I am to speak to you, as has
been announced on the theme, The Reign of
Christ, A Divine Imperative.
And I want to read from the scripture.
Let's turn to the second Psalm, Psalm 2.
Why do the nations rage?
I am almost amused to read in the
margin, the word rage means tumultuously assemble.
Call that a summit conference now.
Why do the nations tumultuously assemble?
And the people imagine a vain thing.
The kings of the earth set themselves, and
the rulers take counsel together against the Lord,
Jehovah, and against his anointed, saying, Let us
break their bands asunder, and cast away their
cords from us.
He that sitteth in the heaven shall laugh,
the Lord shall have them in derision.
Then shall he speak unto them in his
wrath, and vex them in his sword, his
pleasure.
Yet have I set my king upon my
holy hill of Zion.
I will declare the decree, Jehovah hath said
unto me, Thou art my son this day,
have I begotten thee.
Ask of me, and I shall give thee
the nations, for thine inheritance, and the uttermost
parts of the earth for thy possession.
Thou shalt break them with a rod of
iron, thou shalt dash them in pieces like
a potter's vessel.
The first nine verses of Psalm 2.
Then in 1 Corinthians 15, Now is Christ
risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits
of them that slept.
For since by man came death, by man
came also the resurrection of the dead.
For as in Adam all die, even so
in Christ shall all be made alive, but
every man in his own order.
Christ the firstfruits, afterward they that are Christ's
at his coming.
Then comeeth the end, when he shall have
delivered up the kingdom to God, even the
Father, when he shall have put down all
rule and all authority and power.
For he must reign till he hath put
all enemies under his feet.
And the last enemy that shall be destroyed
is death.
For he must reign, says the Holy Ghost.
Now, there has been a big change in
the public mind since the First World War.
Matters having to do with prophecy have been
pushed into the margin of our thinking, and
even those who believe in the Lord's return,
I feel, have not the certainty and the
urgency that they had during and after the
First World War.
The Second World War did not arouse the
hope of the coming of Christ that the
First World War did.
Now there are causes for this.
It is now almost necessary to explain, if
not apologize, in evangelical circles when we talk
about the coming of our Lord.
You have to put your hands up and
say, Now, just a minute, I don't mean,
I do mean, I do mean, I don't
mean, in order that somebody won't classify and
pigeonhole you.
And there are reasons for this shift.
One of them I will give is this,
a reaction from extreme teaching by irresponsible men.
I remember, after the First World War, doing
it and after it for quite a long
while, until the Depression made it economically
unfeasible, there was a great deal of teaching
on prophecy, a good deal by sincere and
honest men, but also a good deal by
irresponsible men who exploited the truth of Christ's
coming for popularity and cash.
And then another reason that there has been
such a turning away from the hope of
his coming is that a growing doubt has
arisen of the soundness of the popular interpretation.
Father Beshore this morning told us of the
man who, in 1927, said that Mussolini was
the Antichrist.
And, of course, when Mussolini got hung up
by the heels there with his girlfriend, you
remember, in that garage, something happened to the
Antichrist right there, and it was a big
shock to a lot of prophetic teachers.
But I was telling them at dinner tonight
that there was one prophetic teacher that he
wouldn't down.
He went around teaching that Mussolini was dead,
so Mussolini is going to rise from the
dead and be the Antichrist, just as Christ
rose from the dead and was the Christ.
Well, this kind of thing, the popular interpretations,
what gets me down with this whole deal
is that there are so many people who
know more about it all than Daniel does.
And John the Beloved is a poor second
-rater compared with some of the Brethren, and
you've got to take what they say without
any reason.
They just say it, and if you don't
believe it, you're not a fundamentalist anymore, you're
an Amillennialist.
Well, I am not an Amillennialist, and I
am a fundamentalist, if by fundamentalism you mean
believing everything the Bible says.
Then there was quite an upset in the
schedule out of the Roman Empire.
I do well remember when the Roman Empire
had risen, and the Lord was about to
come.
Of course, that blew up during the Second
World War.
Then there is the rise of a doctrine
called Amillennialism.
The word A is a prefix to Millennialism,
and the word A, of course, is a
meaning not, it's a negative.
