tonight, and
I want you to relax and lean back
and don't expect anything amazing.
Just hear what the word of the Lord
says, and we'll see whether we can get
real help out of these opening verses.
Now, I call attention to this, that Jesus
walked in Galilee, and he would not walk
in Judea, here called Jury, because the Jews
sought to kill him.
Now, I see something here that I wonder
if you see.
I see how perfectly poised and self-assured
our Lord was in God his Father.
He was perfectly free and uninfluenced by public
opinion.
He was not forced to be reckless to
keep up his reputation.
It is great to be free to say
amen when you want to, if it's appropriate,
whether anybody else is saying it or not.
Keep perfectly quiet when everybody else is excited,
and to stand still when everybody else is
running, and to run when everybody else is
standing still, and to do strictly what you
feel God wants you to do regardless.
Now, it is wonderful to be free and
poised and self-assured like that.
Mostly, we go along with the brethren.
Mostly, particularly that inner circle of brethren who
are real Christians.
But Jesus, our Lord, was not stampeded by
the opinions of the people.
They said, why don't you go to Galilee?
And he said, I am not going to
Judea.
I'm not going there.
I'm staying in Galilee.
And he did stay in Galilee.
Now, he might have been afraid that someone
would call him a coward.
He might have been afraid that somebody would
say, if you don't do that, you're a
coward.
Then he got under bondage to that person
who was accusing him of cowardice, and would
have gone to Judea out of the will
of God.
But he was too free for that, and
too sure of himself in God, so that
he stayed in Galilee, even though he was
on the borderline of being thought afraid to
go into Judea.
Now, there are people who are too cowardly
not to do something, and then there are
those who are too cowardly to do it.
You see what I mean, my friends?
When everybody is doing it, and you see
that it's not right for you to do
it, then it's possible to be too cowardly
to obey your conviction.
You know, we let ourselves get jockeyed into
doing things that God doesn't want us to
do.
You say, well, now what will the people
say?
Well, usually the answer to that is, what's
the difference what the people say?
Now, Jesus didn't care what the people said.
He stayed in Galilee because he did not
want to go up and put himself in
jeopardy before the time.
And the historian would say he was scared.
Our Lord would not walk into a trap.
He would not go into an ambush there
in Judea.
He was just plain afraid, and he knew
that they would say it.
And yet he was so completely free in
God that he let them think and say
what they will.
He stayed in Galilee.
Unless somebody would say, well, then he was
afraid.
I remind you that when the time came
for him to go, he went.
And I remind you that our Lord Jesus
Christ did not know fear.
He sent word to Herod.
Herod sent a word to him.
Sent somebody and said, did you know that
Herod has sent a word?
King Herod has sent a word to you.
He was walking along, and he stopped and
turned around and said, you go tell that
old fox I'll be here three days.
And then I go.
Just three days.
He wasn't afraid to call that king an
old fox because he wasn't afraid.
And when the time came, he went up
to Jerusalem, and he told the people, now
the time has come.
I'm going up to Jerusalem, and I'm going
to fall into the hands of the Jews,
and they will sell me to the Gentiles,
and the Gentiles will crucify me, and I
will be crucified, and three days I'll be
in the earth.
Well, he wasn't afraid.
He walked up boldly and did what he
had to do in the will of God.
He was neither afraid to be thought a
coward, nor was he a coward.
He was just what he was in God.
Now that's a good lesson that I wish
we could learn.
So many of the Lord's people do things
under bondage to other people's consciences because somebody
else thinks their testimony is not quite consistent.
If you do this, your testimony isn't consistent.
Some fellow says, I believe the Lord heals.
All right, he does, and the Lord does
heal him.
Maybe 15 times.
The 16th time, why he feels that he
has to go somewhere, maybe get an operation
or take a pill, a vitamin cap tool
or something, but he's afraid to take it
because he's afraid of what the people will
say.
He's not a free man.
A man ought to be free to say
to God, now God, you lead me, and
say to the people, now God's leading me,
and you can expect me to do anything
at all, not what you expect.
You can expect me to disappoint you.
You can expect me to say and do
things that you don't agree with, and I
will fall in your sight.
I will shrink and get little in your
eyes because I'll be doing things you don't
think I should be doing.
