The book of 1 Peter, 1 Peter 2nd
chapter.
1 Peter 2nd chapter, verse 9.
But ye are a chosen generation, a royal
priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar
people, that ye should show forth the praises
of him who hath called you out of
darkness into his marvellous light.
The praises there would be the glory or
the high and holy qualities that make God,
God's virtues.
But ye should show forth the virtues of
him who hath called you out of darkness
into his marvellous light.
Now, let us offer a word of prayer.
Dear Heavenly Father, the world is very evil
and the times are waxing late and we
are running out of time.
O God, lay hold of us this evening.
We pray that we may have eyes to
see and ears to hear, hearts to understand.
We pray that we may be saved from
the routine and the rut.
We pray that we may have eyes inside
and outside, anointed understanding.
Help us, Lord, for Christ's sake.
Amen.
Now, for several weeks I have taught you,
coming always back to the same thing, starting
wherever I started, always coming back to the
same thing.
I have taught you what worship is and
that we are created to worship, as the
text tonight says.
But that we are largely failing in the
purpose for which we have been created and
redeemed.
Now, in this closing one of this series,
this is the last for this series, I
wish to apply the truths which I have
taught.
Most of you have heard them all.
Therefore, I want tonight to make application of
these things.
First to the Church, thought of as a
company of people, as it says in 1
Peter, a royal priesthood, a holy generation, a
peculiar people.
First as the Church and then as the
individual that composed the Church.
Now, have you ever stopped to consider why
we exist as a Church at all?
You know, so many things we take for
granted, we never ask why.
We are too busy with everything.
We don't ask why.
We are born into it and we just
do it.
We don't ask why we do it.
So, there is a Church here where a
company of people meets.
Every so often, I am going across the
street where a company of people meets, a
couple up the way here, down another direction.
Now, why?
Let me answer to say that a local
Church exists to do corporally what each should
do individually, namely, worship God.
Show forth the excellencies of him who has
called us out of darkness into his marvelous
light.
Reflect back the glory of him who shines
down on us, even God, even Christ, even
the Holy Ghost.
Now, all that Christ has done for us
in the past and all he is doing
now leads to this one end.
And I sound strange to myself when I
say this, because you hardly hear anybody that
is saying it.
I do not, I have not got a
messianic complex, I think.
I hope I have.
And I do not want to take even
unconsciously the attitude that I alone am a
prophet of the Lord and I would like
to die along with Elijah.
God says he has 7,000 that haven't
bowed to me, and he usually has.
But as far as I get to hear
men, and as far as I'm familiar with
books, and that I think is fairly right,
my familiarity, I do not find this being
taught very much, that we are saved to
worship God.
We have it that we are saved for
a number of reasons.
I suppose that if you were to ask
the average Christian, you were to take the
average Christian who was really born in England
and is truly a Christian, and say, well,
why are you saved?
Well, he would say, I was saved to
have peace of mind, or I was saved
in order that I might be delivered from
smoking, or I was saved in order that
I might give up dope, or I was
saved because I had a bad temper and
it bothered me, or I took the Lord
Jesus as my helper because I was failing
in business and I wanted him to be
my business partner.
Or I was in school and I wanted
him to help me to get good grades.
We would have, I suppose, very many reasons,
and I'm not going to be too hard
on people really, because I notice in a
study I once made in the New Testament,
that people came to the Lord for many
reasons.
One man came because his boy was sick.
A woman came because her daughter was sick.
Another woman came because she'd had a chronic
disease for 12 years.
A politician climbed out of a tree and
looked down because his heart ached.
Nicodemus came by night because his religion was
not adequate and his heart was empty.
So the Lord received them all, and the
Lord receives everybody that comes to him in
faith, even if their motives may not be
the highest, I suppose.
But the point is, why should we always
stay where we started in?
That's what I can't understand.
Why should the Church be composed of a
school of the 1st grade with never any
2nd grade?
Or if a few got into the 2nd
grade, nobody got into the 3rd.
Why should the Church be a spiritual school
composed of 1st graders who never went beyond
the 1st grade?
There's an old joke I heard of a
man who said that he ought to be
well-educated, who spent 5 years in the
4th grade, and that's, I suppose, funny, but
it's not so funny when it comes to
the Church.
