Turn to chapter 1, verse 9, and following.
I, John, who also am your brother, and
companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and
patience of Jesus Christ, was in the isle
that is called Patmos, for the word of
God and for the testimony of Jesus Christ.
I was in the Spirit on the Lord's
day, and heard behind me a great voice,
as of a trumpet, saying, I am Alpha
and Omega, the first and the last, and
what thou seest, write in a book, and
send it unto the seven churches which are
in Asia, and to Ephesus, and unto Shmyrna,
and to Pergamos, and to Thyatira, and to
Sardis, and to Philadelphia, and unto Laodicea.
And I turned to see the voice that
spake with me, and being turned, I saw
seven golden candlesticks.
And in the midst of the seven candlesticks,
one like unto the Son of Man, clothed
with a garment down to the foot, and
girt about the paps with a golden girl.
And his head and his hair were white
like wool, as white as snow, and his
eyes were as a flame of fire, and
his feet like unto fine brass, as if
they burned in a furnace, and his voice
as the sound of many waters.
And he had in his right hand seven
stars, and out of his mouth went a
sharp two-edged sword.
And his countenance was as the sun shining
in his strength.
When I saw him, I fell down, and
his feet as dead.
And he laid his right hand upon me,
saying, Fear not, I am the first and
the last.
I am he that liveth and was dead.
Behold, I am alive forevermore.
Amen.
And have the keys of hell and of
death.
Write the things which thou hast seen, and
the things which are, and the things which
shall be hereafter.
The mystery of the seven stars which thou
sawest in my right hand, and the seven
golden candlesticks.
The seven stars are the angels of the
seven churches.
And the seven candlesticks which thou sawest are
the seven churches.
Let's pray.
O God, we grieve because there is not
found any man worthy to open this book
or to expound it.
We grieve because in our blindness we see
only the men as trees walking.
Who is sufficient for these things?
O God, certainly not thy poor servant who
knows only a little.
And the vast sea of truth lies luminous
before us.
We can only tonight point to it and
say, Behold, and then we pray that thou
wilt open our eyes that we may behold
wondrous things out of thy law.
Help, Lord, where we are blind, give us
sight.
Where we are deaf, make us to hear.
Where we are low, raise us up.
Where we are high, bring us down.
And may truth triumph, and may thy word
run and be glorified.
In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,
amen.
The revelation of Jesus Christ which God sent
and signified to his servant John said, John,
who wrote the book of revelations?
says the critic.
John to the seven churches which are in
Asia says, John, who wrote the book of
revelations?
says the critic.
I, John, who also am your brother and
companion in tribulation says, John, who wrote the
book of revelations?
says the critic.
There are two ways to be ignorant, brothers
and sisters.
One way is to not go to school
at all, and the other way is to
go too long.
I have met both kinds of ignorant people,
those who never went, and I can understand
them.
Then I have met those who went too
long, and the longer they went, the more
ignorant they got.
John wrote the book of revelations.
He says so three times here in the
first chapter.
If I wrote you a letter and signed
it three times, then you would say, Who
wrote that letter?
I'd figure that you had that good examination
of your head coming, because there it is
in clean sight, my old scrawly signature on
it three times.
I, John, says John, and the critic says,
Who could have written the book of revelations?
Who killed Cock Robin?
Well, my brother and sister, John wrote the
book of revelations, and as I said in
the opening sermon, and all you have to
do is compare it with John's other writings
and you will see that it is that
way, that it is like John.
He wrote that thing.
He wrote this book.
John says, I, John, who am your brother,
and notice the humility of this man, I
am your brother, and I am your companion
in tribulation and in the kingdom and patience
of Jesus Christ.
Kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ and the
word of God and the testimony of our
Lord.
Now, what did all this add up to?
I repeat again that I'd like to be
able to preach sermons 100 percent positive.
I'd like to get up sometime and not
have in mind that fellow looking over my
shoulder preaching something else.
I'd like to get up sometime and be
able to preach 100 percent positive and not
be bothered at all by people who teach
wrong things.
But you can't be realistic and stand up
like a little statue of St. Francis with
your head off on one side and a
meek gentle look on your face, as though
these enemies of the gospel didn't exist, they
do exist, and you've got to deal with
them.
And we've got to deal with those who
teach otherwise than what John teaches here, this
man who is a companion in tribulation and
in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ,
and who is a witness to the word
of God and the testimony of our Lord.
Now, all this, what did it add up
to for John?
Big contracts, that's what I hear now.
You give your heart to the Lord and
get born again, and if you're a businessman,
your contracts will get larger immediately.
You will have bigger business.
If you run a store, you'll have more
customers.
Whatever you are, you will have more.
And is it promotion, this kingdom and patience
of our Lord Jesus and the word of
God and the testimony of Jesus Christ?
