Now, I'd like to ask you, please, to
help me, at least with the text, and
turn to 1 Kings 18.
We'll all turn to 1 Kings 18.
I'll give you a moment to find that.
1 Kings 18, and I'll read verse 16,
you read 17, we'll read responsibly, up to
and including verse 40, but not after that.
End of verse 40, that's the end of
the scripture passage for us tonight.
1 Kings 18, 16, responsibly.
So Obadiah went to meet Ahab and told
him, and Ahab went to meet Elijah.
And he answered, I have not troubled Israel,
but thou and thy father's house, in that
ye have forsaken the commandment of the Lord,
thou hast followed Balaam.
So Ahab went unto all the children of
Israel and gathered the prophets together under Mount
Carmel.
Then said Elijah unto the people, I, even
I, only remain a prophet of the Lord,
but Baal's prophets are 450 men.
And call ye on the name of your
gods, and I will call on the name
of the Lord.
And the God that answereth by fire, let
him be God.
And all the people answered and said, it
is well spoken.
And they took the bullock which was given
them, and they dressed it and called on
the name of Baal from morning until noon,
saying, O Baal, hear us.
But there was no voice or any that
answered.
And they leaped upon the altar which was
made.
And they cried aloud and cut themselves after
their manner with knives and lances till the
blood gushed out upon them.
And Elijah said unto all the people, Come
near unto me.
And all the people came near unto him.
And he repaired the altar of the Lord
which was broken down.
And with the stones he built an altar
in the name of the Lord.
And he made a trench about the altar
as great as would contain two measures of
seed.
And he said, Do it the second time.
And they did it the second time.
And he said, Do it the third time.
And they did it the third time.
And it came to pass at the time
of the offering of the evening sacrifice that
Elijah the prophet came near and said, Lord
God of Abraham, Isaac, and of Israel, let
it be known this day that thou art
God in Israel, and that I am thy
servant, and that I have done all these
things at thy word.
Then the fire of the Lord fell and
consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and
the stones, and the dust, and licked up
the water that was in the trench.
Join me in reading verse 40 for the
last.
And Elijah said unto them, Take the prophets
of Baal.
Let not one of them escape.
And they took them.
And Elijah brought them down to the brook
of Chisholm, and flew them there.
Father, we pray that the Spirit of God,
thy Spirit, the Spirit of the Father and
the Son, may take this ancient truth and
let it be released in power tonight over
our consciences.
Lord, we haven't long, and we're in great
need.
So we beseech thee, O risen Lord Jesus,
confirm thy word this night and perform the
counsel of thy messengers.
Amen.
This story covers a period when Israel was
in the low times in her history.
By birth and by covenant and by blood
purchase and by all the high privileges God
gave Israel, the nation was committed to the
highest righteousness in personal living and conduct and
in the purest worship of the Most High
God.
This was not something added.
This sprang naturally out of Israel's birth and
covenant and purchase and the giving of the
law and the privileges which God gave them.
And yet, in spite of their being, in
spite of all this, they were living such
lives as that there was a continual and
constant controversy going on between them and God.
Part of the difficulty and the chief difficulty
had been the coming of the Sidonian vampire
Jezebel.
Now, Jezebel was the wife, as you know,
of Ahab.
Ahab was the king of Israel.
He wasn't much of a king, really, but
he was there.
He filled the place for the time being.
And he had a wife, and that wife
was not a Jewess.
She was the daughter of the king of
Sidon, and thus she was a Sidonian, and
she was a Baalite.
Her husband, Ahab, was a Jew and was
supposed to be a worshipper of Jehovah.
For wherever the word Lord occurs here in
capital letters, it's Jehovah, the great God, the
I Am that I Am.
And the Baalites, of course, were set over
against that.
And this man went out of his own
nation.
There were lots of women in Israel, I
suppose, and he wanted a wife of the
royal family of Sidon, so he picked this
good-looking cramp Jezebel, married her.
I suppose he told himself, I'll marry the
girl, and then after I marry her, I'll
make Christian out of her.
She's a Baalite now, and she paints herself
like a refrigerator, and she's all mixed up,
but I'll win her, I'll win her to
Jehovah.
But the thing worked the other way around.
He didn't win her at all, and I
don't mind.
Now, we men, we're supposed to be the
strong race, but why don't we men wake
up and admit it?
We're not.
You never heard of a man marrying a
woman, a Reformer, that ever worked?
It just never worked.
It rarely works the other way around, although
occasionally some strong-willed woman will marry a
weakling and pull him up with But mostly
it works the other way, and she pulls
him down to her level.