You put A on in the Greek and
it means not so.
Just as we say non this and non
that, they said, Ah, we have Amillennialism, that
is, those who do not believe there is
going to be any Millennial at all, and
what's all the fuss about?
Well, the text shows that Christ is going
to reign, both the text in the second
psalm, I don't know how we're going to
escape it here, the nations of the earth
are gathered tumultuously together, and the Jewish people
are imagining a vain thing, that is, a
thing that there is no meaning in at
all, and the kings of the earth set
themselves and the rulers take counsel together, and
it is found to be against Jehovah and
against his anointed.
And they are saying, Let us break their
bands asunder and cast away their cords from
us.
I just read in the paper last night
that Khrushchev had said in his speech, he
was being funny, he thought he was a
Bob Hope.
And while he was making a very saber
-rattling speech, he introduced this, he said, We've
had our men up there in orbit around
the earth, and we haven't found any angels
or anything like that.
We've come to the conclusion there aren't any.
Well, they say, Let us break their bands
asunder and cast away their cords from us.
Well, now the scripture says, He that sitteth
in the heavens shall laugh.
This is the only place in the Bible
where God is said to laugh.
Here is the terrible laughter of the great
God.
He shall have them in derision, and he
shall speak to them in his wrath and
vex them in his sore displeasure.
Then he declares, Yet will I set my
King upon my holy hill of Zion.
And he says to that King, Now ask
me, and I'll give thee the heathen, the
nations, for thine inheritance in the uttermost parts
of the earth for thy possession.
I think that this text shows that Christ
is going to reign, and in the 15th
chapter of Revelation, or of verse 4 from
which the text is taken, he must reign.
This chapter goes back and under all the
plan of God for the future, to complete
universal redemption when death must be abolished, and
to abolish death, Christ must reign.
Now I want to talk to you a
little, for I'm not going to give a
lot of details tonight.
That is, I'm not going to interpret so
that I can take you to Time magazine
and say, Well, now here's what they said
in Time magazine, and this piece of land
over here, somebody said something.
I'm not going to do that, but I'm
going to get above the whole thing and
look down and tell you why Christ must
reign and the qualifications of the reigning one,
and why Jesus Christ fits those qualifications.
I'm going to do that, and that will
be my sermon for tonight.
A reigning one is required.
I remember as I told you one time
what Mark Twain said about the nations of
Europe in the time of the Middle Ages.
He said that the nations of Europe were
so divided up and were so small that
when a king lay down to sleep, he
couldn't stretch out without a passport.
I have been looking over the map for
these last days, and particularly in Africa, and
I have noticed that some of those little
countries, the tall boys, if they could dare
not lie down, they would lop over into
the next country.
Of course, they would have to have a
summit conference to settle what to do with
these feet.
But the nations of the earth are needing
somebody.
I want to give you six things that
ought to be seven if I were a
good fundamentalist, I suppose, or a good Schofield
Bible addict.
It ought to be seven, but I sometimes
only can find six.
I have a sneaking idea that some of
those boys divide number six up into two
parts in order to get seven.
But anyhow, here are six.
The weak must be delivered from the oppression
of the strong.
Now the scriptures teach this, and in the
72nd Psalm it tells us plainly, Give the
King thy judgment, O God, and thy righteousness
unto the King's Son.
He shall judge thy people with righteousness, and
thy poor with judgment.
The mountain shall bring peace to the people,
and the little hills by righteousness.
He shall judge the poor of the people,
he shall save the children of the needy,
he shall break in pieces the oppressor.
They shall fear thee as long as the
sun and moon endure throughout all generations, and
he shall come down like rain upon the
mown grass, as showers that water the earth.
In his day shall the righteous flourish, and
the abundance of peace as long as the
moon endureth.
He shall have dominion also from sea to
sea, and from the river unto the ends
of the earth.
They that dwell in the wilderness shall bow
before him, and his enemies shall lick the
dust.
And the kings of Tarshish and the Isles
shall bring presents, and the kings of Sheba
and Sebal shall offer gifts.
The all-king shall fall down before him,
and all nations shall serve him.
