...of revelation, and 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 no man in heaven nor in earth,
neither under the earth, was able to open
the book, neither to look thereon.
And one of the elders saith unto me,
Weep not, behold the Lion of the tribe
of Judah, the Root of David, hath prevailed
to open the book and to loose the
seven seals thereof.
And he came and took the book out
of the right hand of him that sat
upon the throne, and
they sung a new song, saying, Thou art
worthy to take the book and to open
the seals thereof, for thou wast slain and
hast redeemed us to God by thy blood
out of every kindred and tongue and people
and nation.
And I beheld and I heard the voice
of the angels round about the throne and
the beasts and the elders, and the number
of them was ten thousand times ten thousand
and thousands of thousands.
And every creature which is in heaven and
on the earth and under the earth and
such as are in the sea, and all
that are in them, heard I saying, Blessing
and honor and glory and power be unto
him that sitteth upon the throne and unto
the Lamb forever and ever.
That is the chapter we'll deal with tonight.
Again I ask you to note that the
4th and the 5th chapters are one.
John sees one sitting on a throne, a
rainbow encircled throne, and then he sees the
one on the throne suddenly take from somewhere
a book that he had had and was
waiting to reveal.
And there was a proclamation, a formal proclamation
made, Who is worthy to open this book?
Who has prevailed to do it?
Who is worthy and whose right is it?
And they searched every place.
They searched on heaven above and they found
nobody there.
They searched on the earth and they found
nobody there.
They searched under the earth, which I could
assume to be only, hardly know what they
mean by under the earth, but I suppose
it must mean hell.
God is wanting to make a clean sweep
of it so never for all the millennia
that lie ahead could ever anybody say, Well,
there was one place you didn't look.
They looked everywhere there was to look.
They found nobody.
And the angels on their broad wings swept
back in and landed in front of the
throne, and there in reverence they announced, We
found nobody who is worthy.
And John, because John knew what the book
was, and knew that the book was related
to the earth that he loved, where he
was born and where he lived and where
he was when he saw all this, and
that it was to be the rocket upon
which he was to ride, or had ridden
around the sun for all of his years.
And he loved it and loved the race.
So John broke down and wept.
And then came a second enunciation, Don't weep,
John.
John weep no more, because the Lamb, the
Lamb of the tribe of Judah, the root
of David, hath prevailed to open the book
and to loose the seals thereof.
Now, he said, Behold, the Lamb of the
tribe of Judah hath prevailed.
And as I pointed out, to talk about
the Lamb of the tribe of Judah was
to be entirely scriptural, for everybody that knew
the Old Testament knew that Judah was of
the twelve tribes of Israel, the one whose
symbol was the Lamb.
The courage and the strength and the might
and the dominion and the rulership, they belonged
to Judah.
It was out of Judah that David came.
It was out of Judah that Solomon, of
course, came, the son of David.
And so the line of kings all down
the years, culminating in that King of all
kings and Lord of all Lords, Jesus Christ.
And Judah was the ruling tribe in Israel.
The scepter shall not depart from Judah, said
the Lord, until Shiloh come, and unto him
shall the gathering of the people be.
Now, Jesus Christ is the Lion of the
tribe of Judah.
And I ask you to see that Lion
there, tawny gold in the moonlight, this great
untamed Lion with its head held high and
its eyes sweeping the plain.
And then it lowers its head and roars
its challenge to the world.
And all the little creatures everywhere are frightened,
some of them in a panic flee, and
some cower and freeze among the leaves, hoping
he'll pass them by.
And Christ Jesus the Lord is symbolized by
this mighty Lion of the tribe of Judah.
And Christ has conquered, Jesus is victor.
Now, this is the New Testament shout of
triumph that Jesus is victor.
There lived in Germany about a hundred years
ago or a little less, a man by
the name of Pastor Blumhart.
Pastor Blumhart was a great preacher and a
great pastor and a man of God and
a mighty man of prayer.