Very, very rarely the other way around.
It didn't work the right way with Ahab
and Jezebel.
She was a Baalite, and she believed her
religion.
Now, this is one thing that I never
could understand.
Why the people who have a religion that
right, half the time don't believe it, and
those who have an all-mixed-up, false,
miserable, degrading religion believe it fervently?
She did.
She believed in Baal and the Baalite.
Baalim is the plural, and Baal is the
singular, and there were lots of them.
If you're talking about one God, you call
him Baal.
If you're talking about two or more, you
call them Baalim.
Well, the Baalim were everywhere, and this woman
was promoting it, you know, and that was
a degrading worship.
Now, we're not using words carelessly.
You couldn't worship Baal very long, but what
you were worse than you were when you
started, because of the degrading quality of the
worship.
And it had cruel and immoral ritual.
I never was any of these fellows to
titillate a congregation by borderline descriptions of immoralities,
but your imagination will picture for you, I'm
sure, if you don't know from history, what
the immoral rituals were that went with the
worship of Baal.
And this woman was pushing it and promoting
it.
She was the evangelist of the hour, not
for Jehovah or decency and righteousness, but for
Baal and evil.
Now, Israel had a moral dilemma here.
Here was the royal family.
Ahab, the Jew or the Macedonian, he was
committed, at least nominally, to the worship of
Jehovah, and she was committed positively to the
worship of Baal.
And Israel was in a state of dilemma.
When they knew what was right and good,
for Israel did know what was right and
good, Israel knew partly by the deep wisdom
of life.
You know, there's a passage of scripture that's
very mysterious, and if you say much about
it, they'll accuse you of being a mystic.
But it's that passage that says that he
was the light, that light of every man
that cometh into the world.
Now, you mark it, my friend, that even
the man who has never heard of the
Bible, God, nor the gospel, nor anything having
to do with revealed religion, yet has more
light than you imagine he has.
For he has been in some measure illuminated
by the light, that light of every man
that cometh into the world, so that a
pagan man living in nakedness in the hinterlands
of New Guinea knows something of what right
and wrong are, and he knows when he's
broken the code.
Now, his culture, his practices, and the crystallization
of religious beliefs may make right wrong and
wrong right to him, but nevertheless, the dim
light that shines over the landscape of his
soul shows him the rocks and the crevices
and the dangerous spots, and God will hold
him responsible for it.
Now, Israel knew partly by the deep wisdom
of light, the light that lighted every man,
and also because of the holy scriptures.
Israel had the divine revelation, the holy scriptures,
that nobody else had.
And then there was the example of good
men.
When you're thanking God these days, when you're
worrying about crooked politicians and movie actresses with
five husbands, change it around and thank God
for the good people you know, for you
all know some good people.
You ever think about that?
Sometime when you're feeling real mean, when you
just feel emotionally as if you weren't a
Christian at all, your faith is holding and
you know you are and your anchor holds
in the storms of life, but you're just
feeling really bad, nothing right.
Take a little time out, get down on
your knees, get an ordinary tablet or flat
piece of paper, and write down the names
of the good people you know.
You know, it'll surprise you.
Find out how many good people there are
left in the world.
And I'm grateful to God for every one
of them.
And I'm grateful to God for the ability
to appreciate them.
Thankful to God.
You know, I think it was Milton that
said that next to being a poet, the
next degree of genius was the ability to
appreciate one.
And so it is with music.
I listen to the great musicians, particularly the
four great Germans, for I admit that the
four great Germans have won me.
Bach, Beethoven, Haydn, and Mozart.
The others are all right, but those four
great men, they've won me over.
Now I can't write a line of music
and I can't even sing on pitch, but
I have this much ability I can enjoy
it until it hurts.
I believe that it's possible for us to
appreciate good people, even people better than we
are.
That's why I believe in reading the scriptures
constantly, in order that I might fellowship with
holy men and women.
And if I am not that good, I
at least can appreciate them.
And as I mingle with them, why, there
seeps into my heart by a kind of
spiritual osmosis a little bit of what they
were, and I'm a better man for having
gone along with them.
So Israel knew not only by the deep
knowledge in their hearts, they knew by the
instruction from the scriptures, and they knew by
the example of good men.
And they knew by that inner voice which
is the Holy Spirit.
Now, here they were, knowing what was right,
knowing who to worship, knowing how they should
live.
But it happened that the popular vogue was
the other way.
It was the other way because of this
pretty, nasty, bad, wicked personality plus gal that
had married the king.
