Again tonight, from the book of John, and
I am going to talk about the results
of rejected life.
John 8, 12, these words, Then spake Jesus
again unto them, saying, I am the light
of the world.
He that followeth me shall not walk in
darkness, but shall have the light of life.
Then in the twelfth chapter, verse 46, the
same book, I am come a light into
the world, but whosoever believeth on me should
not abide in darkness.
And I want to support this by reading
a passage from the sixth chapter of the
book of Matthew, spoken by the same Lord,
but recorded by a different evangelist.
Verse 23, our Lord says, but, oh, we'll
read verse 22, too.
The light of the body is the eye.
If therefore thine eye be single, thy whole
body shall be full of light.
But if thine eye be evil, thy whole
body shall be full of darkness.
If therefore the light that is in thee
be darkness, how great is that darkness!
And even in our staid and straight-laced
King James Version, to avoid punctuation, there is
an explanation point following the word darkness.
How great is that darkness!
Now, I think you know that millions of
words are printed every day, literally millions of
words.
But there is not one authoritative word ever
published anywhere in the world, except, of course,
it comes from the sacred scriptures.
There is not one word published on the
North American continent that I would want to
die by.
If I knew that my evening this was
to be my last, and that I'd never
preach another sermon to see another sunrise, there
hasn't been a newspaper published anywhere in the
world today that I'd want to see.
There hasn't been a book published in 1954
that I'd want to read.
There hasn't been a word uttered in the
League for the United Nations that I would
want to hear.
There is no authority anyplace.
Everybody is writing and everybody is talking.
But for dying men, there is not one
word of authority anywhere, except as we hear
the sure, true, clarifying words of Jesus Christ.
So let us tonight hear these words, their
sure words, accurate fit the circumstances, their true
words, true to all the facts, present and
eternal, their clarifying words, in that they pierce
straight through all the fog of man's ideas,
straight through to the truth.
Now, our Lord is not only true, but
he is honest, and he doesn't have anything
to hide, and he doesn't have anything to
gain, and he doesn't have anything to fear,
and he doesn't have anybody whose favor he's
courting.
He's perfectly, completely frank, and he's loving with
it all.
This is not the cynical language of one
who, from his vantage point of safety, speaks
with contempt to those who are not supporting
him.
These are the loving, loyal words of one
who backed them up with his own blood.
And now this one tells us, authoritatively, that
men are by nature darkness and in darkness.
And then he tells us that he has
come to be their light.
He doesn't apologize or water it down or
put any notes in the margin saying, I
didn't quite mean that.
He tells us authoritatively and boldly, we are
in darkness and you are yourselves darkness, but
I am the light of the world.
Now, we're not going to try to prove
that.
Faith doesn't prove anything.
Faith believes or doubt rejects.
And he that has not faith, I have
nothing to say to him.
But he that has faith will hear the
words of God.
And Jesus says, I am the light of
the world, and he that followeth me shall
not walk in darkness, but shall have the
light of life.
Now, that's what he tells us.
And he tells us that the light will
not always shine on them.
For he says, walk while you have the
light, because the time will come when there
will be no light.
The light will not always shine, and it's
possible to reject the light and shut it
out.
And then he says, when that time comes,
how great is that darkness!
Now, that's not a question.
That is a statement put in the form
of a question followed by a lightning flash
of exclamation.
Now, there are two degrees of darkness, according
to our Lord.
There is the darkness that has never had
any light.
There is darkness that is the result of
no light available.
Behind them, in their darkness, we sing.
And we sing it correctly.
They are in darkness because there has never
been a sun to shine upon them.
And then there is another degree of darkness,
more intense than that, and that is the
darkness that follows rejected light.
The darkness of the night before the sun
comes up is one thing.
The darkness of the hermit who hides in
his cave among the cobwebs and bats, and
who will not come to the light, is
something else again.
The man can see the dim silver star
shining above, and he says, It is night,
and I fear to move, lest I fall
over a precipice, or into a river, or
trample on a snake.
I am afraid, I must stand still, I
have no light.
