Now, will you turn to Revelation, the 10th
chapter?
Revelation, the 10th chapter, and I'm going to
ask you to read it with me.
I'll read verse 1, and you'll read verse
2, and so on to the end, and
we'll all read the last verse.
And if what follows doesn't help us any,
this is bound to help us if we'll
believe it and obey it.
Revelation 10, I saw another mighty angel come
down from heaven clothed with a cloud, and
a rainbow was upon his head.
And his face was as it were the
sun, and his feet as pillars of fire.
And he cried with a loud
voice as when a lion roared.
And when he had cried, seven thunders uttered
their voice.
And the angel which I saw stand upon
the sea and upon the earth, lifted up
his hand to heaven.
But in the days of the voice of
the seventh angel, when he shall begin to
sound, the mystery of God shall be finished,
as he hath declared to his servants the
prophets.
And I went unto the angel and said
unto him, Give me the little book.
And he said unto me, Take it, and
eat it up, and it shall make thy
belly bitter, but it shall be in thy
mouth sweet as honey.
And he said unto me, Thou must prophesy
again before many peoples and nations and towns
and kings.
Now I'll not be finished with this little
book tonight, but we'll talk about the earlier
part of the chapter.
This book, as I've tried to say, this
book of Revelation, is primarily the revelation of
Jesus Christ.
And it is impossible to look, as we
know, at a bright star and see only
that bright star.
When we look at a bright star, we
see all the other stars round about it
that are large enough and bright enough to
register on our optical nerves.
And it's impossible to see a king or
to look at a king without seeing other
things that surround the king, the palace and
the throne and the attendants and the scepter
and the robe and the things that go
to make the king a king.
And so when we're reading the book of
Revelation, we often do not for the moment
see Jesus himself.
This is, I say, primarily a revelation of
Jesus Christ.
And yet when we look at Jesus Christ
and toward Jesus Christ, we see that which
surrounds him.
Jesus Christ is first.
He is the word, the everlasting word.
He is the Father of the Father's love
of begotten.
He is God incarnated in human flesh.
I could spend all the evening telling about
him, and I would yet be ashamed of
how little I had said in praise of
him who is the desire of nations, who
is the wisdom and the righteousness and the
sanctification and the redemption and the hope and
the resurrection and the glory and the way
and the truth and the life and all
that the human spirit will need and all
that we as human beings will need for
all for the world to come.
And yet when we look toward him and
see him naturally, we see these other creatures,
too.
He is the one by whom the race
is to be redeemed and the earth restored
and evil vanquished and Satan defeated and justice
established and human banishment ended and the veil
taken away from the face of God.
And yet when we gaze at him, we
see also the sight of angels and hell
and heaven and the bottomless pit and the
throne of God and the souls of the
righteous and the last judgment and the marriage
of the Lamb and the new heaven and
the new earth.
So we're seeing all of this.
I don't know what this does to you,
but just reading it lifts me.
Just reading it gets me off the dull
earth where it cares about and gets me
up into another world and onto another level,
as they say now.
And I like to read it, even if
I don't altogether fully understand it.
Now, the book is rich, this book of
Revelation, rich with wonderful scenes, scenes that are
noble and magnificent and terrible and awesome and
attractive and frightening and rapturous and all this.
And we come to Revelation 10, verse 1,
and we hear these words, that John looked
and behold I saw another mighty angel come
down from heaven clothed with a cloud and
a rainbow was about his head or upon
his head and his face was as it
were as the sun and his feet as
pillars of fire.
Now, this is a parenthesis, this 10th chapter
here.
It is parenthetical.
That is, it does not advance the progress
of events.
You know what that means.
It doesn't advance the progress of events.
We are moving forward in the schedule of
events, but here we do not find any
forward motion at all.
But we see a loud and lordly announcement
coming from an angel, another mighty angel, and
then follows the description of the angel.
And the scripture says he is clothed with
a cloud.
You know that the Bible was written very
considerably in figures of speech and symbolism abound
throughout the word of God.
This ought not to scare people and discourage
them, as it does some.
They throw up their hands and say, I
cannot understand the scriptures.
I don't know when it's a literal thing
and when it's a symbolic thing, and therefore
I just quit and I don't read the
word.
That, of course, is the devil's neat trick
to prevent us from reading the word.
You have no such trouble as that when
you are reading a letter from a relative
or a letter from a loved one far
away.