And had him, the little fella, poor little
Ahab, you know I pity Ahab, by God
forgive me, I don't want to be unkind
to you.
God made him and let him pass for
a man.
But he wasn't much of a man, really.
He was a weakling.
He was a kind of a mouse, trying
hard to be big enough to be a
rat.
But he never quite made it, you know.
And this poor fella, here he was, and
he was under the control, we can just
write him off now, because from here on
Jezebel takes over.
Talk about hand-pecked, he was so full
of holes he wouldn't shut out the light.
Because she'd pecked him so, Miss Jezebel, he
had nothing to say about what went on,
all he did was sulk.
Remember when he didn't get what he wanted,
he went to bed and turned his face
to the wall and his countenance fell.
He sulked, he was a sulker.
And I know very few things in all
the world that are more disgusting than a
male sulker.
Now when a baby sulks, it's cute when
their little lip comes out and they look
cute, I like to see that.
But the trouble is, some of you fellas
have been voting for years and you still
stick your lower lip out and pout.
Try to get your way by going to
bed and turning your face to the wall.
Oh boy, I'd just let you lie there
until you rotted, if I were your wife.
But this king was that kind of a
king.
And he didn't have anything to say, and
Jezebel was setting the moral standards.
She didn't have any Hollywood to help her
out, but she managed it pretty well by
herself.
Whatever she wanted, everybody did.
If she painted two layers, everybody painted two
layers.
And if she cut it short, everybody cut
it short.
And if her dresses were long, theirs were
long.
And if they came up, they all came
up.
And they all had excuses, but they were
all careful to follow the fashion of Jezebel,
running after her.
And then they worshipped the way she worshipped.
That was the vote to do, too.
They worshipped the way she worshipped.
And the people then were too weak and
cowardly to obey God, and they found it
easier to worship her, to follow her.
That's always the easiest thing, the old saying
about the dead fish.
Any dead fish can float down.
I get amused, and I set my English
jaw a little bit harder when I find
everybody saying the same thing.
Somebody wrote it from California, said that when
Carl Chessman was put to death out there,
that at a particular college, they said it
for the people were walking about like zombies
on that day, and there was a deep
gloom prevailed in all that college.
And the professors walked around with tears in
their eyes, because that's the vogue, you see.
That's the way folks should feel about it.
Nobody pities the woman that's been raped.
Nobody pities the man that has been slain.
In Chicago, there lies in a hospital a
man who was a cab driver and was
a decent fellow behaving himself and making his
money to keep his family.
The fellow got in his car and said,
Give me your money.
And there was a little scuffle, he was
shot through the spine.
He didn't die, he's better, but he didn't
die.
But he went into a deep state of
unconsciousness, and that has been probably five years
ago.
And he still lies in that state of
unconsciousness, simply a vegetable.
He has no consciousness, no intelligence, no anything.
And they never caught the man who shot
him.
His wife works to keep the family, and
the newspapers reported the other day that every
day for five years, that little woman after
her work has gone to the hospital and
talked to her husband and said hello and
patted his forehead and talked to him and
he lay in deep slumber unable to reply.
But if they catch the man that shot
him, all the professors will wipe their eyes
and blow their nose copiously about the fellow
they caught.
But they'll have no sympathy for the victim
that lies a vegetable in a bed.
And the woman, his wife, who weeps over
his silent form for five years, can't get
sympathy for the decent people that are victimized.
You can only get it for a thoroughgoing
scoundrel who deserves ten thousand times more than
he'll ever get.
Well, that's the vogue, you see.
If the vogue ever turns the other way,
all these learned boys will blow their nose
on the other side, and they'll get all
worked up about something else.
Brother, if you're going to be a Christian,
you're going to have to learn to stand
against the vogue.
You're going to have to learn to listen
to the voice of God and to heed
the sound of an inaudible drum.
You're marching all together in another parade, and
the world's parade marching to the world's music
is going the wrong direction.
One of my little boys, when he was
about a little blond fellow, he's about two,
a band went nearby on Memorial Day.
And they marched on, and I always just
raise my eye and look at them, wait
until I can't hear the drum anymore and
go back to my business.
But little Bud, he decided to follow them.
So about two hours, we got a phone
call.
I don't know why.
My wife always was very careful to know
where they were, and so was I.
But in this case, we slept.
And then about two hours of both phones
said, have you got a little blond boy?
And we said, yeah, we have a little
blond boy.
And we said, he's up at our house.