And one night some people came to him
and they said, Pastor Blumhart, there is a
poor young woman out here and we don't
understand what's the matter with her.
She acts queer, she goes into convulsions, she
says strange things and we believe that she's
possessed by the devil himself.
Pastor Blumhart said, I'll go and we'll pray
for her.
So he took some of his praying friends
along with him and they went to the
home of this young woman who was possessed.
And she was possessed.
And when he came in, she began to
talk to him and he recognized that he
was not hearing a woman talk, but he
was hearing somebody dwelling in the personality of
that woman.
And she fought him back.
And when he prayed and talked with her,
she fought him back and resisted and he
realized and sensed that there was another terrible
spirit present in that room.
But instead of praying and saying, well, we
take it now by faith and then going
home and going to bed, he and his
crowd of little or little crowd of praying
people decided to stay all as long as
it was necessary until that poor young woman
got the victory.
So they prayed on and on and finally
when it was getting pretty late and they'd
prayed quite a while, one of them got
through to God and out of the mouth
of this woman there came a shout, Jesus
is victorious.
And she came to herself and smiled and
began to talk rationally.
And that sense of oppression went out of
the room and everybody began to sing and
praise the Lord.
That was Pastor Blumhart.
Pastor Blumhart went on from there to be
one of the great praying men of Germany.
And they used to come to his house
and he would pray for them and people
were delivered in answer to the man's prayer
and answer to the prayers of others.
But he took for his motto, Jesus is
victor!
With an exclamation point after it.
And shortly after that a man, this was
about the time Dr. Simpson, a little before
the time Dr. Simpson was getting underway, and
there was a Salvation Army captain by the
name, what was his name?
For the moment it slips me and it
doesn't matter.
But he was a great man of God,
Carter was his name, Captain Carter.
And he got a hold of this idea,
Jesus is victor, and he wrote a song
about it.
And they used to sing that song a
great deal in the Alliance and they used
to believe it was true.
They didn't know so much then, but they
did know the right thing.
Jesus is victor, they would say.
And he wrote this song and it runs
like this, Jesus is victor, his work is
complete, crushing all enemies under his feet.
Jesus is victor, he died not in vain,
risen and glorified, Jesus doth reign.
Jesus is victor, without and within, saving and
cleansing and keeping from sin.
Jesus is victor, O heavenly dove, come to
abide and make perfect in love.
Jesus is victor, the heavens shall ring, dread
king of terrors, O where is thy sting?
Jesus is victor, we'll shout o'er the
grave, glory to God, he is mighty to
save.
One of the first songs we ever sang
in the Alliance church that I first attended
in the city of Akron, Ohio, they sang
that song, Jesus is victor.
Here's an old Alliance man nodding his head
down there as if he'd heard from home.
Jesus is victor, the heavens shall ring, dread
king of terrors, O where is thy sting?
I say they sang it in those days
and they believed it.
John heard them say, behold the lion of
the tribe of Judah, and immediately John, knowing
what lions were like, he lived in a
lion country and he'd heard all the stories
of lions from his youth and maybe had
seen some of them.
And so John looked around expecting to see
a great tawny lion with his head held
high and his long angry tail switching there
in the light.
And when he turned about to see the
lion, it says, and I beheld a lion.
Now there's an odd thing.
I wonder why that could be, that I
beheld a lion.
Now the lion conquers by tooth and claw,
and John turned in fear and hoped to
see the lion, and he saw instead a
lion.
He turned to look for the lion who
had prevailed by the power of his teeth
and his claws, and by his courage and
power he had prevailed to take that book
out of the hand of the great God
Almighty.
That book is entitled Deed to the World.
He turned to see it, and I suppose
he turned between hope and fear, and he
trembled as he turned, and he saw not
a lion at all, but a lamb.
Now, God's ways and man's ways are not
the same.
They are different.
On earth, you see, the lion is stronger
than the lamb.
But in the kingdom of God and before
the face of God, the lamb is stronger
than the lamb.
And here was one who was both.
