In the 7th Revelation, the 7th chapter of
the Book of Revelation, After these things I
saw four angels standing on the four corners
of the earth, holding the four winds of
the earth, that the wind should not blow
on the earth, nor on the sea, nor
in any tree.
And I saw another angel ascending from the
east, having the seal of the living God,
and he cried with a loud voice to
the four angels, to whom it was given
to hurt the earth and the sea, saying,
Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor
the tree, till we have sealed the servants
of our God in their forests.
And I heard the number of them which
were sealed, and there were sealed a hundred
and forty and four thousand of all the
tribes of the children of Israel.
The tribe of Joseph, twelve thousand were sealed.
The tribe of Reuben, Gad, Asher, Naphthalim, Manasseh,
Simeon, Levi, Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph, Benjamin.
All of these were sealed, thousands of all
of these tribes.
Verse 9, After this I beheld and lo,
a great multitude which no man could number,
of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and
tongues, stood before the throne and before the
Lamb, clothed with white robes and thorns in
their hands.
And they cried with a loud voice, saying,
Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the
throne, and unto the Lamb.
And all the angels stood round about the
throne, and about the elders, and the four
beasts, and fell.
They fell before the throne on their faces,
and worshipped God, saying, Amen, blessing, and glory,
and wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honor, and power,
and might.
Unto our God forever and ever.
Amen.
One of the elders answered, saying unto me,
What are these that are arrayed in white
robes, and whence came they?
And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest.
And he said to me, These are they
which came out out of great tribulation, and
have washed their robes, and made them white
in the blood of the Lamb.
Therefore are they before the throne of God,
to serve him day and night in his
temple.
He that sitteth on the throne shall dwell
among them.
They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any
more.
Neither shall the sun light on them, nor
any heat.
For the Lamb which is in the midst
of the throne shall feed them, and shall
lead them unto living fountains of waters.
And God shall wipe away all tears from
their eyes.
Now our Lord is opening the seals, and
as we have tried to point out, there
is war and famine and plagues.
We saw last Sunday night the souls of
the martyrs in the hand of God, underneath
the altar, and the shaking of heaven and
earth.
And affected were the earth, and the sun,
and the moon, and the stars, and the
mountain, and the island, and all mankind.
Now comes a breathing spell in between the
sixth and the seventh seal.
John said, I saw four angels standing on
the four corners of the earth.
I'd like to begin the way out and
say that when you read such an expression
as four angels standing on the four corners
of the earth, I'd like to put a
little word in here to help you Christians
who may be attacked by persons who do
not believe the Bible.
They say there it's obvious that the person
who wrote this book believed the earth was
square, or at least it was flat, and
that it was in such a shape that
there were corners to it, and there were
four of them.
These angels were standing on the four corners.
Now I'd like to say to you that
if you will give the Bible the benefit
of the doubt and wait for a little
further life, that is, if you will look
for a little further life and pray for
a little further life, you will always find
that the Bible is right.
The critic who says that this Bible couldn't
have been written by a knowledgeable man, this
book of the Bible couldn't have been, because
he talked about the four corners of the
earth.
Well, anybody knows what he means.
He means the four cardinal points, north, south,
east, and west.
And we have talked about the four quarters
of the globe so long and so often
and so much, altogether apart from the scripture.
Even now we talk about it such.
The four winds of heaven.
There are only four winds, the north wind,
the south wind, the east wind, and the
west wind.
And then of course they whirl all around
and come at you from an angle, but
those are the major winds, and that's all
that it means here, because it says that
they stood on the four corners of the
earth holding the four winds of heaven.
Nothing mysterious about that.
There are the four winds of heaven, and
there were four angels holding these four winds
of heaven.
Now, when I was preaching in Hebrews, I
am preaching in Hebrews Sunday mornings now, but
when I came to that passage about the
angels, that the angels of God worship him,
I took time out to preach a whole
sermon on angels.
As our brother Greg goes on Wednesday night,
he'll come to angelology after a while and
talk about the angels.
But I can't skip over what is here
and point out to you that we've got
to face up to the fact of angels.
We have to face up to it.
We're going to be believers in the Bible.
We have to face up to angels.
In the book of Revelation they are mentioned
75 times, and anything that is mentioned 75
times in one Bible ought not to be
skipped over by me, because I am so
very learned and modern and know all about
nuclear fission and therefore don't believe in angels.
If I believe in the Bible and the
Bible 75 times in one book talks about
angels, I ought to get my eyes open
a little bit and say to myself, Now,
wait a minute here, boys, maybe you're skipping
something.
Maybe you have skipped over something that you
ought to take seriously.
And the Bible talks about angels mentioned 297
times by actual count.