He followed the band out of 111th Street
and up Western Avenue.
And he's up here all lost and wandering
around.
Well, I said, you just keep him there.
So I went up and got him.
He had followed a parade, and when the
parade broke up, he was lost.
He didn't know where he was.
And if there hadn't been a decent neighbor
miles away in the city to call us,
it might have been days before Bud showed
up.
Because he didn't know where he lived.
He didn't know where to tell him his
address was.
But he had followed the parade.
He loved the sound of the music.
And the Jews here were doing that thing.
Jezebel was beating the drum, and poor little
Ahab was playing the royal kite.
And off they were going on their way
to hell.
And Israel was too weak to obey God,
so they fell in line behind the parade.
Now, there was the dilemma they were in,
and there is exactly where we are today,
my friend.
Here we are in Avenue Road Church tonight
in Sydney, Toronto, the corner of Avenue Road
and Roxborough.
We're intelligent.
We're educated well enough to read and write,
most of us, some exceptions.
And we, I don't mean you either, but
we're some are too young to read and
write, I mean.
But here we are, and brothers and sisters,
we've got to make a decision, that's all.
We're going to have to decide whether this
religion business is of God, whether God's in
this, whether the Bible is real, whether hell
is hell and heaven is heaven, or whether
we can just follow the vogue and be
like everybody else.
We're going to have to make up our
mind.
Israel was in that state, and of course,
nobody's at rest when he's in that condition,
really, because he knows he's being cheated.
Everybody knows he's being cheated that follows a
band or parade that isn't going to heaven.
Everybody knows he's being cheated.
He knows he's being robbed of something very
precious and it worries him.
He knows he's dishonoring his soul and he's
deeply ashamed, but he covers it up with
amusement.
He knows he's violating the holy laws of
God and it makes him afraid.
And of course, the effect will depend upon
the degree of light.
Now, is it to be Baal or Jehovah?
And here was the question.
If Baal, in the verse 21 text, how
long, Halki, between two opinions?
I've heard that in the original that says
how long, Halki, between two unequal legs.
On Thursday they were up on the long
leg, that was Jehovah.
But on Friday they got down on the
low leg, that was Baal.
And on Saturday they got up on the
high leg, that was Jehovah again.
So they were trying to walk in the
middle and they were one leg shorter than
the other.
That's what they're telling me it means there.
Now, is this a Baal way?
For after all, the religion of the day
is the religion of Baal.
It's a religion that will let you get
away with anything.
If you just talk about love and the
unity of mankind and the brotherhood of the
world, including cruise ships, if you just talk
nice about that and sound very pious, you
can just do anything, there isn't any limit,
the sky is the limit, and there's no
morality, no righteousness, no godliness required.
Just live anyway, provided at the last you
say, well, we're all going the same way,
we're just going by different roads.
You know, that sounds so very spiritual.
And that's the way the Baalite lady talked,
Jezebel.
She told them, now you Jews, don't you
know that Baal has something to be said
in his favor, too?
Of course!
They have sex orgies and rights of iniquity
to worship him, but that's all right, that's
our way of looking at things.
Don't imagine that you know it all, they
said, I've heard that.
Well, Baal, now, what does Baal offer?
What does the world offer and what does
the cheap, shallow, religious world offer?
Well, they offer a few things.
They offer the customary fun and conformity.
If you do it, you conform and go
along with the crowd, they have it.
But Jehovah, he calls you to the good,
hard way.
The good, hard way with its present cost
and its eternal compensation.
What has Baal to offer?
What has the world to offer if we
surrender to the world?
What have they to offer?
They would lead you to think they have
a great deal to offer, but how utterly
helpless they are when tragedy strikes.
How utterly helpless when tragedy strikes.
Only a Christian knows how to die.
Everybody has to die, but only a Christian
can die with dignity.
Only a Christian can die with peace in
his heart.
So the world makes you believe they've got
the answer.
But the world doesn't have the answer.
I've seen through the world.
The world is a painted mask.
And behind that painted mask, there's a mask
of fear upon the face of the men
and women who march up and down.
They've got to have amusements and fun and
liquor and dope and demoral dance and all
the rest in order to keep from crying
out in fear like a child in the
night.
They cover up the fact that they're scared
and making a lot of racket and saying
that this is fun and then paying people
for it.
I'll never believe in the civilization.
I'll never believe that we're a civilized people.
When the Prime Minister of Canada and the
President of the United States make less money
than the cheapest clown in Hollywood, I will
never believe that when great and good men
with the weight of empire on their shoulders,
such as the two men I've named, have
an ordinary salary and they're fabulously wealthy out
there, cheap bulls of Bayshan, with nothing to
recommend them but a little ability.
