Revelation 5, verses of the 5th chapter already
read, but I'll read them again, where John
said, I saw in the right hand of
him that sat on the throne a book
written within and on the back side sealed
with seven seals.
And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with
a loud voice, Who is worthy to open
the book and to loose the seals thereof?
No man in heaven nor in earth, neither
under the earth, was able to open the
book, neither to look thereon.
And I wept much, because no man was
found worthy to open and to read the
book, neither to look thereon.
And one of the elders saith unto me,
Weep not.
Behold, the Lamb of the tribe of Judah,
the root of David, hath prevailed to open
the book and to loose the seven seals
thereof.
Next week, next Sunday night, I want to
speak on the Lamb turned Lamb.
But I'll stop with that tonight, and I
want to point out that we are still
in the 4th chapter, really, because the 4th
and the 5th chapters are all one.
What is not generally understood by the average
person, even though he's told, he forgets about
it, that when the Bible was written, it
had no chapters in it.
The chaptering was done by those, and I
think properly done by those who felt that
it would be better if the scriptures were
divided into chapters and verses, so that we
would remember where things are.
You will notice that in the book of
Hebrews, Paul, or whoever wrote it, says, the
scripture says, and again it says, and again
it is written, and the word scripture says
somewhere, thus and thus, no chapters and verses,
so he didn't tell you where, he just
said it was here, it was there somewhere.
But we think we've improved on that, anyhow,
by making chapters and verses so we can
tell you exactly where a thing is.
So they divided this book of Revelation into
22 chapters, and they began, and after this
I looked, and that made a chapter.
And I saw in the right hand of
him that sat on the throne, and that
began a chapter.
And I saw when the Lamb opened one
of the seals, and that began a chapter.
I think the chaptering is usually right, but
sometimes it needs to be remembered that the
chapters were not put in by the Holy
Ghost, but by men, in order to make
it convenient.
And so we're really here where it says,
I saw in the right hand of him
that sat on the throne.
We're back where we started here in the
4th chapter, where it said, I was in
the Spirit, and behold, a throne was set
in heaven, and one sat on the throne.
And I saw in the right hand of
him that sat on the throne, a book
written.
So we're where we were, it's the 4th
and 5th chapters are really one.
And the door is opened in heaven, and
there is seen a throne, and there is
seen one seated on the throne, and there
is seen a rainbow encircling the throne.
Then round about the throne there are seen
the 24 elders, and before the throne there
are the four living creatures, the beasts of
the King James Version.
And there is lightning, and there is thunder,
and there is the worship of all creation,
as the living creatures who are representative of
all the unfallen creation, and the elders representative
of all the redeemed.
They join to worship the Lord.
And the scene doesn't change, but mighty deeds
are done here.
John is still looking through that open door
at the throne and all this wonder.
And mighty deeds are done here before the
throne, all embracing and breathtaking and cosmic and
mighty in their extent and power.
And says the man, John, I saw in
the right hand of him that sat on
the throne, a book written within and on
the backside, sealed with seven seals.
It was as though the book, and as
you know, they didn't have this paging that
they have now in those days either.
Their books were rolled like wallpaper.
And you've seen the Jewish scrolls, for that's
what they were, and they were written only
on one side, that would be the inner
side.
But this book was so full that it
was written on the inside and then written
on the back side of it to the
outside of it, so that it was twice
as big a book as it would have
been otherwise.
And the, or I don't know whether my
figures are quite right there or not, but
anyhow, the book was large and it was
on the inside and on the outside.
And this was the day of universal jubilation
when this book was in the hand of
God.
The world has had her celebrations.
I remember back, some of you weren't born
yet, but then some of your parents even
hadn't even been married yet.
And some of your parents hadn't even been
born yet, maybe.
But I remember when they had the, what
do they call it, Armistice Day.
You remember when we had the mistaken, some
of you old-timers remember when we had
the mistaken day.
They said the war's over and everybody went
wild.
Then they found the war wasn't over at
all.
And then later on they said the war's
over and then they really went wild.
Those were celebrations, I tell you.
There have been coronations of kings and queens
and births of princes and the surrenders of
warring nations.