A few times the word in our English
Bible refers to human messengers, for the word
means messenger.
But in the vast majority of times that
the word is used, it is used of
a being from heaven, and that being is
said usually to be large and powerful and
immortal and holy and wise.
Jesus our Lord said about the angels that
they would do not marry or give in
marriage, said people in heaven wouldn't, because they
were like the angels of God.
Neither could they die anymore, so they are
immortal and they are holy and they are
wise, not always, but wise, and they are
always closely associated with God, running and going
back and forth doing the errands of the
Almighty.
Now, a few more facts about these angels,
and I am skipping the fallen angels.
I don't know much about them.
I probably know as much as I want
to know, but there is something in there
about them, too.
We are talking about the holy angels, and
I notice these angels are always on the
side of righteousness and God, always, never find
them on any other side except the fallen
angels.
But the holy angels of God are always
on the side of righteousness, and they are
almost always on the side of man.
I say almost always because there have been
occasions where they couldn't go along with man
because of his sin and rebellion, but when
God sends them to be ministers to men,
they are naturally on the side of man.
I have noticed also in the scripture that
the angels are more active in times of
crisis and less apparent in quieter times.
It was when the morning stars sang together
and the angels of God shouted for joy,
God created the heaven and the earth.
It was when God was giving the law
that he gave it through the mediation of
angels.
Angels were active then.
When our Lord came to the world and
was born of a woman, the angels were
seen in a great multitude of the heavenly
house, praising God and saying, Glory to God
in on high.
Then later on, when our Lord had risen
from the dead, the angels were there again.
When you get to the book of Revelation
again and the crisis begins to churn and
get tighter and fiercer, then we find angels
appearing 75 times in that one book.
But they are less apparent in quieter times,
I say.
Now, why have we no place for angels
in our thinking in modern Christianity?
Because, one reason, the veil of materialism is
on the modern religious American and Canadian and
English and French and German Western minds.
The veil of materialism is over our minds,
and Christ has been linked with earthly prosperity.
I suppose that my good compatriots and friends
down south of the border didn't like to
hear me say it, but I have said
it, that you cannot equate Christianity with Americanism.
They are not the same, neither can you
equate Christianity with Canadianism.
I believe in nationalism, I think it's nice
to hear Canadians talk up for Canada, I
think it's nice to hear Americans talk up
for the United States, but I don't think
that we ought to make the mistake of
thinking that a fat, well-lined, toothpicking, storytelling,
Christian American businessman with his Cadillac parked out
in front and his summer home and his
winter home and a few things like that,
that's Christianity, brother.
A man could be a Christian and be
that, but then he wouldn't be a very
good one, but then he could be one.
So we equate that with Christianity, and that
we don't have any place for angels, you
can't buy an angel, nor sell him, and
he won't bring you anything, and it's too
silly, this angel business.
But God talks about them here, but we've
got a materialistic mind, and so if a
man is making money, amen, praise the Lord,
he's a Christian, and the Lord is his
co-partner.
But if he isn't making any money, then
he suspects something's wrong with the fellow.
Now, if I read my Bible right, that's
exactly upside down to the scripture, because in
the scripture it was the rich man that
was having a tough time getting to heaven,
and the poor man who went sailing through
quite easily.
So I think we'd better rethink this whole
deal, for I think that we're badly off
-center.
Lecture 11 Justification and Sanctification 7 Now, the
popular teaching has denied or muted the supernatural,
really.
We're not a very supernatural people here at
Avenue Road.
You know, friends, I think I can say
this to you, I'd say it anyhow whether
you like me or not, but I think
that you understand me enough that I could
say it, that it's my conviction that the
Lord could leave Avenue Road Church and be
gone on a 6-month holiday, and when
he came back, we wouldn't have missed him
much, because we got everything nicely fixed up.
When we'd just turn the crank and away
she rolls, everybody knows what to do, and
we'd do it.
The idea of the immediacy of God and
the necessity for God, we don't have it
here, and I haven't been very many places
where it's found.
In fact, we get very much worried when
God becomes necessary to us.
They tell the story of a preacher who
got up before his congregation and said, I
have an announcement to make, my friend.
On my way from my house to the
church, my notes blew away and blew over
the cliff, so I have no notes to
preach from, and I come badly unprepared.
I'll have to trust God this morning, but
next Sunday I hope to do better.
Now, that's a joke they tell on the
preacher, but you know that there's more truth
than poetry in that story, because as soon
as the church gets into a tight spot
where it has to trust God, the board
sweats, and the pastors walk around in circles.
We all walk around in circles.
As soon as the supernatural becomes necessary to
us, we're miserable.
We want to know the supernatural is out
there somewhere further than the farthest rocket has
gone, waiting for us when we're plenty done
with this world.