Did it add up to winning at sports?
It's a wonder somebody hasn't, and I suppose
they have written to Maris, telling him that
if he'll only be born again, he'll be
able to break Babe's Ruth record, no doubt,
because Babe wasn't born again when he hit
60 home runs.
And they'll tell us, if you want to
win at sports, get born again.
And if you want to get big contracts,
get born again.
And if you want your cows to give
more milk, get born again.
And if you want to have good grades
at school, get born again.
Believe on Jesus Christ and accept him, and
there it all works.
What did it add up to for John?
Well, for John it added up to, I
was in the isle that is called Patmos.
What were you doing there, John?
You were Bishop of Ephesus.
You should have been back home standing up
with a long robe on, presiding over your
congregation.
You were born again, weren't you, John?
Haven't you accepted Jesus, John?
Yes, I accepted Jesus, and what it got
me was, I was in the isle that
is called Patmos.
Well, now, if the modern doctrine were true,
John wouldn't have been in Patmos.
John would have had his reward back home.
He'd have had peace of mind, prosperity and
the friendship of the great.
But there would have been no book of
revelation.
I'm glad John was on the isle of
Patmos.
I'm glad for that.
If John had been like some of us
modern fundamentalists, there would have been no book
of revelation, because we are not producing the
kind of men that can see visions and
dream dreams and write books of revelation.
We are producing men that can barely understand
a book of revelation after somebody else writes
it.
But peace of mind and prosperity and the
friendship of the great, I suppose that John
would have been back home.
He would have played golf with Caesar, but
he would never have seen the door opened
in heaven and never would have seen a
throne with a rainbow around it.
Never!
But I'm glad that John took the hard
way, brothers and sisters.
I'm glad he took the hard way.
He would have got off the hook if
he had wanted to, if he had just
blown through his nose learnedly and compromised the
truth a little bit and stood up and
looked saintly.
They would have said, Well, this man is
doing good in the community.
And they would never have sent him to
the isle of Patmos.
But John knew who he believed and knew
what he believed, and he said, I'm your
brother and your companion in tribulation and in
the kingdom and patient of Jesus Christ.
And I was in the isle that is
called Patmos for the word of God and
for the testimony of Jesus Christ.
All you have to do is take the
heat off of your testimony and the world
will take its heat off of you.
But you give your testimony and the world
will turn the heat on.
John must have given a mighty strong testimony
because they had him in the isle of
Patmos.
And they told me he was in a
coal mine, salt mine, though as I said
before, I don't know whether that's true or
not.
He was in the Spirit on the Lord's
day.
Now, right here we could get ourselves off
into a little eddy and get clear out
of the stream of truth, and we could
go around and around like a toy boat
in the eddy and imagine we had been
somewhere and we had never been away from
one little spot.
We could talk for half an hour on
what it means to be in the Spirit,
in the sense that John wrote it.
Then we could talk for another half an
hour on what the Lord's day means Sabbath
or means Sunday or means that it was
the prophetic period known as the day of
the Lord.
I'm not going to get into any little
eddy at all so far as I can.
I'm going to stay in the mainstream and
not get snagged on these two nails.
I would assume that the man John was
in the Spirit, that is, he was caught
up into a kind of a prophetic trance,
and the time he remembered was on the
first day of the week.
He said, I heard behind me a great
voice as of a trumpet.
This isn't part of the sermon, but it's
rather significant to notice how many people there
are that have heard the Lord speaking behind
them, because we're usually facing the wrong way.
If you were facing toward the Lord, you
would hear him speaking ahead of you, but
because we turn our back on the Lord,
he has to speak behind us.
Isaiah said the day would come when we
should hear a voice behind us, saying, This
is the way, walk ye in it.
Why didn't he hear a voice saying ahead
of him, Come on, this is the way?
Because Isaiah, whoever he was talking about, had
gotten off the main highway, so the Lord
back on the highway was behind the fellow,
and he said, Come, turn back.
So he turned back.
I heard behind me a great voice, and
John turned to see, and what he saw
was seven golden candlesticks.
Those candlesticks were lampstands, some other translations have
it, and I could take another 20 minutes
explaining the difference between lampstands and candlesticks, but
when we were finished, all I would have
done would be bore you or give you
a notion you knew something you didn't know,
which would be bad for both of us.
So we'll pass that candlestick deal up entirely
and point out only that they had candles
in those days, and they stuck them in
a candlestick, and if you were capable of
it and you had lots of money, you
made golden candlesticks, and they stuck a candle
in a candlestick and lighted it, and they
had light in the house.
Those candlesticks didn't shine, I want you to
notice.
They were made of gold, but they weren't
shining.
What was shining was the candle.
These seven golden candlesticks, Jesus explained, were the
seven churches of Asia, and they were meant
to stand for all the churches of all
time.