When John saw the lion, he saw him
as a lamb, that is, John the Baptist,
and said, Behold the Lamb of God.
And when John the Revelator saw the lion,
he saw him as a lamb, and he
is both lion and lamb.
And unless we know this, we are not
Christians in the right sense of the word,
and we are not as good Christians as
we ought to be.
In the earlier times, we talked about him
as the lion a great deal, and we
made a great deal over his being conqueror
and victor.
But we have come to think of him
only as the lamb now, but he is
both the lion and the lamb.
In the kingdom of man, the lion takes
dominion over all, but in the kingdom of
God, the lamb takes dominion over all.
So you see, the redemption of the world
is out of the hands of man.
Now, if you don't get anything else tonight,
I want you to get this, that the
redemption of the world is out of the
hands of man.
It was done the way God does things,
not the way man does them.
I am very wonderfully glad that there is
one thing man hasn't ruined.
I am glad there is one thing he
can't get his hands on, one thing that
man can't spoil, one thing he can't commercialize,
one thing he can't take any credit for,
one thing he can't put up any statues
in any parks to commemorate.
Some old fellow with his hand on his
chest, looking away into space with a pigeon
roosting on his head for a generation.
He is a big man, he has done
marvelous things.
But in the kingdom of God, where God
redeemed the human race, no man statue is
there.
It is the lamb that was slain who
became a lion because he could be a
lamb.
It is God's way of doing things.
So that God redeemed man not by Jesus'
fists but by his nail-pierced hands.
It is not the fists of Jesus that
we sang about earlier.
I shall know him, I shall know him
by the prints of the nails in his
hands.
And it was by the power of the
hands of the lamb that the lion got
his strength.
You can be sure of that, that whatever
the lion can do and will do in
conquering and bringing the world into submission to
him, he can do it, because of what
he as the lamb did.
And the redemption of the world was not
by muscle but by love, and not by
vengeance but by forgiveness, and not by force
but by sacrifice.
Jesus, our Lord, surrendered in order that he
might win, and he destroyed his enemies by
dying for them, and he conquered death by
letting death conquer him.
That is just upside down to the ways
of man.
That isn't the way man does it.
Man clenches his fists, and the man who
can hit the hardest takes the prize away
and gets the statue.
He can hit harder than the other man.
He has a tougher fist and harder knuckles,
and so he gets the prize.
The big gorillas that go into the ring
with their busted noses and their low-slung
jaws and their empty brain pans, they stand
up there, they've trained like soldiers, more vigorously,
rigorously than soldiers.
And they go in there to try to
knock each other's brains out, but of course
there's a disappointment because there's nothing to knock.
So they knock each other around a while,
and the man who has the toughest fist
and the biggest shoulder, he gets his arm
raised and he is winner!
And of course he's known all over the
world.
I go up the avenue down in New
York sometimes, just out of curiosity, and walk
by Jack Dempsey's restaurant.
And Jack Dempsey's restaurant, I never went in.
I never went in there.
I don't care particularly to go in.
But I know he runs it, and they
come in there still.
Jack Dempsey's still getting customers in on the
strength of what he did back there when
he knocked out so many men.
That's the way men do it.
And God says, I won't put myself in
the hands of men.
This whole work of redemption has to be
done the way things are done in heaven.
Here are two kingdoms, the kingdom of heaven
and the kingdom of man.
And in man it's your knuckles and your
muscles and counts, and your vengeance and your
hate.
But in heaven it's your love and your
willingness to die and sacrifice and give up.
And love is more powerful than all the
armies of the world.
So the wandering universe learns the truth now
in this fifth chapter.
Because you see, my brethren, we're not only
dealing with Israel, we're not only dealing with
the Church, we're not only dealing with the
nations of the world, we're dealing with all
the universe.
For the universe has been searched through, and
all the universe is waiting, waiting on tiptoe
to see who it is and why and
how it could be that this one is
capable of and worthy of the place of
rulership over the world.
So now the wandering universe learns the truth.