That loved one may write you a letter
and in it he or she may use
brilliant figures of speech, and yet you know
what every one of them means.
And you also know that that person is
using a symbol, a figure, and you're not
at all, you don't say, I'll not read
that letter because the fellow talks about things
that I don't understand.
You understand all right.
So when we read of the angel clothed
with the cloud, we know that this cloud,
if we're Bible students, is not a rain
cloud.
It's not a cloud composed of water.
It is some other kind of cloud.
You go to the Bible and let the
Bible interpret itself.
And in the Bible you find that cloud.
Way back there in the days of Israel
there was a cloud and a fire glowing
by night as a fire and appearing by
day as a cloud.
And that was the Shekinah presence, that was
the glory of God.
And when Jesus was taken away, a cloud
received him out of their sight.
And again it says, Behold, he cometh with
clouds, and every eye that saw him, every
one that pierced him shall see him when
he cometh with clouds.
Well, this is what the cloud means.
It is the visible manifestation and the setting
forth of the invisible glory of the invisible
God.
And when the creature comes out from the
throne of God, there clings to him something
of the glory that belongs to God, something
of thee, the splendor and beauty that belongs
to God.
And the throne of God clings to the
mighty angel as he moves down from his
place by the throne of God to the
place where he's coming on the earth.
Now, Jesus is seen through all this.
This angel is not Jesus Christ, our Lord.
This angel is another mighty angel, let's get
that straight.
Our Lord is called the angel of the
covenant in one place, but since the word
angel means a messenger, this is another mighty
messenger coming down from heaven, clothed with a
cloud.
And this is not Jesus Christ, our Lord.
He had a book, and he took a
book, and he began to open the book,
but this is not the same one.
The one we saw in the 5th chapter
is the Son of God, the Lamb of
God, and he taketh away the sins of
the world, and he holds in his hand
a little book.
And they begin to open that book, but
this is not the same little book, and
it's not the same angel.
Not the same one, I mean.
This angel is not Christ.
Now, I don't know about this little book,
and I'm not going to emphasize it too
much, but I believe that God keeps books,
my friends.
It seems like a little bit kindergartenish, perhaps,
or childish, to believe that God keeps books,
but I do believe that he keeps books.
I believe that God keeps books on his
people.
I read of the book of life, and
I read of the book of deeds in
which are written the evil works of men,
and I read here of a book, and
I read in the 5th chapter of a
book which is the title, Deed to the
World, and so the great God of Heaven
does keep books.
And here is a little book which he
has in his hand, we may notice a
little later, and perhaps not until next week
even, what it is.
But he cries with a loud voice.
Now, he lifted up his hand to Heaven.
I like this.
I like somebody or some creature that can
do something with finality once.
We nibble at things and experiment and try.
We're weak and we try to do things
and don't get them done.
And our great men and our mighty men
try to do things but don't get them
done.
We're such little men when the stars come
out, said the poet.
And here is someone who comes down and
he lifts up his hand, and when he
lifts up his hand he cried with a
loud voice, that is, he shouted as when
a lion roars.
And when he had cried, seven thunders uttered
their voices.
Now, those seven thunders that uttered their voices,
obviously they uttered something that was intelligible to
John.
And so John grabbed his quill pen and
he started to write down what the seven
thunders had uttered.
And I was about to write and then
I heard a voice from Heaven saying, now
seal up those things which the seven thunders
uttered and write them not.
And the angel which I saw stand upon
the sea and upon the land lifted up
his hand to Heaven.
He stood this great creature upon the sea
and upon the land and he declared that
time should be no more.
Now we've made a great deal out of
this time being no more.
In our hymns and in our gospel songs
we sing about time being no more and
we're looking forward to the day or the
period when time will be no more.
But actually what the great angel said here,
this mighty resplendent being, was that delay should
be no longer.
We could understand this if we were at
a football game or a baseball game, or
I suppose the same would be true of
the average of most games, but I do
happen to know it's true of these, too.
All that somebody has to do is to
call time and everything ends.
Nobody can score, nobody can run, nobody can
do anything, it's dead for the time being.
Time has been called, delay.
They say, wait a minute, there's a delay
in the game so that the sequence of
the game ends for a while and there's
a parenthesis, a period of waiting there.
And this is what we have now, we're
in a period of waiting and suddenly this
great angel appears from Heaven above and he
cries to the earth and to all here
that the time is not called now, that
the delay should be no longer.