They, they've all been great and they have
touched every part of the world.
But here is a triumphant ovation rousing all
three worlds, because it's written here that under
the earth and above the earth and in
heaven on top of the earth, wherever there
was any living thing that was sensitive to
thought, wherever there was a moral creature, there
that, that affected that moral creature.
This, the, this fourth chapter and fifth chapter
and what follows, for they all spring out
of this, this affects the very world itself.
I said above that it's cosmic, meaning that
it belongs to the whole world and it
does.
Now God who sat on the throne, the
eternal God, the Father Almighty, had a book
in his hand and he sat there on
the throne.
Now I ask the question, what is this
book?
Now if I, if you've been taught only
one view of this, I suppose that you
will, that I will sound to you untaught
and ignorant and astray, but the book was
written in tears, somebody said, and it only
can be understood in tears.
And there are opinions about this book.
What is the book that God had in
his hand?
Now there, you wouldn't believe this unless you've
been a student and read the commentators.
I often think about the Iowa farmer that
heard these young preacher fresh out of seminary
talking about commentators all the time.
And one day he appeared with a wagon
load of Iowa's best.
He said, I don't think our pastor should
be feeding his family commentators.
He said, we'll give you the, the very
best Iowa taters.
I don't know whether you know what the
word tater is, but we do down in
the States there.
It's another word for potato.
And a commentator was, was one who commentates.
And the commentators have disagreed about this.
Some say that what God held in his
hand there was the old Testament.
And others say that what God held in
his hand was the new Testament.
You say, how could people be so dumb?
Well, you see the fellow that knows what
you believe may say, how could you be
so dumb?
We have to keep our minds open on
some of these things.
And other commentators believe that the book God
had in his hand was the book of
judgment.
Others believe that it was the apocalypse itself.
And then there are those who have been
imaginative enough to say that they believe this
book is the book of God's hidden purposes.
And then there are those who believe that
this book that God had in his hand
is the title deed to the universe.
And I believe that that's what I believe.
I believe that this book is the title
deed to the world and that God has
said now here, the church is taken up
and it's with the Lord, and the elders
are representing all redeemed, and the creatures are
representing all the unfallen.
And now we're going to settle forever a
big question.
It's a question that's asked right now, being
asked all over the world.
Who owns the world?
That's the big question.
Who owns the world anyhow?
That was the question that we must answer,
because there was a day, a dark and
a dreadful day, when God's right to the
world was challenged.
And the ownership of the world was questioned.
Satan and his hosts claimed the world.
You remember back in the book of Luke
where it's written the devil taking Jesus up
into a high mountain, showed unto him all
the kingdoms of the world in a moment
of time.
And the devil said unto him, all this
power will I give thee and the glory
of them, for that is delivered unto me
and to whomsoever I will I give it.
If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall
be thine.
And our Lord never challenged him on that
at all.
He never said and positively did not say,
you're mistaken about this, the glory of the
kingdoms of the world are not thine.
He simply said, get behind me, Satan, I
won't worship you, I'll worship God.
So that Satan's claim is made, and it
sticks to a certain degree.
And nations and kings and races fight for
ownership over the earth.
And there are different schools of thought about
who owns the earth.
Some say that the earth is owned by
the thinkers.
If you're a great thinker, you will own
the earth.
That may be true to a certain degree,
but it's also not true.
Who was that mathematician back in ancient Greek
that was walking along, figuring out a mathematical
problem, and somebody came along and slew him?
If he had been awake and hadn't been
in dreamland, he'd escape.
And the thinker sometimes only makes himself miserable.
The book of Ecclesiastes is a book of
a thinker who only got unhappier as he
went along.
He said, I searched into everything there was
to search into in heaven and earth, and
when I was finished, I said, oh, more
knowledge only means more misery.
I sometimes like to look at a comic
strip, some fellow who's just dumb and happy,
and I kind of wish that I might
be just dumb enough to be happy.
And yet I'm dumb enough, God knows, but
I don't want to be that dumb.
I'd rather be miserable about something than to
just take the world good-naturedly.
There are lots of happy people running around.
They are just not sensitive enough to be
anything but happy.
Just not sensitive enough.