I'll be taking a course you're not approving.
Now, if I'm free in God, I say,
now God, I'm sorry that my brethren don't
agree with me, but this is the course
thou art leading me, and go do what
God's calling you to do.
Now that was exactly what Jesus did.
He stood before Pilate, and there was no
panic there.
He'd had his bloody sweat in the Garden
of Gethsemane, and now poised and self-possessed,
and sure of himself, and unaffected by the
consciences of other people or public opinion, he
went calmly out to die.
He would not even be turned aside by
the kind but badly directed sympathies of his
people.
He did what he did, and that was
that.
Now that's lesson number one for me, and
it's good.
If God's people would only get out from
under bondage to each other.
I've always had that to worry about when
I go into the pulpit.
When I go into other pulpits, other places,
I have that that bothers me, and I
talk to myself.
I don't mean audibly, but I say to
my own soul, now wait a minute here,
friend.
You take a position that's different from these
people, and if you say the things to
this congregation that you say at home, people
at home know you, and the ones that
don't like you don't come, and you send
your audience out, and there are people who
expect that kind of thing from you, but
these people don't know you, and if you
talk to them the way you talk at
home, you'll hurt people, you'll get in bad,
and you'll disappoint the man that calls you,
and you'll disappoint the man that runs the
meeting.
Now calm down here, and just give them
a nice little talk tonight.
Now, so help me God, I never yield
to that cowardly temptation, never.
I never yield to that cowardly temptation.
I get up there and take an outline
that I've preached at home first, usually, and
preach exactly what I preach at home.
But also, if I am preaching for a
blood and thunder, fire-eating type of preacher
that expects high-pressure evangelism and preaching on
hell three times a night, and the Lord
says, now son, this congregation needs love and
grace, and they've been preached, hell has been
held over them like an atom bomb.
Give them love and grace.
I'll give them love and grace, even if
the man that called me sits and frowns.
First time I met Brother McAfee was about
11 years ago.
He was a song leader in a church
in a certain section in the city of
Chicago, and I was the evangelist.
The pastor had called me over there and
called him to lead the singing, or he
was there for a while.
And I understood after I had gone that
he was very much disappointed in me.
He expected me to preach loving evangelism and
win a few souls.
But instead of that, I plowed into his
congregation.
And they were dead, and I plowed into
them, and I plowed in every blessed night.
I don't know what happened, but I plowed
in.
He didn't like it so well.
He was disappointed in me.
But I claim the holy right to disappoint
men in order not to disappoint God.
Jesus didn't disappoint God, but some people thought
he was afraid.
Now, notice what his brothers said to him.
And his brothers, of course, were his blood
brothers, sons of his mother.
Now, they exposed their ignorance and their earthliness.
They said this to him.
They said, Depart hence, and go into Judea,
that thy disciples also may see the works
that thou doest.
For there is no man that doeth anything
in secret, and he himself seeketh to be
known openly.
If thou do these things, show thyself to
the world.
Now, they were creating Jesus in their own
image.
They thought he had a racket.
They thought they didn't believe in him.
It says so here.
And they didn't claim to be disciples.
They said, If you want to get known
the way we believe you do, why don't
you go up to Jerusalem where the great
Feast of Tabernacles is on, where you'll be
able to talk to twenty people compared with
the one you're talking to here.
Why don't you go up and make yourself
known?
If you want to put on this great
religious racket, why don't you go up there
and get known by the people who, they
said, is trying to promote himself and yet
stays with a little circle?
Why don't you go up where there's a
big crowd?
Now, they were creating him in their own
image.
They couldn't understand a selfless man.
They didn't know how to appraise a man
who didn't have an axe to grind nor
anything to gain.
Our Lord was here to die for people,
not to win them to his political side
or even his religious side.
He was here to die for men and
save them.
Now, this, my brethren, is authentic cynicism.
A cynic, you know, the word cynic comes
from the Greek word dog.
The old cynics were such sour pusses that
they snarled at the people and they said,
they're dogs, and they called them cynics.
Now, a cynic is a philosopher who believes
with the devil that every man has his
price.
You remember Dr. Max Rice's great sermon on
Job when he told us that the devil
was a cynic because he said, yea, duh,
Job served God for nothing.