But there is hope for him, because giving
him a little time, the sun will arise.
That is the darkness of the heathen.
But the darkness of those to whom Jesus
spoke was not the darkness of the man
in the night who was waiting for the
sunrise.
It was the darkness of the man who
had fled from the sun up and was
hiding in a moral cave, refusing to come
out where the light could get to him.
Let's look at Israel before the coming of
the Lord.
Israel was a nation before Moses' time and
before that memorable and dramatic moment when the
man of God went on to the mount
among fire and smoke and cloud and sound
of a trumpet and had the law.
There had been some dim light.
God had appeared to Abraham and appeared to
Jacob and to Isaac, and the patriarchs had
some light.
There was the light of tradition handed down
and God's requirements accorded with that dim light.
And that is why some of the old
patriarchs did things that we wouldn't do today
and that our Lord would not have them
do, because God always takes into consideration the
intensity of the darkness or the degree of
the light.
And Israel before Moses' time did some strange
things.
Jacob did some strange things.
Jacob with his four wives had no rebuke
from God about it.
That was before the coming of the law.
Abraham and the rest of them did not
live the kind of lives that enlightened Christians
would live, but they lived in faith and
trust and obedience to the light they had.
Then came Moses and the law.
Then came a sunburst of revelation on Sinai's
mountain, and God told them about himself and
about man and about man's relationship to God
and the moral requirements of God and told
them of the origin and the destiny of
man and that man was made in the
image of God and that he fell and
that there must be a sacrifice.
And then they took that light and they
had light such light as no nation had.
The old Orientals had certain light, surely, and
the Greeks and the Romans and the Egyptians
had light.
But Israel had light of an intensity and
pureness of quality that no other nation had.
It was the very light of God revealed
in the law, and as soon as Israel
received that light, they were responsible for it.
Now, let me tell you this, my brother.
If you imagine that going to church is
something you can do with a shrug of
your shoulders and a snap of your finger,
let me correct that.
It isn't anything of the sort.
When you expose yourself to moral light, you
become responsible to that light and you become
responsible to obey it.
Therefore, going to church is not the casual
thing it's supposed to be.
All these ads tell us, go to church.
We see the ads here and there, and
some radio programs now close and say, go
to church Sunday or synagogue or temple.
And they want somebody to go to church.
It's supposed to be a very casual thing.
My brother, it's not a casual thing.
When Moses got the law on Sinai's mountain,
they became instantly morally responsible to that law.
There used to be in ancient days, when
I was for a short time in the
Army of the United States, a high-ranking
but private, there used to be something they
did that I don't know whether they do
it now.
So if this doesn't fit what you know
about the services, men, just remember that these
are different times.
But they would take a bunch of green
fellows in there and they'd put them through
the works.
I remember when you pulled your hands down,
everybody slapped his thighs until it sounded like
thunder.
And immediately we were corrected and told to
bring our hands down with a snap that
never touched.
I can still do it after all these
years.
But among other things that they told us
to do was to listen to what they
called the reading of the Articles of War.
You took a green rookie in there and
he could knock a sergeant down if he
got mad and there wasn't much said about
him.
He could disobey orders and they didn't do
too much to him.
But one day they lined them up and
they read the Articles of War.
And as soon as the Articles of War
were read, immediately they became responsible to military
law and any disobedience in wartime could have
brought upon them not only the guardhouse and
military court-martial, but death itself.
Instantly.
It only took a few minutes to read
the Articles of War, but they said, now
you're no rookies anymore.
Now you're not innocent civilians anymore.
Now you're responsible to the military.
And from here on you're soldiers responsible to
the military law, which in time of war
is strict and rigorous.
In exactly the same way Israel could wander
and sin, and God wouldn't in those days.
But the moment God took Moses on the
mountain, read to him the Articles of Morals,
the moral law, they became instantly accountable to
God and accountable to that law.
I wish I could tell you that the
result was a nation of supermen.
I wish I could tell you that they
all snapped to attention and said, yes, sir,
and began to walk in obedience to the
law, but I can't.