But the thinker isn't a happy man, and
the thinker doesn't own too many things either.
Usually the fast talker owns most.
And then somebody else says the man who
toils, he's the man who owns the world.
Workers of the world arise, you've nothing to
lose but your chains, they said at the
turn of the century and a little later.
And so they said the proletariat, that's a
long name for the fellow with the shovel,
and the working man, they say he owns
the world.
And then there are those who believe the
world belongs to those who can take it.
Hitler believed that.
He believed the world belonged to the fellow
who can take it, and he was only
one in a long train of men who
had the same mistaken idea that the world
belongs to the fellow that can take it.
Then there are those that say the world
belongs to the white man.
There are those again that say the white
man's had it long enough.
It's time the colored man took it over.
And then there are those that say the
world belongs to the Jew, and others say
no to the Gentiles, and so it goes.
Now the secret is out.
To whom does the world belong?
Who is it, says God, I have in
my hand a title deed to the world.
This is whoever can establish ownership here has
a right now to claim it.
And as soon as ownership is established, the
man who establishes the ownership takes the book
and begins to open it seal after seal.
And as he opens it, the clutch of
the octopus begins to shake loose.
God cuts one, what are octopuses' hands?
What are those things?
I don't know.
I got in myself into it there.
What are they?
I don't know.
But tentacles, that's what they are, tentacles.
The world is owned and held on to
by these tentacles.
And God begins to cut them, seven of
them instead of eight, and he cuts them
off one at a time as the seven
seals are open.
And now God says here, we're going to
find out now who it is that owns
this world.
No tricks now, no arguing, no bullying, no
lying, no force.
It always seemed to me to have been
and to be one of the silliest things
in all the world, that the man with
the biggest fist, he has a right to
anything.
There stands a car, and two men walk
up, a little one and a big one.
And they say, who owns the car?
And the little man says, I own it.
And the big man says, well, no, I
own it.
And so they decide to find out who
owns it by fighting.
And the fellow with the biggest fist says,
well, it's mine.
They haven't proved who owns the car, they've
proved who has the biggest fist.
And that's the way with nations, when they
start a war, they don't prove anything.
All they prove is who can fight the
most and the best.
But when the world is finally, the pinnacles
of hell are to be shaken loose from
the world, and the world is going to
be given back to the one that owns
it, there will be no tricks.
Nobody will pull any tricks.
Nobody will do any arguing, there won't need
to be any arguing.
And nobody will do any bullying, and nobody
will do any lying, because they're in the
face of a God who knows a lie
when he hears it, and there'll be no
force used.
Somebody's going to have to determine who owns
this world anyhow.
When you walk up and down, you say
in a vague way, well, God owns it.
He owns the world.
There was a day when the robber barons
owned it, and there was a day when
men thought that they were appointed by God
to own the half of the neighborhood, and
everybody had to work for them, and so
on.
Different philosophies, different views.
They all go back to the one who
said, This has been delivered to me, and
to whomsoever I give it, to him it
belongs.
And they searched everywhere.
Everywhere they searched, there wasn't any man found.
No man in heaven, no man in the
earth, and no man in hell.
And I ask you to look at the
list.
I ask you to look at the list
of statesmen who might have made some claim
to the world.
Every nation has had its great statesman, because
there couldn't be a nation without a statesman
to found it.
And where there had to be the largest
or the smallest nation, had to have somebody
who's known as the father of his country.
Look at the statesmen.
Not a one of them could claim it.
And there are those who are philosophers.
They're the deep thinkers, the brain, the eggheads,
the men who inhabit habitually altitudes of philosophic
thought that most people never get into, and
some only get in just a few minutes,
and they get sunburned and deserted for the
rest of their lives.
They get into college or later in high
school, and they get a little taste of
the highlands, and they say, I'll never, never
read that book again.
I remember a sister of mine, Mildred, after
she'd gone through high school and they had
exposed her to Shakespeare, exposed Shakespeare to her,
I don't know which.
She said, I don't believe that Shakespeare is
a great writer at all.
I simply think there has been a conspiracy
among the teachers to say that he's a
great writer, and that everybody, in order to
seem to be learned, has to say he
thinks that Shakespeare is a great writer.