Free shall deliver the needy when he crieth,
and the poor also, and him that hath
no helper.
He shall spare the poor and needy, and
shall save the souls of the needy, and
he shall redeem their souls from deceit and
violence, and righteous shall their blood be in
his sight.
That's only a sample of what the Bible
teaches about a time that is coming when
the oppressed people shall go free and the
weak shall be delivered from the strong.
Then the race must be rescued from the
tyranny that we call sin.
Sin is not only a crime that man
commits against God, sin is a monster that
rides mankind to exhaustion.
And according to the Bible, all through the
Bible, the race has got to be delivered
from this tyrant.
And thirdly, Israel must be delivered from her
ancient tormentors.
And I wonder if we can ever hope
that while Satan roams loose in the earth,
and Israel is at the mercy of her
Gentile neighbors, she'll ever be delivered from her
ancient tormentors.
And number four is that the world must
have a perfect leader.
Its problems have gotten beyond any of us
and the power of any of us.
And then fifthly, the evil spiritual powers must
have a master, and death must have an
executioner.
You know that Welch song that says, "'Death
of death and hell's destruction, bear us safe
on,' something like that.
Well, that we take and change.
But he says, "'Death of death.'" Jesus Christ
has got to be the death of death.
He has got to be the executioner of
death, and that hasn't happened yet.
In order to have a reigning one to
do these six things, to deliver the weak
from the oppression of the strong, to deliver
the human race from the tyranny of sin,
to deliver Israel from her ancient tormentors, to
deliver the world from her problems and to
have thus a perfect leader, we've got to
have someone with these qualifications.
Let me give them to you.
The qualifications of the world leader that's coming.
Our brother told us there would be a
world leader, and the qualifications of the world
leader that finally comes.
Now there will be a lot of world
leaders, and there have been, and the Lord
warned us there would be, who claim to
lead in the Lord's name.
But the first thing, the one who brings
about this wondrous golden age, he must be
a native of the earth.
For you see, the human race is inextricably
united with the earth.
You and I are sons of the earth,
whether we like it or not.
Even though we're born in a sanitary hospital
under glass, and we walk around on sidewalks
most of our lives and die again in
the hospital two floors down, 30 or 40
years later, and get put away in a
memorial park without any sign of death around
at all, except the dead man, he's dead
enough.
But in spite of that fact, we're still
a pretty earthy people, for the earth is
our mother.
From her we took the very body we
have.
The earth is our nourisher.
This earth we live in provides us with
nourishment for our bodies.
This is our home, this earth.
I don't want to go to the moon.
Do you want to go to the moon?
I don't want to go to the moon.
I have nothing in common whatsoever with that
hunk of clay and ashes that's roaming around
up there reflecting the light of the sun.
It can stay up there as far as
I'm concerned.
God put it there and I'm going to
leave it there.
And if you wait for me to volunteer
to go to the moon, I don't intend
to volunteer.
I don't want to go.
The earth is my home, and apart from
sin and death, I have nothing against the
earth.
I don't like sticky weather.
But on the other hand, I don't like
cold weather.
So we're adjusted so we can take it.
Nobody will die as a result of this
sticky weather.
You just feel as if you would.
But anyhow, the earth is our home, and
the earth will finally be our grave when
her boys and girls get old and tired.
Mother earth calls us back to her arms
again, and we lie down and sleep in
the bosom of the same earth from which
we sprung.
And that earth in the meantime has been
our battleground, our playground, our field, our home,
our all in all, as far as this
world is concerned.
And then, God, if he's going to bring
peace to the earth, he's going to have
to have somebody who qualifies as belonging to
the earth.
He doesn't want to send an archangel.
If the archangel Gabriel were to come down
to Washington or Ottawa or Berlin, he wouldn't
know what to say, except that he'd been
instructed by the Lord.
For he would have no sympathy at all
with the earth.
He wasn't born here.
He's spirit, not mortal, not flesh.
He knows nothing about being born and growing
up in school and stubbing your toe and
getting the measles.
He knows nothing about that.
He knows nothing about the troubles that we
people go through down here.
But Jesus, our Lord, knew, and that one
who comes must be able to say, I
am of the earth.
