...to speak on the law of moral gravitation,
and the ninth one, the fifteenth verse, and
on.
In those days Peter stood up, and he
said, Men and brethren, this scripture must needs
have been fulfilled which the Holy Ghost, by
the mouth of David spake concerning Judas, which
was guide to them that took Jesus.
For he was numbered with us and had
obtained part of his ministry.
Now this man purchased a field with a
reward of iniquity, and falling headlong, he burst
asunder in the midst, and all his bowels
gushed out.
And it was known unto all the dwellers
of Jerusalem, in so much as that field
is called in the proper tongue, a soldomah,
this to say, the field of blood.
For it is written in the book of
Psalms, Let his habitation be desolate, and let
no man dwell therein, and his office let
another take.
Wherefore, of these men which are accompanied with
us all the time, that the Lord Jesus
went in and out among us, beginning from
the baptism of John unto the same day
that he was taken up from us, must
one be ordained to be a witness with
us of his resurrection.
And they appointed two, Joseph, called Barsabbas, and
Matthias.
And they prayed and said, Thou, Lord, knowest,
which knowest the hearts of all men, show
which of these two thou hast chosen, that
he may take part of this ministry in
apostleship, from which Judas, by transgression, fell, that
he might go to his own place.
And they gave forth their lot, and it
fell upon Pius.
He was numbered with the eleven.
Now, verse 25 is the verse that I
want particularly to point to tonight.
The apostleship, from which Judas, by transgression, fell,
that he might go to his own place.
Now, that's the text.
And I want to talk about the operation
of the law of moral gratification.
The teaching in this verse, uttered by the
apostle in prayer, is undoubtedly that Judas went
where he went because he belonged there.
Now, that's very plain.
It doesn't take a profound mind to see
that.
He fell away from the apostleship, that he
might go to his own place.
Now, he was called elsewhere son of perdition.
And therefore, without being angry or abusive, or
even careless about it, we have a right
to conclude that since he was son of
perdition, when he died and went to his
own place, he went to perdition.
Now, this isn't pleasant, and I don't like
to talk about such things, and I wish
I didn't need to.
But this is the conclusion we arrive at
from the scriptures.
That this man went where he went because
he belonged where he went.
No one got angry with Judas, and in
a fit of temper, threw him into perdition.
Justice, and righteousness, and nature, and moral intelligence,
and the cosmic fitness of things, put him
where he went, as naturally as it's possible
to think.
His nature had fitted him for that place,
and he went where he was fitted to
go.
Just as a bird is fitted for the
air, and therefore spends a good deal of
its time in the air, just as a
fish is fitted for the water, and when
a fish goes to the water, it goes
to its own place, and when a bird
goes to the air, it goes to its
own place.
And an earthworm, when it burrows in the
earth, is burrowing in its own place.
And that's no reflection on the bird.
God made the bird to go there.
And by law of natural gravitation, it goes
where it belongs.
And no reflection on the fish, nor the
earthworm.
God made them.
They were fitted, one to burrow blind in
the earth, and the other to swim in
the water.
Now there is a law of God that
runs through all this universe, that everyone and
everything will finally go to his own place.
I want you to hear this.
And you know that my method of Bible
teaching and preaching is not to quote everlasting
verses of Scripture and say Peter said this
and John said that, but to read some
verses and then try to find out what
they meant.
And this is what the Holy Ghost meant
when he said that Judas fell from his
apostleship, that he might go to his own
place.
What a horrible incongruity it would have been
if Judas could have continued in his apostleship
belonging in perdition.
Now about Daniel it says almost the same
thing.
The last verse of the book of Daniel
says, Daniel, rest and stand in thy lot
at the end of the day.
And another version says, stand in thy allotted
place at the end of the day.
Daniel, when the end of the day has
come, will find himself automatically in his own
place.
And Judas will find himself automatically in his
own place.
And so will every one of us find
ourselves in our own place.
Now the problem is, where is your place
and where is mine?
I think that I have said this many
times, but I doubt whether it gets a
hold of people, that the judgment will not
decide the destiny of Daniel or Judas.
We're looking forward to a judgment that shall
decide the destiny of man.
No.