I say they didn't shine, but they were
the receptacle of all shining truth.
It is the purpose of God that his
churches, and here's the plural used here, churches,
it's the purpose of God that his churches
should not be themselves the shining light, but
that they should be the containers and the
receptacles of the shining light.
Just as the candlestick didn't shine, if you
put the candle out, the gold candlestick didn't
shine, but it held the light that did
shine.
So that the church ought not to be
a group of people who, because of their
social position, shine in society.
We ought not to conceive of the church
as a group of people who, because of
the learning of its members, shine in society.
Why don't you know that church is the
most learned church, there are more college professors
go to that church, and more retired college
Presidents go to that church, and more atomic
scientists go there than any other church in
the whole dominion?
Oh, I suppose so, but it doesn't impress
me.
You'll excuse me if I'm not impressed by
their shining.
They're just trying to shine.
If I get up here and try to
shine, be learned, quote Shakespeare and show what
a shining intellect I have, I'll be a
candlestick trying to shine.
But that's not my business to do that,
and it's not the business of this church
to shine.
It's not the business of this church to
gather in so many Senators and MPs, that's
Mounted Police, isn't it?
Members of Parliament, I mean.
Members and all that, but everybody will say,
that church there has very high social standing.
I'd rather go along with that first church
that didn't have very good social standing, but
had a tremendous lot of power.
Peter didn't have any degrees that I know
of, but Peter said, silver and gold I
have none, and he didn't have much money.
But he did say to a man, I
say unto you, get up.
And the fellow got up.
Got up because the man without any money
and without any prestige may have now what
they call a status symbol.
Was a day when the number of servants
you had in your home was your status
symbol, I heard a fellow say last night.
But now it's your car that's your status
symbol.
And how many of them you have, that's
your status symbol.
I remember back to the days of the
horse and buggy, and when the first automobiles
that came into the neighborhood, the great high
-wheeled fellows that were built to run over
the muddy roads.
And if one man in the whole what
they called county, if one man in the
whole county got himself an automobile, he had
a status symbol there, boy.
And everybody thought unquestionably that he was somebody.
He was a big wig with accent on
wig.
But that was a status symbol, and we
can have those status symbols now.
I believe in clean churches, but I hope
this nice new paint doesn't become a status
symbol for having you were old.
I hope that we'll remember that you can
just be as humble in the dirty church
as you can in a clean one, and
versa, but yet I'm for this.
I'm glad for a nice clean job here,
and I'm even agitating to get some rugs
on the aisle so that when you walk
down the aisle you won't hear you down
at the corner of Bloor.
But if that becomes a status symbol, then
it's too bad for all of us, brethren.
There's only one thing that ought to make
a church glad, and that is that there
is somebody walking in the midst whose eyes
are like a flame of fire.
And no matter how low and poor they
may be, there's still a people walking, simple
people among whom the Lord walks.
I went to a church in this city,
my good friend Finley, McKay and I went
down there.
They were simple people, the people most of
whom could not speak good standard English.
But there was something about them that warmed
my heart, and I got up there and
spoke to them, and they were so blessed
and by it all that they had a
prayer meeting afterward, and I've felt good ever
since.
They didn't have one lonely claim to anything,
but the Lord was in the midst.
I'd rather have that than anything else I
know in all the wide world.
Yet I think that if we're going to
serve the Lord, and we're an assembled company
and there's enough of us to do it,
that we ought to see to it that
the place where we meet is nice and
worthy of our prayers and worthy of our
worship.
That's why I like to see a church
fixed up looking nice.
That doesn't make us spiritual.
I don't mind seeing a man preaching in
a robe.
I have preached in robes before now, and
with square hats on, although I always took
those monkey hats off before I'd preach.
I don't care, you can put two or
three robes on me, if it isn't too
warm, I'll preach in a robe.
It makes little difference to me in or
out of the robe, but it makes an
awful lot of difference to me whether I'm
in the Spirit or out of the Spirit.
Well, John saw the seven golden candlesticks which
would stand for all of the churches, and
these churches which themselves do not shine, but
which are the receptacles for all shining truth.
And in the midst of the candlesticks I
saw one.
In the midst of the candlesticks I saw
one.
Now, who would you expect if you knew
that the candlesticks stood for the church and
all the churches?
Who would you expect to find standing in
the midst of the seven churches, that is,
being in each church?
Who would you expect to be there?
St. Paul?
No, St. Paul died.
I think St. Paul may even have been
dead when this was written.
Who would you expect there?
Who was it that said, "'Two of you,
three of you are gathered in my name,
I am there in the midst.'" Didn't he
say that?
Isn't that the one you'd expect to see
there?