I suppose we might say, and I think
the devil would laugh, I doubt whether God
would be so much pleased, but we might
say, well, I ought to be a good
Christian.
I've been in the 4th grade or 3rd
grade now for 29 years, come next mass.
I think this is a tremendous and terrible
thing, that a Church should remain, should be
dedicated to the proposition that everybody ought to
be ecstatic, if that's where we are.
Why were we converted?
Well, I was converted so I could be
happy, happy, happy.
And everybody's happy to say, Amen.
And this is as far as we get,
my dear friends, this is as far as
we get.
Nobody wants to get any further than this.
And I don't mind telling you that I'm
kind of sick about it all.
Not only here, it's everywhere the same on
the North American continent, and I suppose all
around the world.
And we're out busy evangelizing, making your 1st
graders, so we can keep them in the
1st grade until the Lord comes and gives
them a rule in the 5 cities.
It seems to me that it's an awfully
badly mixed up concept of Christianity.
For now the Lord Jesus Christ died on
the cross that he might make his people
worshipers of God.
That's why we were born, that we might
show forth the excellency of him who has
called us out of darkness into his marvelous
light.
He is thy Lord, worship thou him.
And we see when it's all over, and
the consummation has taken place and been fulfilled,
that the beasts and the elders and the
creatures under the sea and above the earth,
and the holy, holy to the Lord God
Almighty, which is and which was and which
will be, this is the purpose of God,
that he might redeem us and put us
all in the choir and keep us there
singing his praises and showing forth his excellencies
while the eggs are old.
This is the purpose of God in redemption.
So I say that he has done it
for us and he is doing it now.
What he's done all leads to one end,
and all we should lead to one end.
All that we do should lead to one
end.
For activity's sake, it is not of God,
it's not a high thing.
Religious people are very active people, I suppose.
Politicians and preachers are the longest-wounded.
Two weeks from tonight, Brother Gray, Senator Thiessen
is going to be here and take a
part in the service, and I'm going to
have the longest part.
That will be the only time when the
preacher and the politician ever got together, and
the preacher preached longer than the politician, but
it will be two weeks from tonight, God
willing.
But we are very noisy, very wordy and
very active people.
But the activity, for activity's sake, is not
of God.
Now we must bring our ideas into harmony
with the Lord of the church.
Would you like to do that?
Would you?
Are you interested in this?
Bringing your whole thought, your whole philosophy of
Christianity, your whole conception of what the church
is, into harmony with the Lord of the
church and his teaching.
Well, I might say what the church is
not, and I'm not saying it because I'm
slapping at this church.
That's not the idea at all.
But you might push clear away, we're not
a social club.
A church must have certain social connections, I
suppose, and certain fellowship.
But we are not a social club, and
we are not a current events forum, reading
Time Magazine or Liberty or some other magazine
and taking off like a little airplane off
of a ramp from what we've just read.
We're not a current events forum, and we're
not a religious theater to provide a place
for amateur entertainers to display their talent, home
talent, barn talent, displaying their gifts.
We're none of these things.
We are holy people, a supposed to be,
a royal priesthood, a holy generation called out
of darkness to show forth the glory of
the one who called us out.
Now, we should take whatever steps are needed
to fulfill our high design as a New
Testament church.
Does that sound reasonable, that we should take
whatever steps are necessary to fulfill our design,
our high, holy, sovereign design as a New
Testament church, and to become a true church
of Christ?
Now, to do less than this is to
fail utterly.
To do less than this is to fail
God, and it's to fail our Lord Jesus
Christ who redeemed us.
It is to fail ourselves, and it is
to fail our children, and it is to
fail the whole ghost who has come from
the heart of Jesus to do in us
the work that is to be done to
make us a holy people, a sanctified people,
mirrors of the Almighty, to reflect the glory
of the Most High God.
Now, if we fail God, you say, well,
it can't happen here, but that I hope
you'll never use that argument.
If it does happen, the result is that
the next generation will depart from the faith
altogether.
That's how liberalism comes.
You can strive out here at the City
of Nimitz where I live, and you can
go to the lake.
You who know Toronto better than I know
it.
And you'll find church after church standing as
a monument to the fact that the generation
before failed God, and this generation is liberal
and not preaching the word of God at
all.