Now the great test of faith for the
world and it's been a great stumbling block,
too, when God has promised so much and
God has promised so much.
Read your Bible, go back to Genesis and
read it on through and see how much
God has promised.
Sibyl and prophet and saint and sage and
seer and apostle and our Lord himself promised
so very much.
But time has been called and the great
test of faith is that if we can
wait on God and not push it and
not expect immediate results and immediate action, you
know that we live in the push-button
age now, that's not a new thought and
certainly isn't news, but we live in that
period when we want things done immediately and
now they said that a man used to
be able to wait for a day or
two or maybe a week on a stagecoach
and now he's impatient if he misses one
section of a swinging door, of a revolving
door.
And that is quite literally true, we want
what we want immediately, we want it now
and we don't want anybody fooling about it.
But God doesn't move like that and faith
doesn't always get things immediately.
You see the difference between faith as it's
found in the scriptures and faith as we
conceive it and is it to us.
Faith is a kind of magic, I want
something and I pray and I exercise faith
and I reach out and I have that
right now and immediately, I get it at
once.
Now that's true, you can pray and some
things do come now, but there is another
kind of long-range telescopic faith that sees
the ages and that can wait on God.
And the church has had to wait a
long, long time, God has promised so many
things and his people have waited so very
long and their cry has gone up, how
long O Lord, how long?
And now the lordly angel proclaims with the
voices of the lion and three worlds hear
him, heaven hears him and agrees and hell
hears him and is frightened and earth hears
him and is glad.
You won't have to wait any longer now,
says this mighty angel, because time is no
more, delay is no more, we're lifting the
time signal from the game and from here
on we go forward to the end without
any more delay.
God promised Abraham an awful lot of things
that he hasn't yet fulfilled, we might as
well face up to this, that God told
Abraham a number of things that Abraham hasn't
seen yet.
Abraham died without having seen it, was buried
in the cave of Machpelah and laid away
to rest beside the wizard body of his
old wife Sarah.
And the dust of Abraham and Sarah still
blows about over there somewhere, perhaps in the
Asia Minor, in the land which God gave
to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
But God has a lot of promises standing
out and a lot of notes that are
waiting to mature.
And a lot of things he told Abraham
he would do.
He said, Abraham, I'll bless the whole earth
through you and through your seed.
I will give you all this land from
way up here at the top, clear down
and from the river, from the sea clear
out beyond the river, I'll give it all
to you.
And there never has been a time when
the descendants of Abraham had all that.
They never have had it all.
They've had some of it and they have
had less of it and more of it,
but they've never had all of it.
So Abraham is still waiting.
God has said, Abraham, we'll have to call
time a little here and delay a bit.
Things are, I'm going to let the tree
ripen.
And so Abraham has been waiting, but Abraham
couldn't afford to wait.
A man who, when he's a hundred years
old, could quietly look up to God and
believe that his wife, who was ninety, could
have a child.
Abraham had no trouble with faith.
And Isaac was born in faith, in the
will of God.
Then there was David.
God loved David.
David did some things he shouldn't have done,
there's no question about that.
And a lot of people have tramped all
over the poor man ever since.
We've written him and preached about him, but
David was a human being and he acted
like a human being under pressure.
But David knew one art that the average
human being doesn't know.
David knew the glorious art of repentance.
He could repent as few men have ever
been able to repent since the world began.
David could sin in a robust fashion, but
David could also weep as few men have
been able to weep.
And so God promised Abraham a lot of
things.
Well, most of those Messianic, I won't say
all, but most of those Messianic psalms that
tell us about the King in his glory
coming to set up his throne and the
people of the world gathering up to the
King and peace being throughout all the earth,
that's not simply poetry.
That's history pre-written.
God has said that would be.
Take that 45th Psalm, I mean, when David
sang his song of loves.
Well, it says here, Now,
this is a picture of the marriage supper
when the man who never married on the
earth, but who adopted all the children of
the world as his children and who lived
a single life and died his glorious death
and rose again, takes to himself a bride
not composed of another person, another single person,
but of the church of Christ.
And we see it here, and we see
it ahead of time.
It's history pre-written.
Now, David did not ascend up to heaven,
said Peter, but David sleeps in the 2nd
chapter of Acts, we're told that.