Now, that's cynicism.
That's hedonistic philosophy, the old Greek hedonistic philosophy
that says everybody moves for his own ends,
and everything we do, we do for our
own ends.
Echoes of hedonism and cynicism have come down
the years.
It was crystallized by those Greek philosophers, but
it's been in human nature all these years,
and we find it even now in human
nature.
It was Clarence Darrow who said that when
a man put a quarter in the cap
of a blind man on the street corner,
he didn't put that in the cap in
order to help the blind man, he put
it in to make himself feel good.
Now, that cynicism, you see, that's the devil's
doctrine, the doctrine that you, that every man
has his price, and that you can always
be safe in looking back of the motives,
the façade of things to the real motives,
that every man is out for what he
can get.
That's cynicism, and that, of course, what they
said about the Lord.
They said, now, what are you doing loafing
down here in Galilee, and you're promoting a
racket here, why don't you go up where
the crowds are and get known?
If you're doing these things, the commentator says
that that these things was a sarcastic reference,
they didn't believe in the things he was
doing.
You're doing them, and they're real, and they're
what you say they are, why don't you
go up and show them off?
Now, my friend here was a complete misunderstanding
of Jesus, and what we can learn from
these things is two, two things we can
learn here.
Be careful about judging other people's motives.
You never quite know why a man does
a thing.
You might know, but you're likely not to
know, and particularly you're likely to be mistaken
if you yourself are not in sympathy with
what he's doing.
So let's not judge each other's motives before
the time.
And the second thing is that your own
family may be the last people to accept
you.
That is one of the hard things for
us to get hold of.
Why is it that our own family is
the last to believe in us?
Now, Jesus' own brethren, now, born of his
own mother, didn't believe in him.
They said, why don't you take your disciples
and go up with your disciples?
They differentiated between his disciples and themselves.
The brethren were not his disciples.
That is a tough one for us all,
a hard thing for any Christian to understand,
is why his own people do not believe
or are the last to believe.
That's hard, but you may figure on that.
That, you see, Jesus grew up among them,
and they played together, and they saw him
grow, and they said, why, we know this
boy.
He's our brother.
What does he know, anyhow?
We know as much as he.
And they were right in it from the
human angle, but they didn't accept him.
And I suppose that was hard for Jesus
to take, the human Christ, that his own
brethren didn't believe in him.
And I want to tell you that it
may be they'll believe in you in some
other city before they'll believe in you in
your own house under your own roof.
Now, that's strange, but a prophet is not
without honor except in his own country and
among his own people.
So if you're having a hard time at
home, remember Jesus had a hard time at
home.
And remember John Wesley's wife used to throw
shoes at his head while he knelt and
prayed in Latin so she couldn't understand.
And remember that many of the saints of
God have not had an easy time at
home.
For all the Christians that have an easy
time at home, I suppose we ought to
be glad.
But sometimes Christians are made not in an
easy home, but in the fiery furnace of
opposition.
Jesus Christ our Lord himself was not believed
in by his own people.
Now that's a little lesson.
Now notice about Christ and the world, that's
lesson number three.
The world cannot hate you, he said, but
me it hates.
The world can't hate you.
Why did he say this?
Because they were part and parcel of the
world, and a house divided against itself cannot
stand.
The world cannot hate you because there is
a spirit that indwells the world, and you
are part of that spirit, he said, and
that spirit is in you.
The world's people can quarrel and bloody each
other's noses, but basically they're one.
They're of one spirit, and therefore the world
clings together.
They're united, and the spirit that's in the
world, Jesus said many times that the world
was one, and he made the world a
collective noun, a unit.
Now that spirit that dwells in the world
is anti-God and anti-Christ.
This is what's so hard to make people
see in the day in which we live,
so very hard to make people see, that
the spirit that lives in the unregenerate world
is anti-Christ and anti-God.
In Ephesians, Paul tells us that plainly.
He tells us that plainly in Romans.
Our Lord tells us plainly in the gospel
of John that the spirit in John, the
first John, tells us the same thing.
The spirit that dwells in the world is
hostile to God and hostile to Christ.
This thing of peaceful coexistence between the born
again and the unborn again is a myth.