Didn't he say, "'Go into all the world
and preach the gospel to every creature, and
I will be with you unto the end
of the world?' Wouldn't you expect the one
to be standing in the midst of the
church, of whom it is said that he
is the head of the church, the fulness
of him that filleth all in the foundation
upon which the church is built, the life
of the church?
Wouldn't you expect him?
Well, that's just where he was.
He was there, and he was like unto
the Son of Man.'" Hear that again.
This was not a spirit in the church,
but one like unto the Son of Man,
a Son of Man, the Son of Man,
Jesus Christ our Lord, and he was clothed
with a garment down to the foot.
Here's what dear old brother W.
T.
MacArthur called the only authentic portrait of Jesus
Christ.
Here it is, the only one.
All of these weak pictures that Italian artists
and Dutch artists have painted with Christ, you
can have them all.
I don't want to get a concept fixed
in my mind borrowed from an artist.
I want the Holy Ghost to paint the
picture of Jesus Christ across my heart.
I want to read it out of the
Bible, and I want the Holy Ghost to
dip his brush in the paint of the
blood and fire and paint the picture of
the Son of God across the canvas of
my soul, so that when I go there
in his presence I'll not be disappointed.
Some people will be disappointed when they see
Jesus, because they've been raised on Solomon and
Hoffman's heads of Christ, and they'll expect to
see what he isn't at all.
Here he is, here's what he is, the
only authentic portrait of Jesus Christ.
He was clothed with a garment down to
the foot, and there is the priest's garment.
The priest in the midst of the church,
where else should a priest be?
In the old days of Israel, where were
the priests?
They were in the midst of Israel.
The temple was in the midst of the
camp, and the holy place was in the
midst of the temple, and the priests were
there moving in and out, and the high
priest was in the holy place, so in
the midst of Israel.
So here's the man clothed with a garment
down to the foot.
We have a priest.
I believe in the priesthood.
I believe it.
I believe in it two ways.
I believe in the priesthood of believers.
I believe that you and I are priests
and that we have access to the throne
of God, to our high priest who has
gone in before us.
But I believe in the final, ultimate priesthood
of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the
high priest in the presence of God.
And there he is, standing with the garment
clothed down to the foot, and girt about
the breasts with a golden girdle.
There's the insignia of royalty.
Around his chest was a broad band made
of pure gold, and it held up the
garment that went down to his feet.
There we see him, but there was a
man there, not a spirit, not an angel,
not a cherubim, but a man, a real
man.
And you could have gone to that man
and touched him.
Jesus said, Handle me and see.
A spirit has not flesh and bones, as
you see me have.
And he ate fish before them, after he
had risen from the dead and was glorified.
So this one that we have there is
a true man, and he's girt about the
breasts with a golden girdle, the insignia of
royalty.
So we have not only a priest, but
we have a royal priest, a priest who
is both king and priest, prophet, priest, and
king, they said in the early days of
the Christian and missionary alliance, before we got
out onto the jingle bells and began following
the backslidden church over the cliff, they used
to talk about the prophet, priest, and king,
that Jesus Christ was all of these, and
I believe that.
I believe that he's the prophet, I believe
he's a priest, and I believe he's a
king.
And I see him here combined, a kingly
priest standing in the midst of the church.
And you know that's why churches exist and
why churches don't fall apart, with all the
pressure the devil puts on the church.
How can a church exist at all?
I don't wonder that churches backslide, the wonder
is that they don't.
I don't wonder that churches hold together, or
do not hold together, the wonder is that
they hold together.
If it were not for the invisible presence
of our Lord in the midst, a priest
to stand before God for us and a
king to rule, there would be no church.
And it says he's head and hair white
as wool and white as snow.
Now, there are two views of this, and
I don't see why both of them can't
be true.
That's one way that I like to believe.
When I run onto a passage where there
are opposing views, I don't accept one or
reject the other, I believe both.
You get more that way and it's more
comfortable, and you don't have to argue with
anybody.
Some say that Jesus Christ's pure whiteness means
holiness, that it's the utter holiness of our
Lord that makes his hair to be whiter
than wool.
But others say, no, that couldn't be it,
because that means ripe knowledge and solid judgment.
It's talking about the Ancient of Days, because
he is the Ancient of Days, dating back
to time out of time, and therefore we
see him as white-haired.
Well, maybe both of those are true, but
on the other hand, I can't quite believe
that our Lord is gray-headed.
I believe that the Lord has white hair,
but it's not the white hair that came
as a result of age, it's white hair
that came there because he wanted to show
us the utter holiness of the Lord.
Do you know, friends, that we have lived
with unholiness to a point where we are
almost incapable of appreciating holiness?
We are all but incapable of knowing what
holiness is.
But here he is, white as wool, white
as snow.
That's why I can't go along with those
who excuse sin.