The judgment will simply confirm that which the
moral operation of things already has declared.
It may come as a surprise to men.
It may come as a surprise to a
lost man to find at the judgment day
that he's lost, in that he thought he
was saved, he was a Church member, he
thought he was good enough.
But as far as God is concerned, there
will be no weighing of evidence at the
judgment bar.
Don't think of the judgment of God as
being a court trial where there will be
lawyers for the defense and lawyers for the
prosecution and witnesses on both sides and a
jury or a judge.
No.
There will be a just and gentle monarch
who will be judge, without a doubt.
But all he will do will be to
declare that which all the moral evidence has
shown down the years and during the lives
of the person who is affected.
The judgment will not decide the destiny of
Daniel.
Thou shalt arise, said God, O Daniel, and
shalt stand in thy allotted place.
Look at another passage of scripture in the
Bible and notice what it teaches there.
All but most the same thing.
There is a rich man and there is
Lazarus.
We know that the rich man died in
hell and lifted up his eyes, and we
know that Lazarus died and went to Abraham's
bosom.
We assume that because Lazarus died and went
to Abraham's bosom, therefore he was a very
poor man and a beggar, that the poor
men and beggars go to Abraham's bosom, and
the rich man died and went to hell,
rich men go to hell.
Now, our Lord never taught this here.
This has been introduced there.
It's not there.
The rich man went to hell not because
he was rich, but because he belonged there.
He went to his own place, that's all.
Abraham was also rich, and the Bible declares
that he was.
The Bible says Abraham was rich in camels
and asses and sheep and goods and servants
born in his own house, and he had
much goods.
Abraham was a rich man, but Abraham also
was a man that got delivered from his
riches and held them as if they weren't
his and got saved from them and lived
a rich man in the earth, but a
man completely free from the foul pollution of
riches.
And then there was Job.
Job also was a rich man, and God
stripped him, but God gave it all back
to him sevenfold, so he's richer at the
end than he was in the beginning.
And yet Job was a man after God's
own heart and a man that God called
attention to in the very heaven itself and
said, have you seen my servant Job?
Now, this rich man who went to hell
went there, I say, by natural gravitation, by
a moral magnetic attraction.
He went there just as a bird goes
to the air, a fish to the water,
and the earthworms were burrowing in the ground.
Then there was Lazarus, and it came to
pass that Lazarus also died and went to
Abraham's bosom.
Now, why did Lazarus go to Abraham's bosom?
Because he was poor?
No, because if that were the case, then
a man's financial status would determine his place,
and it doesn't.
It may determine his place in the world,
I grant you that.
The man's rich enough, why, he'll be able
to make a place for himself among men,
but you know the song they used to
sing in the village Sunday meetings, the rich
man was there, but his riches, when death
came, had melted and faded away.
A poor man, he stood in the judgment,
his debt was too heavy to pay.
That was an old bass solo they used
to sing in Sunday's day, and it was
perfectly sound theology and good sound philosophy.
Lazarus did not go to Abraham's tender bosom
because he was poor, for the very man
whose bosom he went to had been rich
while he was on earth.
The very Abraham who opened his bosom to
Lazarus had been a rich man, and the
poor man he took into his bosom was
way down, way down on the financial scale
below him.
Then think of the blind beggars.
Now I say blind in quotation marks who
aren't blind at all.
Think of them.
They put a tag on their chest to
help the blind, but as soon as they
get around the corner they take it off
and go look at the movie.
They're not blind, they're just beggars, they're poor,
and think of the people who come where
it's permitted to the doors and bang on
the door and say that they haven't had
anything to eat.
They're poor, but they're liars.
So you can be a liar and a
voluptuous and vicious pervert and still be as
poor as a church mouse.
So poverty didn't put Lazarus in Abraham's bosom,
and riches didn't put the rich man in
hell.
They both went where they belonged.
Now I'm glad to be able to say
that to you tonight, my dear friends, that
when you die you will go where you
belong.
You will not have an angry god grab
you by the skirt of the neck and
hurl you in a fitted temple into hell.
You will not have a god in a
burst of sentimentality pick you up and sweep
you into hell and dramatically like an actress
making an entree into an act club.