David ascended not into the heavens, but he
saith unto my Lord, saith himself, the Lord
said unto my Lord, sit on my right
hand until I make thy foes thy footstool,
and so on.
Now, he said, my brethren, know that David
died and sleeps now, that all the house
of Israel knows that David sleeps and has
God forgotten David?
You put your baby to bed at night,
and before his little eyelids fall shut, you
promise him something.
Do you think for a minute that you're
going to forget what you promised your child?
No, no.
Your love for your child will not allow
you to forget.
The father leaves, and he's making a long
journey.
And he says, now when I come back,
I will have certain something for you.
And the little child doesn't forget that.
They say babies do not remember very long,
but you'd be surprised how long.
Some of them have memories like elephants.
And if you're gone for three weeks and
come back, the first thing they will do
will not be to welcome you, but to
ask whether you got that or not.
Now, I personally know that.
Our little girl was growing up, she had
a grown-up brother, and everybody called him
Bud.
He had another name, but he was Bud
to the family.
And when Bud would come home, she'd come
dancing up to him with her brown curls
flying, and she would say, Have you got
goom?
And she was glad to see Bud, too.
But she remembered the promises, you see.
And when God said to David, Now, David,
the day will be.
Here it is, the day will come when
you'll see all this, and the glory will
be seen.
And then David died, and they laid David
away.
He got so old and cold.
And they finally died, and they laid him
away in a tomb.
Do you suppose for a minute that the
God who promised his boy when he put
him to sleep and laid him there in
his little bed to sleep in the cave
of the earth, do you suppose God's forgotten
David?
Do you suppose those psalms through which God
poured his promises to the human race and
to Israel and to the church, do you
think for a second that God's forgotten David?
No.
And there was Isaiah, that man with the
organ voice, that man who could pull out
the stops and make the heavens hear the
great tones, as he told of him who
was wonderful counselor, the everlasting Father, the Prince
of Peace, and that he should come, and
that the law should go out from Jerusalem,
and the word of the Lord should go
out from Zion, and that the nations of
the earth should come to Israel, do you
think that God has forgotten these promises that
he made through Isaiah?
Do you think that when God, when this
grieving prophet Daniel, this man who prayed his
way through and fasted and sought the will
of God and knowledge of God, do you
think that this man Daniel, to whom God
promised that there would be a stone come
out of heaven and strike the earth and
that that stone should grow until it should
fill the whole mountain, do you suppose God
has forgotten all this?
We've forgotten it.
We've got our minds made up on something
else.
Russia sent up a man, and the United
States sent up monkeys.
We've got our minds made up on monkeys.
I don't know how you felt about little
old Enos, but I pitied him.
I was on his side as soon as
I saw his picture there.
I thought, poor boy, you may not be
back.
Did you see his picture in the newspaper?
I did, and I pitied him.
I have no particular friends among the chimpanzees,
but I saw the picture of Enos there
looking so much like a rather homely half
-grown boy.
And I pitied Enos, and I was real
delighted when they reported that they'd brought him
back a little bit excited but entirely all
right and all smiles.
That was Enos.
Well, we're more concerned now with sending monkeys
into the heavens above than we are with
the prophecies of Daniel.
But I don't think God is too much
concerned as man throws the little snowballs up
and watches them come down and gets excited
about it.
I don't think God is so excited as
man at all.
People are just playing with rubber balls made
out of steel, throwing them up in the
air and bringing them back.
But God said, Let Daniel see a rock
that fell out of heaven, a great stone
that fell out of heaven and that smashed
the image and filled all the mountains.
And men are forgetting that.
If I were to get up before the
United Nations and start to explain what Daniel
had taught, I'd be hooted out.
And I'd be hooted out not only by
the Asians and the Russians and the Africans,
I'd be hooted out by the Canadians and
the Americans and the British and the Germans.
I'd be hooted out of that place, believe
me.
The Germans aren't there, but the rest of
them are that I've named.
And I'd be hooted out that Daniel is
still there.
He said, O rest you, man of God.
When Daniel was old and tired, God said
to him, Rest, man of God.
The day will be in that last chapter,
said the time will be when go thy
way till the end be.
For thou shalt rest and stand in thy
lot at the end of the days.
Blessed is he that waiteth and cometh.
So we're waiting and we're coming by the
grace of God.
And I think of the Church.
The only way we'll know where we are
is to know Church history a little bit.
Everybody ought to read Church history.