And I said, I personally don't think that
he is.
Well, I didn't agree.
I personally think that he is.
But you try a diet of Shakespeare for
a while, and you'll find that it's a
wee bit harder than Little Abner or quite
a little bit harder.
But the philosophers, do they own the world?
Do the men that think own the world?
Not necessarily.
But there have been some great thinkers, and
there have been some great inventors.
Do you ever stop to think how little
you've done, ever?
Ever stop to think how little you've ever
done?
Look, you rode to church in a car
tonight, and you haven't added one thing.
All you know is what to push and
what to pull, and when to turn it.
That's all.
You don't know a thing.
Somebody else did that inventing.
Everybody, I'm in debt to everybody.
I'm in debt to the man that laid
the sidewalk when I walked down the sidewalk.
I'm in debt to the person who invented
the car.
I'm in debt to the man who invented
airplanes.
I'm in debt to the fellow who invented
bifocals, if you want to know the whole
truth.
I couldn't have done it.
I wouldn't have thought of it.
I'm in debt.
I'm just in debt to everybody.
So the inventors, do they own the world?
No, they don't own the world.
The scientists, the cynical and ominous thing, that
the scientists who have become the high priests
of a great God science in these last
days, are taking us to the brink.
The Prime Minister this day before yesterday, or
yesterday in Ottawa, said that if atomic war
came to the world, you could find him
and his family in their hideout.
Well, he's going to try to save what
he can of the pieces of a shattered
and torn civilization if atomic war hits the
world.
I don't know, I know that there will
be such a thing, but the scientists, somewhere,
but the scientists have led us to it.
I could take you anytime you want to
come down with me to Chicago, to the
south side of Chicago.
I could take you out and show you
the football stadium under which the atom bomb
was born.
Learned men and scientists labored in there, and
I've passed I wouldn't know how many scores
of time.
This plain-looking stadium there, under the seats
as they sloped down this way, there were
rooms.
And in those rooms, this horrible jiggernaut was
born.
The scientists are able to heal one disease,
while other scientists, equally reputable and equally honorable,
are over somewhere inventing ways to destroy the
greatest number of men in the quickest time.
Oh, the scientists haven't any right to the
world.
Well, there are the painters and the poets
and the dreamers and the greater men of
the world in the world either.
As I said now two weeks ago, was
it, or three weeks ago tonight, when I
talked on the reign of Christ being a
divine imperative, I must repeat now that while
they looked around for someone to rule the
world, and someone who could establish claim to
it and say, this is mine and I
have a right to, with my lightning and
my thunderings I have a right to shake
the tentacles of hell loose from it, for
it doesn't belong to them, had to have
the right relationship, no living creature, no beast
with four faces, no archangel with a great
wing spread, no cherubim, no seraphim, no creature
other than human had any right to this
earth.
This earth belongs to you and me, brothers
and sisters.
By our right it belongs to us because
we are made in the image of God
and this is our playground, our backyard, our
front yard, our meadow.
This is the place where we play and
work and live and die.
But it's been taken from us.
And whomsoever he will, he gives it, said
the devil, and Christ never challenged him.
Somebody had to be of the seed of
Abraham and of the seed of Adam, and
there had to be somebody with character good
enough to want to do it and wise
enough to know how to do it and
holy enough to do it purely and powerful
enough to do it.
No one could qualify.
They searched everywhere.
Notice here they were searching for somebody to
come along and say, that's my book, that's
mine.
It's titled Eve, here under, here under, described.
And so they described the whole universe and
said, now who owns it?
Who can open it?
Only the owner could open it.
Who's is it?
They said, this is God Almighty's deed to
the world.
And they searched everywhere.
I saw a strong angel making a proclamation
with a loud voice.
And his proclamation was very simple, who's worthy
to open the book and to loose the
seals?
That is, who's worthy to do it?
Who owns this?
And they searched everywhere.
What a search that must have been.
They looked all over the heavens and they
didn't find a man.
I suppose that in heaven itself there must
have been the great souls, the great saints
who had lived there, the great men that
who shrines you and I kneel almost in
our great love for them, the Moses and
the David and the Isaiahs and the Pauls
and the Johns and the Peters and the
Augustans, all down the years.