You will go where you belong, ladies and
gentlemen.
There is a place which is called your
place.
Judas went to his own place, and God
never allowed a creature to come into the
world that he didn't have a place for.
And he never allowed a creature to live
or die that didn't have a natural place.
And in the moral world, there is a
place where we gravitate to naturally.
Heaven has for the soul, for Lazarus' soul,
a magnetic attraction.
Now a part of that song we sang
tonight, a different verse, a different stanza of
it, the celestial country, which we sang of
Jerusalem the golden, talks about the sheep flock
from the goat herd shall part on either
hand.
And then he says this beautiful thing.
He says, these, that is the sheep, the
goats, these shall pass to torment, and those,
that is the sheep, shall triumph then.
The new peculiar nation, blessed number of blessed
men.
Jerusalem demands them.
They paid the price on earth and now
shall reap the harvest in blissfulness and mirth.
The glorious holy people who evermore relied upon
their chief and savior, the king, the crucified.
Jerusalem, that's heaven, demands them.
It was the poetic way of saying heaven.
Heaven demands them.
The man Lazarus couldn't have gone to hell
any more than an English sparrow could have
swum ten feet down across the Atlantic Ocean.
It's not the sparrow's place.
He doesn't belong there.
He doesn't gravitate there by the law of
nature.
He belongs up on a telephone wire on
the eave of a house chirping and quarreling
and flying around.
That's where he belongs.
Whales and fish belong in the water.
But sparrows belong in the air.
And Jerusalem demanded.
Abraham's bosom had a moral attraction for the
man Lazarus.
And he went there by a demand.
Jerusalem demands him.
And I believe there are people walking around
on this earth.
I think there are people listening to me
tonight.
That heaven demands you.
When you know your heart no longer beats
and you're finished with this earthly pilgrimage, there'll
be no question of where you'll go.
Heaven demands you.
You'll belong there by the law of moral
gravitation.
You'll go there as a steel filing will
leap to a magnet.
You'll go to your own company.
You'll go to your own place.
And thou shalt sleep and thou shalt rise
and stand in thine allotted place at the
end of the days.
I believe there are people maybe here tonight.
I hope not.
But I believe there are people here that
hell demands.
Hell demands them, I say.
As the carrion demands the buzzard, and as
the darkness demands the sinner, so hell demands
some people.
Now, I hate to do this and I
want you to forgive me, but I want
to ask, where are you demanded?
What's demanding you?
Where is the attraction so strong that as
soon as you stop breathing, you'll zip there
instantly?
Where do you belong?
Does hell demand you or does heaven?
Well, now, some people say, well, Mr. Tozer,
hell doesn't demand me, because in hell there
will be murderers and I never could feel
at home there.
In hell there will be drunkards and I
couldn't feel at home there, and there will
be sex perverts there, and I couldn't feel
at home there, and there will be assassins
and they're hateful and I couldn't feel at
home with them.
No, your heart revolts against them and so
does mine.
Your heart revolts and you wouldn't feel at
home there, but let's remember that in perdition
the majority of people are not murderers.
The majority of people are not drunkards and
perverts.
The majority of people who are demanded by
perdition, demanded by a law of moral gravitation,
they've got to go when they go.
Most of them are not whoremongers.
They stayed clean from all that.
Most of them are not assassins.
Most of them are not malicious.
They forgave people before they died.
Most of them are not drunkards.
If they drank, they controlled it.
They were not wallowers in the streets.
And would you feel at home among those
who tell white lies and then shrug and
laugh?
Well, they'll be there.
All the white liars will be there.
Those who say, well, it's a white lie.
The secretary who lies for her boss and
says he's in conference when he's at a
ball game or he's not in when he
actually is in.
The secretary who lies for her boss.
She's telling a white lie.
She'll be there.
For all liars shall have their part.
All liars, all colored liars shall have their
part.
The black lie of a Judas or the
white lie of a secretary.
The merchant who says these goods are fresh
when he knows he's had them on his
hands until he's begun to wonder if he
can get rid of them.
That kind of white lie.
The man who cheats on his income tax
and tells a little lie about this.