I can tell you they did nothing of
the sort.
I can tell you that they followed their
own lusts and affections, and they broke that
law time and time again until God rose
up early in the morning and stretched forth
his hands to them, and they would not
hear.
And God sent punishment upon them and scattered
them like chaff to the ends of the
world.
Look at the nations before the coming of
our Lord, the nations of the world.
And if you can look at an old
map, you'll see them there.
Idumea, Achaia, Palestinian nations, Syria, Greece,
Rome, and all the nations of the East.
They were in darkness.
They had their philosophies, and they had their
religions, and they had their low idolatries, and
they had their high dreams of a single,
one God.
And they had their Plato's and Aristotle's, and
they had their monotheists and their believers in
the true God.
They had all this.
But their light was only the light they
got out of their own head, the dim,
muted light of their own thinking.
They had not the light they lighteth in
the sense that Jesus meant when he said,
I am the light of the world.
The very best they had was inadequate, and
the very worst was too low to describe.
The welter of vice and superstition that took
them was men that made beasts out of
it.
And then came Christ, and the light was
shining.
The light that had always been in the
world, the light that lighteth every man, the
light that gives a certain moral responsibility to
every man, now added to it the shining
light from above.
John tells us that Jesus Christ was that
light.
And for 200 years that light shined, and
shined during that time on all the civilized
world.
Men became responsible for what they saw, and
men were responsible for what that light revealed,
and men are now responsible for what that
light revealed.
Think not of dispensations and changes of years
in the passing of centuries.
The light that will rise tomorrow morning to
give light to the city of Chicago, shone
on Abraham when he came out of Ur
of the Chaldeans.
Yes, it had been old when Abraham took
his family and left Ur of the Chaldeans
to go into a land which I will
show unto thee, and that light was old
when it shone down on the bowers and
flower gardens of the Garden of Eden when
Adam and Eve walked in sinless purity hand
in hand, before they committed the tragic act
that plunged the world into moral night.
And it was old before Adam was.
So let us remember that the light that
lights us tomorrow or now and tomorrow out
of heaven is the same sun that shone
back there.
And a thousand years from now, at the
end of some millennium, that light will still
be the same light shining on the bodies
and minds of men, filling the body, as
Jesus said, full of light through the eye,
doing the marvelous chemistry of photosynthesis, causing the
flowers to grow and the plants to be
green, be the same sun.
So the passing of the years and the
change of history and the change of the
maps, the rise and fall of kings and
the fall and rise of empires hasn't changed
the light that came when Mary gave birth
to the sun.
His name was called Jesus.
He shone back there and he shines now.
And just as the sun as it moves
around the earth may shine upon the roofs,
the tile roofs of the homes of the
rich or may shine upon the grass roofs
of the homes of the poor, may shine
on tyranny or shine on filth, may shine
on poverty or shine on wealth, it is
the same sun shining in unbroken continuum from
the beginning, since God set it in the
heaven and said, light the day.
So there is a light that has come
into the world and the passing of time
and the new inventions and the penetrating of
the minds of man into science doesn't change
anything at all.
The light still shines.
The light shines on a new nation conceived
in liberty and dedicated to the principle that
all men are created equal, a nation that
is not very old in the long sweep
of history.
We call it America.
We stand stiff at attention with our hands
in front of us and our hat in
our hand.
We sing the Star Spangled Banner.
We're glad for the nation whose flag flies
over every post office and schoolhouse in America.
But before America was, the light shone.
And after America has been dissolved in the
flux of nations, the light will be shining.
And the red man roams the hills and
vales that we now call the vales of
Temple Hill, the light will be shining.
When God forbid that any of us should
live to see it, the heel of the
oppressor camps on the eastern seaboard and starts
west to conquer our land, the light will
still shine.
There's been no change.
I am the light.
The light is here.
He is the light, and there is no
other light.
Men called for other religions.
Wells, before he died, called for another religion
and said we ought to have another Bible,
and said that there ought to be a
synthesis of religions.