That's why I can't go along with the
pastor who nurses a cigarette and then prays
for the sick, shuffles his pack around and
gets a New Testament, reads the passage and
prays for the sick.
I can't go along with him, but somebody
says, Well, I don't believe in Methodist morality.
I don't either, but I believe in New
Testament morality.
And I believe that if the Methodists took
up New Testament morality, then good for them,
and I'm glad, and more power to them.
But this holiness, God's people ought to be
a holy people.
I tell you that I could only pray
that God would help me to preach so
that you would sweat.
I don't want you to go away feeling
good.
This idea that the Church is a place
where you go to get a tranquilizer, if
you feel all bad, come to Church and
we'll sing soft songs and preach pussycat sermons
to you and purr and purr until you
feel better.
Why don't you go down to the drugstore
and ask for a tranquilizer, if that's what
you want?
If you only want to feel relaxed, take
a hot bath and a tranquilizer.
That will relax you, relax you and let
you go to hell in your relaxation.
That's not what the Church is for, to
relax sinners.
The Church is to make sinners sweat, and
the Church is to make backslidden Christians sweat.
And if I can bring the bubbly sweat
out over you while I preach, I'll only
thank God with all my heart, no matter
what you think of me.
Because this Lord is a holy Lord, and
his head and his hair were white as
wool.
And it's in his presence that we're going
to live, and his eyes were as a
flame of fire, seeing through.
You and I see, but he sees through.
There's the difference.
Fire sees through.
The eyes of our Lord are like x
-ray eyes, and you can't hide anything from
our Lord.
He's got those eyes, so there isn't any
use to clear your throat and swell out
your chest and claim you're somebody.
No, you're nobody, and we might as well
get together on that now.
Neither am I, so there's no difference in
our standing.
You're nobody, I'm nobody, and if we had
our desserts, we'd all perish alike.
And he knows that, and he sees through
it.
Some churches get so self-righteous as the
Pharisees were, and they walk around trying to
be the incarnated sum of all that's respectable.
But they've got no spirituality and no garment
of righteousness to hide them from the flaming
eyes of Jesus.
I'd rather be exactly what I am, and
stand right out and be exactly what I
am.
I tell the preachers, I quit preaching anymore
to writers.
I've quit that.
They won't do it anymore, no use.
They won't do what you tell them anyhow,
and I think that I'm going to give
up preaching to preachers one of these days,
because they don't pay much attention to you
either.
But I tell them that there isn't any
use to try to pretend to be somebody,
because the preacher is nobody either.
He's just an animated clothespin walking around on
his two legs, and he snores just like
other people when he goes to sleep, and
he'll die one of these days and be
lugged out and buried just like everybody else,
and the fact that he was a Reverend
D.D. won't make a bit of difference
to God.
Not a bit of difference to God.
They called me doctor long before I got
doctor's degrees, but I don't know why, I
just do, you know.
But I wasn't conscious of any step-up
in my preaching ability, none whatsoever, when they
stuck some square hats on my head a
couple times, nothing to make a bit of
difference.
Just to be a simple, plain person standing
before God, you've got to be that, completely
that, for Jesus Christ sees through.
He knows, he knows even now, if while
I'm talking to you, if my very claim
to humility is only another form of pride,
he knows that.
He knows everything, and I'm glad he does.
I'd hate to think that after I go
to bed at night or go down to
Chicago, the devil could come around and tell
God something about me.
As soon as the Viscount takes off, the
devil comes around and says, you know that
fellow that preaches down Avenue Road, God, if
you know about him what I know, oh,
he knows all about it.
Nobody's going to hunt up Jesus and whisper
back at his hand and say, have you
heard about Tozer?
Jesus, my Lord, knows all about him, knows
his weakness and knows his strength, and knows
that the only thing about him that harms
him is his strength, not his weakness.
You can never get too weak for the
Lord to use you, but you can get
too strong.
You never can get too ignorant for the
Lord to use you, but you can get
too wise.
You never can get too little for the
Lord to use you, but you can get
too big.
And yet these days we say, oh, if
we only had big, wise men in our
pulpits and places of Christian leadership, why, we'd
be all right.
My friend, the Church of Christ wouldn't be
one whit better off if every preacher in
Toronto was a Ph.D., not one whit
better off.
It might easily be worse off.
Somebody else says, if we only had money,
money that we need.
I've been toying with the idea one of
these times of writing an editorial, magazine goes
to 110 countries, they tell me, and I
suppose that the preachers would gang up on
me and write me off.
But I was going to write it anyhow,
I think.
Here's what it is.
Money isn't enough.
And point out that more money wouldn't mean
a thing.
This Church we're endowed with $100,000 a
day after tomorrow.
And our Prager climbed a sunbeam with delight,
as he would in spite of it.