Goes out and spends $15 loosely and says
it was to pay for a lunch for
customers.
Well, they're white lies, but white liars shall
have their part in the lake of fire.
You see, there's no magnetic.
Heaven has no magnetic attraction for them.
Heaven does not demand the liar because there's
an Indian compatibility there.
They couldn't go there because heaven wouldn't have
them.
And then there's the cheater and the lustful
fellow and the fellow who's got soiled speech
and who can't talk in a pot even,
who can't talk with a goof in a
car without borderline dirty jokes.
Now, that fellow will be there and the
lustful fellow will be there and the worldly
will be there and the godless will be
there and the prayerless and the irreverent, they'll
all be there.
And you'll get along with them now and
some of you even seek their company.
And you're here tonight, somebody brought you, but
tomorrow you'll seek the company of the white
liars and the soiled people with soiled speech
and the worldlings who know more about Elvis
Presley than they do about David with his
heart.
And you seek their company because you belong
there, you see.
Now, I'd think this over, my brethren.
I wouldn't take anything for granted.
Now, I want to ask you, would you
feel at home in heaven?
And I hope you can all stand and
say yes.
I'm not going to vote you.
I wouldn't embarrass you.
I'm going to preach two weeks, one week
from tomorrow at Moody Bible Institute to the
faculty and students on courtesy in the life
of a minister.
Somebody told me I knew nothing about it,
but they've asked me to speak on the
subject and I'm going to do it.
So I wouldn't be so discourteous as to
vote you.
But I do want to ask you the
question, would you feel at home in heaven?
For after all, the heart goes to its
home.
Being let go, they went to their own
company.
The sailor who leaves the ship goes to
his home.
The sailor boy, the soldier boy in Germany
or the far east, the wires home or
cables home.
He wants to come home.
I know the awful homesickness of the military
service.
I was in for a short while in
one of the wars.
And I know the horrible homesickness.
I know it.
Your home demands you.
It creates a vacuum.
It sucks you back to where you belong.
The boy's released.
He immediately hits out for home, hits out
for the old familiar place.
That furniture he thought was a little tacky
when he left looks like it if it
was made of gold when he comes back.
Things he used to complain about when he
went before he went.
Now he thinks that it's a gorgeous palace
when he comes back.
Your home demands you because your heart is
there.
And I want to ask you, would you
feel at home in heaven?
Would you feel at home in an atmosphere
of perpetual worship?
For that's what heaven is going to be,
an atmosphere of perpetual worship.
When I think how much drum beating and
bell ringing and chime playing and tender organ
playing we have to do to get people
in the mood, even to sing a worshipful
song in this world of ours.
And I think how many sermons it takes
to get a fellow in a mood to
even think spiritual thoughts.
Well, I wonder about some people when they
get to heaven where they live in an
atmosphere of perpetual worship.
Now, I don't think that heaven is going
to be a place where God's on a
throne and every other creature on their knees.
I don't think that at all.
We'll have too much to do.
There'll be a lot to do.
Oh, we'll have real saints to paint from,
Magdalene, Peter and Paul, and we'll paint for
an age of the city and we'll never
get weary at all.
The poet said we'll have lots to do
there, but it'll be done in an atmosphere
of pure worship.
It'll be done in an atmosphere of doxology.
And some of you are bored to death
with worship.
There are people that have been going to
this church for years and years and yet
haven't learned to like the type of songs
we sing.
They want something else.
They want a rock and roll Elvis Pelvis
type of song that they have in the
hall in some places.
They don't want this other thing.
Oh, couldn't we have some of the G
.O. numbers like, Thank you, Lord, for saving
my soul.
And, well, now that's worship, brother.
And the other thing is it's just a
cheap imitation, and there'll be none of that
in heaven, but I don't think there'll even
be any of that in hell.
I'll take that back.
No, I don't think so.
But some people are bored to death with
a prayer meeting.
Check on yourself, man.
When have you been in your last prayer
meeting?
It's boring.
Some people say, well, I don't do any
way closer to conduction.
Well, you'll be conducting about half the time.
McAfee conducts them.
Moore conducts them.
Case conducts them.
Visitors conduct.
Other people conduct them.
