After this I looked, and behold, a door
was opened in heaven, and the first voice
which I heard was, as it were, the
Tumper talking with me, which said, Come up
hither, and I will show thee things which
must be hereafter.
And he that sat was to look upon
like a jasper and a sardine stone.
And there was a rainbow round about the
throne in sight like unto an emerald.
And out of the thrones proceeded lightnings and
thunderings and voices.
And there were seven lamps of fire burning
before the throne, which are the seven spirits
of God.
And the first beast was like a lion,
and the second beast like a calf, and
the third beast had a face as a
man, and the fourth beast was like a
flying eagle.
And when those beasts gave glory and honor
and thanks to him that sat on the
throne, who liveth forever and ever, thou
art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and
honor and power.
Thou hast created all things, and for thy
pleasure they are and were created.
Now tonight we are still looking through that
open door which John saw.
And he saw a throne set, and one
sitting on the throne.
And he that sat was to look upon.
I mentioned two weeks ago that John did
not identify the one who sat on the
throne.
We know who that is.
Here is the great fixed throne.
I think one of the greatest texts.
If you ever get discouraged, any of you
preachers, I suggest that you preach on Revelation
4.
And behold, a throne was set in heaven,
and one sat on the throne.
There you have it.
It even breaks itself up so that any
preacher at all can preach on that text,
because it divides itself.
A throne was set in heaven with one
on the throne, God.
Now that's what we're looking at, and he
that sat was to look upon light.
I ask you to notice here the problem
this man was up against here, this man
John.
As I've pointed out before variously and written
about it a little, that when Bible writers
are given a picture of the world to
come, they're puzzled.
They're not puzzled because things aren't clear, they're
puzzled because they're too clear.
They're puzzled because they're seeing things the like
of which they never saw before.
That is, they're seeing things that they never
saw before, so they have to tell us
what they're like.
And they're not like anything exactly, but they're
somewhat like it.
The problem there is that God wants to
disclose himself to John.
Do you notice a veil over this?
Do you notice that while John was looking
at it, God himself nowhere came out, shining
in his sevenfold brilliance?
If he had, there would have been no
John.
John would have perished as a leaf in
the fall might perish when tossed into a
furnace.
No man can look on God and live.
And it took the protection of the rock
for Moses to be safe from the sight
of God.
But here was God coming out, and yet
not coming out.
Here was God being seen, and yet not
quite being seen.
So John's eyes could not focus on God.
If he had focused on God, he'd have
gone blind.
For no man can look at God and
live.
But God is disclosing himself nevertheless.
But how can the infinite receive the finite,
or the opposite around?
How can the infinite be received by the
finite?
For that was the situation.
The infinite one, the one who had no
bounds, was to be received by the one
who had bounds.
It was like pouring an ocean into a
teacup, and John staggered under it.
And John had to describe what he saw.
And he, of course, lacked ideas and he
lacked language.
Now, I said this in the book The
Knowledge of the Holy, which has just been
out for three weeks.
At least one man has written a review
of it in which he carefully and skillfully
peeled my hideoff, because he doesn't believe, apparently,
that when you talk about God, you lack
ideas and mental stuff, that God is wholly
other and beyond and elevated and transcendent.
But I do, and I don't mind, really.
I think there is a time.
I am talking an awful lot now about
union, but I'm not so sure about what
division might be a good thing.
I'm not so sure, but what if you
divide at the right place?
You might get more out of it than
if you try to unite the wrong people.
Well, there is a definite difference between the
evangelical mystic and the evangelical rationalist.
The evangelical mystic, like John, stands in the
presence of the awesome God and cries, holy,
holy, holy, and falls down at his feet
as dead.
But the evangelical rationalist figures it all out
and says, we can understand it, we know
how it is, and so he writes a
long book about it and tells exactly what
it's like.
Well, I belong to the first category.
I think I belong to that category, and
I'm not alone.
I believe that Paul belonged to it and
David and Isaiah and Moses and Augustine and
Luther and Wesley and Terstigian.
You could name them by the hundreds and
by the thousands of those down the years,
not that I classify myself with those men
with regard to size.