When we're really civilized, we'll pay the milkman
more than the clown.
He brings milk to the baby.
When we're really civilized, we'll pay the grocer
man more than we do the actor who
only amuses us.
The grocer man feeds your insides.
When we're really civilized, we'll put the farmer
up on a level with the politician.
But we're not civilized.
We only think we are.
I don't know how I got over on
that.
That's not in the script, really.
I thought I'd say it anyhow because I'm
going to heaven one of these times and
I want to get everything off my chest
that I can.
Now, there's a good hard way, and God
calls you to it, my friend.
He doesn't call you to be a softy,
to be a blubber boy.
He calls you to be a soldier, a
good hard soldier.
I heard about a young lieutenant.
He said, you know, first lieutenant, I believe
they call him out in college.
Well, I heard about a second lieutenant.
And when the war got, when the battle
got on, he ran screaming and said, they're
shooting at me.
And a tough old sergeant said, what are
you out there for?
Of course they're shooting at you.
Of course they were.
He'd had it too easy.
Well, brother, that's what you're out there for.
And Satan is shooting at you.
He's going to get you if he can.
And we Christians are called to be tough,
to flex our muscles, and have a bit
of hard godliness.
Oh, I don't understand why the ministers feel
that they've got to pet and paw over
everybody to get them in, and dilute, and
edit, and modify, and amend, and trim down
the gospel.
Won't work, my brother.
A trimmed down gospel never saved a soul.
A trimmed down, diluted, edited religion is not
the religion that Christ died to establish.
And the heaven over yonder is not filled
full of weaklings that had to have somebody
to go along and help them over the
rough spots.
It's full of men, soldiers, and men, the
matron, and the maid, and the martyr, and
the dreamer, and the prophet, and the clean
man who lived and loved his God, and
loved his generation, and lived and died living
a good life, a hard life.
We've got to make up our mind.
Are we going to go the way the
world goes, excuse ourselves on the ground that
it's revoked?
Of course it's revoked.
Go to Jezebel, oh, see to that.
What are we going to do about it?
The veil has a lot to offer, and
we might as well admit it.
I hear it sometimes as preachers, and I
suppose I've done it myself because I've done
almost everything I can then, some time in
my life.
But I have heard the preachers talk about
how terribly burdened down men are with sin,
how they're burdened down.
Picture men with great weights on their backs,
and they say that there's no pleasure in
sin.
Did you ever read that passage that says,
Moses gave up the pleasures of sin, and
that he would rather take the hard way
than enjoy the pleasures of sin for a
season?
Of course sin has pleasure, of course it
has.
But you've got to break with that, you've
got to break from it, and follow Jehovah.
And the worse the country is, and the
worse the state of society, the harder it
is to break, and the more it's going
to cost you to break.
What has Baal to offer?
Baal has something, don't imagine he hasn't.
The world has something to offer, all right.
And the world will offer something.
There's something out there.
I don't say that it's all empty, there's
something out there.
You don't want to follow the Lord Jesus
Christ, if Baal be God's follower.
But if the Lord Jesus Christ is God,
follow him, but see to it that you
make up your mind.
Don't be in the middle, because you're neither
hot or cold, I'll spew you out of
my mouth.
The only place in the Bible where God
gets sick is when he faces up to
people that can't make up their minds whether
to serve God or Baal.
I believe that God has more respect for
a Baalite down on his knees before a
sect over, all given over to Baal, than
he does a fellow caught in the middle
who's afraid to worship God, but is afraid
to go all the other way.
And there he crumbles in the middle between
right and wrong.
Does that describe you?
God says it makes him sick.
I'll spew you out of my mouth.
Well, Baal has a lot to offer.
Let's name a few things briefly.
Baal has fun, if you're able to enjoy
it.
If you have health, you can have fun.
If you're in an economic position so that
you have time off, that's one thing that
capitalism has done, it's enabled us to have
time off for fun.
And the average person works hard for a
short time in order that he might have
fun for a while.
And he's willing to work hard as a
price for the fun that he'll have.
So Baal will give you fun, all right,
if you want it.
But when it's all over, what then?
If Jehovah should be God, and if what
I'm preaching tonight is true, and if Jesus
Christ does say, come and take up your
cross and follow me, and if there is
to be a judgment, and God is to
judge every man's heart according to his thoughts
and according to his deeds, then what about
that thing that Baal offered you?
