It is good to be with you here.
The first time I ever came to Charlotte
to preach was in 1915.
That sounds a little prehistoric, I'm sure.
But there was such a year.
And I was in circulation.
And I came down from Catawba County where
I grew up and spoke in the old
Broadway theater in the courthouse.
I've been coming back to Charlotte through the
years since.
And I have been on the road alone
in this type of ministry for 38 years.
We old folks, the senior citizens, have to
work out a philosophy of our own.
I'm not as old as you might think.
I went to see my father-in-law
about a year ago.
He was 98.
And I said to him, Papa, how does
it feel to be old?
He said, well, you ought to know.
But I heard of an old timer in
his 80s who was getting ready to make
a trip around the world.
And one of his friends went over to
the airport and said, I'll declare you yourself
and try this.
Why?
I may never see you again.
No, he said, you may be dead when
I get back.
I owe a great deal to Presbyterians.
The first great evangelist that I ever heard
was Dr. Wilbur Chapman, right here in Charlotte.
And Charles M.
Alexander led the singing.
And at the piano was Harry Barraclough who
wrote Ivory Palaces.
It's been a long time.
Then later on when I became a little
liberal in some of my theology and God
shut up the doors and I had to
start over, God used Gresham Mason's book, Christianity
and Liberalism, to advance some absolutely unanswerable arguments
of the right sort.
And then Donald Gray Barnhouse, was a great
friend who helped open the doors of Bible
conference work with his great ministry.
What a teacher.
I am not a Bible teacher, I want
to say that at the beginning.
I am not a pastor or a teacher
or an evangelist.
Sometimes I wonder what I am.
I've not made up my mind fully, and
you may have a new word for it
afterward, but don't tell me, maybe I wouldn't
want to hear it.
But I am of the conviction that we
need today, in addition to pastors, teachers and
evangelists, and I thank God for every one
of them, we need prophets, New Testament prophets.
Not in the predictive sense, the old definition
is good, not a foreteller but a foreteller,
speaking for God both to the nation and
to the church.
I have aspired through these years to follow
something of that ministry, but I don't like
the word prophet generally, because it's all right
in the book, but prophet today connotes to
the average individual, some rather queer looking individual
wearing a long robe, carrying a walking stick
and wearing sandals and all the rest of
it, and I don't qualify for that kind
of a description.
But we do need prophets in this day
and hour, and the business of a prophet
is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the
comfortable.
And I try to do a little of
both, by the grace of God.
The scripture this morning is very familiar from
Romans 13 and very practical, beginning with verse
11.
It's all the answers and tells us where
we are and what to do about it.
And that knowing the time or the season
that now it is high time to awake
out of sleep, for now is our salvation
nearer than when we believed.
The night is far spent, the day is
at hand.
Let us, therefore, cast off the works of
darkness, and let us put on the armor
of light.
Let us walk honestly as in the day,
not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering
and wantonness, not in strife and ending, but
put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ.
That's the positive.
And then in spite of these folks who
say they don't believe in negative preaching, the
Bible's got a lot of negatives in it,
make not for thee, for the flesh, to
fulfill the love thereof.
We read in 1 Chronicles 12.32 about
the children of Issachar who had understanding of
the times to know what Israel ought to
do.
I wish we had more of that tribe
now.
Not just knowledge.
There are plenty of people who know a
lot about the times, but they don't know
what to do in them.
Will Durant knows a lot about the times,
indeed.
Arnold Toynbee, but apparently they didn't know much
about what to do in them.
Somebody has said if you want knowledge, go
to school.
If you want wisdom, get on your knees.
If any of you like wisdom, let him
ask of God.
That's where it comes from.
And wisdom is the proper use of knowledge.
We listen to the news analysts and the
columnists, and they dazzle us sometimes.
We listen to the panel discussions and the
symposiums.
You know what a symposium is.
It's where we prove our ignorance.
We listen to the symposium, and we've about
decided that they know precious little about what
to do.
I don't know of anything that will wear
me out more quickly than listening to a
bunch of experts on television analyzing the situation.
I read the other day about something that
I don't think happened, but makes a good
illustration anyhow.