So they keep it up by social activities
and by tying it in to whatever is
going on in the world.
But as a church it has failed and
is not a church anymore, and the glory
has departed.
The glory has departed.
If we could see the visible cloud hanging
over churches these times as once the visible
cloud and fire hung over the camp of
Israel in the wilderness, if we were permitted
to see the fire by night and the
cloud by day visibly hanging as a plume
over the churches in which God is pleased,
I wonder how many churches in this city
we would see having a plume of fire
by night and cloud by day hanging over
them to tell all the world this is
God's willing place and God is pleased with
this place.
But instead of that we'd see only monuments,
monuments out in the country.
Out in the country they have in some
smaller towns, they have a rather quaint, and
sometimes I think of more of it, but
nevertheless they have this habit of burying good
people out back of the church.
They came to the church so much that
they thought, well, we might as well bury
them out back.
They're here all the time anyhow.
So when they died they just buried them
out back of the church.
They have a little church yard, the church,
the little brown church in the vale.
Do you remember singing that song, the little
brown church, come, come, come, come?
I never could count the comes.
And I always got in each step and
came in with too many or too few
comes and singing that song.
But come to the church in the wild
widow, come to the church in the vale.
Now that little church is in Iowa, the
state of Iowa.
And out back of that little church there
are the old people that used to come,
come, come, come.
But now it's just a monument, a place
where people come and say, that's the little
church where Mbella was that wrote that song.
And they pass on.
But the Christians are lying out back of
the church, they're sleeping out there, and I
don't know about that church, but most of
these monuments, they're great big buildings, kept up
nicely.
But the people that have the fire are
lying out back asleep, and the people that
don't have the fire are sitting inside asleep.
And that's the church.
I say it's a monument for the fact
that the church failed God.
It would be a tragic and a terrible
thing, but you can keep coming to Avenue
Road to Church week after week and putting
in your huge offerings and keeping it running
and keeping interested in it and never worry
over it and never have any anxiety about
its spiritual condition.
It was too bad, because it's only as
men and women labor in Israel, it's only
as mothers travel in Israel, that Israel keeps
alive and keeps pure.
Now, that's the church.
We must not accept the church as it
is.
We must check it with the word of
God and see if this is the way
it should be.
And then reverently and quietly and slowly but
surely and patiently and lovingly bring the church
into line with the New Testament to see
that this is the way it would be
done if the Holy Ghost were preached.
And when that takes place, the Holy Ghost
begins to glow like a light in the
church, begins to glow like a light.
And that's what my heart longs to see.
Now, secondly, the individual Christian, that is, the
individual professed Christian.
Now, if you fail the purpose for which
you were created, which of course is to
be saved, to be born of God, to
be filled with his Spirit and then be
a reflector of the glory of the One
who called you out of darkness into his
marvelous light, to be a reverent, humble worshiper
of the Most High God, if you fail
in this purpose, then you had better never
have been born.
Jesus said that one man, it were better
for that man if he had never been
born.
In what there is no retreat or escape
once you are born.
And once we grow up and become in
that state that we call a state of
responsibility, there is no retreating, you can't go
back.
But it would be better if I failed
to reflect the glory of my God, if
I failed God, it would be better if
I had never been born to the world
at all.
How utterly tragic, how unspeakably tragic to be
forever a broken vase.
How utterly tragic that God should make me
to be a vase in which he would
place the flowers of paradise, the lily of
the valley, the rose of Sharon.
And out from that simple earthen vessel there
would go forth a fragrance that would fill
the universe of God.
And when I allow that vase to be
shattered on the floor and not be used
for the purpose God had intended.
How utterly tragic to be a stringless heart
and to have all the shape and outline
and form of a Christian that had no
strings that the Holy Ghost could pull over.
How utterly terrible to be a barren fig
tree.
Jesus walked to Jerusalem once, or out from
Jerusalem with his people and saw a tree
that had leaves on it.
And he went to that tree and found
that it had no figs.
And the way a fig tree does is
different from an apple or a peach or
a pear.
The way the fig tree does is the
fruit comes first, and then the leaves.
And when the leaves appear on the landscape,
they tell everybody, come, come, there's fruit here.