And I have even seen and bought Bibles
that were supposed to be a synthesis of
all good things.
I held and attempted to buy and didn't
Bibles that were compounded out of all the
high, fine, lofty parts of mankind from the
beginning.
But that doesn't change it.
The light is still shining, and men can
compile their little Bibles and die, and the
worms can crawl into their brain chambers and
feed on the gray matter that one time
compiled a Bible that had no God in
it.
But the light still shines, and the light
that's shown on Palestine shines on Chicago tonight
without diminution.
There's no dimming down of that light.
I am the light of the world, he
said.
He that follows me shall not walk in
darkness, and he said it not to them
there only, but said it to us here
also.
Says it not only in Hindu lands, but
says it in America.
Says it not only among the Indians of
South America, but says it among the white
people of Chicago, Illinois.
So we hear it, and we're responsible.
And there is no avoiding it.
And we can bog ourselves down in argument
all we want to.
We can get mad at the preacher because
he is a little too straight-laced.
I take up beating all the time.
I get letters as if they were not
in print with Burton's blisters on me.
I've got so I can grin and read
them to brother Mac that they say, Listen
to this one.
So I get letters, not from around here.
I don't get letters from our people.
I don't mean that.
You don't write me letters.
You call me up.
But I mean they get letters from all
over.
Most of them thank God are good, favorable,
warm-hearted letters telling me they're praying for
me.
But once in a while there will be
one that will really take the hide off.
But I can't help it, and I don't
care.
We're responsible for the like.
And you can't hide behind differences of opinion.
You can't hide behind modes of baptism.
You can't hide behind church politics.
You can't hide behind philosophies.
You can't hide behind this crazy relativity of
morals they're teaching in the schools now.
You can't hide.
He said, I am the light of the
world, and the light shineth in the darkness,
and the darkness comprehends it not.
He that follows me shall not walk in
darkness.
But if you quench the darkness and dim
it down, how great will be the darkness.
The light that shines is the light from
heaven from God.
It is the light in the face of
Jesus Christ.
You don't have to know a world of
theology.
There is a light shining.
The boy that gets up in the morning
can find his way to school with a
light.
He doesn't have to be able to know
the speed of light.
He couldn't remember till he got to school
anyhow.
He doesn't have to know how many millions
of miles the sun is away.
He doesn't have to know the size of
the sun or how far the flames of
light go from its surface.
He can tell us that, but he doesn't
need to know it.
He only needs to get up and in
the light of it walk to school.
In the light of it stay out from
under trucks and cars.
In the light of it walk to school.
The farmer doesn't need to know much about
the starry heavens above.
He only needs to know that when the
weather is right and the season is right
he can plow and plant, and then when
nature moves on a little later he can
reap and store.
He only needs to know that.
There is a light that shines upon the
world, and there is a light that shines
on the hearts of men.
You don't have to know all that can
be known.
Israel did not reject the Lord because of
philosophical reasons.
They rejected the Lord for moral reasons.
Now, you listen to me say this.
This is the kind of thing people attack
me for saying.
They write me in and say, why don't
you modify your statement?
Why are you always making flat statements?
Of course I am.
And I'm telling you this, I'm making this
statement, that I do not believe there is
anybody that ever rejects Jesus on philosophical grounds.
He rejects Jesus on moral grounds and then
hides behind false philosophical grounds.
He's got a pet sin somewhere.
He's in love with his iniquity.
Then he calls me or some other pastor
up and says, I want an appointment.
So we give him an appointment.
And he sits there and says, I have
intellectual difficulties about the Pentateuch.
I have intellectual difficulties about Jomon Yisrael.
I cannot believe that the world is created
in seven days.
If he was an honest man, God in
heaven would respect him.
But my Bible tells me that when you
preach Jesus Christ, the Holy Ghost will take
Jesus and bring conviction on men and convict
them of sin and righteousness and judgment.
And I believe that every one of these
that are hiding behind intellectual difficulties are hiding
because they're morally unwilling to obey.