This Church wouldn't be one whit better off,
because all you can buy with money is
material things.
You can't buy spirituality.
You can't buy humility.
You can't buy purity.
You can't buy godliness.
You can't buy holiness.
You need enough money, and I hope you'll
keep that in mind, and pray about it,
and give.
Loose your purse strings and get rid of
some of that money.
Turn it over to the Church.
But when you've done it, remember that mere
money can't bail you out.
Mere money won't do it.
More education won't do it, more money won't
do it.
The Lord sees through all of that.
I, for my part, don't know why the
preachers can't see through it.
Well, he had a feet like unto fine
brass.
Now, why did he have feet like unto
fine brass?
Because he was to be the judge.
Here was the judge, to judge what his
eyes had just seen.
The Church that isn't judged is not the
Church of the Lord Jesus Christ at all.
There are congregations, I have no doubt of
it, congregations that meet every Sunday, carry on
their programs that are not true churches of
Jesus Christ at all, for two reasons.
The Spirit is not in the midst of
them, and the Lord is not the center
of their interest.
They carry on, and they call themselves churches,
but the true Church is going to be
a disciplined Church, and our priest in the
midst of us who knows all about us
and loves us anyhow is going to judge
us.
Never pray that the Lord shouldn't judge you,
never.
Pray like the man David prayed, and if
it's turned around and rightly translated, "'Chastise me,
O Lord, but not in thy wrath,' says
King James.
Do not in thy wrath chastise me.' It
leaves the impression that the man was not
wanting to be chastised.
He was praying that the Lord would chastise
him, but he didn't want the Lord to
do it in anger, he wanted him to
do it in love.
Then this one who stood in the midst
of the candlesticks and stands in the midst
of the candlesticks tonight had a voice as
the sound of many waters.
This warms my heart and gives me a
sense of something I can't explain or express,
the voice as the sound of many waters,
the strong, majestic and deep.
What that voice had done, that voice had
called the world into being.
In the day when there was nothing, that
voice called something, and it sprang into being.
In the day when Lazarus was dead, that
voice said, Come forth, Lazarus, and he came
forth.
That mighty voice, that voice that said, It's
finished!
And the strong, bold soldiers of Caesar fell
down and said, This was the Son of
God.
That voice that shall someday come and wake
the dead, that voice is the sound of
many waters.
You know the sound of many waters is
a musical sound.
There is something musical about water.
The poets say that the brooks babble.
I could have wished that a poet could
have thought of something else sometime, but except
babble.
Oh, they have ripple and pearl.
I forgot those two words, pearling brooks and
rippling brooks and babbling brooks.
Those are the only three things books are
allowed to do by the poets.
But did you ever sit by a little
stream on a quiet day with a cow
standing over there in the shade and maybe
two or three sheep wandering around and hear
the liquid pearling of that water?
I have, and I've enjoyed it tremendously.
But as it gets larger and become great
waterfalls or great oceans, the sound, while it's
still musical, it becomes powerful.
I told you about Jenny Lynn, the great
Swedish soprano.
They called her the Swedish nightingale, Barnum.
Brought her over here, Phineas P.
Barnum brought her over to this continent and
took her around as the greatest singer.
They say she was one of the greatest
singers of all time.
She entered any place to sing.
They packed to the rafters and hung out
the windows to hear the Swedish nightingale.
Suddenly she disappeared from the scene and retired.
Somebody went, some newspaper man, and they poked
their nose into everything.
So they went to hunt up Jenny Lynn.
They went over to Sweden, and they found
Jenny sitting somewhere, whether in Sweden, I don't
know, but in Europe.
They found Jenny sitting with an open Bible
in her lap, sitting on a rock, looking
out over the ocean, listening to the roar
of the breakers as they beat over the
rocks.
They said to her, Jenny, the world was
at your feet.
You're at the peak of your artistic powers.
Why did you suddenly run out on us?
She said, I found that the praise I
got from the public, I found that it
made me forget this and this.
She pointed to her Bible and the ocean
where she had been brought up.
The roar of the ocean has something in
it, the roar of the ocean.
We used to, not the ocean, but one
of the great lakes.
We used to go over to Beulah Beach
on northern part of Ohio where on Lake
Erie.
The wind would rise in the night and
the lake would begin to roar, great long
drawn trumpet blasts.
The next day maybe would be a time
when they were to baptize people.
Always they baptized once or twice during the
period.
And the lake would be coming in and
breakers as high as a man or higher
than a man.
I suppose it wasn't nice to smile, but
I've stood there and smiled a few times
while they baptized somebody.
Instead of dipping him down in, they just
held him up.
And the breakers went over him and led
him from head to foot.
He got baptized without going down into the
water at all.
Now I suppose that I shouldn't have smiled,
but being a young fellow I did.