I was born here in the earth.
And then God won't send us a stranger,
that I'm certain.
He won't send us a stranger here.
You wouldn't like somebody to come from Accra
or Washington, D.C. or Buenos Aires here
to Toronto and say, Here, I'll solve your
problems.
You'd say, Who, you and who else?
You don't know anything about our problems.
And I had him.
Of course you would.
You'd want somebody that's Canadian.
You'd want somebody that knows your people, that
knows them well, grew up among them.
And when you mean been, you say been,
just like any other good Canadian.
And you'd want somebody that has your accent
and your language and your background and your
love of country and all the rest.
You'd want that kind of person.
And that's the kind of person I'd want
you to have.
I don't want somebody coming from London to
Washington and trying to run the United States.
And you don't want somebody to come from
Washington and try to run Canada.
And so we don't want any archangels or
seraphim coming down here to this earth where
we've stumbled along in the darkness and watched
the sun rise and the moon come up
and to have watched people die and seen
them born and grow up.
And we've learned to love the earth and
to fear the earth and to respect the
earth.
We want somebody that knows our people, that
knows us human beings, that knows us, red
and yellow, black and white around the world.
Somebody that's tempted in all points like as
we are and yet without sin.
Somebody that bears our lineaments and looks like
us.
And that one, of course, is Jesus Christ,
our Lord.
And then Christ is the Son of Man,
and Christ is the native of the earth.
He is God.
He was before the earth was, before the
world was, he was.
And he was in the beginning with God,
and all things were created by him.
And the same earth that was his birthplace
and his playground and the place of his
crucifixion and the place of his resurrection was
also made by him.
He is a man of the earth, he
knows the earth and he knows earth's people.
And in Hebrew they tell us that as
the high priest was taken out from among
the Jews in order that they might know
the Jews, so Jesus Christ was born among
us, one of us, that he might know
us and he understands us.
And he received his body from the earth
and he walked on the earth and he
drank of the water of the earth and
he rode on her lakes and he walked
her highways and he washed the dust of
her lanes off his feet and he lay
down to sleep on her bosom at night.
And when he was dead they took him
away in a quiet place in her bosom
from which God raised him the third day
according to the scriptures.
So he's part and parcel of the earth
and he's of the stuff of which the
earth and the world and humanity is made.
Archangels couldn't claim that, nor neither seraphims could
claim it, no strange creature from another planet
could claim it.
We wouldn't have them around, they're not people,
they're something else if there are any of
them there.
But he is a man, he's one of
us.
The second thing of qualification that this reigning
one must have, he must have unspotted holiness.
A holy God must have a holy King
and Jesus Christ is the Holy One of
God.
The enemies and the ages have found no
spot in him.
Even the fiercest and severest enemies of Christianity
bow their heads in silence when the name
of Jesus comes up because they know he
was a holy man.
And even the devil had to flee from
his presence and the enemies admit that he
was, this man was surely the Son of
God.
And then he must have unchallenged right to
reign.
Now, Jesus Christ our Lord is both God
and man, and so he can reign for
God over men.
He's the only one in the universe that
can do that, that can reign over men
for God.
If somebody had merely been a man, he
couldn't reign for God over us because he
would not understand God's side.
If he had been only God, he couldn't
have reigned because we'd say, how does God
know our problems?
But he is both God and man, and
so as God he reigns over mankind because
he is himself man and knows both God
and man.
And he came in line with the ancient
scriptures.
He's got to have unchallenged right, and Jesus
Christ came in line with the ancient scriptures.
Two thousand years of scripture, of prophecy had
gone ahead on Jesus Christ our Lord, and
the predictions were so minute and so detailed
that nobody else in the world could possibly
fulfill it.
I read where some fellow had said, look
in this mirror and you see God.
He had been looking in the mirror and
thought he'd been seeing God, and he was
only seeing his own mortal countenance.
But he had wrote that over the mirror.
He'd forgot somebody else would follow him and
look in and think he was God.
But nobody can say, I am the Christ,
for the simple reason nobody can prove it.
He stood up and said, I am the
Christ, and then could go straight to their
scriptures and prove it.