Sin has come to the earth and turned
it upside down.
So man always thinks upside down.
You can be perfectly sure about one thing.
An unconverted man thinking about religion always thinks
wrong.
He's always wrong when he thinks about religion.
They say if you give the light to
the world, the people will find their way
along.
They won't find their way along at all.
Man's always upside down.
And a Christian has to be always correcting
in his own heart and translating what he
hears into the language of heaven in order
that he won't be carried away by the
world.
Man has learned the way of the lion,
and it's the way of the lion that
prevails.
We might as well admit it.
Now, there are countries that for a time
in their history are not going out after
anybody.
I have not heard where in the last
hundred years Canada has ever sent any soldiers
out to try to conquer any other country.
I have not heard since, when was it,
1812, that the United States ever came up
here looking for any prey.
And I have not heard that in recent
years that Sweden or Norway or Holland has
gone out.
So in history there are periods when nations
are not like the lion, they're waiting around.
But if you were to know how all
the nations got the way they are, you
would find they got that way by tooth
and claw, by the law of the jungle.
It was the law of the jungle and
the power of the jungle lion that destroyed
the Roman Empire.
It always just seemed to me as though
God had played a mighty cynical joke, and
he that sitteth in the heaven shall latch.
When that refined Roman Empire, o'er as
it was of all the wealth of Greek
philosophy and Greek art and Greek music and
all the rest, when that Roman Empire that
had given such beautiful laws to the world,
laws that are still perpetuated to us, having
come down from Babylon to Rome to Britain
to Canada to America, and we're still having
some of the laws that the Romans gave
us, and yet that Roman Empire, great and
broad and sprawling and self-assured as it
was, went down like a great tree in
a storm when the long-bearded vandals and
goths from the north country came sweeping down.
They couldn't read nor write, and they never
took a bath, and they were barbarians of
the worst kind.
They were called vandals.
When a man destroys for the sake of
destroying, we call him a vandal.
When he steals because he's hungry, we call
him a thief.
When he destroys just for the sake of
destroying, we call him a vandal.
And he's named after the armies that swept
down and destroyed the Roman Empire, and so
it's always been.
I fought for a long time against the
notion that some people tried to make me
believe I was brought up, of course, in
an American school, and there we were taught
that everything that was wrapped in the Star
-Spangled Banner was immaculately pure, and that we
never made a mistake nor did a wrong
in our lives.
But I never could quite feel at home
when I thought about the Indians, because we
came into New England and on west and
drove the Indians before us until they reached
the Western Sea, and there was no place
else to go, and they threw up their
hands and they put them on reservations.
Now, don't you look pious.
You've got some reservations, too, and you've got
some Indians.
And you've got an Indian problem in Canada.
I listen to the radio and I hear
them talk, and I know they've got it.
And I think that we people who inhabit
this continent ought to bless a little occasionally
and look up to God and ask forgiveness
for the way we treated the noble red
man who once roamed this plain and shot
the buffalo and laid his buffalo hide down
and swept under the sky and prayed to
Gitche Gumee and believed in some kind of
God.
We came in and made him sick with
fire water and treated him with glass beads
and took his property and drove him to
the Western Sea.
So every country has its own claw marks,
and the history of the world is a
knave.
Mankind rips with blood like the midnight path
of the lion.
And we are what we are and we
have what we have because somebody with a
big fist and somebody with tough muscles and
somebody with a long sword and somebody with
a heavy hammer or a big cannon was
able to take it for us and hold
it for us.
The question of justice, the question of righteousness,
the question of right, it scarcely comes up
at all.
Men conquer by spilling the blood of their
enemies.
Wonder of wonders.
God, how did you think of it?
How did you think of it?
I heard the little poem once that said,
How odd of God to choose the Jews.
And I think how odd of God that
he should do this wondrous thing, that he
should run contrary to the ways of man.
Man has learned the ways of the lion,
he's learned the power of guns, and he's
learned what prisons will do.
He's learned how to make armies march.