But we want to wring all of the
goody out of this world that we can.
We want to squeeze every hive of honey
possible and wring every sweetness out of it,
and then when we're thrilled with it and
we're so old and battered and lined up
and calcified that we couldn't enjoy ourselves anyhow,
well, we want to go to that supernatural
place.
But in the meantime, we'd rather God wouldn't
bother us, because trusting the supernatural is an
edgy, sensitive thing, and we don't want to
do it.
And a preacher has that same temptation to
fight.
Don't think I'm standing up here flapping my
wax wings.
I'm not.
I'm one of you, and we're all alike.
But it's a sad thing, my friends, when
we have denied or muted the supernatural to
a point where we've confined every miracle to
another generation.
They talk about healing in the Christian Missionary
Alliance an awful lot, or at least they
used to, and I've been criticized a little
because I don't talk more about it.
But I find out the people who talk
about it run for a pill just as
soon as they feel the first twinge of
a headache.
I've found that we preach about healing and
anoint people and then go take pills.
So I'm not sure we're believing in the
supernatural any too strongly.
We're believing in our belief in the supernatural
rather than in the supernatural.
Well, I don't know why the Lord ever
didn't button up my mouth and not let
me say some of the things that I
say, but I've said it now, and I've
said it in an Alliance church, the day
when everybody from 260 to 490 will all
begin to trust the Lord for their bodies,
then I'll begin to preach more about healing.
But in the meantime, I like to be
practical and preach in line with what I
see as well as what I hear.
So I believe in divine healing, and I
pray for this sake.
I have seen a few people healed in
answer to prayer.
I've seen some of them die, but I've
seen some of them healed and will be
walking around yet in answer to prayer.
So I believe in it all right, but
I don't want anybody to stampede me or
rush me and say, Now, hold on there,
closer, what's the matter with you?
Why don't you go home and get rid
of your pills and then come back and
talk to me?
The mighty scene here in heaven, I think
this is one of the most wonderful scenes
that I've possibly read about or seen with
my mind's eye.
These four angels are holding the four winds
of heaven as though God is dramatically waiting.
You know what God is doing?
I've been telling you since the 5th chapter
what God is doing.
God is jarring man and the earth loose
from mankind's control.
Man has his roots in, you know.
He has driven his stakes in.
Man belongs to the earth, or the earth
belongs to man.
God says the earth doesn't belong to man,
the earth belongs to the man, the man
Christ Jesus, the man that is worthy, who
has earned his right to hold the earth.
So he's shaking the earth loose.
I'm glad for this, very happily glad for
this.
I'll be glad for the time when all
these border crises will be over with.
One fellow says, I own this.
Another fellow says, I own this.
And it's been a standing joke through the
centuries that one farmer puts the line fence
over with four inches on the other farmer's
ground, and he goes to the expense of
having it surveyed to prove he's over four
inches.
And so they have a feud on and
shoot across the fence at each other for
40 years, never speak to each other because
one fellow's got four inches that belongs to
the other fellow and won't change the fence.
Our trouble is we think we own something.
Brother, you don't own anything at all, I'd
like to tell you that.
Naked came you into the world and naked
you're going out again.
You ought to thank God he let you
borrow an outfit so you wouldn't have to
run around naked.
You ought to thank God he allowed you
to borrow a house so you wouldn't have
to sleep out on the lot.
You ought to thank God he let you
borrow a car so you can drive to
your work or drive wherever you go.
You ought to thank God.
You don't own a thing, not a thing.
And if Russia thinks they own Russia, or
the United States thinks they own the United
States, or Canada thinks they own this great
sprawling half a continent here, we don't own
a thing, brother, we just think we do.
There's only one that owns it, and he's
the one that bled for it and gave
himself, and it all belongs to him, and
God's going to shake it loose so that
nobody can say, this is mine, this is
mine.
He's going to turn it back over to
the one to whom it belongs, the one
who carried around with him the form of
a man and whose body was made of
the very elements that the earth gave him.
And so these four angels are holding the
four winds of heaven.
God's waiting now for the four winds of
heaven to begin their destructive work on the
earth.
They help jar the earth loose from mankind's
control.
And the angel has, an angel comes out
with the seal of God, and he cries
out now with a loud voice, and he
says to these four angels, he's evidently capable
of giving orders to these four angels, there
are gradations of angels, the idea of a
cookie-cutter uniformity in heaven is one of
the greatest errors and heresies that I know
about, why the Bible says that in heaven
men shall differ from each other as star
differs from star in glory.
And the Bible talks about angels and archangels
and principalities and powers and mights and dominions,
why those are gradations having greater authority, this
idea that everybody's put in a sack and
shaken up and that we all come out
exactly alike.