They that are born of the flesh persecute
them that are born of the spirit, even
as it is today, said the Holy Ghost
in the epistle.
Now, a peaceful coexistence can only be maintained
by unworthy compromise on the part of the
people of God.
Christ is altogether of another spirit.
The two spirits are entirely hostile.
This is why I don't understand that people
can't get this.
It's so simple.
It's so biblical.
It is found in the writings of the
saints.
It's part of the theology of the Church
of Christ.
It is the belief, the traditional evangelical belief
of the saints from the Pentecost to the
present hour, and yet today people don't see
it, and I always feel somehow that I'm
out of gear with my times when I
remind people what's plainly taught in the scriptures,
that the spirit that indwells in the unborn
again world is an anti-God, anti-Christ
spirit hostile to God and not subject to
the law of God, neither can it be.
And when we become truly born again, something
is born into us that is hostile to
the world.
Not hostile to the poor, suffering, dying people
of the world, but hostile to that religion
of Cain that fills the world.
Now, the world cannot hate you.
And Jesus said, I testify that the works
thereof are evil.
And he that is born of the flesh
persecuteth him that is born of the spirit.
And someone said that Jesus our Lord, when
he came into the crowd, he made the
heart condemn itself.
Whatever makes the heart condemn itself will never
be forgiven.
Keep that in mind.
You can talk religion to people and they'll
come back for more.
But when you are so spirit-filled and
so in touch with God that your life
and your demeanor and your very presence is
so pure and Christ-like that it rebukes
the sinner and makes his own heart turn
against him and condemn itself, you're a marked
man and you'll not be forgiven until, of
course, conviction comes on that soul and he
falls down before his God and finds hope.
A lot of criticism of Leonard Ravenhill, but
ladies and gentlemen, I think we need a
little more Leonard Ravenhill in these days in
which we live.
I'll have no part in meetings that simply
console the saints and give them more assurance
and pat their carnality and swoop down the
hackle on their lovely carnal backs.
I'll have no part in it because sin
is a reality, a devilish, terrible, damning, grave
-filling, hell-filling reality.
And when we take the stand against it,
we're going to raise the anger of those
whose hearts feel self-condemned because of it.
Religion's every place now, every place.
Somebody sent me an article called Piety on
the Potomac.
It's written in one of the current magazines,
national magazines, called The Reporter.
Cut it out and send it to me,
two or three pages, and they show how
that it's in vogue now to be religious.
I remember just between the two World Wars,
it was out of vogue to be religious.
You couldn't be intellectually respectable and be religious.
But after Second World War, they said there
were no atheists in foxholes, and then it
became religious or intellectually respectable to be religious.
I was religious all the time in between,
respectable or not respectable, as some of you
were.
But they have now given us the right
to be religious, and it's quite the proper
thing to say something nice about God.
But, brother, it's one thing to say something
nice about God, it's quite another thing to
be so in God that your very breath
makes the hearts of men condemn themselves.
They won't forgive you for that.
You can talk all you want to about
religion being good for mankind, and they'll approve
you.
And you can say, I think there ought
to be churches in every community, and they'll
nod and say, that's right.
And you can say, I believe that the
teachings, the morality upon which America was founded
ought to be restored.
They'll all nod and say, that's right, that's
fine, reverend, that's good, doctor, that's good, brother.
But when you get past that keen-eyed
religion, that religion of patriotism and shallow philosophy,
and get past that and through to the
point where it's either Christ or damnation, and
you won't be liked, I'm telling you.
They're going to, you're going to find that
same spirit rising up against you, because the
spirit that is in Christ and the spirit
that is in the religious world are hostile
to one another, or in the world.
And I'm not talking about the churches now,
I'm talking about the world.
And now, you know what the Jews said
about Jesus?
They said, some of them said he's a
good man.
And others said, no, he deceives the people.
Whose side are you on, on that?
There's a debate.
Here was a debate.
Here they stood, and their little beard, they
were quivering with anger and their eyes flashing.
He's a good man, said some.
No, but he deceives the people, said others.
So there was a dividing line, and Jesus
always had a dividing line, always.
And you walk down the street, you draw
a knife blade between men.
Now, whose side are you on?
He is a good man.
No, but he deceives the people.