I only classify myself with them in that
they were evangelical mystics, the man who founded
the Christian and missionary alliance, the man who
wrote the first book of his life, Thompson.
A missionary named Thompson wrote the life of
Simpson, and I wrote the second life called
Wingspread.
And the first man, I guess we wrote
about 25 or 30 years apart.
I wrote, of course, after Mr. Thompson and
benefited by his research.
But he said, and said cautiously, that this
man, A.
B.
Simpson, was an evangelical mystic, because back in
those days the word had gotten into disrepute,
and a man had, if he said anything,
he had to say it most cautiously.
But I don't hesitate whatever to say that
John was an evangelical mystic.
And then there's the evangelical rationalists, I say,
those who are trying to educate themselves out
of the miry pit and by degrees get
themselves out of the miry clay.
But they'll never get out, God will never
allow man to think his way out of
the horrible pit, never while the world stands.
You're going to have to have an open
vision, an open door and an illuminated heart,
and then you're going to have to stand
looking through that open door at that awesome
throne, and you're going to have to say,
Oh, Lord, God, is it I?
Now, there are two substances in the universe,
that which is God and that which is
not God.
That which is God, spiritual and unique and
uncreated and unapproachable and incomprehensible and wholly other
than, is super-rational and super-sensible that
escapes all of our efforts to get at
him.
And yet, if we're humble, we'll come to
us.
That you can never find, but can find
you.
That you can never search into, but that
he'll search you out.
That you can never rise to greet, but
will come down and greet your soul through
the gospel, that which is God.
And then there's that which is not God,
all that God has created.
It's not eternal, it's finite, it's made, and
it is not God, but it is the
handiwork of God.
If you were to say, go into a
studio of my friend Francis Chase, back in
the city of Chicago, Illinois.
He's a very widely known artist, as you
know, and you've seen his stuff in all
the magazines.
But he's a saintly man, a man of
God.
And you were to go into his home,
and he wasn't there at the time, but
you were to talk to his wife, Isabel,
and you were to say, Is, talk to
me about your husband.
And well, she'd say, there lives in this
house my husband, and then there's that which
is not my husband.
There is France, as she calls him, and
then there's that which is not France.
There is pictures, look at them here, and
all around there would be pictures of everything
under the sun which his imagination had created
and put down in watercolor and paint.
That would be that which is not Chase.
And then he'd come in smiling, and there
would be Chase.
There's that which is Mr. Chase, and then
all around him is his handiwork, that which
is not Chase.
And you can take all that out and
burn it, and Chase still lives.
So we have all around about us in
this studio of God, for this is God's
studio, this world in which we live.
It's a tragic place now.
Sin is everywhere.
I suppose this afternoon you heard the news,
as I did, that another plane crash in
Chicago, a takeoff, and two minutes or three
after the takeoff, a crash, another crash with
37 people dead instantly.
Well, now that's tragic, my friends, that's tragic.
There's no question about it, that's tragedy for
the people who remain, and tragedy for the
people, some of them in their youth, who
go without having fulfilled their life work.
There's tragedy all about.
That's because sin is here and the devil,
but this is God's studio anyway, and all
around about are the evidences of the handiwork
of God.
God's work done in blue sky, and God's
work done in green ocean, and God's work
done in the brown fields, and God's work
done in beasts and birds everywhere.
That's that which is not God.
And then God walks in and immediately you
know who did it all, and you say,
there's God.
That which is God and that which is
not God, they're separated.
And because I can understand that which is
not God, it doesn't mean I can understand
God.
God has revealed himself sometimes in what the
theologians call the theophany, that is, the setting
forth, the shining forth of God.
Now, God has by figure and by similitude
and by many like images, by angels and
by fire and otherwise, God has made himself
known to men.
He's come and revealed himself in theophanies.
But those were only theophanies, of course.
When God revealed himself as fire and was
in Israel as fire, that wasn't God.
It was God and it wasn't God, for
God is not fire.
The Bible says God's a consuming fire, and
yet it doesn't mean that that which comes
to a match when you strike it is
God, unfortunately.
There are those who believe that, our friends
way over the ocean who are called the
Pharisees or Zoroastrians or the fire worshipers.