Everybody ought to go downtown somewhere to a
good bookstore, say evangelical publishers, and buy themselves
a Church history, if only a synopsis of
Church history.
And then I recommend the reading of the
biographies of the Saints.
It's a good cure for any new ideas
that pop up.
But he comes along and he has a
new idea, and he takes the Scripture and
begins to expound them, he thinks, and makes
you think that he suddenly has found a
secret nobody else has known since the Apostle
Paul.
And if you know Church history, you smile
to yourself and you say, There were only
45 other people down the century who said
that same thing, and it didn't happen.
And so we know he's wrong, too.
So the Church, it's good to study and
see how the Church, and particularly the martyrs,
how they died in calm belief that everything
would be all right in their father's house.
They're still waiting.
God says, Time!
And he calls time!
And they're waiting.
And they're bereaved and oppressed.
I'll tell you, I've seen some, I've never
ever told a graveyard story here, nor a
deathbed story.
I don't go much for that.
But I've seen some heart-wrenching things in
my time.
I've seen, I saw one mother when her
little baby boy died.
She was a young mother, oh, I'd say
in her early twenties.
And she went over in her paroxysm of
uncontrolled, irrational grief.
She scolded him.
She said, Why could you do it?
Why did you do it, Junior?
Why did you do it?
You left Mama, you left Mama.
Why did you do it, Junior?
You left Mama.
And she scolded the little white form in
her awful grief.
And though I was a preacher and supposed
to be in charge of the service, I
walked to a window and looked out to
hide my tears.
I couldn't help it.
I hadn't known them.
I only had the service.
But I've seen things like this.
Now, that mother was a Christian.
And if she ever became a Christian, she
knows she will meet that babe somewhere there
in the glory.
She knows it.
Suzanne Wesley, that brilliant and holy woman, had
17 children.
And, of course, two of them were John
and Charles Wesley.
But she lost.
I've forgotten how many died.
Was it nine that died?
And she led every one of them away
in full confidence that Jesus Christ, when he
died, died for her babes.
And that she would meet them in that
day, and they would know her, and she
would know them in the great day of
our Lord.
But she's dead now, and they're all gone.
The whole family is gone, and their descendants
have gone.
You suppose the God who lives in his
heaven and waits and looks down upon the
poor, frightened tribe of men, do you think
that God's forgotten, my brother?
No, God says, Wait a minute, I've called
time.
But one of these times, I'm going to
release the wheels and we'll roll along.
And now it comes.
Now in the 10th chapter it comes.
And the angel which I saw stand upon
the sea and upon the earth lifted up
his hand to heaven and swore by him
that liveth forever and ever who created heaven
and the things that are therein and the
earth and the things that are therein and
the sea and the things that are therein,
he swore that there should be time no
more.
Delay was over, and now the wheels of
God's justice rolls on.
Once the cup of wrath was filling up,
do you know that happens?
It happens to human beings.
We sin and we sin and we sin
and perhaps or possibly God doesn't notice much
or at least he doesn't seem to.
And then the sin becomes accumulative.
That's the terrible thing about sin.
It's accumulative.
It becomes accumulative and piles up within us.
And when it piles up to the place
where it overflows, then the judgment of God
falls.
And the nations of the earth have been
accumulating their sins.
And there was a day when the cup
of wrath was filling up for the world
and the just judgment of God was about
to fall and then the saving victim who
opened wide the gates of heaven, crucified, gave
himself to die and offered himself on a
cross and God called time and said, While
my Son pleads at my right hand and
while grace is operative, there will be no
end to the human race, there will be
no final judgment.
And you and I are living now in
a period of time, a period when time
has been called.
But the great angel is coming.
I don't know how soon he'll come, but
he will come and he will say, That's
over now.
Time is no more.
The delay has ended and the wheels will
begin to roll on.
And then during this time, this period, God
has taken out of the world a people
for his name.
Why do we believe in nations?
Somebody wrote me a letter here in the
city.
She may be here tonight, I don't know.
And if she is, she will understand that
this is said, as her letter was kindly,
this is meant to be kindly too, but
she rather took us to task a little
for pledging to missions and said that the
Spirit would lead about it and so on.
I have no apology to make for being
interested in the work of world missions, none
whatsoever.
For it is written in the 15th chapter
of Acts, these wonderful words, spoken by the
man of God as he stood up in
a council and he said that, was it,
it was the man who preached and said,
Men and brethren, hearken unto me.