Watching them baptize people and getting the help
of the old sea itself.
As she roared, her breakers roared over the
candidate.
Well, Jesus Christ our Lord will drown out
every voice.
We're hearing some big voices now, aren't we?
Every once in a while, a cruchet climbs
up like a rooster on a fence post
and flaps his wings and booms out something,
some terrible thing.
I'm waiting around for him to have a
heart attack, because no man can blow his
top as regularly and as high as he
does and not suffer from high blood pressure.
You get it one of these times he
doesn't want to.
That's why you dear Westerners here on this
blessed continent, don't take him too seriously, because
I don't want you to blow yours too.
Keep calm.
There is a voice that will make all
of those banty roosters sound like the roosters
they are.
When that booming voice that sounds like the
voice of many waters sounds out over the
world, what will cruchet for Mount Tooth or
any of the rest of them?
In his hand, seven stars.
I don't know whether there are any missionaries
here or not.
I had a nice thing happen here in
the church this morning.
A nice, pretty little lady came down the
aisle.
She will excuse me if she's back tonight
if I say that she's not young anymore.
She's not old, but she certainly isn't a
girl.
She said, I am so and so.
I have been a missionary in such and
such a place for 37 years.
I enjoyed your sermon.
She handed me a bill.
She said, this goes to the building.
That's to help clean up the mess and
make the church look decent.
I thanked her and gave it to one
of the board members to put in the
treasure.
Well, there's a missionary.
Maybe there are missionaries here tonight.
Maybe there are pastors here tonight.
Let me say to you, in his hand
were the seven stars.
Here they are, the seven stars.
Who are they?
They are the messengers of the churches.
They are those who go forth, messengers, the
angels of the churches.
Messenger and angel is the same word.
They're held in the hand of the Lord
Jesus.
I believe that.
Isn't it too bad the church is divided
on the question of the security of believers?
Some scream against it and some scream in
favor of it.
I stand in the middle and thank God
I'm in his hand.
I'm not going to argue and write books
one side or the other, but I'm going
to say I'm in his hand.
He holds his messengers in his hand.
If you're a messenger, you're held in his
hand.
Out of his mouth went a sharp sword.
All other words will melt.
They'll melt like butter in the sunshine.
But the words of the Lord, the sharp
sword of the Lord.
I wish that I had known years back
what the Lord has taught me lately, to
give more place to the word itself.
I used to preach a lot and use
science and all the rest and psychology, but
the Lord got me away from that.
Because long before science and psychology ever reared
their head, the word of the Lord was
coming out of the mouth of the man
in the midst and it was like a
sharp sword.
We'd better by all means stay by the
sharp sword.
I believe in the church that preaches the
word, the sharp sword.
I believe in the missionary society of the
denomination that's dedicated to the word.
Not perfect, certainly.
Take the word s off of the word
sword and what do you have?
You have word.
For the word of the Lord is like
a sharp sword dividing even to the narrow.
His face is the sun shining in its
full strength.
How can I comment on that?
How can any man comment on that?
There was once a picture of Jesus that
I can understand better than this.
Here's a picture of Jesus that I can
understand better.
Behold, my servant shall deal prudently.
He shall be exalted and extolled and be
very high.
As many were astonished at thee, his visage
was so marred more than any man, and
his form more than the sons of men.
I can understand that better.
The marred visage and the form that was
marred and bruised worse than that of any
man, beaten and bruised by the fists and
the whips of men, and the face all
torn as they pulled out his beard and
spat in his holy face.
I can understand that.
But now I am asked to see that
face again.
I am asked to see that same face
that once had spittle upon it.
I am asked to see that face shining
brighter than the sun in its full strength.
If you want to see how strong the
sun is, go look into the sky of
a noon day.
You never, never can face the sun.
They say the eagle looks into the sun
and flies into the sun.
The scientists who study the eagle say that
the eagle has a thin film, like you
do out on the highway on a sunny
day.
You put on blue glasses, dark glasses, to
cut the vigor of the sun so that
you don't get blind from the sunlight.
And the eagle, when she flies and screams
into the sun, wheels and banks and turns
yonder, high above the mountaintop, she's got her
glasses pulled down.
God built them in, put them there so
she can look at the sun.
You try it without your glasses.
I don't know how to explain this, but
I know this face that shines like the
sun in its full strength.
The sun, they tell us, gives not only
heat and light and warmth, but the sun
also gives vitamins to the earth.
The sun buries away its warmth and its
heat and its energy in the bowels of
the earth, and men dig them up and
put them in combustion chambers and run their
airplanes and their furnaces everywhere and send their
ships across the ocean and their trains across
continents because the sun's energy once was buried
and came out as oil or coal.
And here we have the man who made
it all.
You say, the man who made it all?
Do you mean that man made it all?