He's learned now how to throw bombs.
He's learned what force will do in selfish
men getting their own way in the world.
But along comes the great God Almighty and
does a wonderful thing.
Christ conquers by shedding his own blood.
The first time in the history of the
world it was ever thought of, and it's
never been thought of since.
That any man should conquer, he always conquers
by spilling the blood of others.
But Christ conquered by spilling his own blood.
There was the Lamb who became the Lion
by shedding his own blood and giving himself
up in death for mankind.
Now he stands in the midst of the
throne, and God is saying to all the
universe, down on the earth where men are
poisoned and brainwashed by sin, where they've drunk
the local weed and big things look little
and little things look big, and things that
are not worthwhile are valued and valuable things
are overlooked, down in the world where men
are men, and kings and presidents and lords
and mighty men beat their chests.
He said, down there, the Lion is king,
the one who can take it.
And the weight of the throne is always
stained with blood.
But he said, I do things the way
I do things.
And I don't count upon human muscles or
human fists or human sinews.
I don't count upon the beauty of a
woman or the strength of a man or
the brilliance in their intelligence of anybody.
I do it my way, says God.
My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are
my ways your ways, for my ways are
higher than the heavens compared with the ways
of men.
So he let Jesus Christ come down as
a Lamb and conquer the world as a
Lion by dying as a Lamb and make
himself worthy to be the Lion to rule
the world by dying as a Lamb for
the sins of the world.
When Napoleon was on the island, he said
to one of his generals, he said, General,
what do you think of the man they
call Jesus Christ?
The general was afraid to commit himself because
he didn't know what the emperor was going
to say, or the ex-emperor.
He said, I don't care to comment, Master,
Sir, or Sire, I think that was the
word they used.
He said, I don't care to comment, Sire,
what do you think of him?
Well, he said, if you won't tell me,
I'll tell you.
He said, Alexander and I have conquered vast
sections of the world with a sword, but
in order to do it we had to
be present, leading our men.
We had to leave widows and dead people
behind us, and we had to spill blood
and be there in power, and we had
to make promises, and we had to be
there.
But he said, here is a man who
never held a sword in his hand and
never led a soldier to battle, and he
hasn't been visible to the world for 1800
years.
And yet at the drop of a hat
there are thousands throughout the world who would
die for him and give their lives for
him unseen, though he is.
And the strongest thing he ever used to
conquer men was love.
I conquered them while I could be there
with my armies, and so did Alexander.
But he conquers them by being absent from
them and loving them.
And he said, all he's got is love,
and all his strength lies in forgiveness and
love.
He said, now, I don't know what youth
I think of him, but I think he
must have been more than man.
He must have been the Son of God.
Good reasoning on the part of the emperor,
but it's too bad he didn't think of
it sooner.
If he had thought of it sooner, he
wouldn't have waded across the face of Europe
and swum rivers of blood in his mad
ambition to rule Europe.
But when it was too late and he
had time to sit and think, he thought
about it.
Though he was the greatest soldier that ever
lived, though he didn't do what he should
have done with it, he was probably the
greatest soldier that ever lived.
I think history would declare that without any
question.
Yet, the one who never held a sword
made him feel like a fool, because the
one who never had a sword in his
hand has an army today.
And even though the Church isn't as bright
and as spiritual as I'd like to see
her and as I'm sure God would like
to see her, I am yet certain that
all over the world the Lord has his
soldiers of love and servants of peace who
would give themselves freely to die for him.
The Lamb conquers.
But the day is coming, the day is
coming when the Lamb is going to go
out and take over the world.
It starts in chapter 6 of the book
of Revelation.
There, when the first seals are opened, then
the mighty powers begin to operate, and the
Lord Jesus Christ cleanses the world and establishes
his reign.
But it's only because he was the Lamb
that he could do it.
And if he had not been willing to
be the Lamb, the Lamb never could have
done it.
The devil thought Jesus didn't know.
He thought that he had adopted the philosophy
of Adam.