When we fall in love with our sin,
we can imagine and manufacture 10,000 syllogisms
to keep us away from the cross.
But it's wonderful how when a person gives
up his sin and puts his pride under
his feet and looks to the light, the
whole body and mind is flooded with light.
I've talked to people that have come out
of rationalism and unbelief and atheism and all
the rest, and they smile at you with
clear eyes and say, oh, wonderful now, the
light has flooded in.
A blind man can argue there is no
sunshine, but when he gets his sight, the
sunshine floods in.
So Israel did not reject our Lord on
doctrinal grounds, nor on philosophical grounds, really.
So men reject him today.
In case any of you would want a
bit of support further for what I've been
saying, John 3, verse 19, verse 21, notice
this.
This is the condemnation that light has come
into the world, and men love darkness rather
than light, because they are deep for evil.
For everyone that doeth evil hateth the light,
and neither cometh to the light lest his
deed should be reproved.
But he that doeth truth cometh to the
light, that his deeds may be made manifest
that they are wrought in God.
Now, if that means anything, it means that
our Lord teaches that people who reject him
reject him for moral reasons.
This is the condemnation that light has come
into the world, and men love darkness rather
than light, because their deeds were evil.
They didn't want to follow him.
Israel not only disregarded the light, but Israel
rejected the light.
God called them stiff-necked and hard of
heart.
They had a perverse antipathy to the light,
because it interfered with their iniquity.
And that is our difficulty today, more dangerous
than Communism to Christianity.
I don't think Communism is dangerous to Christianity.
I don't think it is.
I don't believe that Communism can ever destroy
Christianity, if Christians live like Christians.
I couldn't destroy Christianity in Rome.
Every time they killed ten, a hundred more
came forward and said, kill me too.
Sidney, history tells us that.
Back in Roman days, when they were killing
Christians, there were hundreds and thousands going into
the land with a great Roman architect.
He planned and built an amphitheater, a beautiful,
wonderful thing.
He was the big architect of the day.
That's Christopher Wren, that he signed, if you
please.
And the old Roman emperor decided that they
would have a kind of a dedication of
the thing, so he said, get a lot
of hungry lions and bring them into the
pit, and loose them into the runways, and
we'll lead the Christians down, and we'll have
a gorgeous time looking at them kill these
heretics.
So they did, and they killed them one
after the other.
Of course, they were making a great deal
out of this architect.
And the architect was present, and he walked
down after they had slain, after the lions
had chewed up a few Christians, and the
Christians had praised God, and thanked, and died
in their blood.
This architect walked up to the man, they
always called him sire, I never know where,
but he said, sire, I have a request.
Give an order to have me thrown into
the pit.
And the emperor said, are you kidding?
He said, I suppose you use other language,
but he said, are you kidding about it?
He said, no, I mean it.
He said, why?
He said, I belong to that despised codger
trying to wipe out.
I'm a Christian.
And the famous architect was picked up and
hurled into the arena, and soon his genius
was torn apart and released, because God had
gave it to him.
And the thing went on until the emperors
began to get embarrassed, and they said, what
are you going to do with these fools?
And they killed ten and a hundred more,
sand up.
And they were rushing like flies, and so
they had to call it off.
And they said, shush it down, let's try
to stay safe, but don't kill too many,
or the place is getting too bloody.
Christian blood was the seed that made the
church grow.
So I don't believe that communism can ever
destroy the church of Christ.
She can only destroy herself.
And we worry about the church behind the
iron curtain.
My brothers and sisters, there have been periods
down through the years when Christians met in
damp basements among the flatworms and cobwebs and
worshipped their God, and then sneaked out to
their job, and at night, like hidden again,
went to some hiding place and prayed and
sang in a low voice and read what
portions of scripture they could get, and they
kept the fire alive in the midst of
the fiercest and most brutal persecution.
The fire of God can't be damped out
by the waters of man's persecution.
It's only when the church is rotten inside
that she can die.
If the church in Russia is dead today,
it's dead not because of communism.
No, communism is from hell without any question
about it.