It's all wrong, my brothers, all wrong.
There are going to be degrees, there are
going to be rewards, some big, some little,
some not at all.
There are going to be people who have
earned a right by their sufferings and tears
to rule over five cities.
There are going to be others who get
in by the skin of their teeth, so
as by fire.
This idea that everybody that's born again is
equal to everybody else that is born again
is just as silly as it's possible to
be.
You might as well tell me that the
little black boy born in the bayous of
Mississippi and never heard of out of his
own parish, county parish, they call it in
Louisiana at least, out of his own little
county, never heard of, you might as well
tell me that he has just as much
authority as Prime Minister Diefenbaker.
No, my brothers, there is difference of degrees
because there is difference in abilities and difference
in size.
So here is one angel who has authority
over these four angels, and he says, Don't
hurt the earth, nor the sea, nor the
trees, till we have sealed the servants of
our God on their foreheads.
Now, this sealing is not an unusual thing,
at least it's not unprecedented.
For back in Ezekiel 9, he cried also
in mine ears with a loud voice, saying,
Cause them that have charge over the city
to draw near, even every man with his
destroying weapon in his hand.
And behold, as six men came from the
way of the higher gate which lie toward
the north, and every man a slaughter-weapon
in his hand, and one man among them
was clothed with linen, with a rider's ink
-horn by his side.
And they went in and stood beside the
brazen altar.
And the glory of God of Israel was
gone up from the cherub whereon he was.
And he called to the man clothed with
linen, and he said, The Lord said unto
him, Go through the midst of the city,
through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a
mark upon the foreheads of the men that
sigh and that cry for all abomination that
be done in the midst thereof.
Not unusual, I say, for God to mark
out certain men.
To this man will I look, says God,
who trembles and weeps at my word.
Well, so they sealed the hundred and forty
and four thousand.
Now, who are the hundred and forty and
four thousand?
Well, the cults all have the answer.
And if everybody said he was a hundred
and forty and four thousand, you'd have to
multiply that by about twenty in order to
get enough people to go around.
The cults have the answer.
Always remember that there are some people that
are cult-minded.
That is, they have a mind, well, if
they are not Christians, they are superstitious, and
if they are Christians, they are cultists, usually.
Some people run toward a cult just as
smoothly as my old German grandmother ran toward
superstition.
She had a dream book, and every morning
that she'd get up, she'd go read to
try to find out what the dream meant.
She believed that if a dog howled outside
your window, that somebody near to you was
going to die.
When our first boy was born, Loa, forty
years ago, last April 26, I think, or
3rd or something, some of the dear old
ladies told my wife in order to comfort
her, they said, Now, if a baby is
born with a blue mark over its nose,
it'll die before it's a year old.
She ran and looked, and sure enough, Loa
had a little blue mark on his nose.
Thank God we were Christians, and so we
didn't pay any attention to the blue mark.
Forty years ago, he still had his blue
mark.
I haven't looked lately, I haven't seen him
for 8 years.
But I guess he still got it, and
as far as I know, he's going strong,
getting healthier as he gets older.
But these comforting old sisters that tell us
those things.
When they get religion, they run to cults
just as naturally as it can be, because
something queer and funny and offbeat, uh, they
have to find that or they're not happy.
They're the ones that'll come to you seriously
and say, uh, who was Melchizedek?
And where else they'll say, uh, could you
tell me who are the hundred and forty
-four thousand?
Or they'll, they'll have, they'll say, was Moses'
wife a colored woman?
They have, they won't ask questions and all,
they're cultists.
I've, I've run, been among them.
I have never joined them and I never
believed with them.
I believe, uh, in spite of what I
said a while ago, that we are materialistic
minded and that we ought to get spiritually
minded and begin to think spiritually.
I also believe that a good, uh, fresh,
uh, clean, uh, little squirt of skepticism won't
hurt you a bit if it's turned in
the right direction.
I got lots of letters.
Boy, if I joined everything I've been invited
to join, I'd just be all over this
continent, joining this and joining that.
I grew up, that is, I came up
through that long stretch when we had, um,
little boy preachers and little girl preachers.
God bless the little fellas.
I used to see them, pity them, stand
them on a box, you know, little chaps
as small as Mrs. Morrison's little fella down
here, five, six years old.
Stand them on a box and they'd stand
up there with the Bible, you know, in
their little high treble voice, they'd preach the
gospel.
Poor little fella.
And they'd get a little girl and they'd
stand her on a box and she'd preach.
And they got to preaching about the gospel
in the stars.
And they said that there was a gospel
in the great pyramid of Chios.
Well, I prayed to God when he filled
me with the Holy Ghost to give me
a spirit of discernment.
