I'm surely glad to see demonstrated here what
they have taught me in history, that democracy
really began with our Baptist churches.
We don't appoint our officers, such as we
see in the presidency and the vice presidency
of the United States.
We elect them, and that's great, that's good.
Because of the passing of time, I thought
I'd just begin in the middle of the
message.
Leave off the first part of it and
start with arousal, which would be the preacher
and his pulpit and the message that he
delivers.
The preacher's message is to be first of
all authentic, that is not spurious or legendary
or mythological.
For they say out of certain sections of
the academic world you had as well preach
Jason and the Golden Fleece as to preach
Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden.
You had as well preach Hercules and the
twelve great labors as to preach Moses and
the twelve tribes.
You had as well preach Agamemnon and the
Trojan War as to preach Joshua and the
conquest of Canaan.
You had as well preach Aesop and his
moralistic as to preach Jesus and his theological
parables.
The whole book they avow to us is
spurious.
It's a piece of antique literature.
It is filled with legend and fable and
myth.
So some of our young people come back
from the university and they say to me,
we have given up the faith.
We no longer believe in the Bible, much
less the stories in Genesis.
For I have learned that I came from
a green scum.
Oh, I see.
So you came from a green scum.
Yes, yes.
I came from an amoeba or a paramecium,
a tadpole or a frog or a fish
or a fowl or a marsupial or an
anthropoid ape and now I'm homo sapiens.
Oh, I see.
Where did you learn that?
And why am I so sure of that?
I was taught that by a professor in
the university.
Oh, so you came from a green scum
because you were taught so by a professor
in a university.
Indeed, indeed.
Once I was a tadpole beginning to begin.
Then I was a foal with my tail
tucked in.
Then I was a monkey in a banyan
tree and now I'm a professor with a
peak D.
So our book
is a serious book full of myths and
fables and legends.
How is the preacher to think in conviction
and persuasion and academic judgment like that?
May I reply?
I have a dear friend who went to
the University of Chicago to win a Doctor
of Philosophy degree in Pedagogy.
While he was there, he gained the friendship
of a young man in the Chicago Divinity
School.
Upon the graduation of the young theolog, he
said to my end in Pedagogy, he said,
I don't know what to do.
I have been called a pastor to an
old-fashioned Presbyterian church in the Middle West.
One that believes the Bible is the Word
of God.
But I don't believe the Bible is the
Word of God and I don't know what
to do.
And my friend in the Pedagogical School at
the University said to him, I can tell
you exactly what you ought to do.
And my young theolog up there at Chicago
Divinity School eagerly said, what?
And my friend replied, I think you ought
to quit the ministry.
I believe the same way.
If a man does not believe the Bible
is the Word of God, he ought to
quit the ministry.
Our message is first of all to be
authentic.
It's to be genuine.
It's to be real.
It's to be based upon the revelations of
Almighty God.
Number two, the man who stands in the
pulpit delivering a message, it ought to be
not only authentic, it ought to be authoritarian.
That is, not speculative, not hypothetical, not problematical.
There are several bases for truth and for
belief action.
One can be the five senses.
I believe a thing because I can see
it, or taste it, or touch it, smell
it, or hear it.
And the inevitable concomitant, nor do I believe
anything that I cannot explain.
Such a premise of authority is idiocy.
Like the old cliche, just how would you
explain a black cow eating green rice, giving
white milk out of which you turn yellow
butter?
You don't explain anything.
There's no scientist, there's no academician, there's no
student in the earth that explains anything ever.
You just observe and write it down.
Explanation belongs to God himself.
Another basis for belief and action can be
subjective, internal experience.
This is the existentialist with his incommunicable, unverbalized
truth.
This is the neo-orthodox theologian with unpropositional
truth, all of which is nothing but subjective
judgment.
The Bible and the truth of God is
nothing but what I accept to be, or
experience to be, as the truth of God.
Not that it is a revelation from heaven
itself.
It is all subjective and internal.
I one time heard of a woman who
went to see a famous artist, and there,
looking at her, she explained, oh, oh, oh,
what is this?
Such depth of emotion, such harmony of spirit,
such intellectual deception, what is this?
And he looked and said, dear madam, that
is the place where I clean my brushes.
A basis of truth can be a horror.
A thing is true because the church, the
palace, the legate, the pope, the cardinal say
it is the truth.
But for us, who stand in the pulpit
of a Baptist church, what is the base
of authority upon which our feet stand?
It is the immutable and unchanging word of
God.
The pharaoh will not feed us, the Christ
wither us, but the word of God shall
stand forever.
Heaven and earth may pass away, but my
word will never pass away.