Whose side are you on, on this?
I don't mind telling you bluntly, I'm on
the side of those who said, nay, but
he deceives the people.
Now, let's, I'll show you what I mean.
They both believed that he was just a
man, and believing that he was just a
man, and not God, they took their sides.
And some said, he is just a man,
but he's a good man.
And the others said, if he is just
a man, he's a deceiver, and he's not
a good man.
Whose side are you on?
I'm on the side of those who said,
he's not a good man if he's lying
to the people.
He's not who he said he is, he's
not a good man.
And the others said, no, but now wait
a minute here.
Don't, don't condemn.
That's the way he worships.
That's his religion.
That's, don't condemn other people's religion.
That's his religion.
And he believes that.
Now, it's perfectly all right.
It's all right.
A fellow said on the radio broadcast I
heard this evening while I was resting, this
afternoon, he said, I have a creed.
What was his creed?
It was, and now that's his creed.
And let him alone, they say.
Don't bother him, don't disturb him.
A fellow writes in, cancel my subscription.
You're condemning other people the way other people
worship.
And Cain's worship, and Balaam's worship, and Judas's
worship, and the worship that Paul condemned in
his epistles, and Christ castigated in his teachings,
and John condemned in his teachings, and the
evangelists and reformers down the centuries have had
to stand up and protest the pagan religion
of the world.
No, we can't accept everybody's religion.
Jesus Christ was not a good man if
he was only a man.
He had to be more than a man,
or else he was deceiving the people.
They were both wrong, for they both began
on a wrong premise.
It was that he was a man.
If they had said, he's a good man
and he's a God man, they'd have been
right.
But they said, he's a good man.
Sure, he's mistaken, but he's a good man.
Certainly, he was extreme, but he's a good
man.
Certainly, he's making demands that we can't fulfill,
but he's a good man.
Certainly, he's talking about things that just couldn't
be so, but he's a good man.
That kind of smirking, tolerant religion is worse
than atheism.
I'd rather be an atheist than have that
kind of religion.
He's a good man.
Of course, he's mistaken.
He's a child of his age, but he's
a good man.
Now, if he's only a man, he's anything
but a good man, for he led the
people to believe in him as God, and
if he was not God, he was the
world's top liar.
When you come and say you're God, we
smile at the little colored man in New
York.
I don't know if he's in New York
now, they ran him out, but I think
he's in Philadelphia now, a little fellow that
speaks, he's wonderful, and God.
We say, isn't that cute, the little baldhead
cowboy says, I'm God.
It's not cute, brethren, it's tragic, it's terrible.
For a man to deceive the people, that's
not a good man.
And a man who leads people to believe
that he is what he's not, is not
a good man, even though he can point
to good that has been done.
Not everything that does good is good, remember
that.
And not everyone who is capable of doing
some good sometimes is to be trusted.
There's a great divide.
Any well-intentioned religion is good, says some,
and the others say no.
He's either God, or he has tragically misled
generations of men.
And I take my side with them, and
I say, but I have found him.
Now, Jesus Christ cannot be tolerated as being
merely good.
He must either be obeyed or rejected.
Either obeyed or rejected, one or the other.
But this is the day of the tolerance
of the Lord Jesus.
We're tolerating him now in civilized, the civilized
world.
We're tolerating him, just as we tolerate the
Queen Mother.
You hear that broadcast yesterday where the Queen
Mother made a nice little speech?
Little housewife, lovely little soul, made her a
doctor of laws.
Dear little old ladies, you are the next.
We tolerate queens when they come over here,
and call them your majesty.
But we tolerate them.
Basically, we don't believe in them.
We believe in the democratic processes, and we
believe no man is a king or queen
in America, or rather every man is a
king, and every woman the queen.
But we tolerate them, smilingly, treat them nicely,
and Jesus is being tolerated by people.
He gets into the newspapers now, and magazines,
and his name is used over the radio
a lot, and songs are sung about him,
and speeches made.
He is the tolerated savior.
No, no, no.
He can't be, can't be.
How long can it go on?
I'm not a prophet, but I think a
little common sense will help me to see
something.
We've been scared by communism.
We've been scared quite by the dangers of
the Kubalt bomb.