So I never fell into any of those
traps.
I always was able to see a cultist
and smell a cultist.
Now, literally, quite literally, I can smell a
cultist.
When I, when he comes toward me, I
sniff and I know, I don't mean with
my olfactory muscles or, it isn't your muscles,
it's your nerve, that's right.
My olfactory nerves, but it's with something in
my heart that says, watch him, because he's
a cultist.
They write me letters and try to get
me to come over on their side.
I had, I have a fella who's very
faithful in sending me literature and he's a,
he's of the Order of Aaron.
He's of the Latter-day Saints, a Mormon.
Oh, look at me, I'm no Mormon, he
just sends me his stuff.
But you know, if you have, if you
have read the scriptures until you got used
to them and got the feel of them,
you know as soon as it doesn't feel
right, you know, as soon as it doesn't
feel right, you know it.
It's like, it's like your hat.
You reach up carelessly talking to your friend
and grab a hat off the rack and
a rest and put it on and immediately
you'll know it isn't your hat because it
doesn't feel, it hasn't taken the paint, you
know, hasn't got the bumps.
And it's not your hat.
You don't have to examine it, it just,
it just isn't your hat.
And so if you, you'll get to know
your friend, for instance.
You see Jim Johnson coming down, you grew
up with him in school and fought with
him and played with him and studied with
him in the grades and on up into
high school, and he's your friend, you know
him.
And you see somebody coming down the street
and your wife says, there comes Jim Jones.
You say, that's not Jim Jones.
You know better.
Still, for the man, you know, well, you
can do the same thing.
You can go to the scriptures and learn
it and love it and you don't understand
it all.
But the sense of it and the spirit
of it and the flavor of it and
the texture of it and the shine of
it and the color of it, it becomes
second nature with you.
And when the cultist comes along, you just
know he's a cultist.
You don't have to know why.
I've had the experience many a time, I
think I told you before, of knowing something
was wrong and not knowing why for a
long time afterwards.
The Holy Ghost lets you know why.
Well, I said all this because I know
that this 144,000 thing has caused a
lot of people to dip a lot of
ink horns in a lot of ink wells
and smear up a lot of otherwise clean,
white, virgin paper that should have been left
alone.
And they tell us about who these are.
Well, the cults can't, they can't, one fellow,
one cult says, we're the 144,000.
Another cult says, we're the 144,000.
That makes 288,000.
And another cult comes along and says, no,
we're the 144,000.
Multiply that by three.
And another cult says, we are multiplied by
four.
And pretty soon you're running into the millions.
And it says 144,000.
I'd like to know why we fool around
with anything as clear as this is.
This is one of the few times in
the scriptures where the Lord gave us a
long list of names.
He said, I heard the number of them
that were sealed.
And there were sealed 144,000 of all
the tribes of the children of Israel.
Unless you get the notion that that means
spiritual tribes.
Why, the Holy Ghost says, now wait a
minute, of the tribe of Judah, 12,000.
Of the tribe of Reuben, 12,000.
Of the tribe of Gad, 12,000.
And so as somebody says to you, I'm
going to have five men at my house
tomorrow night for a little supper, dinner.
I'm going to have Mr. Jones, Mr. Robertson,
Mr. Robertson, Mr. Smith, and Mr. Brown.
And I'll say, well, I don't know any
of those men.
Explain, who are they?
Well, they tell me who they are, where
they live, and all about their marital state
and their financial situation, and I get quite
a rundown on them.
They even show me their pictures.
And then the next day the man says,
I'm having a party at my place tonight,
I think I told you.
And I say, yes.
Who are the five?
Well, he says, I thought I told you,
Smith, Brown, Robertson, Robertson, and who else was
it?
And I say, well, now just a minute,
am I to understand that spiritually or poetically
or literally or figuratively?
He said, I thought I told you who
my five friends are from Detroit, and they're
coming up to see me.
I used to know their Aunt Mabel out
in Alberta, and they're coming up to see
me.
And he pins it down, names them, and
then I stand bug-eyed and say, who
are they?
And that's what we're doing here.
We're writing books on who the 144,000
are, and God told us who they are.
He says they're people saved out of the
twelve tribes of Israel.
And then in case we might think he
meant somebody else, he names the tribes, substituting
Joseph for Ephraim, and we have it, twelve
tribes of Israel.
These, then, are the Jews who will be
converted yet.
Now, I believe that.
I understand that isn't popular doctrine in the
City of Toronto, that some of the leading
preachers and good, godly men, too, find no
future for Israel.
I find a future for Israel.
I couldn't read my Bible at all and
not believe there is a future for Israel.
I could not read Romans 9 and not
believe there was a future for Israel in
10.