They have a fire burning on their altar
day and night, and they worship before that
fire, and they worship the sun, and they
say that God is fire.
Well, when God said he's a flaming fire,
he doesn't mean that.
For the fire that I strike when I
strike a match and hold it up and
it flickers there and then goes out, that
is not God.
That is that which is not God, but
it's like God in that it's as mysterious
and fiery a substance as God is.
Then there were angels.
Do you remember that they came down to
the city of Sodom, and God said, I'll
go down and see?
God talking down to our ignorance, I'll go
down and see whether things are as bad
as they say they are.
Immediately there were two angels down there talking
to Abraham.
Those two angels were a revelation undoubtedly of
the Father and the Son, because God said,
I'll go down, and when he appeared, there
they were, two men.
Sometimes it is as men, and sometimes it
is as angels, and sometimes it is as
fire God appears.
Here was the rainbow.
Here was God on his throne and a
rainbow.
Now, that rainbow is an interesting thing.
A rainbow is, of course, what you see
in the day of the storm, and God
made that rainbow to be a sign of
a covenant and of a protection eternally.
God said, One time I destroyed the world
by flood, but the next time it will
be by fire, and that will be way
at the end of things.
In the meantime, don't you worry about floods.
They are telling me now that Hurricane Esther,
bless her, all the Esthers I've ever known
were meek little ladies, and here she is
going wild.
They say that by tomorrow she'll hit the
Florida coast, and look out for her, she'll
be the worst of them all.
Well, the gods, when they strike, and it
looks as if the world is going to
go to pieces in water, God says, Don't
let it get you down.
There will be losses and maybe a few
will die, but I'll not destroy the world
by water again.
And when you look up and see the
rainbow, it will be my smile telling you
that it will not be destroyed again by
fire.
So you don't have to worry about that.
And this is a sign of covenant, a
sign of protection, and a sign of eternal
protection.
I wonder if you've noticed one little thing
here, that all the rainbows are arches.
The rainbow arch, said the poet, is the
sign of his love, the rainbow arch.
It just comes over this half-way, you
know.
But this rainbow went all the way around
the throne.
So as much as to say, Here is
a covenant protection all the way around, and
it included and embraced these elders that were
sitting there, clothed in white raiment, and these
beasts that were there, these strange creatures, 24
elders and all these beasts.
They were there, and around about them there
went circles.
There wasn't a spot where the devil could
get in.
If I were the devil and I'd sneak
under the end of the rainbow and try
to do some dirt, if I were the
devil, I think I'd try that, because it
only comes half-way around.
It starts here and goes over and comes
down there.
You've always noticed that.
The devil might sneak under, but here he
can't get in, because it's all around the
throne.
It embraces and protects and takes in God
Almighty himself and the throne and all of
these redeemed and unredeemed creatures that are here.
There were the 24 elders.
Now, for whom do they stand?
Well, here would be the place to divide
over things that don't matter.
I have said that divisions over things that
do matter aren't to be deplored.
If a man doesn't believe the scriptures and
insists he doesn't believe the scriptures, I can
shake hands with him and live in the
same town with him without having trouble, but
I'm not going to kneel and pray with
him or go to church with him if
he doesn't believe the word of God.
There can be a division that does us
good, and then there can be a division
that does us harm.
Now, who are these 24 elders?
Well, I think they stand for the overcomers,
Israel and the Church.
I think they go back and stand for
all the overcomers, the 12 tribes of Israel
and the 12 apostles of the Lamb.
Notice in Matthew 19, then answered Peter and
said unto him, Behold, we have forsaken all
and followed thee.
What shall we have therefore?
Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto
you, that ye which follow have followed me
in the regeneration, when the Son of Man
shall sit in the throne of his glory.
He also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging
the twelve tribes of Israel.
These are not those thrones, but at least
it's a suggestion that these twelve apostles shall
sit upon the twelve thrones.
So that, I think, is what the elders
mean.
But if you think something else, we're going
to be friends about it.
Somebody was worried for fear in something I'd
said.
I don't remember what I said.
It's on tape in there if anybody wants
to make anything out of it.
We can play it back there.
But I said the last time I preached
here something about the Scofield Bible, and I
left the impression that one good Irishman sounded
as if he'd come from County Sligo.