Simeon, that's Peter, has declared how God at
the first did visit the Gentiles to take
out of them a people for his name
and to disagree the words of the prophets
as it is written, After this I will
return and will build again the tabernacle of
David which is fallen down and I will
build again the ruins thereof and I will
set it up that the residue of men
might seek after the Lord and all the
Gentiles upon whom my name is called saith
the Lord who doeth all these things.
Known unto God are all his works from
the beginning of the world.
So God is taking out of the world
a people for his name.
This church isn't a religious theater.
This church isn't a place where paid men
perform for the religious amusement of the people
who pay them.
This is an assembly of redeemed people who
have been called out and called unto and
who are part of the church which he's
called by his own name, the church of
God.
He's taking out of the world a people
for his name and time waits while grace
operates.
So I have no apology to make for
missions we can overdo or appeals, I know
that, and I'm ready to admit that.
And I think maybe we have here sometimes
taught too many things and made too many
appeals.
But I have no hesitation in saying that
one of the most important works that any
church can do is to get the gospel
out as far as they can, as soon
as they can, because he will take out
of the Gentiles a people for his name
and afterward he will return, he says.
Now that's there.
I know that many have tried to explain
that away, but I die hard.
I don't die easy.
I don't kill easy.
When somebody comes, he's determined he's not going
to believe that Christ is coming back again.
He's just not going to believe it.
And so he starts explaining, telling me what
all this means.
He can't explain it to me, or it's
already been explained.
I wrote something one time and I quoted
Paul.
And a professor in college wrote me and
told me that I had it all wrong,
that Paul didn't mean that.
And I wrote back and said, Well, Paul's
batting average has been pretty good up to
now.
Paul's ability to say what he means has
been pretty good, and so I'll string along
with Paul.
He never replied.
I thought that would fix him.
And I'm not sure whether it did or
not, because when a professor decides that the
Bible doesn't say what it says, then I
don't know what a little fella like I
can do with him or anybody else.
But when the Lord says he will call
out of the nations a people for his
name, and his name is Christ, and those
people are Christians, and the Church, and after
that I will return, I'm going to believe
that.
I'm not going to let anybody argue me
out of that, sir.
I believe that's true, sir.
So, soon time will be no more, and
when it's no more, then our Lord will
come back.
And when he comes back again, the big
question will be, Are we ready for his
coming?
Now, that is the big question.
We have just gone through a period when
almost everybody taught the same thing.
They taught that every Christian who was born
again was prepared for the coming of the
Lord automatically.
That all he had to do was take
out his air card, say, Here, Lord, here
it is.
There it is.
And it's all set.
I don't believe that, my brother.
I don't believe that.
If that had been true, that all you
had to do was be born again and
you were automatically ready for the coming of
the Lord, then I want to ask you,
how is it that Paul and Peter and
John and our Lord himself exhorted and pleaded
and besought us that we should live so
as to be ready for the coming of
the Lord?
If we're automatically ready, why is it then
that the Lord tells us to get ready
and to be ready and to watch lest
any man take our crown?
No, I do not believe that we're automatically
ready.
I believe that our Lord is waiting and
that one of these times that mighty angel
with a loud voice is going to come
down from God's heaven above with a rainbow
upon his head and his face as the
sun and his feet as pillars of fire.
And he's going to stand on the sea
and on the land and lift up his
hand to heaven and swear that the delay
is over.
And then God is going to begin to
judge a world that's ill-prepared for judgment,
a world that's all bogged down in iniquity,
a world that's more concerned with games and
pleasures than with getting ready to meet God.
There was a day when our serious forefathers
on this continent, here in Canada down in
the States, the sons and daughters of Scots
and German and English and Irish forebears, believed
as they said and said so quaintly that
earth is a dressing room to get us
ready for heaven.
When a wedding is being held, there's usually
a room backstage somewhere and there's somebody smilingly
standing outside of that room.
We had a little room down in Nutty
Pine and that was the bride's getting-ready
room.
And she came up and came with her
whatever it is they had and came up
the stairs and came down to get married.
And I married many of them.
But I'd be all over the place but
there was one place I didn't go.
Somebody outside smiling, they don't come in here.
They were getting the bride ready.
She's sit at all glorious within in garments
of needlework.
I believe that there is a bride being
prepared now for our Lord.