But hell can't destroy the church.
The gates of hell cannot prevail against it.
I say if the church is dead, and
I don't think it is, but if it
is dead in Russia, it's because the Russian
church, which is the Greek Orthodox church, had
died from within.
The tree that's blown down in the storm
is rotten in its heart so it wouldn't
be blown down.
And the church that falls because of persecution
is a church that was dead before it
fell.
So I haven't much worry about communism, neither
have I any worry about liberalism.
Some of my poor, tired, brethren, saints yet
pursuing, are still running after liberals, taking a
shot at them wherever they can see them
out of the sight of an eye, they're
giving it to them.
I don't bother them because they're dead anyhow,
the liberals and modernists.
And they can't kill Christianity.
Liberalism can't kill Christianity.
It tries it, but it can't.
The liberal schools and seminaries and colleges always
got a pest or two coming in to
the registrar and saying, I'm a Christian, I'm
an evangelical, I believe the whole Bible.
And they try to frown in a very
cultured way, but they are very mad inside.
And they say, well, you go on and
get your classes and you may change your
mind.
And he goes through and takes it all
and comes out with his mind unchanged and
goes out still a Christian.
They don't like it, but what are they
going to do about it?
And always find everywhere somebody that believes in
God, somebody that's still true to God.
I was in a membership here this morning,
young men, who went through the fires of
liberalism and modernism and has come out disgusted
and stands up and says, I believe in
God.
What are you going to do with a
man like that?
Liberalism can't destroy that kind of faith.
I hate it.
The atheists, the unbelievers, the pagan, I can
go along with.
He doesn't know any better.
But the liberal, he's the man who has
put his own eyes out.
And I have a much sympathy for him,
but he can't destroy the church.
For the faith of our father is an
eternal fire that blazes in the bosom to
believe in men.
And whether they can ever get to a
church or not, it still blazes there.
Where, where does Christianity destroy itself in a
given generation?
It destroys itself by not living in the
light, by professing a truth that it does
not obey, by destroying the clutch between, the
connection between their theology and their volitional life.
This is what I say that I believe
that makes me a Christian.
It's how certainly I move in the direction
of what I believe that will bring me.
So it is rottenness within, carelessness, worldliness, evil,
refusing to walk in the light, refusing to
let the light of God find and change
my dirty little mess of iniquity where I
lie.
That's what's destroying us, sir.
Love of money, love of the world, unconfessed
iniquity, private sins that nobody dreams we have.
That's what's destroying the church of Christ.
What the combined forces of hell can't do,
the church can do.
It says that if we walk in the
light, we have fellowship, and I am come
a light into the world.
Those who ever believe other than me should
not abide in darkness.
Those are the words of our Savior.
In the other text I read, I am
the light of the world.
He that follows me shall not walk in
darkness, but shall have the light of life.
And there we have it.
But when the light that is in you
turns to darkness, how great is that darkness.
How great was the darkness when Adolf Hitler
was in the Christian country, turning to the
destruction of Europe and said, we'll conquer Europe
or you won't know it.
And they didn't know it.
You and I are still paying high taxes
today, spending over foods and money today to
help to try to straighten up a continent
that one devil possessed man, who had rejected
the light brought upon the world, devastation and
night and darkness.
And that slow-eyed little father of color
with the enigmatic monolithic smile they call Stalin.
How many fields, how much blood, how many
gallons, how many seas and rivers of blood
is he being boiled in tonight?
He was a Georgian and heard the gospel
and studied for the ministry.
Did you know that?
Joseph Stalin.
Vassal of Yugoslavia or something, what do you
know what?
Suppose I ever get to write the name.
But that was he made when he called
himself the man of steel, Stalin.
And he trampled the light of God under
his feet and the blood of the lamb
and became the murder of nature.
How brave is that?
While most sinners are not put in history
where they can be so dramatic in their
sin, the darkness is just as great.
And I tell you, there are many that
are trampling under feet the truth that the
heathen yonder are starving for, the opportunity for
deliverance.