And according to the nature of the tree,
the fruit should have been there before the
leaves were there.
But the leaves were there, and the order
had been reversed.
And when Jesus came and parted the leaves
and reached in for figs, there were no
figs.
He turned to his disciples and said, see
that tree?
No more, go further.
And he cursed it and it withered from
the top down.
How terrible to be a barren fig tree,
to have the form and delineation of the
Christian, but have no fruit, to be a
star that shines not.
Those solemn, lawful men, Peter and 2 Peter
and Jude in this little epistle, speak about
the dark stars that shine not, and clouds
without rain.
How terrible, how terrible to be a shattered
mirror of the Almighty, meant of God to
attach and reflect the beautiful light of God
back to all the universe, but to be
a cracked and shattered mirror that can reflect
nothing.
And thus to be disapproved of God and
banished from the garden, and be eternally aware
of all this.
The most frightful thing about human beings is
our consciousness, that we are aware of things.
But wasn't our awareness, if you were not
aware of anything, no matter, nothing could harm
you, if you weren't aware of it.
But it's a consciousness, it's sentiency, it's ability
to feel, it's awareness.
Hell would not be hell if it wasn't
for the awareness of it.
If men slept unconscious in hell, hell couldn't
be hell.
But the rich man who died and found
himself there was conscious he was there, and
knew his brothers were not there, but would
be coming there.
The story is too well known to repeat,
but he begged that somebody might go back
and tell his brethren.
It's awareness that matters.
I preached somewhere not too long ago, and
I think the Lord was blessing me all
right.
And afterward a man came to me that
had been under my ministry somewhat years before.
I was sitting in a restaurant eating with
a preacher, and this man came by with
his wife, and they stopped him in at
our table.
And he said, I enjoyed hearing it today.
She told me it was like old times.
And then he wept and said he'd had
a bump back there that had thrown him
out of the church, and he wept and
said with tears, think of what I lost
and gave up.
I could have heard this and could have
had this kind of thing, but I foolishly
sold it out, and he went on pestering
me.
I could say nothing, could do nothing.
He was aware of what he had missed.
Not in my preaching necessarily, but the fellowship
of the church and the truth is what
he was talking about, not my sermon.
Now if this is true, my dear friends,
if you have been called God out of
darkness into light to show forth the excellencies,
the virtues, the beauties of him who called
you in worship, in continual and perpetual, radiant,
vibrant worship, and you're not doing it, or
you have never allowed yourself to be born
of his Spirit, you've never surrendered at all
to the cause of the gospel, then let
me say that your first interest should be
to become a purified soul.
Your first interest should be to have a
purified soul.
I bought out here, I think it was
here, perhaps it was in some city elsewhere,
but I was flying out of here, and
I bought a upper stand, one with paper
bounds, and it's a new translation of the
purgatorial that is Dante's second piece in his
Divine Conquest.
I had them in various translations, but it
was a cheap paper bound and I wanted
something to look at while we waited around,
so I took it.
Of course, it's entirely Roman Catholic, all together
Roman Catholic, all of its philosophy is Roman
Catholic.
But it's profoundly serious, Dante's work, profoundly serious.
This purgatorial is the story of Dante.
First he went to hell, that's the infernal.
Then he got graduated upward into the purgatorial
and finally went into perdiccio, the heaven itself.
But this was the new translation by the
Italian poet Charlie on the purgatorial.
There they are getting ready for what they
hope is heaven.
It's half a room between hell and heaven.
They're not bad enough for hell and not
good enough for heaven, but hanging in between
they're being purified.
Purified in the oddest and strangest way.
Purified by carrying red rocks on their shoulders.
Purified by being subjected to every kind of
temporary punishment and fire and cold and heat
and all the rest in order that they
might be a purified people.
Now I speak respectfully of this because Dante
believed that.
He believed that.
He'd been taught that and though he was
a genius, he believed that.
I don't.
And no bible teacher, no bible reader can
believe it.
It's appointed unto men once to die and
after that the judgment to depart and be
with Christ which is far better.
For if we are absent from the body
we'll whom with the Lord, but absent from
the Lord we'll whom in the body.
And the rich man died and in hell
lifted up his eyes and Lazarus died and
carried by the angels to Abraham's bosom.