God's word is like God himself, the same
yesterday and today and forever.
Not only is the message to be authentic,
and not only is it to be authoritarian,
thus saith the Lord, but it is to
be absolute.
That is haunting, not relative.
It is forever grounded in the character of
Almighty God.
That is not strange that a man should
stand in the pulpit delivering the absolute truth
of the Almighty God, for all truth is
that.
Truth is never relative or changing.
It is forever the same.
Mathematical truth, physics, optics, acoustics, mechanics, electromagnetics,
thermodynamics, wherever truth is found, it is forever
the same.
It is absolute.
You don't understand that, sir.
I'm a broad-minded man.
I believe in these narrow theological conceptions.
I think truth can be broad and all
-inclusive.
I am a broad-minded soul.
Oh, so you are.
Suppose you go to the bank and you
tell the officer of the bank, I'm a
broad-minded critter.
I don't believe that 2 plus 2 equals
4.
I'm broad-minded.
I believe 2 plus 2 can equal 6,
or it can be 8, or it can
be 10.
Oh, yes.
You know what they'll do?
They'll examine your head and take you to
the life form.
That's what they'll do.
Truth is absolute and unchanging and never relative
wherever truth is found.
And it is more or less so with
the truth of Almighty God, moral truth.
Moral truth is not what a man said
it is.
It's not what a judge affirmed it to
be.
It's not what a legislature made it to
be.
But moral truth is founded in the character
of God and never changes.
There is no such thing as situation ethics
or changing morality.
Morality never changes.
What was right yesterday is right today, is
right tomorrow, and is right forever.
Truth, moral truth, is founded in the character
of God.
Political truth, which I haven't time to satiate
all the political truth, is grounded in God.
What is right for the citizenry, what is
right for the nation, what is right for
the people, is forever right before God.
And spiritual truth is just the same.
Whoever shall take away from the words of
this prophecy, God shall take away his part
out of the holy city.
And whoever shall add to the words of
this prophecy, God shall add to him the
plagues that are written in this book.
I am to take my stand upon the
immutable, unchanging, absolute, authoritarian word of God.
And what I do, my feet may tremble,
but the rock upon which I stand is
unmoved forever.
Not only is my message to be authentic,
not only is it to be authoritarian, and
not only is it to be absolute without
compromise, my message is lastly to be apocalyptic.
Apocalyptic, an unveiling of the glory of God
in the face of Jesus Christ.
Watchmen, cries the world, what of the night?
What of the night?
What of death?
And what of the grave?
And what of the judgment?
And what of eternity?
What of the night?
We who believe in the inspiration of this
book, and we who believe in the great
apocalyptic, the unveiling of Jesus Christ, we have
a message for the world.
The same Lord God, who in the beginning
revealed to us the creation of the universe
and the earth on which we stand, no
man was there to see it, God revealed
it to us.
The same Lord God revealed to us the
great infinite confirmation of the age that no
man can see without the unveiling of Jesus
Christ.
And when a man stands with an apocalyptic
message, he stands with the Holy Spirit.
For us, for the soaring heart, God wipes
away our tears, and we live in infinite
faith and hope and conquest and triumph.
Someday, by the word of the Lord, Satan
shall be found.
Someday, peace and sleep in the dust of
the earth shall be raised from among the
dead.
Someday, God's people shall be raptured from this
earth of judgment and shall live in the
presence of our Lord forever and forever.
O glorious, apocalyptic, and final day, when the
righteous are vindicated, when the kingdom shall come,
and when Christ shall reign over the earth
and all of creation, our blessed Savior.
O, O, the day that is coming in
the promise and in the word of the
Lord, it may be at midday, it may
be at twilight, it may be perchance that
the blackness of midnight will burst into life
in the blaze of his glory when Jesus
comes for his own.
O joy, O delight, should we go without
dying, no sickness, no sadness, no dread, and
no crying, caught up through the clouds with
our Lord into glory when Jesus comes for
his own.
My brethren, in the process, I can tell
you this, after forty years of experience, the
man who will stand in that sacred place
and deliver to his people an apocalyptic message
shall have victory and triumph in the word
that he brings, God's petus.
As we stand there as God's messengers, with
God's message, authentic, this is it.
Authoritarian, this is it.
Absolute, this is it.
Apocalyptic, this is it.
Thank you, Dr. Cripple.
Thank you, doctor.
You remember tonight, our service will start at
seven o'clock.
We do hope that everyone will be here
promptly at that time.
I would like tonight at eight o'clock
to pursue our practice conference, the new officers,
and so if you'd get the word to
these men who've been elected.