You've had your fun, now take your medicine.
We'll be in that day.
Every time you're led astray, remember the person
that leads you astray leads you in the
lurch.
When Judas Iscariot betrayed Christ, Judas Iscariot was
deserted by the people that he had sold
Christ to.
When with a spasm of conscience he went
back to the priests and said, here, take
the money, they turned coldly away and said,
what is that to us?
And it's always so.
They lead you astray and then leave you.
Thank God for that one named Jesus that
leads you on the right path and never
leaves you.
And then, of course, there's possessions.
You can pile up possessions.
They're very rich here, very rich here in
the Western world.
You can pile them up, but when you
get them piled up, what good are they
going to do you?
Well, maybe I told you this, too, but
I made a family mad one time, very
mad.
And they proved that they had a right
to be mad by buying and going to
church anywhere.
Well, I wasn't meaning them, I was just
talking about people.
And I talked about, say, they moved away
and built themselves a beautiful home.
And I knew that was going to be
the end of them around our place because
it was too far to come.
And I mentioned one time, just nice to
unite in a sermon, that you can die
just as dead in a great, big, beautiful
new home with a picture window as you
can in an apartment on a busy street.
And that sometime there's one car that'll back
up to that big house, and that'll be
the hearse or the dead wagon.
Well, they got so mad they turned green
and never came back.
And it was all right.
There hadn't been much to start with.
But, brothers, when your positions are all petered
out, you can die just as dead, surrounded
by beauty and riches.
I was called into a doctor's home one
time.
A fellow invited me in to look over
his place.
Well, he was fabulously wealthy, showed me $70
,000 in money.
I actually held $10,000 in my hand.
I never knew there was that much, but
there was.
Well, here he had.
He had statues from Europe.
He had paintings on the wall.
You always were afraid because there were so
many split levels, you were afraid of tumbling
over.
But there was such deep carpet that if
you had tumbled over, you wouldn't have hurt
anything.
And it was just riches, just riches.
A fellow was living in a museum, in
an art museum.
That was a long time ago, and I
suppose the old fellow is dead now.
He was a very old man.
You know, when he died, he left all
that.
He got it all right.
He hated the United States government so bad,
and the tax collectors so bad, that he
was giving it all away to religious people
so he wouldn't have to pay taxes on
it.
I kind of admired the old boy for
that.
But his possessions, his possessions, now, your possessions.
If you don't get delivered from your possessions,
they'll curse you.
If you get delivered from them, you can
have them and use them, and they'll be
all right.
Well, then there's position and fame.
Most of us won't make it as far
as fame is concerned.
The only time we'll get in the newspaper
is when we get in the obit section.
People will look us up and phone, want
to know what we died of.
But then there's success.
People are successful.
It's surprising the people that succeed, and then
it's surprising the people that don't.
I've met brilliant people that didn't have one
dime to rub against another one, and I've
met people that were just barely, they had
an intelligence level so low, really, that you
could look over it on your knees, and
yet to hear they were successful is all,
get out.
Talking in terms of thousands of dollars.
I don't understand that, but I only know
that you can have all that, and if
they'll offer you that, say, come on, take
it, it's yours.
All this, he said, will I give thee,
thou wilt fall down and worship me.
Somebody says, don't you believe in beings like
businessmen making money?
Sure, I do.
You know how John Wesley handled that?
John Wesley, one time in his life, said,
I have come upon, of course he stated
it in very cultured terms, I'll have to
just slangify it for him.
He said, I've noticed that the people called
Methodists tend to live clean industrious lives, and
when they lead clean, industrious lives, they make
a lot of money.
And when they make a lot of money,
they save a lot of money.
And when they save a lot of money,
they get a bank account, and a lot
of money laid up.
Then he said, when they get a lot
of money made up, they tend to desert
the kind of life that they lived in
order to get the money.
So he said, there's a vicious circle.
If you're decent and good and hardworking and
frugal, you save a lot.
And when you save a lot, it makes
you backslide.
Now he said, what are we going to
do?
He said, I've got the answer.
Make all you can, and then give it
away.
So he said, that'll take care of it.
And when he died, he left twenty-eight
pounds behind him, and I'm sure if he'd
known he had twenty-eight pounds, he never
would have died with that much.
So that's the way to handle your possessions.
That won't cost you anything extra.
Just throw that out to your brother.
So that's the way to handle it.
That's the way to do it.
Now don't pile it up.
Somebody gave Will Spurgeon fifty thousand dollars.