We've been told that people would go sterile
and couldn't reproduce the human race if we
got any more radiation.
Or we've been told what is worse.
I saw it no later than in today,
yesterday's press.
We've been told that there's enough radiation in
the air now to cause women to produce,
instead of healthy offspring, cripples and deformed people.
We've been frightened.
We're jittery, scared, frightened people, and we're tolerating
Jesus Christ as a cow tolerates a bush
in a hot day.
We're getting up and hiding from the flies
and the heat, because we hope maybe if
we're good, someone will help us, and we'll
get a little help, the spirit of George
Washington or something will help us.
Brethren, I wonder how long, much longer, we're
going to continue to be scared.
Now let me prophesy a little, and I
don't know I need to apologize for it,
but let me tell you something.
Maybe I won't be here to say it,
maybe I will.
If I am, I'll remind you.
Let me tell you something.
If there come a period of peace, if
there should come, I the world, when Russia
is no longer feared as an aggressor, and
when some kind of United Nations or something
else has pushed war into the remote future,
and there's no longer anything to be scared
about, we'll see such a reaction from our
present religious piety as we haven't seen since
the seventeenth century in France.
We will see the churches empty, and men
go their carnal ways.
You can only scare a man into being
good so long, and when he gets hardened
to the scare, and is no longer afraid
of the future, then his carnal self will
go in a wild binge.
And you'll see what will happen in America.
We're a scared people now.
And so everybody's talking about trying the Lord,
and turning to God, and being religious.
But we're not making Jesus Christ Lord of
our lives in this country, and we're not
drawing the line fine and saying, I believe
in him not as a good man, but
as my God and Savior and Lord.
We're saying, rather, he's a good man, and
I believe religion ought to be promoted, and
I think we ought to do better and
acknowledge the Lord.
And when we say we're here to one
nation, indivisible under God, I think we ought
to put that phrase under God.
I was the other night at a high
school gathering, and when they made the pledge
to the flag, they had for the first
time I'd ever heard it, the phrase, under
God.
In God we trust, says the dollar that
some scoundrel is prying out of a widow.
In God we trust, says the dollar that
some punk is winning in the gambling den.
No, my brother, it's going to be more
than in God we trust.
It's going to be more than under God
we do this and that.
It's going to be more than friendly gestures
in the direction of God.
Before God Almighty's great power comes into a
human life to make it over, there has
to be an acknowledgment of the Lordship of
Jesus.
He is Lord to the glory of God
the Father.
And we make that assertion now.
He is Lord to the glory of God
the Father.
He tells us the day will be when
in hell they'll make that assertion.
They'll grind it out of their hot, blistered
teeth.
He is Lord to the glory of God
the Father.
And all around the world they'll admit he
is Lord to the glory of God the
Father.
Who are the ransomed, who are the saved,
who are his friends?
There are those that admit it now.
That say not he's a good man, not
he deceives the people, but he is Lord
to the glory of God.
The opening night of Keswick, the first little
talk, I gave my little nine points.
I didn't know whether they'd run me down
the alley or whether they would accept it.
They accepted it.
Brother Redpath wants to print it.
He wants to print it.
And among the things that I said was
this, there is no Saviorhood without Lordship.
You cannot receive him as Savior and deny
him as Lord.
You cannot be saved and boss your own
life.
He is Lord to the glory of God
the Father, or he's just a good man
deceiving the people.
So friends, we've got to make up our
minds, it's tough, isn't it?
Wouldn't you like to hear something sweeter?
Well, you should have been here this morning.
I preached on the immortality, and last week
I preached on the descent of the holy
city.
No conscience in that, nobody scared in that,
everybody looking forward to the holy city coming
down from God out of heaven as a
bride adorned for a husband.
But who's going to be the ones that'll
see it?
Who'll enter into it?
They who have owned him as Lord in
this hour, they who in the midst of
piety and religion and soft talk and patriotism
have stood out and said, whatever the world
believes, I take him as my Lord and
Savior, my Lord and my God.
They're the happy ones.
Oh, Jerusalem, the golden, oh, they stand, those
halls of Zion, all jubilant with song and
bright with many an angel and all the
martyrs throng.
The saints are ever in them, the daylight
is serene, the pastures of the blessed are
decked with glory.