A woman came to me one time, very
much wrought up.
She said, Mr. Trozer, you said that Jesus,
that Jesus created everything that there is.
You said Jesus created everything there is.
And I said, yes, I said that.
And she couldn't believe it, but here's what
the scripture says.
Who is the image of the invisible God,
the firstborn of every creature?
For by him were all things created that
are in heaven and that are in earth,
visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or
dominions or principalities or powers, all things were
created by him and for him.
And he is before all things and by
him and all things consist.
So this one, whose face shines as the
sun, you say then if he's in the
midst and he's like this, why don't we
see him?
That's the terrible part.
He's in the midst and we don't see
him.
But I mustn't pass up this other thing
that he said about himself.
The effect that it had upon John, John
fell at his feet as dead.
And that's why I keep insisting and suppose
I shall continue to exist, that any real
knowledge of Jesus Christ will knock all the
pride out of you.
It will bring you down in lowliness before
his feet.
That's why I don't believe in this erotic
approach to Jesus Christ, this love song stuff.
He's my lover.
I'm his sweetheart.
I don't believe in that kind of stuff
at all.
That started in Hollywood and go back there
and then they'll all go to hell together.
When you see the man in the midst,
the awful man, the glorious man, the highly
exalted man who is also God, who made
the very midst in which he walks, this
one has an effect upon us.
John said, when I saw him, I fell
at his feet as dead.
A man who has never fallen at the
feet of Jesus in astonished wonder has never
been able to get up and move a
congregation by preaching about Jesus.
But John was.
And immediately he laid his right hand upon
me, saying unto me, Fear not, I am
the first and the last.
I am he that liveth and was dead,
and behold, I am alive forevermore.
Dead three days and alive forevermore.
Fear not, I am the first and the
last.
Amen.
I have the keys of hell and of
death.
Where did they ever get the idea that
Peter's got the keys?
He must have given them back to Jesus
if he ever had them.
Because here I see Jesus Christ standing in
the midst of his church, and I see
him swinging a set of keys, iron keys
and golden keys.
And iron keys will unlock the brazen gates
of hell, and the golden keys will unlock
the glorious gates of heaven.
And he alone has those keys.
I don't believe anybody else has them.
And I'm not going to look around for
them, because I know where they are.
They are on the key ring of the
man who was dead three days and is
alive forevermore, Jesus Christ our Lord.
You can see, can't you, my friends, that
this is the most important thing about this
church.
This one is in the midst of the
church.
He's here to see and to judge, he's
here to keep, he's here to represent us
to God and to us, he's here to
speak to us and reprove us and encourage
us.
Why do we not see him?
How terrible it is to play in his
presence, dream in his presence, sleep in his
presence, sin in his presence.
How terrible.
He's coming again in glory.
In the meantime, he's holding his church together,
getting his church ready.
That's what we're here for.
We're to get ready.
I've had in my ministry many a wedding,
many a wedding.
We had one room, nicely done room in
knotty pine, all fixed up.
It was used for many purposes, but it
had one specific purpose.
The bride got ready in that room.
It was understood that when there was a
wedding coming up within the next half hour,
no male, no matter who he was, ever
stuck his nose in there.
The bride was in there getting ready.
The bride's mother fussing, the bride's maid fussing,
everybody fussing, trying to get the bride ready.
They secreted her.
They didn't let the bridegroom see her.
Secret her and bring her up another way.
They began to play the proper music, out
from here, properly, where he belonged, secondary, came
the bridegroom.
Down the aisle after a while came the
bride, leaning upon her father's arm.
But when once they stood up together, the
father dropped back and said, I do.
That's all part he had.
I always told him, you don't amount to
anything, you just say, I do, and sit
down.
He said, I do.
But there was a place for the bride
to get ready.
This place where we're getting ready isn't done
in knotty pine with nice, shiny tile floors.
This place where we get ready is a
battlefield, a place where there is sin and
woe, and the church has to get ready
and the bride has to get ready in
the midst of her warfare and her labors.
But she must get ready.
That's why we're here.
That's why you weren't immediately transferred to heaven
when you were born again.
You were saved, you got a new nature,
and that nature belongs with God, and you
were not taken to God because you weren't
ready.
He's getting you ready.
There's a people getting ready, a bride getting
ready, purified people getting ready.
Don't you let anybody talk you out of
that.
That's true.
As the book develops, it tells us about
future events, and we're going to skip over
chapters two and three, seven letters to the
churches.
We're going to skip that purposely and deliberately,
because everybody preaches about it.
We're going to go on over into the
fourth chapter, when for the next time I
speak, when John saw heaven open, he saw
the throne.
Now, my friends, Jesus our Lord is in
the midst of us.
He's here.
Are we worthy to look in his face?
Will you bow your heads in prayer?