He called me on the phone, and he
said he thought that I'd inadvertently classified Scofield
as one of those irresponsible teachers.
And I said, No, I hadn't, that I'd
only classified the people who took his teachings
and ran to extremes with them.
So I'll make that explanation for my Irish
friend who was worried about me.
It's nice to have people worried about you
and call you up and try to straighten
you out.
So I've been straightened.
Now, I'll explain that I'm not criticizing Scofield.
I don't believe everything he said.
He was a man among men, but I
certainly don't consider him irresponsible.
He certainly was a responsible Christian scholar along
with those who worked with him.
But that can't be said about all those
who are teaching prophecy.
So that these 24 elders are, I believe,
the redeemers, the overcomers in the church and
in Israel.
Then the lightnings and the thunders and the
voices and the seven fires.
Well, God and the throne are unchanged, but
the cup of iniquity on earth is filling
up.
This is what worries me a little bit
about the earth.
No, I'm not at all worried about my
relation to God, nor about the fact that
the sovereign God will have his way in
the world, and in the storm, and the
day will be when there will be peace.
And that which men now talk about and
don't believe in, at least they can't believe
much in it, there will be that time
when there will be peace from the river
to the ends of the earth.
Yet I'm worried because when the cup of
iniquity fills up, then the judgment of God
comes.
I only hope that we'll not be here
when the judgment of God comes down upon
this terrible earth.
There's a difference of opinion among the saints
of God about whether the church will or
will not go through the time of trial
and judgment and tribulation.
I can only say that I'm afraid she
will, but hope she won't.
And I'm not going to fight about it,
but I'm only going to say that I
don't want to be on earth in that
time when God rises up to shake the
earth and to shake the nations, that those
things which cannot be shaken may remain.
For there are lightnings and thunderings and voices
and fires, and the cup of iniquity has
been filled up.
I wonder how much longer God can take
it.
I wonder how much longer he can take
it.
I say if the holy justice of God
will be able to stand it much longer,
it will be a wonder.
We've sinned our way and forfeited a way
all right we might ever have had to
the protection of God, no question about that.
We've sinned it away.
We like to think that what we grandly
call the underprivileged nations of the earth are
the ones that are the judgments going to
fall upon.
But if I were bringing moral judgment upon
the world, I would not bring it upon
Katanga.
You've been hearing about Katanga and Kshumbi.
I've learned to pronounce those wonderful names.
Katanga, the high priest of Katanga.
If I were bringing moral judgment upon the
world, it would not be upon Katanga and
Kshumbi and those who until recently were cannibalistic.
Somebody told me in one of the little
states in Africa a man had been elected
president who had just gotten out of jail
for cannibalism, his cannibalism had consisted of eating
his mother-in-law.
I said I thought it was one way
to solve the mother-in-law problem.
But anyhow, those people over there, they don't
have the light that you and I have.
Look at our King James Bible, 350 years
it has stood solid and has given light
to all the world.
It's given light and borrowed none, as the
poet said.
We've had our preachers and we've had our
great cathedrals and our great churches and our
great evangelists and our missionaries and our reformers
and our revivalists.
We've had them all, I say.
And if I were bringing moral judgment upon
a nation, I'd bring it upon Canada and
the United States and England and not upon
Kshumbi in his darkness there, or upon the
poor fellows who only got out of nakedness
24 hours ago and were cannibals as long
as they could get away with it.
They need judgment and they will receive judgment,
but I wonder if their judgment will be
equal to the judgment of those nations who
knew the will of God and did it
not.
Does not the scripture say that he that
knows his master's will and does it not
shall be punished with a few stripes, but
he that knows it and does it not
shall be punished with more?
Remember that the moral judgments of God will
fall upon men and nations according to the
light they have received.
I once heard a preacher of the evangelical
church stand, a great tall thin man who
preached as though it would be his last
sermon on earth.
I heard him say once, lean way back
and look up and cry, if I went
to hell, I'd rather go to hell from
the heart of the jungle than to go
to hell from Akron, Ohio.
That's where the sermon was being preached.
I agree with him fully.