Now they are with God in heaven.
And they searched through heaven to find if
there was a man anywhere.
And Abraham, do you own the world?
Abraham said, my God, don't ask me such
a foolish question.
I merely have a little ship called Palestine
for me and my seed after me.
And we'll be lucky if we get that.
God will have to help us to get
that, to look at what the Arabs are
doing.
So Abraham said, not mine.
And they came to Moses.
Moses, does it belong to you?
And Moses said, I never owned a piece
of land.
No, it doesn't belong to me.
I was just a servant in God's house.
David, does it belong to you?
No, it doesn't belong to David.
Does it belong to Isaiah, the man with
the organ voice?
No, no Isaiah.
Nowhere down the years did they find any
man who said, no man in heaven, no
man in earth, no man under the earth.
They even went to hell to find out
if by any chance an owner had gotten
lost somewhere down there.
No owner, nobody.
No, they said, that isn't mine, that isn't
mine.
That's sealed with seven holy seals all around,
and it's written there, and it describes the
world all surveyed and laid out.
It isn't mine.
Nobody claimed it.
And that was too much for John, sensitive,
tender, loving John.
And I'd rather have John's heart than to
have all the knowledge in the world.
John said, I wept much.
Now I don't know how much much is,
but I suppose that John went into a
paroxysm of real manly grief.
I wept much because no man was found.
For you remember that John was still alive.
John wasn't perfected.
John was still on the earth, and if
tradition has it, he was in a mine
over on the Isle of Patmos.
And from there on the Lord's day in
the spirit, he saw all this.
So being a man, a tender man, he
wept much because no man was found worthy
or able to open and to read the
book, neither to look thereon.
Now this one had to have certain qualifications,
I've told you.
He had to have authority.
There were certain signs that marked the takeover,
when the wrong ones took over the world.
Those signs were sorrow and tears and sweat
and blood and death.
Wasn't anybody that could say, well, I've earned
the wealth.
There had to be power.
There had to be marks of thorns.
You remember that when God cursed the world,
he said, thorns and thistles shall it bring
forth unto thee.
And when Jesus Christ, our Lord, died on
the cross, he died in sorrow and tears
and sweat and blood, and around his brow
there was a crown of thorns.
And so we see the sorrow of John.
John was a man who cared.
He was a man who had a concern,
and he carried the grief of the human
race in his heart.
So because God carried the grief of the
human race in his heart, God sent and
signified it by his servant unto, by an
angel unto his servant John.
God always tells the man who cares, and
he doesn't tell the man who doesn't care.
You can be sure of that.
That's why we went astray in our prophetic
teaching a generation back, or less than a
generation back.
Too many had no concern.
They were simply curious, and they studied and
taught from other motives than a concern.
God always blesses the man with tears in
his eyes, and he always gives information to
the man with a concern in his heart.
If you have a concern in your heart
and you go before God on your knees,
you'll get more information that matters, and they
can teach you in the seminaries.
That's not to cry down the seminaries.
I believe in them.
I believe in systematic theology.
I believe in learning.
But I say that we'll get more information.
A broken heart, God will reveal things to
a man with a broken heart, but he
won't reveal things unless the man's heart is
broken.
Try to learn divine things and peer into
divine mysteries and penetrate the veil.
Without having tears in our eyes and sorrow
in our heart, his vanity and futility ten
times multiplied.
So God told the man who cared, John
cared.
So God said to John, John don't cry.
Don't weep anymore, John.
Weep no more, John, because the Lion of
the tribe of Judah, he hath prevailed to
open the book.
This is the man who owns the world.
I've never heard of a man yet that
I thought was worthy to own the world.
Never.
I'd never want to live in a world
somebody else owns, except the man who's worthy
to own it, somebody that takes over.
You never get my allegiance.
So the age-old secret is out at
last.
1700 years before, God had said in that
time when Jacob blessed his sons, Jacob said
to his son Judah, Judah thou art he
whom thy brethren shall praise.
Thy hand shall be in the neck of
thine enemy.
Thy father's children shall bow down before thee.