So he took him up in the temple,
high up there, and he said, Now, look
over.
He said, High, look, look.
He said, Everywhere, all the kingdoms of the
world, in a moment of time, here they
are.
He said, They're all mine, and I can
do with them what I will.
I'll give them to you if you'll get
down on your knees and worship me.
He thought the Lord Jesus Christ was going
to surrender.
He was going to go out and conquer
them and take them over and go right
into Jerusalem with a crown on his head
and establish himself on a royal throne and
wield a scepter over the kingdoms of the
world.
No.
He quoted a verse of scripture and sent
the devil packing and went calmly out with
his face set like a flint and went
out to die like a lamb.
Now we see him here before the throne,
standing in the midst of the throne, surrounded
by the beasts and the elders, carrying not
on the mane of the lion, but on
the head of the lamb, the insignia of
universal authority, the horn of power, with the
eyes of the sevenfold spirit and all knowledge
and all wisdom.
He's ready to take over.
Now, this is prophetic.
This hasn't happened, but it's going to happen.
I don't want to get into any arguments
with anybody on anybody's views of prophecy, but
as I preach along, I'll tell you what
I think, and I'm sure that we can
all agree that there is one worthy to
rule the world, one worthy to take over,
and that one is none other than Jesus
Christ our Lord.
Now we see why following Christ is both
so easy and so hard, for it is
very easy to follow Christ and very hard.
It is hard because the ways of God
and the ways of men are not equal.
Man has his philosophies and his techniques and
his methodology, and they're directly opposed to the
ways of God.
That's why it's hard.
But it's easy because Jesus is victor.
He's victor now in the lives of his
people.
He's victor now in his church if she'll
let him be.
If she'll show him that she means business,
he'll become a victor in the church.
At the old-fashioned altars where we sometimes
meet yet in some parts of the world,
get down on their knees and raise their
hands to heaven and call on God and
aren't afraid, somebody will start a song, Jesus
is victor.
Somebody else will start a song, the Lion
of Judah shall break every chain and give
us the victory again and again.
The Lion of the tribe of Judah, if
you know how to become a lamb as
he was a lamb, if you know how
to humble yourself before him, and if you
know how to stop fighting with your knuckles
and your fists and your sharp tongue, if
you learn that you can't pass back, that's
the way the Lion does it.
They say a lion's breath is one of
the foulest, filthiest things in the world.
His best friends won't tell you.
They tell me it's a foul.
He eats rotten food and he gets his
teeth decayed and his breath smells bad.
Some of the people of God, when they
get under pressure, they begin to talk.
Their sharp tongue is like the lion's breath.
Well, you see, you're going contrary to the
ways of God.
God wants you to do what the lion
does.
I once saw when I was a little
boy a sight that I've never gotten over
yet.
A man came and bought a sheep at
our house, at our place there in our
farm.
I suppose he was going to lead the
sheep away.
I didn't imagine that he was going to
do anything else.
But instead of that, he just took her
by the left front leg or the right
front leg, whichever it was, and threw her
over on her side.
This young sheep trusted everybody.
She trusted me and she trusted my father
and she trusted my kind-faced little mother.
She trusted everybody.
She just lay there.
She didn't know what it was all about.
This man, why would he put his foot
on the neck of this young sheep?
And with an axe, cut down through her
head and killed her in my sight.
And I saw her as a little lad.
And when she convulsively jerked there with the
blood squirting out, I saw what it was
to trust the wrong people.
She was a lamb and she trusted a
man and a man did the way men
do.
And she died for her confidence there.
That isn't the way men yield.
They fight back like the lion.
No lion ever lies down that you put
your foot on his neck and waits around
trusting you.
The wild lion of the tribes of the
world will rush out.
Well, if we serve God in man's way,
we'll make a mess of it.
And that's what's the matter with an awful
lot of us.
And that's what's the matter with some of
us now here.
We're trying to serve God in man's way
instead of serving God in God's way.