If I were going to hell, I would
want to go to hell, a dark man
without knowing any truth, somewhere in some heathen
land, as we call it, heathen land in
our white pride, because they haven't had the
privilege we've had of hearing the truth that
we've heard.
Well, these lightnings and thunderings and voices are
going to come and begin to sound out
in that day when the cup of the
earth has been filled up.
I wonder when it's going to be filled
up.
I don't know when, but I wonder when
it's going to be filled up.
God can't take it any more, and the
anger of God and the justice of God
have been violated so long and so consistently
and so arrogantly that he cannot take it
any more.
Then the lightnings and thunderings shall go out
from the throne, and the throne of grace
will become a throne of judgment.
My brother, that may not be as far
away as you and I think.
It may not be.
And if I were not a Christian man,
I'd get on my knees and see to
it that I was a Christian man.
I wouldn't wait around.
I wouldn't deceive my own soul by talking
about, I don't have the light and I
don't understand this and don't understand that.
You'll go to hell hiding behind excuses, paper
-thin excuses about not understanding something.
All that you don't understand is what's keeping
you away, and it's never what you think
it is.
They that love the light, they come to
the light that their deeds may be seen.
They that love darkness, they hide from the
light lest their deeds be reproved.
And it never is a case of a
man not understanding the gospel, it is a
case of a man not being willing to
obey.
For the Lord said that he that is
willing to do the will of God, he
shall know.
And all the Lord will need from me
is a willingness to do his will, and
I'll know instantly.
Not everything.
It doesn't mean that I'll have a four
-year course in theology if I give my
heart to the Lord, but it means that
I will, if I yield to him in
faith, instantly come to know who he is
and who I am.
And I will know that he is the
Lord God, and I can rise and say
with Peter, Thou art the Son of God,
the Savior of the world.
Then from there on, of course, it's growth,
as I said this morning.
These creatures about the throne, it calls them
beasts here.
I still love the dear old King James
Version.
I just wrote an article for a magazine
called, Confessions of a New Version Addict.
I buy a new version every time one
comes out.
All I have to do is to know
that a new version has appeared, and I'm
hopped off down to the bookseller to buy
it.
Always buy it, always bring it home, always
labor over it for three or four weeks
and then give it up and go back
to my good old King James Version.
Of course, the King James Version has a
few little mistakes in it here and there.
The translators tell us, and our Bible teachers
never get over telling us.
So the word beast is one of those
mistakes.
It shouldn't have been beasts, because they weren't
beastly creatures.
They were creatures, creatures, that's the word, creatures,
living creatures.
Well, the first living creature was like a
lion, the second living creature was like a
calf, and the third living creature had the
face of a man, and the fourth living
creature was like a flying eagle.
There you have four beasts, or four living
creatures.
They adumbrate, to use a big word that
I learned one time, that is, they show
forth and set forth and echo and shine
forth the glory that is Jesus Christ the
Lord.
And one of them is as a lion.
You see, you'll find some day, my brother.
I sat here this morning listening to this
young lady singing, O sweet wonder, Jesus the
Son of God.
I heard it 30 years ago, and I've
heard it sound occasionally down the years since.
Well, I thought as I sat here, this
is Christianity, this is it.
To love Jesus Christ until you are aglow
with it.
To love the Son of God until you
are overcome with it.
Until you cry, comfort me with apples, for
I am undone, my heart is ablaze with
the love of Christ.
Everything in the universe is there to shed
forth the glory of God's eternal Son.
And here we have these creatures.
These are not redeemed creatures, they never fell
and they didn't have to be redeemed.
They were there as original inhabitants of that
holy place, preceding man, I suppose.
And the elders were there as redeemed persons
who were washed in blood and who went
there afterward.
But these creatures are there to set forth
Jesus Christ.
Did you ever go visit somebody who'd had
a baby within the last year?
And they not only have a baby, they
have a camera.
And did you ever try to get away
before 11 o'clock?
You know, all the pictures.
This was Jimmy when he was two months
old.
This was Jimmy when he was two and
a half.
This was Jimmy when we were in Alberta
on a vacation.
This is Jimmy doing this, and this is
Jimmy doing that.
And this is an enlarged picture of Jimmy.
I like it myself.
I don't mind it at all.