That's what the bible teaches.
But we think this is all over the
place.
Well, when the flesh is gone and we
can't do any more, then we'll decide we
want to be poor.
Well, we don't even have to give any
money to the youth at the same church
on which we were decided after we're dead
doesn't give anything.
He doesn't give anything.
So, the first thing we should do to
be a purified soul, no matter how I
look, not after I'm busy going to the
public house.
You know what to do when one of
your relatives has been cut out or not.
If your relatives happen to be too busy,
they'll start out there to the left.
And if you don't have enough money for,
for, for, what private attention, they'll start out
in the left.
What can you do to see if you
have been favored and captured from unloved by
the Lord of Christ?
So, we ought to see quickly.
This ought to be our first interest.
We shouldn't do this until we're purified people.
And when we're purified people, we ought to
do, we ought to do, we ought to
do, we ought to do.
I've said we ought to do it for
all the little ones.
But I've also said we ought to do
it for all the older ones, because there
comes a time when everybody knows that they're
not able enough.
Not able enough to sing.
And people say, well, they're still on the
road.
And don't they know?
When the terrible time is up, we'll all
know that there's some time when we ought
to do it while we have a cap.
We all know psychology and psychiatry are both
very different.
Very different.
There's been a lot of people who say
they've been bound from childhood and that's the
root.
You know, I'm telling you, it's not enough
to allow the consciousness of guilt to get
us down because of guilt concepts.
We ought not to be too much bothered
by religion.
Don't be bothered by it.
There are a couple of people who are
not bothered enough.
One of the great leaders of a great
church, of a great institution, a pre-community
institution, that there's been a long war over
that institution.
Somebody said to me, well, I said, I
suppose there's a lot of the Christians involved
in trouble over religion.
He said, to the best of my knowledge,
you all know that I have been head
of this institution.
I have never known one person to have
a problem with religion.
But I have known hundreds of people here
that could have been killed in here by
religion.
The only thing you've got to do is
have a car.
I'm ready to take that car away from
your car.
Nobody on me needs to come to me
and say, call me and say I'd like
to see you and we're going to meet
together.
No matter.
I expect you to come to me and
I will come to you.
Well, I will do.
I will.
Sometimes I need an answer.
Maybe a friend needs to see me.
She says she'd like to see me.
Said she would be nice.
And he said, all right.
And I came down here to the church.
And I would come to this professor and
he would never say to me, come down
here and see me.
He would say, I don't want to see
you.
So I said to her, I want to
see what I have now.
She said, no problem, Mr. Turner.
I'll do what you want to do.
She said, oh, I never meant it.
And she said, um, she said, of course,
it was all, it was all thoughts and,
uh, emotions that had become physical.
And she said, of course, there's so much
movement.
And she said she'd be able to see
other movements.
She said that there was a movement that
she wanted to see.
But she wanted somebody that could tell her
she was all right.
And I said to her, I said, Rosie,
you're a victim of sodomy.
She used to say, Rosie, the big one.
And I said, Rosie, you've been a victim
of sodomy.
That's about as bad as it gets.
And I said, Rosie, I wouldn't take that
gift from your godfather.
Oh, that's what I meant.
And she told me, she said, it's the
best thing you can do.
It's the best thing you can do.
The reason for the security in California was
that they told me that there were people
who stood there.
See, it doesn't stop anybody from doing that.
I suppose I would have to admit that
it would be illegal in that kind of
way.
There were people who did this.
But it didn't stop it from doing it.
And it will never stop them from doing
it.
See, see, wherever, see, wherever the devil has
them, do them now.
It will never stop them from doing it,
and it will never stop the devil from
doing it.
See, every corner of the world, all of
the things, see, they're going out to the
sunrise.
And if the truth were known to all
of God, those of us who have done
that, as there is, in the sense, see,
we're under pressure all the time, little by
little, to get the message.
And maybe right now, we're getting our backs
back, our heads back.
And we're going to hit them with very,
very awesome techniques, what you call the technique
of total terror.
Total terrorist attacks.
These are like lasers against the top, the
very top, and in the front, and see
such power.
We've done too much to sit here and
see this.
You just believe that all of right now
is wrong?
No.
We must be a pure kind of people.