And you friends of the Jews and Brother
Nielsen, you well know that the best possible
weapon, you don't take weapons when you go
out to win men, what do you take?
You take reasonable arguments.
Well, the best possible argument for the Messiahship
of Jesus Christ our Lord is the very
scriptures which the Jews own to be their
own scriptures.
You can go to the scriptures, I remember
a man told me that he had gone
out with a Jew into the meadow and
they'd spread a blanket down so they wouldn't
lie on the grass among the bugs, they'd
spread a blanket down there.
One of them had the Old Testament and
one of them had the New.
They said, Now we go to the Old
Testament.
The brother of the Old Testament said, Now
here's what the Messiah has to be.
So he turned over to the New Testament
in red and here's what he was.
They did that for 5 hours.
At the end of 5 hours, the Hebrew
man got up off the blanket where he
had been stretched out, got down on his
knees and accepted Jesus Christ as the Lord
and Messiah, for he said, This Old Testament
of mine is perfectly fulfilled in this New
Testament of yours.
It's the only possible approach you can make
that is valid, and it is a valid
approach.
For 2,000 years these prophecies went before,
I say, on the Messiah.
They said he would be born at a
certain time and a certain place, of a
certain line, of a certain race, of a
certain family.
And so when he came, he came born
of that line, of that race, of that
family, in that place, approximately at that time.
Nobody else can claim that.
Buddha couldn't, he came too soon.
Muhammad couldn't, he came too late.
And Father Divine couldn't, he came of the
wrong race.
And no Jew could, no other Jew could,
because he came of the wrong family.
You know they kept the genealogical tablets in
Israel until Christ was born.
Everybody went in and registered his baby boy
when he was born.
So everybody could trace it back and back
and back and back and back.
Plato, Abraham, everybody knew what line he came
from until Christ was born.
And then a few years after that, Titus
came in and destroyed the city, and now
nobody knows where those tablets are.
And you can't prove that you belong to
any particular tribe, therefore nobody can come along
and say, I am the Messiah.
That was fulfilled in Jesus Christ the Lord.
He has unchallenged right to claim that he
is the one about whom God spoke in
the Old Testament prophecies.
Then this man has to be faithful both
to man and to God.
And as a man and God he can
reign, as I have said, as God over
man.
Now, scripture says he must reign.
Now I accept that, my brethren.
The details I am going to leave to
those who know more about it than I
do.
All the small details I knew 30 years
ago, and know less about them now.
I am at the place where I believe
more strongly in the coming of Christ than
I ever did in my life, but have
less dogmatic views of the details than I
ever did in my life.
Now, that will shock some of you out
of at least one year's growth, but I
hope you will make it.
But I must talk to you and say
what is true tonight, that the details I
leave to those who are still able to
figure them out.
But I believe there is a reigning one
coming, and I believe that he is to
reign and that the Lord will give him
the nations of the earth, and he will
reign over them and rule over them, and
that he will right what is wrong, and
that he will do what they are claiming
to want to do in the world today.
He will reign in righteousness and he will
bring peace and he will judge the poor
and he will break in pieces the oppressor,
and he will have dominion all over the
earth, and he will deliver the needy when
they come, and redeem the souls of the
people from deceit and violence.
And precious shall their blood be in his
sight.
Now, I believe that.
Now, he must reign till.
Notice it says, he must reign till.
He must reign till the riddles of the
earth are solved.
I want to insist, as I have said
several times before, don't let us get arrogant
in our attitude toward our rulers.
Those who reign or who rule over us
who have been elected to office, let's not
get too arrogant with them.
Of course they make mistakes.
Of course they make promises they don't fulfill.
Of course they do.
I don't think they ought to make promises
they know they can't fulfill.
But I think that when they make a
promise they think they can fulfill, and then
when they get there and find they can't,
I think we ought to be awful patient
with them.
I remember when John Fitzgerald Kennedy was running
for the presidency.
I heard him one night.
He was being interviewed by newspaper men, and
they said, Mr. Kennedy, you have been critical
of the farm policy of the present administration.
That was the Eisenhower administration.
You were critical of it.
If you were to get into office, what
would you do?
And he snapped back immediately, it didn't take
a minute, he had the answer.