Well, that's just a hypocritical hide, blind to
hide behind.
You simply don't feel at home in a
prayer meeting.
And so when you die, do you think
that that perpetual prayer meeting up there is
going to demand you?
It didn't demand you down here.
If it did, you were surprised you didn't
feel the magnetic attraction, and you never showed
up once.
You showed up at every banquet, but you
never showed up at any prayer meeting.
And then you want me to believe that
you're going to die and go right sailing
off to heaven like a Niki guided missile
straight to the throne of God.
The throne of God will have an atmosphere
of glorious worship around it.
And if you're not at home here in
an atmosphere of worship, how would you be
at home then?
There are some people to whom heaven would
be an insufferable bore, and they'll never get
there.
Never, never, never.
For there's a law of moral gravitation that'll
put every one of us where we belong.
And then I wonder whether you'd be at
home in a place where God is enough.
For most people, God isn't enough.
They have to have God and something else.
But God is enough in heaven.
The beatific vision, the sight of his face
will be enough.
I wonder if you would be at a
home where all the conversation is about the
Lamb.
All the conversation up there is about the
Lamb.
And we redeemed sinners will be telling the
unredeemed, that is, those who didn't have to
be redeemed, the holy ones, we'll be telling
them about our experiences and how we fell
and were brought back again.
And the angels that desire to look into
these holy things, their eyes will shine as
a Jerry McCauley and a John Newton and
a John Bunyan and a Billy Sumney, or
you or me, tell the story of redeeming
love.
And the song that Brother McAfee sings sometimes
says that the angels cannot sing because they
never knew what it was to fall.
But we know and we can tell them.
And the conversation will be about the Lamb.
And you're embarrassed when anybody talks about Jesus
in a company where you are, and yet
you're a Christian.
Well, do you think that you're going to
feel at home where everybody talks about Jesus?
Where nobody will mention the Yankees?
Nobody will mention politics?
Nobody will mention cards?
Nobody will mention the latest TV fad?
Nobody will mention anything.
Everybody will talk about Jesus.
You're not at home in a company like
that now.
How could you be at home in a
company like that then?
I ask you, what demands you?
What is it that pulls your heart by
moral magnetism?
And I want you to think over now,
these two places, which is your place.
But somebody says, Mr. Tozzi, you're presenting an
either-or, and it isn't fair.
You are making a block of black and
a block of white and setting them together
and say, take your choice.
But the fact is different.
I believe that I expect to change.
I know that heaven doesn't demand me now
because there's nothing in me that's like heaven.
I know it.
But I expect to change and be fitted
for heaven.
Well, then I want to ask you a
question.
When will that change take place?
It didn't take place last year, did it?
We're coming to the end of 1956, and
it didn't take place.
It didn't take place last month or this
month, and we're nearing the end of November.
It didn't take place last week, and it
didn't take place yesterday.
And it's not taking place tonight.
When's that change going to take place?
You successfully resisted that change up to now,
and you found your pleasures and your interests
elsewhere.
How can you hope then that that change
will ever take place?
But you say, Mr. Toter, that it'll take
place in death.
I suppose that it's hard to conceive of
anything sillier than that.
Is death going to do what the blood
of the Lamb couldn't do?
If I die of polio, is polio going
to sanctify me?
Is a heart attack that knocks me over
on the sidewalk going to make me fit
for heaven?
Is there anything in leprosy that's going to
make me a pure man if I'm not
a pure man now?
Going to change my attitudes from earth to
heaven and from here to there and from
man to God and from sin to righteousness?
No.
It's foolish to think that death will sanctify
anybody or death will purify anybody.
But our friends the Catholics say that purgatory
is the place, and they frankly admit up
to now they could have gone along with
me.
Any Catholic theologian would have gone along with
me up to here, and he'd have said,
You're perfectly right, sir.
You're perfectly right.
By a law of gravitation, we'll go where
we belong.
But if you're not quite ready for heaven,
why, there's a place called purgatory where you
can get ready.
Well, now, I wish that were so, and
I'd like to believe it.
It would be to take a lot of
pressure off of a lot of people.
But tell me, I hold a Bible in
my hand.
I hold a Bible in my hand.