He said, Mr. Spurgeon, I suppose that you're
going to put that fifty thousand dollars as
a nest egg for your family.
He said, do you think I'd plug up
the pipe that brings the blessing of God
into my home with fifty thousand dollars?
No.
He said, I'm giving that to our villagers
and all the rest.
Well, a position, fame and success and all
the rest.
But at the last what?
And I want to ask you, at the
last, what can the world do for you
at the last, my friend?
You know what you want is just exactly
what the world can give you.
You want forgiveness of sin.
And there isn't a boxing arena in the
world that can give it to you.
There isn't a theater in the world that
can give it to you.
There isn't a tavern on the continent that
can give it to you.
You want inward cleansing.
And there isn't anywhere in the world a
place that you can get it.
The Baalites have their fun, but they can't
cleanse you inside.
You're going to die and you want to
die clean.
How do you die clean?
The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses from all
sin.
So, Baal, if Baal be God serving, but
he'll never forgive your sins, if Baal be
God serving, but he'll never cleanse you inside,
and you want a power to direct your
way.
You want to have somebody that can direct
and lead you through.
Baal can't do it.
Baal can have a big time Saturday night,
but he leaves you with a frightful hangover
Sunday morning.
Baal can't help you through.
I heard once of a Chinese boy, who
gave his testimony, and it was something like
this.
He said, My testimony is like this.
He said, I was down in a deep
pit, in a deep hole, and it was
getting dark.
And he said, I saw a shadow, and
I looked up, and a kindly face peered
down on me, and said, If you had
obeyed my instructions, you wouldn't be in that
hole.
He said, That was Confucius.
He said, I was pawing around, trying to
get out, vainly out of that hole, and
I saw another shadow, and I looked up,
and there was another face, a very venerable
face looked down, and said, Son, I see
you're in a deep pit, but all that
is imaginary.
Just forget.
Withdraw inside yourself.
This is all imaginary.
He said, He went away and left me,
and that was Buddha.
He said, When I was in despair, suddenly
someone jumped down beside me, took me on
his shoulder, took me out, cleansed the mud
off of me.
He said, Now, Son, that was a bad
hole you're in, but I've redeemed you, and
I'll never leave you.
I'll go along with you and see you
don't fall in another one.
He said, That was Jesus Christ.
So he said, That's why I'm a Christian.
Confucius can lecture you, and Buddha can advise
you, but Jesus Christ can save you.
And then directions go along.
You need an advocate.
This is the day of counselors, you know.
Everybody has to be counseled.
Even I understand that the dog catchers are
going to have the psychiatrists in Toronto.
I've been reading up on that in the
telegram, that before they will, I don't remember,
dog catchers or street creepers, maybe, something they
do, it's rather humble, and they're going to
have them all investigated by psychiatrists.
These head rubbers, see how they are, these
head shrinkers.
Well, this is the time when everybody wants
a counselor, you know.
They write in and say, Dear Abby, we
want to know what to do.
I wonder how many dumb people there are
in the world.
I never went to anybody yet to ask
them anything, you know.
I always prayed and looked up to God.
Sometimes I blundered, but I got out.
But why should I run around asking people
that don't know any more about it than
I do?
My grandmother was a psychologist.
She was a farm woman, but she knew
as much as these psychiatrists.
No, they just invent terms.
My mother used to see a sissy and
see a grandmother and she'd say, he's tied
to his mother's apron strings.
But you know what they call that now?
They call that an Oedipus complex.
Well, it's the same thing.
Only it's a five dollar word and it
takes four years to learn in college.
But my mother, grandmother had never been to
college and so she said, he's tied to
his mother's apron strings.
He was the same little old sissy that
now gets an Oedipus complex and has to
lie down and relax and look up at
the ceiling and try to remember if he
fell off out of his highchair when he
was two.
These are the days of counselors.
Everybody has to be counseled.
But you know, I read in the scriptures
it says, his name shall be called counselor.
There is one who knows and that one
is not Baal.
That one that doesn't belong out there at
all.
They don't know in Hollywood and they don't
know in Wall Street and they don't know
in Broadway.
He only knows whose name is Jesus Christ.
He leads them blind by way they know
not.
He guides them in times where they've not
been.
He makes the darkness light before them and
the crooked things straight.
He does all this, but Baal can't do
it.
If you choose Baal, you go without a
counselor or an advocate.
If you choose Baal, you go without anybody
to direct your way.
If you choose the world, you go without
cleansing and forgiveness.
And then there's a safe hereafter.
I like to think about the hereafter.