And she's being prepared in this secret place.
The idea that there is an automatic legal
aspect that if you have your citizenship in
heaven you're all ready, I don't believe it
for a second.
I don't believe that even though you have
a family of five or six children and
they've played all day and you're going to
have company for dinner in the evening, I
don't believe that you're going to allow the
company to see your children the way they
come in out of the backyard or off
of the playing field.
I don't think so.
I think you're going to thumb them upstairs
to the little room with the running water
and the soap and say, Now don't you
come back down here until you're presentable.
I believe that God is not going to
allow his carnal children, his lustful children, his
money-loving children, his pleasure-loving children to
go rushing pell, male, singing gospel boogie into
the presence of a holy God.
I don't believe it for a second.
I believe that the God who is holy
under and said, Be ye holy for I
am holy, I believe that that God is
going to prepare his people and he's going
to say to them, Take a bath, not
with soap and detergent and water, but in
the blood of Jesus Christ as of a
lamb without spot and without blemish.
No matter how much of a racketeer a
man is, he can push his way into
religious circles these days, Protestant circles, and he
can make good and succeed, even though he's
a racketeer, he can do it.
We can shed our jaw and push our
way in, but there's one place where you
won't push your way in, brothers and sisters,
one place.
And I'm glad for it.
I'm glad there's one clean place in the
universe, aren't you?
I'm glad there's one clean place in the
universe.
I'm glad there's one holy place we can
look into.
And I'm glad there's one place where you
can't be permitted to get away with things.
When you're in school, if you've been a
nuisance in a grade too long, they'll pass
you.
Just to get you through.
A doctor examining you for, when I was
about 60 years old, I took a physical
examination for certain insurance.
The doctor said, I don't see why you
won't pass.
Why, it just felt me between my chin
and my knees, and I was warm.
And he said, You're all right.
That's what they used to say during the
days of the army.
They said they took a young fellow and
felt him, and if he was warm, they
put a uniform on him.
And you can get away with anything here,
but there's a place where you can't.
And you'd better consider that.
I'm interested in all this.
I'm interested in this.
Don't ask me what the seven thunders uttered.
Because they were sealed up.
Nobody knows what the seven thunders said.
But you can know one thing, whatever they
said, they didn't say anything in favor of
the devil, or in favor of sin, or
in favor of hell, or in favor of
the proud man.
And you can be sure whatever they said,
it was said in favor of God and
Christ and righteousness and holiness.
So I'm willing to wait for God to
unloose the seven seals, or the seal, and
when John comes, John will say, Now, here's
what the seven thunders uttered.
It was 66 books of the Bible.
I'm not too much worried about what the
seven thunders uttered.
But I'm very much concerned that I should
be prepared when the wheels of judgment start
to grind again, and the cup of iniquity
is so full, God can't abide it.
And he pours it out in judgment.
Oh, my brother and sister, how is it
with you?
Are you ready?
Is everything all right between you and everybody?
Is everything all right between you and yourself?
Have you got any habits you shouldn't have?
Have you fussed with somebody or lied about
somebody or gossiped about somebody and not made
it right?
Have you forgotten a debt?
The statute of limitations has ruled the debt
out and they can't collect.
One preacher I heard about, a young fellow,
he bought on time from everybody that would
sell him anything, I guess, radios and all
sorts of gadgets.
Then he got called to another place and
he moved down in the south, southern part
of the United States.
And these companies, these companies that he owed,
finally found him and wrote him.
He said, Come, pay up.
He wrote back and said, Collect.
Go ahead, collect.
He had nothing.
Collect, he said.
Oh, you can get away with that.
You can't hear.
Dear brother Thomas, who sung here, preached here
many a time, went to those creditors, every
one of them, and said, I'll be personally
responsible for this man's debts.
He was my man.
And he went back.
And I'm personally responsible.
That was Thomas.
He sold a little piece of property that
the church had owned.
He went around from store to store and
paid every debt.
He walked out of that little town with
his chin up.
And every store man and every creditor said,
There's a man of God.
If you get any unpaid debts that you
haven't made any effort to do anything about,
my friends, are you ready?
That's all I'm asking.
Are you ready for the hour when the
Lord returns and God begins his program of
bringing the earth to its knees, of restoring
an earth, vanquishing evil, defeating Satan, establishing justice,
vindicating righteousness, bringing human beings back again into
the presence of God.
Let's pray.