Not only do I hold a Bible in
my hand, but up in my study I
have Catholic Bibles, whole Catholic Bibles.
Not one line anywhere, not one line that
you say there's a scripture that you partisans
throw out, and in that scripture it teaches
that.
That's not so.
I know the books, and I've read the
books that the Catholics put in.
They're called the apocryphal books, and there's not
one line in the apocryphal scriptures that says
there is a cooling off place or a
heating up place or a purgation, a place
where you can make a fellow ready for
heaven who isn't ready now.
Not a place.
And on the other hand, I don't want
to be humorous about this, but it does
have a strain of facetiousness in it.
Because you see, in order to get out
of purgatory, you have to have masses, and
in order to have masses, you have to
have money.
So I could visualize a man dying just
before the stock market blew up, and he
expected his rich friends to bail him out,
and just 20 minutes after he died, the
stock market blew up and the depression came,
and his friends would lose everything and wouldn't
have money to pay for masses.
How do you expect to get out, brother?
If you're in purgatory and you think that
if you have no moral attraction for heaven
now, your attraction's the other way, but you're
still a Christian, you've been sprinkled and worked
over and massaged and have things done to
you, then you expect to go to heaven.
But you say, I'm not fit to go,
but they'll get me out of purgatory by
the masses.
And suppose that there's a law passed suddenly
that no masses dare be said, and there
will be when the Antichrist reigns.
Or suppose that, I say again, your folks
who pay for your masses suddenly get so
poor they can't pay for state.
And I'm telling you this, if it comes
to a difference between eating or saying a
mass to get you out, they'll eat.
They'll eat.
Don't be too starry-eyed about all this.
They'll eat.
Not only they'll eat, but they'll buy automobiles
too.
And cars and coats, and they'll just let
you roam.
Now, my brothers and sisters, to think that
if I have a nature that doesn't fit
me for heaven now, and there's no moral
tug in my heart toward that place, but
that an honest examination proves that the moral
tug's in the other direction, and yet I
hope to make it by that halfway house
we call purgatory, we'd better watch that.
The simple fact is there's not a word
of truth in it, and there's nowhere in
the Bible it was made up by men
who stood up and said Latin masses are
drunk, the choirboys had to hold them up
to keep them from tumbling down.
It was made up by men who had
nothing else to do.
And there's not a line in the Bible.
After death, the Dutchmen.
And Lazarus died and went to the bosom
of Abraham.
When the rich man died, and hell, he
lifted up his eyes.
No halfway house there.
Each went to his own place.
Where is yours?
Somebody says, Mr. Tozer, again you're wrong.
I've accepted Christ.
I've accepted Christ, and by accepting Christ, I
have a mantle, a cloak, I have his
righteousness attributed to me.
I know, I know that I feel at
home among white liars and cheats.
I know that I chuckle at dirty jokes.
I know that I'm a bit whirly.
I know that I'm somewhat perilous.
I know that I'm a bit bored in
a prayer meeting.
I know that I don't have, I don't,
I don't feel at home in an atmosphere
of worship, and I get embarrassed a little
when they talk about Jesus in a group.
I admit all that, but I've accepted Jesus,
and that's all I need.
Listen, where does your heart belong?
You accept Jesus, you say, and it didn't
change your heart?
You accepted Jesus, and it didn't change the
inner life of you?
Why, Paul didn't talk that way about it.
Paul said, if any man be in Christ,
he's a new creature.
Old things have passed away, and oh, everything's
become new.
And the old gravitational tug that used to
pull him that way, he accepts Christ, and
now it pulls him toward this way.
Now, isn't it possible that this accepting Christ
fools a lot of people?
They think merely that going through that is
all they need.
Well, that's all they need, provided a change
takes place.
But if a change doesn't take place, then
we only think we've accepted Christ.
We only think we're converted.
Paul said, if any man be in Christ,
he's a new creation.
And those old things will pass away.
Now, I don't expect young Christians to be
as rich and wonderful as old Christians.
Oh, I got a letter from Brother Rimel,
who used to be among us here, helped
us put this building up, and one of
our fine men, in a physical condition, made
him move to Arizona, where the climate was
hot and dry, and he's all right there.