I don't know about you, but when the
communists thought out that song about pie in
the sky by and by, they didn't scare
me.
No, they didn't scare me.
Of course we want something in the by
and by.
And that man is a complete fool that
will live his life out to the end
and not know what's out there.
I want to know what's out there.
Something in me tells me that I am
going to exist when the worlds are burnt
out.
And I want to know where I'm going
to exist.
No communist, the bewistered one with the bomb
or the slick one, of the modern day
can make me at all ashamed talking about
pie in the sky by and by.
Of course we want to know what the
man of God called the world to come
whereof we speak.
Today I looked over, I haven't edited it
yet, but I looked over an article submitted
for me at my request by one of
the pastors in the district, Mr. Dempster from
Hamilton.
He had taken the wonderful old last section
of Bunyan's Pilgrim Progress, where Bunyan finds his
Christian pilgrim coming to the river and Christian
is scared.
But Christian blunders around and finally says, I
see the face of my Savior and my
feet find solid ground.
Oh, he describes that beautiful land.
And I'm not a bit ashamed.
I want to go there.
The dear old bishop once got up to
preach.
He was very old and very godly.
And as he preached, he lamented.
He said, you know, when I was a
boy, we sang about heaven and we talked
about heaven.
Heaven was a place to go when you
died.
But he said now they're all changed.
He said they call it eschatology now.
He said they study eschatology.
But nobody talks about heaven.
They talk about eschatology.
He said, he shouted rather, and said, I
don't want to go to an eschatology when
I die.
I want to go to heaven.
Remember that village blacksmith poem?
It's rather sentimental, but it tells about the
blacksmith with his brawny arm going to church
on Sunday and sitting among the boys.
He hears a person pray and preach and
he hears his daughter's voice singing in the
village choir and it makes his heart rejoice
and makes him think of her mother's voice.
And so with his hard, rough hand, he
wipes the tear out of his eye.
Good people living in expectation of the world
to come.
Nobody's going to shame me.
Nobody's going to sing pie in the sky
by and by and have me run for
cover.
I'll not run for cover.
I believe in God the Father almighty.
And I believe in his son Jesus Christ,
our Lord, and I believe in the Holy
Ghost.
And I believe in the forgiveness of sin
and the life everlasting.
But Baal doesn't have it.
The world out there doesn't have it.
That slick world that comes into your home
by TV doesn't have it.
That theater doesn't have it.
They don't have it out there, brother.
Only Jesus has.
No man cometh unto the Father but by
Jesus.
So if you want forgiveness of sin, inward
cleansing, a power to direct your life and
advocate, to plead with God for you above,
a counselor to take you through in peace
at last, and a safe hereafter and place
in the Father's house, I recommend Jesus Christ
now.
Now.
Come to him now.
Don't wait.
Because when you wait, your heart hardens.
Don't do it.
Come while you can.
Well, Elijah knew the rule of God.
And when he made his little prayer, they
prayed all day and cut themselves.
All day.
Nothing happened.
But Elijah prayed a prayer you can read
in one half minute.
And the fire came down.
In other words, God confirmed his faith and
witnessed through his obedience.
And that's what God will do for you
tonight.
What about it now?
Backslider?
Cold fellow that's cooled off?
Your business is got between you and God?
Your home's got between you and God?
You used to get up early and pray,
but now you've got a family and babies
and you don't do it anymore?
Cooled off?
Been listening to bells?
Running with the vote?
Don't do it.
Follow me, says Jesus.
And where I am there, ye will be
also.
O Christ, Emmanuel, God with us.
The Word made flesh with Solomon.
The Lamb that was slain.
Who is risen again.
Who is with us now.
O Christ.
We pray, help us.
Out of this Old Testament story, which thou
has said was written for our admonition, upon
whom the ends of the world is.
We beseech thee, O Christ.
May the Spirit who inspired this story.
May He use it as a torch, as
a candle to search our spirits.
Tonight.
We pray for those who have been out
there a little too much in the world.
Listening rather with some sympathy to the siren
song of Jessica.
That have been listening a little to the
soft cooing of the bailiff.
O Christ, make us strong to take our
cross.
Turn our backs upon Baal and all that
he stands for.
And to follow the Lamb with us where
we don't.
Help us tonight.
And in this hour, this moment of the
sea.
This moment of making up our minds whether
it's to be Jehovah or Baal.
Whether it's to be Christ or the world.
Give us the courage.
To say Jesus.
I, my cross is taken.
All that even follows me.
We ask it in His holy name.
Amen.