We serve God in the way of the
lion instead of serving God in the way
of the lamb.
I wrote an editorial one time, said that
the truth, truth had to be applied.
Bible doctrine that wasn't applied morally was useless.
Nobody wrote anything angry about it.
And then it got into a book.
Somebody wrote me from somewhere in Pennsylvania this
last week, and he said, I mimeographed a
chapter out of your book and I gave
it to my congregation.
I want them to get right with God,
get straightened out and begin to live like
Christians.
And he said, I sent it to around
here and there.
And he said, I have a three page
closely typewritten letter, or he called it an
opposition to Tozer's doctrine.
And he said, I want you to answer
this man.
Well, the man took me apart.
First, he misinterpreted what I had said and
then answered his misinterpretation.
That's always the way it is, you know.
And he had, I think, about seven points
in which he proved that I was a
legalist and an Arminian and what else, near
to blasphemy.
All because I said that truth ought to
be lived and the people of God ought
to, if they hear truth, they ought to
begin to live like it.
He said, that isn't close to blasphemy that
I'd say that about anybody or anything.
I'd say that you can read Paul's epistles
and still be bad.
He said, it's terrible a man to talk
like that or words to that effect.
This young fellow, I don't know who he
is, but he's evidently a friend of mine.
And he wrote me and he said, now,
Mr. Tozer, I think you ought to answer
this man.
And the day I answered him, I wrote
a letter to my unknown friend there who'd
written me.
And I said, I never defend myself.
If truth, if what I preach is truth,
it needs no defense.
If it is not truth, it's a waste
of time to defend it.
Let God decide that.
Well, that's settled that.
I'm not going around fighting, not going to
keep a rifle lying across my lap all
the time for fear somebody will do something
they shouldn't.
I'm in the hands of God.
You've got to learn to live like a
lamb, brother.
Somebody says, that man told you no lamb.
Well, I admit some of my preaching doesn't
sound very lamb-like.
It doesn't sound much like the bleating of
the young sheep on the meadow.
But you attack me and see what I'll
do.
You can attack me, I'll tell you now,
and there won't be one inch of skin
gone off your nose.
I won't fight back.
But I will just look upwards.
And God told me a long time ago
that he'd go before me and he'd be
an enemy to my enemy and an adversary
to my adversary, and he'd make all my
enemies turn their backs on me.
So I'd just let these boys who write
these things and mimeograph them and send them
around about me.
I'd just let them do it.
I won't fight, because Jesus Christ conquered by
being a lamb, and he became a lion
because he could be a lamb.
But if you try to be a lion,
you'll only succeed in getting your neck broken.
Well, let's look back here now when all
this had been done.
And suddenly when it was found that the
lamb had become the lamb, and the lion
had become the lamb, or the lion had
been a lamb and now could be a
lamb because he had been a lamb.
He could conquer because he had died.
He could win because he had surrendered.
He could have dominion because he had yielded
dominion.
Now he came and took the book out
of the right hand of him that sat
upon the throne.
That's all he did at that point.
He didn't do any more.
He just took the book.
Everybody recognize what that meant?
That meant, here's the one that last prevailed.
He'd searched heaven and earth and hell and
found nobody.
And right here before the throne in plain
sight is the one who prevailed.
And he took the book.
He didn't have to lead it with a
baton.
All he did was, they just saw.
And suddenly the twenty elders fell down before
the lamb.
No statues for those elders.
Having every one of them harps and golden
vials full of odors.
I want Al Austin to know that I
can't sing a lick now, but I'm going
to play a harp in that day.
It'll be such music as you never heard,
Al, in all your ministry of music.
And such as none of you ever heard
anywhere.
And golden vials full of odors, full of
fragrances, full of incense, which are the saints.
And they sung a new song.
Thou art worthy to take the book and
to open the seals thereof.
Thou was slain and has redeemed us to
God by thy blood out of every kingdom,
kingdom and tongue and people and nation.
And has made us unto our God, kings
and priests, and we shall reign on the
earth.