But I got a letter from him, and
you that knew him, and he wouldn't mind
a bit, and he may even hear me
say this, because he's taken on tape, and
he gets the tapes.
I didn't think about that, but I'm going
to go on.
And this good Brother Rimel, why, I remember
him when he was a pretty sharp-spoken
fellow, pretty tactless, and he would grin when
he hears this, as he does, pretty tactless
fellow.
He could walk up to you, look you
in the eye, and tell you your pedigree
about as nicely as anybody.
Got a letter from him the other day.
Oh, what a tender, beautiful letter it was.
How rich and kind and friendly and cordial
and warm it was.
And he says, I don't, no matter where
I go or who I hear, nobody will
ever take your place in my heart, Brother
Tozer, in your sermons and your preaching, and
the dear people back home.
Why, he's down there in Arizona, but his
heart's back here.
All you'd have to do would be to
cut his shoelaces, and he'd fly back here
by moral gravitation.
God has given that fellow a new, rich
thing.
He's getting to be a middle-aged man
now.
And that's the way it ought to work.
That's the way it ought to be.
Some of you accepted Christ ten years ago.
But you're still, still, if you were suddenly
to die, all you'd have would be the
hope the personal worker gave you.
You're not a new creature.
Nothing's changed in you.
You're not different.
Ah, my brother, true salvation fits us for
heaven, and heaven demands us.
And the man who's been renewed by the
operation of the Holy Ghost in true conversion,
heaven demands that man, and he could not
go to hell.
He could not go to hell.
Heaven demands him.
Heaven is a vacuum into which his soul
will rush when he dies.
Because morally that's where it belongs.
Spiritually that's where it belongs.
But you say, what shall I do then?
And I say, repent.
That was what the prophets all said.
That was the first thing John the Baptist
said.
That was the first thing Jesus said.
That was the first thing Peter said at
Pentecost.
The first thing Paul said when he was
filled with the Holy Ghost later on in
Acts.
And that's what they preached all down the
years.
That was the first thing Finney said, and
the first thing the great revivalists have said,
repent.
Repent.
If your heart is still unfitted for heaven,
then you need to repent.
Because when you repent, really repent, and change,
and believe, and seek, and ask, and knock,
and find, you'll find there'll be a wonderful
gravitational tug.
Judas fell from his apostleship that he might
go to his own place.
I'm so sorry.
His own place was purgatory.
Or not purgatory, but that worse state.
What do they call it?
Limbo.
I think that's the pun, isn't it?
Well, anyhow, you don't get out of there.
They throw the key away.
But purgatory, there's a chance.
No purgatory there.
No purgatory for Judas.
Punish him.
I'm so sorry.
I wish it were otherwise.
But I can't change God's word.
And the scripture tells me that I'm to
be a good servant of Jesus Christ, and
a good minister, and tell the whole truth.
And I'd like to preach on the goodness
of God and the 53rd of Isaiah.
And the book of John for the rest
of my life.
But I can't do it.
I've got to tell people there is a
law that permeates the universe from the far
star to the soul of man.
And it is that everything finds its own
place.
And right now, we're all mixed up because
sin has come into our human world.
And for the time being, we're all mixed
up.
But as soon as we're dead, or as
soon as judgment comes, everybody will find his
own place.
Where is your place?
Brother McAfee told me he heard a song
on the radio.
I'm sorry, I didn't hear it in the
second hand, and I can't tell it as
well as he could.
He was so horrified, he was physically sick.
He said he heard a group sing about
the great production in the sky.
The great show.
That is being put on in the glory
land.
Who all was there?
Al Jolson was there.
The Polish girls that used to kick the
moon down.
And Jean Harlow.
Yes, and all the rest.
They were all there.
And it said, the greatest production in all
of life.
Shouldn't it be when God was the director
of putting it on?
You see, brethren, a lot of those people
have accepted Christ, they said.
But that didn't change them.
Not a bit.
What did Jean Harlow belong up there?
What did Al Jolson belong up there?
What is Earl Carroll doing up there?
What is Al Capone doing up there?
What are they doing up there?
They would be out of their place.
There's Peter.