I believe it in 11, read them and
see.
Yes, there is.
So I think we've identified them, and it's
a very disappointing thing, because I know that
you wanted me to say abracadabra, spin around
three times, look very spiritual and come up
with a weird answer, but I don't want
to do it, because why should I when
God has named them for us and told
us about them and said the judgments of
God coming upon the earth are going to
spare these people?
Don't ask me whether I believe and know
whether.
Israel, over there is the Israel that is
to be restored.
I don't know for sure about that, but
I do know that Israel will come from
the north and the south and the east
and the west, and they will be restored
again to the land which God gave to
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
God never lied to Abraham, and when God
said Abraham could have the land from the
river to the sea and to the cedars
of Lebanon down to the borders of Egypt
and Arabia, he meant exactly what he said.
And you know the story of their sins
and their idolatry and their unbelief and their
judgments, and you know it as I know
it, one judgment after another.
Back in the book of Deuteronomy, it tells
us there about the Jews, that the day
will come when they will plead, O God,
send the morning, and when the night comes
and when the day comes, they'll say, O
God, send the night, and they will plead,
read the terrible stories of Eichmann, the terrible
stories of the Spanish Jews in their day,
read the sufferings of Israel down the centuries,
and you'll see it fulfilled as clear as
a photographic plate.
Now that takes care of 144,000, but
after this I beheld and lo, a great
multitude which no man could number, of all
nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues.
Here we have now not Jews, understand he
has specifically set these apart and said, Here
are the Christians out of the tribes of
Israel at a specific time.
But he says, Now here is another multitude,
I want you to see a bigger multitude,
a great multitude.
You can number these, but you can't number
this multitude, all nations, and kindreds, and people,
and tongues.
I say once again to you that the
Bible has 150,000 miles ahead of the
NAPC, 150,000 miles ahead of those who
are telling us now that we ought to
have a united nation because all men are
one.
Didn't the Bible tell us that, that all
men were created of one blood to dwell
upon the face of the earth?
If we had listened to our Bible we
would have known that all the time.
So God has these people out of all
nations, and kindreds, and tongues, and people, and
they stand before the throne.
Now the Jews, the 144,000 sealed ones,
are on the earth, but this great multitude
is before the throne and before the Lamb,
clothed with white robes and palms in their
hands.
And they cried with a loud voice, and
all the angels stood around the throne, and
the elders and the four beasts fell before
the throne on their faces, and they worshiped
God and said, Amen, and blessed, and glory,
and wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honor, and power,
and might unto our God forever and ever.
I'd like to stop right here and quit
preaching prophecy and intersperse a bracket of truth
here that I want to leave with you
and you ought to get a hold of.
If you think you can untangle things so
that you'll understand them in the world today
and know who's side to be on, and
who's right and who's wrong, you're going to
have to think again.
You can't do it.
If you think that you're going to be
able to explain why one man is rich
and atheistic and another man is poor and
holy, why one person lives to be 97
years old and a woman dies of cancer
in her 30s, if you think you can
figure it all out, and if you think
you can figure it all out, brother, you
can never figure it all out, I'm telling
you that.
But there's one thing you can do.
When you reach a place where you can't
get the answer, you can look up and
say, Blessing, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving,
and honor, and power, and might be unto
our God forever and ever.
Amen.
And if you keep on saying that enough,
why, and long enough, your heart will leap
up and you'll be on top of the
thing even if you can't explain the thing.
We'll never be able to explain things, but
we can praise God for things.
One of the elders said to me, What
are these that are arrayed in white robes?
I smiled when I read that a while
ago because I thought of us Bible teachers.
We'd never let an opportunity like that pass.
John had more humility than we.
Anybody of class asked us any question, we'd
come through with the answer, whether it was
the right one or not.
But John said, Sir, you know, I don't
know about this.
But John, you're an Apostle!
I know, but I'm an awful poor Apostle,
Sir.
He said to that elder, I don't know,
Sir.
He said, You know, I don't know, Sir.
Imagine that, the Apostle.
Here he was, the Apostle.
Nowadays they talk about him that he was
enthroned, so-and-so, a big ecclesiastical big
shot.
He gets a throne, and he has all
of this different paraphernalia.
When they don't die, sheer suffocation, the robes
and chains and all the rest they have
to wear to prove what they are.
And they get kissing rings and kissing toes
and all that sort of thing.
And here was a man who leaned on
Jesus' bosom, and when somebody asked him a
Bible question, he couldn't answer it.
He said, I don't know, Sir.
You know.
Oh, John, what a wonderful brother you are,
and how I'd like to be like you.
Have your humility, and not try to look
wise when I'm not wise at all.
Sir, thou knowest.