I've never been bored yet by anybody showing
me baby pictures.
I like it.
I'm glad they feel that way about it.
My mother, no doubt, did feel that way
about me, though it's hard to think so
now, but I imagine she did.
But I like it.
But the point that I'm trying to make
is that when you love somebody enough, you
never can get too many pictures.
My wife, as a rule, puts a picture
on everything that doesn't have something else on
it.
There's pictures standing up there.
So if you want to know the whole
history of the Tozer Menage, from Laurel to
Becky and all the grandchildren, come over some
night and look us over.
You'll see them standing up there.
Don't mind it because you want to see
and remember what you love.
And what you love, you like to see
it shine out.
God made his world and he said, I'm
going to make my world so everywhere you
look, you see my Son.
Everywhere you look, you see my Son.
Every place, through all the world.
Look at the rainbow and remember the covenant
in his blood.
And look at the sea and remember the
time when the sea will be no more.
And look at the mountain and remember that
he stands strong as the mountain.
And look at the forest and remember that
he's like the cedar of Lebanon and everywhere
you look, you see Jesus Christ the Lord.
I believe a good Christian ought to live
like that.
I believe that everywhere we look and every
thought we think and everywhere we go, we
ought to find the face of Jesus Christ
looking out at us.
So here are these creatures.
One of them has the face of a
lion, and there is the kingship of Jesus
Christ the Lord.
The kingly idea is a noble idea, as
I've said before here under other circumstances, that
the kingly idea is a noble idea, because
the glory of the king doesn't lie in
the person of the king, it lies in
the person of the people.
And when you look at a king or
a queen, you don't mind calling them all
sorts of your majesty and your nobleness and
that, you don't mind that, because you know
they don't mean that person.
They are talking about everybody over whom they
reign.
And so the king idea is a noble
idea, for the glory of the king lies
in the freedom and happiness of his people,
and the glory of Jesus Christ the lion
lies in that he is the ruler over
a people who will be supremely and perfectly
happy throughout all the universe.
And there is the calf.
What is the calf doing there?
Obedient unto sacrifice, the little calf that didn't
have much in his head and not much
to look forward to, but death and blood
and sacrifice.
But he was there, God had him there,
the calf and the lamb.
Then there was the man, the manhood of
Jesus, and there was the flying eagle, the
deity of Jesus.
These four show the four gospels.
It's quite a wonderful thought to me that
when you go back into the symbolism and
imagery of medieval times, you will find that
over Matthew, the gospel of Matthew, there was
the lion.
And over Mark there was the calf, and
over Luke there was the man, and over
John there was the flying eagle.
You will find those symbols dating way, way
back hundreds and hundreds of years, because the
Bible students of those days had seen that
the four gospels show forth the four faces
of Jesus Christ, the Lord.
In other words, God has put Jesus Christ's
picture up everywhere and said, I behold my
Son in whom my soul delighteth, and see
him and hear him, for he is my
beloved Son.
Then there is the unceasing worship, the unceasing
worship.
There are the elders and the creatures.
They unite in verses 9 and 10.
And when those creatures had given glory and
honor, first the four beasts had each of
them six wings, the four creatures.
Each of them had six wings, and they
were full of eyes within, and they rest
not day and night, saying, Holy, holy, holy
Lord God Almighty, which was and is and
is to come.
These beings are there in heaven, never resting
while they worship and cry, Holy, holy, holy.
And yet here we go, we are so
tenderhearted and so generous and tolerant that we
believe that a man who dies, who has
never said holy, holy and meant it, who
would consider himself bored to tears if he
had to dwell day and night in heaven,
crying holy, holy, holy, as soon as he
dies, we preach him right off into heaven
and say, there he goes.
See him disappear?
He's gone into heaven.
There lies the old body.
I remember a dear friend of mine who
preached the sermon one time over the body
of a man who died in his church,
the man, I don't know what kind of
man he was, but the pastor got eloquent
and he said, This is not our brother,
this is only his body, this is merely
the shell, and that's gone to heaven.
And it took the district superintendent to get
that straightened out, they didn't like that so
well.
But it was only oratory, the fellow was
merely trying to use figure speech, and he
used an unfortunate figure, Bob, that's all.