Now, I won't make this closing word, and
it is, watch what you do with personal
light, the light God has given you for
your own guidance.
How many there are in bitterness tonight that
sometime in a happier moment had light and
didn't walk it.
How many young men, beaten and defeated and
old before their time, disgusted and betrothed and
yet trying to live for Christ, but showing
poor examples of what a Christian ought to
be, yet hanging around the church, giving a
little to the Lord's work and doing the
best they can.
But back there, five years, ten years, twenty
years ago, the clear light of God shined
on them.
But they allowed their girlfriend to change their
whole future.
Now they are married and have been, and
both wish they weren't.
They never say so.
Babies, deaths, sickness, defeat, scourge, both trying to
struggle along and be Christians.
And thank God they are, and I hope
they make it through, and I believe they
will, to be Christians.
But back there, they disobeyed personal light.
How many inhabit relationships God has rebuked, the
light has shown in and rebuked, but you
haven't done anything about it.
If you ever try this next summer, try
this, you'll remember it.
You're in the country somewhere on a picnic
or tramping around.
Roll a stone over it, a stone that's
sticking up above the ground and you can
handle it.
Roll it over, and you'll see flatworms and
bugs and beetles and every kind of leggy
and weird-looking insect, miniature dragons.
They'll dash in all directions.
Afraid of you?
No, sir, afraid of the light.
They are the dwarves in darkness.
They are the vermin of night.
They belong under the stone.
When you turn the stone over, you panic
them.
They don't see you.
They're not afraid of you, they're afraid of
the light.
If you still have an old-fashioned house
that has a basement in it, you go
down in your basement sometimes, big after it's
been dampened, and as soon as you throw
the light in, they duck for under the
nearest place to hide.
They're dwellers in the night.
So is with the conscience that has learned
to love its iniquity.
Every new flash of light panics it.
But instead of coming out to the light
and saying, here I am, my God, do
as you what you will, they hide under
the nearest rock.
How many Christians, oh, I hear these optimists.
Boy and man, are we filled with optimism
the day in which we live.
We've got more people publishing statistics to show
that we ought to immediately begin to make
believers, for we, for the largest percentage of
our inhabitants.
They make speeches in which they tell us
statistically that there are more Christians in America
than there ever have been, more people in
the churches, more money given to the church,
and all that.
Can't fool me with statistics, brother.
As soon as the light shines, 90%
of those statistics run for under a rock.
They hide under a rock because they're not
going to obey Jesus Christ.
They get his gospel for moral reasons, so
they go to his church for social reasons.
So what's the light?
I mean, that's for me too.
I've got that to think about.
You've got it to think about.
He's giving the light.
He says, I'm the light of the world.
And if anybody follows me, he has the
light of life.
The light will go brighter unto me everlasting
days.
You'll be my disciples, and where I am
there will my servants be, and my Father
will honor him, he says elsewhere, if you'll
come along.
But you've got to have your spirit, and
the pattern of your sin destroyed, and come
into the light.
He that loveth the light, he comes to
the light.
He that is true, he cometh to the
light.
What about you tonight?
That's all.
Are you obeying the light?
Is there any unobeyed light?
How dare you ask God for more light
tomorrow morning or tonight before you go to
bed?
How dare you say, oh, God, lead me?
How can God lead a stubborn man?
Don't pray.
Dare not pray.
Oh, God, give me light.
How can God give light to a man
that hasn't walked in the light he has?
But it is in you, the light that
God's given you.
I hope you're walking in it.
I have reason to know that many of
you are, but for those of you that
aren't, I've been very bold tonight.
I like that pat, which is intended to
be humorous, but it has a smile in
it, because Isaiah likes it very bold, and
says, except the remnant had been left, God
would have destroyed Israel.
So I've liked it very bold tonight, and
I dare to tell you there is a
light that shines on us all.
We're responsible for that light.
That light gives itself up in Jesus Christ,
who is the light of the world.
He calls us to walk in that light
at our own expense, the expense of our
sins and our nigglies.
Put them away and come and follow the
Lamb.