Judah is a lion's wealth.
From the prey, my son, thou art gone
up.
He stooped down, he couched his lion, and
as an old lion, who shall rouse him
up?
The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor
a lawgiver from between his feet until Shiloh
come.
And unto him shall the gathering of the
people be, binding his foal under the vine,
and his ass's coat under the choice vine.
He washed his garments in wine, and his
clothes in the blood of grapes.
And his eyes shall be red with wine,
and his teeth white as milk.
That was the description of him that was
to come.
And so God didn't lie to the prophets.
What I am worried about now is that
we'll be talked out of our Christian position.
What I am worried about now is that
we'll listen to the fears and listen to
brainwashing talks and be influenced by the techniques
of men who are making up our mind
for us, the image-makers and the public
relations men who are teaching us to think
the way they want us to think.
What I am worried about is that we'll
forget that God never lied to the prophets,
that God never deceived the patriarchs.
When God said to a man, wait, I
have something to tell you, and then he
told him of one who was coming and
would rule the world, he didn't lie.
God, who cannot lie, promised from the beginning.
And I want you to remember that.
When Hitler was riding high, France had gone
down like a collapsed tent.
Belgium had thrown up the sponge, and her
rulers had left, and Holland had broken her
dykes and flooded the lowlands, and England had
her back to the wall, and only the
mighty voice of that great estatesman of this
century, Churchill, was telling him, we'll hide them
on the beaches, we'll hide them on the
street, we'll hide them in our houses and
keep our island home.
In that awful, awful dark hour, when it
looked as if Hitler and his gang would
take over the world, I stood in my
pulpit in Chicago and said, ladies and gentlemen,
God's dear people, I have somewhat to tell
you, it is this, that no matter how
things look now, sin can't win at last,
righteousness can't lose, prophecy must be fulfilled, God
must still rule his world, and Christ must
still be King of his universe.
I said the day will be when this
mouthing maniac, roaring his guttural German into microphones
and causing men everywhere, strong and brave men,
to wince and tremble at the sound of
his voice, I said the day will be
when this man will go down like a
rotten tree on the hillside and leave a
great gap against the sky, so you stay
by your faith.
It still pays to follow Christ, it's still
right to be good and it's still wrong
to do evil, and God will still rule.
And when they began to destroy the Jew,
I said to myself, thank God I know
now, whosoever curses thee I will curse.
And when the gas ovens began to put
to death the seed of Abraham, God's friend,
the dark shadow went across the world and
across Germany, and Hitler ended up in a
bunker somewhere with his girlfriend and put a
.44 revolver in his mouth and pulled the
trigger.
Too bad he didn't do it five years
earlier, but he did it at last.
And God's going to win.
I said, if you're sneaking out as if
you didn't have any right to live, instead
of us Christians crawling about, looking between the
tall legs of the great men of might
and power and riches, as though we were
little insects with no right to live, we
ought from our bended knees to rise and
put our chins up and say, I belong
to God in Jesus Christ, and the whole
world belongs to Christ.
And it's only a question of a little
time until he'll take the book and say,
it's my book, Father.
It's covered with blood and sealed in my
blood and ironed to right.
Then he began to open those seals, and
as he opened those seals, one tentacle will
be cut after another tentacle until the octopus
of evil that now hugs the world will
break away and fall off and die.
And this beautiful world of ours will be
restored to its rightful owner.
I'd like to live here when Jesus Christ
owns the world.
Wouldn't you now?
Wouldn't you?
When Jesus Christ owns the world, and when,
and I believe this now, Israel will be
restored to her land, and the law will
go out from Jerusalem, and the word of
the Lord from Zion, and the nations that
have cursed Israel and put her to death
down the years will come cringing and say,
oh, here, here, I want to come and
do the essence to you.
I believe that.
And I believe that the man Christ Jesus
with his bride shall rule over the earth.
Some don't believe in it, used to believe
in it and have quit believing in it
because they have been brainwashed by techniques of
public relations and politicians and men, bold men,
who say there will be a day when
we'll all be under Communism, your grandchildren will
be under Communism.
And there are some silly people over there
in London who say, I'd rather be red
than be dead.