Now what I'm trying to say here is
that when we preach a man off to
heaven, he'd be bored.
If you don't want to go to heaven,
God's not going to force you into it
at all.
The Lord is not going to take you
and say, Now, here, you weren't much interested
while you were on earth, but now you
will be.
You won't change a bit.
If heaven bores you now, it would bore
you in the hour of death.
There are many a sinner that lies in
the last hour of death without a qualm.
Preachers like to tell stories of sinners pulling
their hair and crying, I'm going to hell,
but not one in 10,000 ever had
such an experience.
The Bible tells us in Psalm 23 that
they'd die quietly in their bed, and John
Bunyan pointed that out in one of his
books.
He said that sinners die peacefully in their
bed, and is that a proof that they're
all right?
No, it's a proof how terribly all wrong
they are.
They're not even able to understand how bad
off they are, so they lie like a
man in a coma on a railroad track
with a train coming.
They don't know what's happening.
Here they're crying, Holy, holy, and they rest
not day and night.
Some of you rest an awful lot in
between holy, holy, holies, and some of us
do, but they don't.
They rest not day and night, crying, Holy,
holy, holy, Lord God Almighty.
And when those beasts give glory and thanks
to him that sat on the throne who
lives forever and ever, that stirs up the
elders.
That's one nice thing about great singing, great
hymn singing, particularly great worship.
It may stir up somebody else to want
to worship.
When the four beasts worshiped, then the four
elders woke up and said, Let us worship.
And down they went on their knees before
him that sat on the throne.
And they worshiped him that liveth forever and
ever, and cast their crowns before him, crying,
Thou art worthy, O Lord, for this is
not Jesus they are talking about now, this
is God the Father.
Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory
and honor and power, for thou hast created
all things, and for thy pleasure they are
and were created.
Now, these creatures, these descriptions of praise given
by the heavenly creatures there and given by
the redeemed creatures there, and they cast their
crowns before him.
They felt they didn't deserve a crown.
They had earned their crown, but they didn't
deserve it, so they cast it at the
feet of God.
Do you feel that everything that's yours, everything
that's good about you, everything you have and
everything that you may easily have earned, nevertheless,
is to be cast at the feet of
God and not your own?
Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory
and honor and power, for thou hast created
all things.
Now, those are the descriptions of praise to
the Father and the casting of the crowns
at his holy feet.
Now, all this is revealed.
This is preliminary to the opening of the
seals, the book which we'll deal with next
Sunday night.
But this is revealed for about three reasons.
It's revealed that the wise and believing may
live in the light of it.
The wise man with faith and penitence who
walks with his God as Noah walked, he
lives in the light of this.
I never want to get where the light
can't reach me.
I never want to get where the light
can't reach me.
Nature has its flatworms and its silver fish.
Nature has its creepers and its crawlers that
lie under rocks and in wet spots and
in caves.
The glorious sun that shines down these fall
days can never reach these creatures.
The sun shines, but it never reaches the
flatworm, because the flatworm hides from the light
and would die if it reached it very
long.
But I don't want to be a flatworm.
I want to be one of those that
the light can reach.
The wise and the believing, I say, will
live in the light of all this.
The curious and the inquisitive will worry over
details and write bitter books against other men
over details.
But the holy and the humble and the
lowly and the blood-washed and the godlike,
they'll live in the light of this, understanding
a great deal and knowing there's a great
deal more that don't.
But understanding enough to live in the light
of it.
You walk out of a beautiful cool day
like this and God's dear sun shines down
on your head and you don't know too
much about that sun.
But you know enough to walk in the
light of it in a cool fall day.
So I don't know all I could know
about this, but I know enough that this
to me, this is great truth to me.
Not because I've preached it, but because it's
here.
Great truth to me.
While I stand on this earth, there exists
out of my sight, but exists in reality,
a throne and one on a throne, a
rainbow around the throne, encircling in everlasting covenant
protection the representatives of the creatures who never
fell and the representatives of the creatures who
fell and were redeemed.
There is a third classification of creatures that
are not represented here.
They are the creatures that fell and were
not redeemed.
There are creatures that never need redemption because
they did not fall.