And so the elder who was in on
the thing, he said, Well, John, I'm going
to tell you then, if you don't know,
I do.
These are they that came out of great
tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made
them white in the blood of the Lamb.
Now, they are up there, you know.
They are not down here.
These 144 are down here, but they are
up there.
Therefore are they before the throne of God,
and they serve him day and night in
his temple.
And he that sitteth on the throne shall
dwell among them.
Oh, how beautiful this is, how beautiful.
I recommend that you, particularly you older people,
you quit reading so much that isn't doing
you any good, and you begin to bone
up a little bit on where you're going.
I think this is wonderful.
Therefore are they before the throne of God,
and they serve him day and night in
his temple.
And he that sitteth on the throne shall
dwell among them.
They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any
more.
Neither shall the sun light on them, nor
any heat.
For the Lamb which is in the midst
of the throne shall feed them, and shall
lead them unto living fountains of waters.
And God shall wipe away all tears from
their eyes.
Now, that's a specific company, but what is
true of that specific company is true of
all the children of God.
Don't believe it, read on to the 21st
and 22nd chapters of the book of Revelation.
Now I have one or two things that
I'd like to say that I want you
to get.
According to this, there is a time of
frightful tribulation coming, a time of violence and
suffering and terror, and a time of upset
of nations and dislocations and pains, a time
when God Almighty shall shake the earth worse
than an earthquake.
And then, too, there is going to be
a radical reduction of the earth's population, as
is found here in the book of Revelation.
But that radical reduction of the earth's population
is not going to be the result of
anything man does, it's going to be from
heaven itself.
If you read this, you will find that
this in the 7th chapter, here in the
6th chapter, when the King Heaven departed like
a scroll, the mountains were moved out of
their places, the kings of the earth and
the great men fled to the rocks in
the mountains, man had nothing to do with
that.
No atom bomb, no missiles, no rockets, God
was doing this.
When we come to the 7th chapter and
read of the holding the four winds of
the earth, that the wind should not blow
on the sea or earth or tree, why,
that's God Almighty that's doing that.
When we come to the 8th chapter and
see God hurling down the fire on the
earth, and this follows hail and fire mingled
with blood, has nothing, not anything whatsoever to
do with cruise ships, has nothing to do
with Cape Canaveral, has nothing to do with
nuclear wars.
Let's get that straight.
There is going to be a reduction of
the earth's population.
I think it's a terrible, terrible thing what
we're hearing now everywhere.
Politicians are saying it, sociologists are saying it,
scientists are saying it, they're saying there's too
many people in the earth, too many people,
they're being bred too fast.
Something's got to be done to shut off
the stream of human beings that are being
born into the world.
One fellow over here in the white or
smock is finding ways to keep babies alive.
The man over here is writing a book
to prove there are too many babies anyhow,
and then they want me to believe that
they know the answer.
They don't know the answer, they're worse confused
than the cults, only that's the scientific cult.
Anyhow, there's going to be a radical reduction
of the earth's population, for the Bible doesn't
hesitate to say one-third of the people
of the earth were slain in one instance.
It's not going to be the result of
nuclear fission.
So if you get a little dust on
your car, go run home and say to
your husband, Honey, I'm afraid it's fallout.
No, it didn't fall out.
It didn't sweep the streets right.
Don't worry about it, don't worry about it.
Again, the human race is going to survive
this radical reduction, it's going to survive it,
the human race is going to come through,
and it's going to come through the human
race, not a sub-human race, but the
human race.
Fourth, Christians will come through that period, and
there will be some believers in that period.
There will be believers among the Jews, and
there will be also among the Gentiles, as
we'll learn here.
But because of the frightful situation that's on
in the earth, they will come through only
by suffering, persecution, pain, martyrdom, many of them.
It will cost them everything.
This is the glory that is theirs, that
their place at the right hand of God,
their place there where they hunger no more
and thirst no more, for the Lamb in
the midst of the throne feeds them and
leads them into living fountains of waters, their
place there they had to win by giving
up everything they had.
Their place there they had to take by
surrendering every earthly thing and going through the
tribulation of terror and loss.
What bothers me, my brothers and sisters, is
how much our religion is costing us.
It really isn't costing us very much at
all.
It isn't costing us very much.
The average evangelical who claims to be born
again and have eternal life and have it
forever isn't doing as much to propagate his
faith as Jehovah's Witnesses are doing down here
on the corner selling their papers.
They are not willing to take the spit
and the blow and the abuse that they
get.
They are not giving as much time to
it.
They are not giving as much as the
Mormons are giving to it.
They are not giving as much time and
sacrifice as the Seventh-day Adventists are giving
to it.