My brethren, they who have taken him as
Lord, whose side are you on?
He that is not for me is against
me, and there can be no neutrality, no
neutrality.
Before some things there can be no neutrality.
When Hitler's Nazism was capturing the world, a
man wrote a book, say, called Only the
Stars Are Neutral.
There's no neutrality when it comes to Nazism.
There's no neutrality when it comes to Communism.
Some things you can't be neutral about, stand
up and take your medicine like a man.
When it comes to Jesus Christ, there's no
neutrality.
He that is not for me is against
me.
He that gathers not with me scattereth.
Wouldn't it be a terrible thing if in
that hour we find that we had been
camp followers of the Lord, mixed multitude only?
Wouldn't it be a tragic thing if we
found in that day that we had never
really obeyed him?
We'd been wooed to believing in him by
thoughts of fear or thoughts of how much
better a country is that believes in God,
and we've heard men say, our noble heritage
of religion, and it charmed us.
But we ourselves never actually found him, God
and Savior.
That would be a terrible thing, I think,
a terrible thing.
And much worse for you, because you have
had a chance to know.
I trust it isn't true, but it would
be frightful, it would be terrible, terrible for
me if I'd preach to others and myself
be a castaway.
Terrible, terrible.
I'd rather have died like my old dog
Mac back in the hills of Pennsylvania that
got old and they shot him to get
him out of his misery.
Better had I died and sleep beside his
old carcass than that.
And that I stand and preach these holy
things and myself be a castaway.
Which side are you on?
He that is not with me, is against
me.
No neutrality there.
To be for him is to believe on
him, obey him, and let the world know.
Let the world know.
No underground, no Christian underground.
No hiding place, no underground.
If ye deny me before men, I'll deny
you before my Father which art in heaven.
Tell the world and never let them hear
the last of it.
He's my Lord and my God to the
glory of God the Father.
Never let the world hear the last of
it.
Don't hide.
Stop doing some things and begin doing others
and start giving your tithe and start pledging
to missions and start attending services.
But don't tell anybody you're a Christian.
No, no, no, you can't do it.
He that is not for me is against
me.
He that's not gathering under my banner is
gathering under my enemy's banner.
You're denying me before men, I'll deny you
before God in heaven.
Let the world know.
Go home and tell thy people what God
hath done for thee.
Go home to school and let the people
in school know what God's done for thee.
Let everybody know.
Don't hide.
Obey him as Lord and Savior means.
Believe on him, obey him, and let the
world know.
O Lord, O Lord Jesus, our Lord, the
great world, sons of Cain, nice people, many
of them, friendly people, people that would give
a dollar if we got in trouble, lend
us their lawn mower, help us if we
got a flat tire, good people.
But in religion, the followers of that man
who brought the flowers and didn't bring the
blood.
Maybe Cain, maybe Abel's disposition wasn't as nice
as Cain's, but he had found a refuge
under blood, and he was born of the
New Spirit.
And then he that was only born once
murdered him that was born twice.
O God, we hate to think of it.
We love people, we love the world, we
want to get along with everybody.
We wish that we could always nod our
head and amen everything everybody says.
We hate to be on the other side.
We hate to be stubborn, contentious.
But O Jesus, they are saying, thou art
a good man.
Others are saying, no, religion deceives people.
So they are fighting it out, and they
are both wrong.
O Christ, thou art more than a man,
thou art God's man.
Thou art God thyself, God, begotten of the
Father before all ages.
Thou art thyself, man, born of the Mary
in time, of perfect man and perfect God
compounded.
This night, O Lord Jesus, we pray that
the carelessness and the breeziness might go out
of our spirits.
We might wait to know who said, O
Lord, we take thy side.
Even if it's against our friends, we take
thy side.
We own thee, Lord, to boss us, to
tell us what to do, and we promise
to obey thee, O Lord.
We would be disciples of thine, taking the
cross and following thee.
We pray for any who may this night
not have taken this way, we pray for
such, they be here.
God have mercy, have mercy, O Son of
God, have mercy tonight, for the world is
very evil, and the times are waxing late,
and the judgment's drawing near.
We beseech thee, Lord, pity and spare and
forgive and have mercy on our poor souls.