He said, Why, I'd simply bring supply into
balance with demand.
That's the way you do it, brother.
And now that he is in there, he
finds out you can't bring supply into balance
with demand.
There's always something out of balance in the
world, and nobody knows how to straighten it
out even if they wanted to.
We have world politics.
When I was a younger man, they said
that we were all going to get together
and outlaw war.
And some of the liberal preachers used to
make big speeches saying, I'm against war because,
I'm against war because.
And they said there wouldn't be any more
war.
Right after the first world war, they said
nobody would ever again, nobody would ever again
go to war.
They said the women now have the vote.
I was down in the states.
They said the women have the vote, and
if the women have the vote, they'll never
vote for war.
Let me ask you, whoever asked you to
vote whether you wanted a war or not,
brother, you will just get a notice if
you're young enough saying that your country needs
you.
Please appear at Brewer and something else at
a certain time and you will appear.
All right.
You never cast a vote, but the big
men who make the wars, they don't ask
us.
All those notions were just childish notions, but
they said there would be no more war.
There would be world politics.
We'll all become one.
They said we'd get together and everybody'd love
everybody else.
It was that simple.
Well, we hate each other worse now than
ever since the beginning of the world.
I don't suppose there ever was a time
in human history when more people say meaner,
nastier, most abusive and horrible things about more
people than now.
This is the day when liberalism and pedagogy
and all the rest have taken over.
They have cast God's cord from them and
broken his bands of thunder, and the nations
have tumultuously assembled and imagined vain things.
And they said, Christianity is old-fashioned, why
do you want to believe in Christ?
The Lord says he'll laugh at them.
But anyway, then there are the racial antagonisms.
I don't like to bring up these unpleasant
things, but after all, we do have race
problems, you know that.
We have them all over the world.
They have them in Canada and they have
them in the States and in South Africa
and they have them now in England.
I remember a great English preacher came to
the States and he said, I don't know
a thing about the race problem.
We have no race problem in England.
I've been hearing on the radio about their
riots over there and their race problems.
They sure do have them.
They have them everywhere, the race antagonisms.
Just as long as you have less or
more pigmentation than I have, you're going to
be suspicious of me.
And just as long as your nose is
differently shaped from mine or your eyes slant
otherwise round over the wall, we're going to
stand and glare at each other across rivers
or across imaginary lines.
Race antagonisms will continue.
Then there's economics.
I don't know too much about economics and
in this I am quite in line to
be elected Minister of the Interior down in
Washington because nobody knows anything about it down
there either.
All I know is that nobody knows anything
about it.
I know how to change dollars into dimes
and so on and make out my tax
and say, you added it up wrong, you
owe me $13.
And then I send them $13.
But I know about that much.
But that's just about all I know.
But that's about all anybody knows.
You remember when they were plowing under little
pigs down in the United States?
Plowing under little pigs.
And all over the world people were hungry
for just one pork chop.
But they were plowing under little pigs.
Then they got their economic ledger domain all
mixed up.
And here was a pile of beautiful golden
wheat that God had given them, pile a
whole pyramid of beautiful golden wheat.
And they said if we dump that wheat
on the market we'll upset the economic balance.
So they poured gasoline on it and burnt
it.
I wasn't for that, but I couldn't help
it.
Nobody asked me whether they were going to
touch a match to wheat that people of
the world need.
They did it, brought a lot of watermelons
along, truckload after truckload, boxcar loads of watermelons,
and dumped them in the river.
I'd like to have been downstream a bit
myself.
But they did that rather than give them
away.
They said if we give them away we'll
upset the economic balance.
Well somebody has got to come who knows
something about this.
And nobody does up to now.
Then disease, disease.
We're conquering diseases, but every time we conquer
one another one breaks out.
Highest living standards in the world we have
in Canada and the United States.
These two countries on this God-blessed continent
eat more fat than all the other countries
in the world put together, and we also
have more heart attacks.
So when we manage to push one thing
up another one is like trying to put
twins to sleep.
You get one twin to sleep and by
that time the other one wakes up.
Then you rock him to sleep and by
that time the little yelp wakes the first
one up, and so there you are caught
between.