I've been ashamed of myself now for years
that every time I look at a government
affair that tells how many different religious people
denominations are giving, the Adventists stand at the
top.
We who have the truth and know what
it is to have our sins beautifully and
sweetly washed away by the blood of the
Lamb, we stand ashamed before these cultists who
are out putting us to shame by their
zeal and their effort to make converts.
But there will be a great multitude that
no man can number, and it will have
cost that multitude everything.
Now, I realize that the pass to heaven
or the ticket to heaven is not something
you do.
The entree into the kingdom of God is
by the blood of the Lamb.
Somebody else paid for it, but I also
know that the world being such a world
as it is, as soon as you begin
to take God seriously, the world starts to
jump on you.
And as soon as the world gets in
a place where it can, that multitude that
no man can number, the Christians of that
period are persecuted unto death.
And they weren't on earth, they were in
heaven waiting before the throne of God and
before the Lamb.
And therefore they are before the throne of
God and serve him in the temple day
and night.
Dear friends, we claim to be Christians, we
say we are Christians, but I wonder how
much our Christianity costs us.
It's a disgrace and a shame that any
church should ever be in the red financially.
It's a disgrace and a shame that a
missionary society should be $165,000 in arrears
as ours is.
It's a disgrace and a shame.
We waste enough to keep the church moving.
We waste enough if we had a sense
of the urgency of this whole thing on
us.
Very little sense of urgency.
To church and back to church and back.
I went to church and sang a hymn
and home again did go, and that's that.
And then we're ready to say, well, we're
Christians and I don't say we're not.
But oh, how far we are from revival
and how far we are from having the
urgency of the Holy Ghost on us.
Brother and sister, we ought to take this
seriously.
No man ever ought to ask, how much
is it going to cost me?
He only ought to ask, what's my duty
before God?
No Christian ever ought to say, what will
be the consequences if I take this direction?
They came up out of great tribulations.
They could have sneaked out of it if
they would.
They could have collaborated with the enemy, but
they didn't.
They took the firing squad first, or the
sword, or whatever they used.
Therefore are they before the throne, and their
poor bodies were thrown out and burned and
tossed into a lime pit and gotten rid
of as these devil-mad people moved over
the face of the earth, trying to hold
on to that which God was trying to
shake loose from them in that terrible period
that's ahead.
They said, all right, we'll serve Jesus Christ
no matter.
And they did.
It does me good occasionally when I hear
of somebody, maybe in China, maybe in Indonesia,
maybe in Africa, or some other place, some
simple-hearted native, as we call them, somebody
born there of another race than ours, who
hears about the Christ that the white race
has known about for 2,000 years, and
undergoes such a tremendous transformation, and becomes so
enraptured with the glory of God in the
face of Jesus Christ, that they allow themselves
to be killed for Christ's sake, slain for
Christ's sake.
They're keeping it away from them.
They're not telling it.
But in the country of Colombia alone, the
Christian Missionary Alliance has lost by murder, that
is, by martyrdom, some pastors and a large
number of Christians.
But the State Department doesn't want to know,
and the Catholic Church, with their squeeze on
and their tremendous ability to choke off news,
we don't know about it.
It's being done.
Some come out and tell us.
Thank God for them.
I don't know what I would do.
Peter said he wouldn't deny the Lord, and
he denied him, so I don't want to
make any boast at all.
But if I could have my brothers take
my choice before God this night, I'd rather
be one of them down there, have my
home attacked and bombed, be chopped to pieces
with cutlets, than to be a too-rich,
too-comfortable, too-well-fed, too-well-off
white man taking his Christianity for granted.
Brothers and sisters, they didn't take it for
granted there.
It cost them everything, even their lives.
Therefore are they before the throne of God,
having washed their robes and made them white
in the blood of the Lamb.
I believe it's time that we ought to
rise up and get out of our rut
and routine and begin to take our Christian
faith seriously.
Listen to me.
If these few hundred listening to me tonight
were to begin to take this whole thing
in dead seriousness, and would dare, dare, dare
to go down before God and say, O
God, I hereby give myself to thee, and
my family to thee, and my business to
thee.
Take it, Lord, take me, and if it's
necessary that for thy sake I should lose
everything, let me lose it, Lord.
Don't ask what price it is.
I'll pay the price, but I want to
be all I ought to be.
If just this church full of people would
get that serious, you'd never hear the last
of it.
It would spring out and the news of
it would go everywhere like birds on the
wings.
There would be such a revival, such a
renaissance of New Testament, first century Christianity as
you didn't dream could be.
My God delivers, delivers from this easygoing, smooth,
comfortable, fat, greasy, oily Christianity that always is
careful never to let the truth get a
hold of us and embarrass us.
It costs them everything, what's it costing us?
Let's pray.