I'm reading in the newspapers that people are
getting scared and having fear complexes.
Are you frightened?
Either I don't have sense enough to know
what it's about, or else my faith lifts
me above it because I'm not afraid.
I hear that Dromico and Russ is having
a conference.
They're having a conference.
And that doesn't bother me.
I don't know what they'll arrive at, or
rather I do know what they'll arrive at.
Just wasting their time.
Might just as well go fishing.
And I hear about these tremendous bombs they've
got now, megatons.
Boy, we've come a long way from the
bow and arrow, haven't we?
The day when a caveman came out of
the cave and took a rock and threw
it at another caveman and missed him and
ran back in the cave.
That was early warfare.
But now megatons.
And Mr. Kay says he had enough megatons
to just wipe everybody off the face of
the earth.
But he doesn't know that the wind will
just blow back in his face and then
he won't be around.
Or rather, he does know it.
And because he knows it, you can go
to sleep tonight and turn over and rest,
as far as human beings are concerned.
Hitler had gas and didn't use it.
He used it the first time, but they
didn't use it the second.
They found it was harder on them than
it was on their enemy.
It's a boomerang.
They hit the enemy, but the boomerang came
back and knocked them over.
And I think that the people of the
earth will never use a bomb again.
That sort of bomb.
As they know, there'll be a boomerang and
they'll get the fallout and a lot of
other stuff.
Anyhow, that's the way old man looks at
it, so I'm not worried as far as
man's concerned.
Old Kay is going to have to develop
a hardier pair of lungs before he can
growl loud enough to frighten me.
But I have another reason, because I have
been up there and looked down.
And I've seen through that open door and
I've seen the throne and one on the
throne and a rainbow around the throne.
And I've seen beasts and elders and living
creatures and six winged creatures there.
And I have heard them searching and seen
them searching through heaven and earth and hell
to look for a man who could run
the world.
And they found him at last, and lo,
he was a lamb with the power of
a lion.
And I have heard them saying, Thou art
worthy to take the book and to open
the seals thereof, for thou hast redeemed us
out of every people and king, kindred and
tongue of nations.
We shall reign on the earth.
And I beheld and I heard, that is,
I saw and I heard the voice of
many angels round about the throne.
The angels are only there just kind of
help out.
They don't know the meaning of all this.
The angels round about the throne, I mean,
they don't know and experience the meaning of
it all.
Just as somebody who's lost a loved one,
somebody else comes in and sympathizes, but they
can't understand how you feel when you've lost
a loved one.
So the angels don't understand the wonder of
redemption because they weren't redeemed.
The number of them was 10,000 times
10,000 and thousands and thousands.
And they cried with a loud voice saying,
Worthy is the lamb.
I suppose I've heard the Messiah, worthy is
the lamb.
I wouldn't know how many times I couldn't
count them.
If I had as many years to live
yet as I've heard the Messiah and heard
that particular chorus, I'd be around here yet
at the end of the millennium, I suppose.
But, brother and sister, I never hear it
without something rising in my soul.
Worthy is the lamb that was slain to
receive power and riches and wisdom and strength
and honor and glory and blessing and every
creature which is in heaven and on earth
and under the earth and such as are
in the sea.
I heard saying blessings and honor and glory
and power unto him that sits upon the
throne under the lamb forever.
And under the impulse of it, the four
living creatures cried, Amen.
And the four and twenty elders suddenly threw
themselves down, and they had to mash around
there and say, That fanatic, take him out.
But these twenty four elders fell through, fell
down and stretched themselves out and worshiped him
that liveth forever and ever, Amen and Amen.
Now, I want you to sing something for
me and for him.
I want Al to lead it, and I
want it to be up to tempo.
I don't want any funereal dragging.
I want it to be up to tempo,
382, and I want you to do two
things.
Keep it up to a happy tempo and
sing all four stanzas.
We'll stand and we'll sing all four stanzas
of number 382, Crown him with many crowns,
the lamb upon the throne.
382.