Oh yes, Peter belongs there.
Sure, Peter.
Old clumsy, tumbling Peter.
He belongs there because God did what Peter
said, gave him the nature of God.
And Paul, old fiery eyed Paul that breathed
out threatening and slaughtering.
That Paul there?
Yeah, that Paul.
He belongs there.
Why?
Because he said, I am the least of
the apostle and I'm worthy to live and
I ought to die.
But God in his mercy saved me.
He belongs there.
There they are, that grand parade.
Do you want me to tell you something,
friends, tonight and close?
I had this in my notes and took
it out.
But I want to say this to you.
If justice without mercy were done, and there
were no cross and no Christ and no
Redeemer, it would be the inevitable operation of
the law of God that I should go
to hell.
I, A.W. Toye, I in my natural
life, in my nature, I belonged there and
belong there as certainly as the earthworm in
the earth.
And if only justice were done, kind justice,
but justice, without a Redeemer and without a
cross and without a Savior, I wouldn't belong
in heaven any more than I belong not
a thousand times as near as I belong
eating beside the Pope in Rome or the
Queen in England.
I'm not a member of that outfit and
I'd be out of place there.
I wouldn't belong there.
But oh, grace, sweet grace, supernal, has all
my sins washed away.
And by that infinite grace of God, I
feel the upward tug.
Not by nature, not by education, not by
character, not by merit, not by virtue, not
by faithfulness, not by prayer, not by any
of those things, but by the infinite mercy
of God that changed me.
I wanted you to know that's the way
I felt about that.
I wanted you to hear me say, for
if I died without an advocate above, I'd
plunge instantly by the law of moral gravitation
to hell.
But there's another nature that stirs within me.
There is, every Christian is pregnant, spiritually pregnant
with a life that stirs and moves and
kicks within him.
It's another life from another world, and he
can't go to hell.
He goes to God's heaven as a bird
rushes to the air or as air rushes
into a vacuum.
The seat of God is in him.
Oh, my friend, is that your condition?
Can you say it's true of you?
If you can't, then I say, repent, believe,
quit your sins, throw yourself out on the
mercy of God, and God will renew you
within and put within you his own nature,
and the root of the matter will lie
in you.
And oh, you won't be a perfect saint.
There'll be a magnet.
I have on my desk a horseshoe magnet
somebody gave me as a paperweight.
A very heavy thing, for as little as
it is, very heavy and powerful.
And when I set it down on a
little desk, thing I get kidded about up
there, it has everything, paper clips and rubber
bands and thumbtacks and bobby pins that I
pick up here and there over the churches
I walk through and all sorts of things.
I put that magnet down there.
Some of those things jump to it at
once.
Others lie there unconcerned.
They go where they belong.
Steel leaps to steel.
But the buttons and the pennies and other
things that aren't steel, they just lie there
unaffected.
So heaven is a magnet that some people
feel its pull and leap to it.
Heaven demands them.
What demands you?
Let's pray.
God, our Father.
Thou hast made us, and we're glad.
Glad we were ever born.
Glad our tired mothers ever brought us into
the world.
Glad that we ever saw the sunrise.
Glad that we learned to speak and see
and hear.
Glad, oh God, we're glad we're alive.
Glad we're human beings, not earthworms or bugs.
Glad thou didst make us in thine image.
Oh, we're glad tonight.
Father, we've sinned.
We've suffered.
We've been, we've disappointed thee and disappointed our
friends.
Disappointed ourselves.
Tumbled around, and we can look far down
the mountain where we wandered many years.
Often troubled in our journey by the gross
of doubt and fears.
And it's all true of us.
But we thank thee for redemption in his
blood.
We thank thee for the best and dearest
Father who loved us and who loved.
And who in pollution saved us and from
our pollution laid and delivered us.
We thank thee, thank thee, Lord, tonight for
redemption.
Thank thee for redemption.
Now, Father, for these eight persons who've asked
us to pray.
Father, would thou search them as with a
candle.
Would thou search them as with a candle.
And grant our Father, we pray, that before
they close their eyes and sleep tonight.
That any doubt they have will be swept
away as, as the bells of the sea
sweep things from rocks.