We can be born into the world and
not do a little bit of fucking cancer
out of it.
No.
Just because God doesn't let you do this,
and God doesn't let the devil shine, and
God doesn't let the devil fall to the
devil's feet.
Then what?
Do you think that we want to do
the things that God has never done?
Do I want to make people that were
desperate and in need of attention push the
world to do ridiculous, ridiculous, God-awful work
to tell them, God is watching, and say,
I was wrong to tell you to do
this.
I can find and break the pains of
your conscience.
You can make your life a little bit
easier.
Conscience?
No, nothing.
Business?
Better sell pills on the corner.
You look good in business.
But there's nothing about you that's the reason
you shouldn't be here.
Closures?
Closures.
I told you I needed two.
You can't conduct these services.
You can go astray.
Why don't you go astray?
What is the question?
Let me go right now and I will
show you something.
All of this.
You and your family.
All of the nation.
All of the people of the nation.
All of the map of nations.
The two unilateral contracts.
Look.
Canada.
The United States.
Britain.
Canada.
This covenant.
That is the one that Canada has got
everything it needs to have.
And it needs to be held into the
wild.
So the winner and the loser.
and the people of the blood spattered all
over the world for the peace we've taken
on the ground.
All the nations, all the blocks of nations,
have been given, have been, have been given
the assurance of the power of the Supreme.
The economy will not explode to the degree
that we have, They're weak, they're bound, because
they're weak.
They're weak.
They're poor.
They've been bound because they didn't look after
their hearts.
The nation that is in pain can go
to the picture of God in heaven.
There will never be a nation on the
outside that is in pain.
Why not?
Because they're weak.
They've been too weak.
They won't help us, they're bound.
They won't listen to us.
I know it now from a place that's
like me.
I've heard them tell us that it's too
rough.
We've learned that.
They won't stop until I do that.
They've shown us in too many ways.
That's a reason why.
Don't be a sheep person.
We are the weak ones.
I know it's up to me.
It's up to me to tell you that.
Something's up inside of you.
And it's up to you whether you have
to let it go or not.
I've heard that it's good to let the
blood run in your veins.
Let us see.
This is just the way it is.
Don't be a sheep person.
We are the weak.
Screw the beast, and out you go.
Out you go, you ass hole.
We are the weak ones.
We're gonna get you out of this hole.
We've been on a rock since the beginning.
We're gonna get you out of here.
And there's more to practice than this.
We are the strong ones.
Totally crazy...
They were full of, like, shining, wonderful spirits.
They just don't want to do it.
They don't want to do more.
It's too late.
They don't want to have to do this.
It's too late.
But in a moment, if you want to
get out of here, you will really come
back to me.
It's going to be an amazing experience, man.
The bad guys, the bad sons, they want
to see what these bad guys, the bad
adults, they want us to see that we're
too high now and we're expecting everything to
be as it was.
The
bad
guys,
the bad sons, they want to see what
these bad guys, the bad adults, they want
us to see that we're too high now
and we're expecting everything to be as it
was.
The bad sons, they want to see what
these bad guys, the bad adults, they want
to see what these bad guys, the bad
sons, they want to see what these bad
guys, the bad adults, they want to see
what these bad guys, the bad adults, they
want to see what these bad guys, the
bad adults, they want to see what these
bad guys, the bad adults, they want to
see what these bad guys, the bad adults,
they want to see what these bad guys,
the bad adults, they want to see what
these bad guys, the bad adults, they want
to see what these bad guys, the bad
adults, they want to see what these bad
guys, the bad adults, they want to see
what these bad guys, the bad adults, they
want to see what these bad guys, the
bad adults, they want to see what these
bad guys, the bad adults, they want to
see what these bad guys, the bad adults,
they want to see what these bad guys,
the bad adults, they want to see what
these bad guys, the bad adults,
they want to see what these bad guys,
the bad adults, they want to see what
these Trust in your own love, so the
people of the land, the people of the
land Know all the differences, this is our
country now We're proud of you, we're so
proud of you Take it down, we know
all you do We're proud of you, we're
so proud of you And we're grateful for
your time Take in all the beauty in
our song and in our relationships, brothers I
want you to listen to what I have
to say, I want you to listen to
what I have to say,