Let me stand and tell you, ladies and
gentlemen, I'd rather be dead than be red.
Any minute of the day, ask me, or
you take your choice, be dead or be
red, and I'd say, well, I can always
die.
That's an easy matter.
Just stop breathing.
I can always die, but I'd rather be
dead than be red.
And for all of my family.
Why?
Because it's a political party?
No, politics has nothing to do with it.
Because it's an economic philosophy?
No, economics has nothing to do with it.
Property, public ownership of property, that's got nothing
to do with it.
Nothing whatsoever.
Why then do I hate so?
Why then do I hate Communism?
Because Communism begins with materialism and says there
is no soul, there is no God, there
is no angel, there is no heaven, there
is no hell, there is no future.
And they'd drum it into the young minds
of our people, of their people, and wouldn't
drum it into our minds.
Because they say, you're talking about the blood
of Jesus as superstition, you're talking about prayer
as nonsense.
A pink in the United States years ago
wrote a book.
Now, Brother Gray, you read it, no doubt,
or heard about it.
And here's what he said.
Upton Sinclair was his name.
He's not a Communist, but he's a pink,
and they're always disbanded.
He said that he had a vision, or
something to this effect, of a man at
prayer.
And he said the man at prayer had
a hold of his shoelaces, and he was
trying to lift himself with his shoelaces.
He was all bent over, tugging on his
shoes, trying to lift himself.
And he said while he was lifting on
himself, trying vainly to lift himself up by
his boot latches, the fellow in the black
robe was behind him, taking his pocketbook.
That was lifting the offering.
He said that's what religion is.
Religion is a man on his knees, tugging
at himself, trying to lift himself up, while
the priests, and the pastors, and the voices,
and all that kind of stuff, we're living
off of the fat.
That's what they tell us.
So that's why I hate it.
I hate it because if it's true, there's
no Christ.
I hate it because if it's true, there's
no God.
I hate it because if it's true, every
seat that's been lowered down into the grave
is doomed to lie there and rot, and
never see the face of God or have
any future.
I hate it because it's a negation of
everything good and everything pure, and everything divine
and everything holy.
Not because it's a political party or an
economic view of things.
They can have any political party they want
to.
I don't care.
The great English Johnson said, sir, I perceive
that no matter what the form of government
in the world, in any country is, the
people will be happy if only the rulers
be good men.
He's right about that.
In England, they have a monarchy.
In the United States, they have a president.
Somewhere else, they have something else.
Here, you have a prime minister, and you
elect your men.
Democracy, all right, very good.
But it's just a question of how good
men you're getting.
When it comes to negating everything, standing up
in the earth like a bat, a vampire
out of hell, saying to every baby, all
that matters about you is your body.
No him, no heaven, no hope.
And they're rearing them over there, but the
millions and millions, they have no hope.
Dialectical materialism runs wild and becomes a philosophy,
a religion indeed.
And the cynical outcome of it all is
that those who say we don't believe in
religion have made the negation of all good
their religion.
And they're worshiping at the shrine of negation.
We see distressive nations, and God knows there's
plenty of it, and a hundred remedies are
offered.
I don't believe in any of the remedies.
I'm sorry, I wish I could.
I wish I could believe in a remedy.
I think I'd be a happier man if
I could believe in man, you know, if
you could just believe.
Well, just elect so-and-so, he'll lead
us out of the wilderness.
Boy, oh boy, how many we've elected, and
he never led us anywhere except in a
circle.
Well, there is one coming, and he's going
to pick up the book.
We'll talk about that next week.
He's going to pick up the book and
start flipping it open.
As he flips it open, he'll break a
seal.
And there'll be wars and distresses and tribulations
and terrors all over the world, while God
Almighty shakes Satan loose from the world that
he doesn't own, and gives it into the
hands that were once crucified for mankind.
Amen, and amen.
I hope that last Sunday night, when those
of you, 50 or more, who went into
the prayer room, I hope that this week
you've been on your knees seeking the face
of God.
We're not going to give an invitation tonight,
but we're just going to close with a
hymn our brother will announce.
That will be all.
I hope you'll be back next Sunday night
as we talk about the Lamb Turned Lion.