And if we get one problem solved another
problem comes up.
We get one thing whipped and another one
comes.
The problem comes.
We've got them.
Somebody has got to come who knows something
about this.
I don't know where to look for him.
I don't know where to look for him
in among men.
Lecture 10 The Resurrection And The Three Degrees
Of Glory 2 No genius has ever been
equal to these problems, how to handle world
politics, how to make people love each other,
how to keep peace in the world, how
to settle race antagonism so that people of
different colors and shapes don't hate each other
and try to kill each other, how to
solve the economic problems so that there are
not strikes and wars and people being beaten
up, and how to solve the disease problem
so we can walk around on the earth
without diseases.
No genius has ever been equal to this.
Now there are three things necessary to solve
this problem.
First, you've got to have a heart that
wants to do it.
Second, you've got to have the knowledge of
how to do it.
And third, you've got to have the power
to do it.
There's nobody like that.
I think Lincoln was a man, maybe, and
he's adopted by the whole world now.
He's no longer an American.
He's a member of the human race.
The whole world's adopted Lincoln.
And I think Lincoln had a heart big
enough to want to do this, but Lincoln
didn't have the knowledge of how to do
it nor the power to carry it through
if he'd known how.
Most politicians don't want to do it.
They don't care.
But if you could find a man who
had a heart big enough, whose love for
mankind would make them want to bring peace
to the world, they wouldn't have ability.
But when Jesus Christ came to the world,
he had all the infinite compassion of God,
for he was God.
And all the infinite compassion of God was
in his heart.
And he never looked at a blind man
without grief and sorrow in his heart.
He never looked at a deaf man unable
to hear the sweet sounds of nature but
what there was grief in his heart.
He never looked at a man with a
withered hand or a man with crippled feet
or a dead girl being carried out on
a bier.
Never.
But what there was sorrow in his heart.
He loved people.
As I've said a thousand times, Jesus loved
people.
He didn't love populations only, he loved people.
He loved the look of them and the
sound of them and the warmth of them
and the eyes of them.
He loved people, Jesus did.
And he loved them so much that he
gave everything he had, even to his life
itself, for them.
So he had the heart to do it.
But then these leaders that we're talking about,
if they raise a leader who has a
heart big enough to want to bring peace
and prosperity to the world, he must have
wisdom to know how to do it.
I frankly admit, I don't know how to
do it.
I just wouldn't know how to do it
at all.
Personally, I think that in history will show
that the end of the United States began
in 1913 when they put the income tax
on.
I don't say that to sour grapes because
they've hooked me and reamed me for income
tax.
I say it because it seems to be
the hour when America began to decline.
I believe that she'll tax herself to death
if she doesn't tax herself so weak that
Russia can shake her like a plum, as
she's threatened to do, and shake the right
plum off the tree.
But if you ask me how I could
run a country that big without an income
tax, I'd have to say, excuse me, I've
got an appointment.
I don't know.
I have the faintest notion, and I don't
know anybody else that does.
But I do know somebody that does.
I know somebody who is wisdom and righteousness,
and in whom all wisdom is hidden away.
I know someone who knows all the answers,
and that never would have to say, excuse
me, I don't know.
He knows.
He never has to ask anybody.
He's got the knowledge of God, all the
knowledge of God.
And this one is coming to reign, and
when he comes to reign, he'll know how
instantly to solve the economic problems, the political
problems, the racial problems, and the physical problems
of the world.
He'll serve it because he'll solve them because
he is God, and because he is a
God-made flesh that dwells among us.
Well, then, if you were to find here
in Canada, say, suppose that you were to
find a politician, a statesman.
Suppose, you know the difference between a politician
and a statesman, I'm sure you do.
A politician is a fellow who is running
for something, and a statesman is a man
who stands for something.
It's quite a difference there.
But suppose that you found a man who
stood for something, and he was popular enough
to get elected, and had a heart big
enough to want to bless the nation, and
was wise enough to know how to do
it, he'd have to have a third qualification.
He'd have to have the power to do
it.
Nobody got that power, except the one who
said, All power is given unto me in
heaven and in earth.
That one has all the power there is.