There are creatures that fell and must be
redeemed and were redeemed.
There are creatures that fell and were not
redeemed and will never be redeemed.
And the first two classes are found here
on the throne.
Those who never fell and those who fell
and were redeemed.
But the third terrible class is not found
here.
They're found elsewhere, but we know they're there
somewhere.
We know that they're in the sight of
God at any rate because there are lightnings
and thunders and voices and fires and God
gets ready to send his judgment upon them.
Then these things are revealed that the foolish
and unbelieving may stand without excuse.
The foolish and the unbelieving, they stand without
excuse.
Let me never hear anybody say, I'm puzzled,
I'm all mixed up, I don't understand.
If I knew more, I'd get right.
If I'd get saved, if I only knew
more.
You know enough.
You know enough to get right with God.
If you're a Christian living a life far
off, you know enough to get straightened out.
You don't have to know more.
You only have to kneel on what you
now know.
When Paul had his shipwreck out there in
the Mediterranean that terrible day, the night, remember
that the ship broke to pieces and they
all got ashore, some on boards and some
on oars and some on bits of floating
cargo, some on this and some on that,
but they all got ashore.
So you don't have to know everything.
You only have to know that you're a
sinner and that Christ died for you, and
if you'll believe on Christ, you'll be saved.
You're a Christian all mixed up, but you
say you don't have to believe.
You can come back, any verse that will
bring you in.
You can come soaring in on any verse.
You can come soaring in on the verses
some people don't believe that are for you.
You can come in, come back, be restored
and be cleansed and delivered and filled.
We missed this the first time I ever
talked to my now good friends, Brother Finley
and Kay.
He surprised me as we rode along.
I learned he was a young philosopher, and
he said this.
He said, what makes me feel bad is
that we were born with a design, with
a purpose, and where men are not fulfilling
the purpose for which they were created.
There's the great overweening philosophy of the world,
that we were brought into the world with
a design, with an ending.
I want you to justify your existence if
you fail that end.
I want you to tell me what right
you have to live if you fail that
end.
I want you to excuse yourself before the
bar of God and the judgment of mankind
if we miss this.
If I miss the salvation, if I miss
the privilege of standing with these for whom
these 24 elders stand, all those creatures, if
we read about those redeemed souls we read
about later in the book of Revelation, if
I miss this, then it's far better for
me that I had been carried from my
mother's arms to the grave when I was
yet an unnamed infant.
It's far better for me that I should
never have breathed God's fresh air and basked
in God's sunshine.
It's far better that I should never have
gone to Sunday school as a young fellow
and heard the text, God is love, for
Christ died for the ungodly.
It's far better that I should never have
heard it if we miss it.
And if we miss it, who is to
be blamed?
Certainly not the God who sits on the
throne.
Certainly not the Lamb who stands before the
throne like as he had been slain.
Certainly not the fiery Holy Ghost that leaps
out all over the world bringing the gospel
to men.
Certainly not.
And if I miss it all, has life
been worth the struggle?
I personally think not.
I wish that those who are not saved
might be saved this night, and I wish
that those Christians who are not living as
you should live, you'd decide to do something
about it tonight.
Now it shouldn't be like this, but it
is.
But we're kind of starting a new season.
There never should be any seasons in the
church.
We should serve God in season and out
of season.
But we are getting started with what we
hope will be a long fall and winter
and spring uninterrupted.
Are you ready to do your share?
Can you properly do your share?
Can you do it with zeal and enthusiasm
and fire?
Can you do it with relish?
You can't?
I suggest we all go into the newly
cleaned up chapel.
You can get in there now without falling
overboard.
Everything is all fixed up from the floor.
I suggest we go into this chapel tonight
and have a little prayer meeting together.
Now we're going to close this meeting.
I want every unsaved person or person who
isn't sure of his spiritual condition to meet
the Pastor and me in this room.
And I want every Christian who wants to
say, I want to get straightened out tonight.
I want to serve God with relish and
with zeal and with fire.
I want to make a new start this
night.
And I want you to all go in
there, and we're going to go in and
have a prayer meeting in a little while.
Not long, but a little while anyway.
Let us stand and sing, and then let's
file through that door into the chapel.