He has not only power, he has authority.
In our English Bible, power is the same
word.
Power, power, power, you hear it all through.
Unless you know the Greek, you don't know
whether the word is authority or power, as
I've explained before.
There is a difference between authority and power.
A man may have authority to do something,
and no power to do it.
Occasionally the police, with all the authority in
the world, will get chased out of a
lot someplace by a bunch of teenagers.
They don't have the power.
They have the authority, but not the power.
But Jesus Christ has both authority and power.
He has all the authority there is, and
he has all the power there is.
He has the heart that wants to heal
the world, and he has the wisdom to
know how to heal the world, and he
has the power to accomplish his plans.
Now he must reign, I say, until the
riddles of the world are solved, and he
must reign until evil is put down forever.
No effort has succeeded yet.
You remember Savonarola, the great Italian preacher who
stood Florence on its ear, that mighty orator,
that mighty gospel preacher?
Savonarola in Florence tried to have a little
holy city there, but you know what happened
to it.
Those of you who were students of Church
history in more recent times know how John
Calvin tried in his city to bring the
kingdom of God to bear.
It never came.
Do you know how the Puritans when they
came to the States tried to bring the
kingdom of God to New England?
They never managed to do it, it never
could be done.
Just out from Chicago, about 25 or 30
miles, there is a city named Zion.
Some of you have been there, no doubt,
I preached there.
Zion, Illinois.
It was supposed to be the city of
the Lord.
They named all their streets after Bible characters,
and judging from the announcements I heard, they
named all their babies after Bible characters, too.
They thought by naming their streets after Bible
characters and by calling the town Zion, and
by naming everybody after a Bible name, that
they would manage to have a city that
was perfect.
But poor Zion City, Illinois, now has shows,
and they didn't used to have them, and
I think they have saloons, and they do
smoke on the streets and they are just
like other towns now, only not quite so
bad.
Nobody has ever succeeded yet in getting a
group together and enlarging that group and causing
it to grow and spread like good leaven
until it fills the world.
Because leaven isn't good, leaven is evil.
Then death must be abolished.
Death must be abolished.
Nobody is able to abolish death.
The only two men in the world who
ever escaped death were Elijah, was Elijah.
The only man who ever escaped death was
Elijah.
He was taken away.
Moses, of course, died but then was taken
away.
But I'm sure that Elijah has to die.
It's appointed unto man, every man to die.
Enoch also, two men, Enoch.
Those were the two.
They escaped death.
But something happened to them commensurate with death,
these two men.
Death must reign.
This terrible thing called death reigns all over
the earth.
And we manage to live and get along
by ignoring it.
Did you hear that 83 people perished in
Shannon, Ireland today?
An airplane coming from Germany to Chicago, Illinois,
bearing farmers and landowners to the Middle West
to learn how they did in the Middle
West on this continent.
They took up into the air, nose down
into the river, and 83 died.
Terrible how death reigns.
Death reigns.
But the scripture says he must reign.
He must reign till there is a victory
over death.
He has a victory over death by paying
a debt he did not own, a debt
that nobody could ever properly claim as the
old.
And this brought into his hands the power
finally to reign over death.
Back in that text in the book of
1 Corinthians, he must reign till he hath
put all enemies under his feet, and the
last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.
So this is why I believe that Christ
is coming back to the world again.
This is why I believe that Jesus Christ
must reign, because he is the only one
in the universe that has the proper qualifications
for it.
He is the only one who has the
heart big enough to want to do it,
who has wisdom infinite enough to be wise
enough to do it, and has sufficient power
to be able to do it.
He is the only one who comes in
the line of scripture and with unchallenged right
according to the prophetic scriptures.
He is the only one who is a
native of the earth and is a man
and a member of the human race, and
therefore has the unchallenged right to reign over
the human race.
He is the only one.
So I believe that he is coming to
the earth again.
As I say, I am glad to leave
details with those who know more about it
than I do, but I am gazing upward
with the hope.
I don't see how it can be put
off very much longer.
Maybe there are things I don't know, maybe
he will tarry longer.
But if he does, I don't know how
we are going to get on, because we
are busy trying to destroy ourselves all we
can.