A man was in the hospital for a
brain operation, and they had his brain over
in another room working on it.
I'm telling it the way I heard it,
you understand.
And they say that he got up and
put on his clothes and left.
They didn't find him for five years.
When they did, he was an expert in
Washington.
I don't have a bit of trouble believing
that.
Not a bit.
You know as well as I do, you
turn off the TV and you don't know
any more than you did about what to
do about what.
And we're not going to get out of
the woods by following blind leaders of the
blind, and what is worse, bland leaders of
the bland.
Paul Harvey said, It is the Christian's conviction
that Christ will return and take over when
mortals have made a hopeless mess of self
-government.
Well, he ought to come any time then,
because we have succeeded at that.
I'll buy that statement, because Paul Harvey has
read his Bible.
The Bible tells us ye do err.
Why?
For two reasons.
Not knowing.
That's ignorance.
Not knowing.
Not knowing two things.
The Scripture and the power of God.
That's the basis of all error.
Ignorance.
And so much of it is educated ignorance.
The natural man receives lots of things of
the Spirit of God.
They are moronic.
They are foolishness to him.
Because they have to be spiritually discerned.
A PhD degree will help you after you
are saved in some of your study and
so on, but it won't make spiritual things
any clearer before you are born again.
The natural man just can't take it in.
And if a PhD is all he has,
that just means phenomenal dead.
Because you don't have the ability to ascertain
truth until the Spirit of God has set
you.
You may know history, but you don't know
His story, as it has been put.
And there's something about the way God operates
in His history, within history, that charms me
very much.
There's almost a touch of humor in it.
For instance, in Luke 2, I read, and
this verse starts off rather pompously with big
names, and it says, And it came to
pass in those days, that there went out
a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the
world should be taxed.
And this taxing was first made when Serenius
was governor of Syria, and all went to
be taxed, everyone to his own city.
Sounds rather pompous for a beginning, but look
what comes next.
And here's where God's moving now in the
next verse.
And Joseph also went up from Galilee to
be taxed, with Mary, his espoused wife.
If you had seen that little peasant couple
going along, you wouldn't have given them a
second look.
But that's where God was moving.
And He does it that way.
And there's another one that's even more pompous,
over in chapter 3 of Luke.
Now you talk about a lot of big
shots.
Listen to this.
Now in the fifteenth year of the reign
of Tiberius, Caesar punctus Pilate being governor of
Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and
his brother Philip tetrarch of Icaria, and of
the region of Trachonitis, and Lysanias the tetrarch
of Abilene, and Caiaphas being the high priest.
My, what a who's who.
But look what comes next.
The word of God came unto John, the
son of Zechariah, in the wilderness.
That's where God was moving.
All these individuals were just winded wreckers for
John the Baptist out in the wilderness.
Now the children of Issachar not only had
understanding of the times, but it produced knowledge
of what Israel and the application is, God's
people, ought to do.
I think, beloved, there are four considerations that
ought to be kept in mind if we
are to know what to do.
There is, first of all, the promise of
our Lord's return, that divine event toward which
the whole creation moves.
The church, the professing church, missed the road
a long time ago, and she quit looking
for the king to come back, started building
the kingdom down here in her own way.
It's a spiritual kingdom.
It's not meat and drink, but righteousness, peace,
and joy in the Holy Spirit.
And the first word is righteousness.
And people don't like righteousness.
They don't want to hear about righteousness.
They want peace and joy.
They'll buy books by the dozen about peace
of heart and peace of mind and so
on.
You know, Rabbi Liebman and Norman Vincent Peale
and Hodin Sheen have all written about peace
of mind.
And I heard about it, dear lady, when
in the bookstore the other day and said,
Have you got that book, A Peace of
My Mind, by Rabbi Norman Vincent Sheen?
Well, she was a little confused.
But there is going to be a visible
kingdom, thank God, not brought in by education,
legislation, sanitation, and reformation under religious austerity.
The Chinese have a proverb, You cannot carve
rotten wood.
And that's why you can't make anything out
of unregenerate human nature.
That's why you can't get the world together.
That's why the Brotherhood of Man's a joke.
That's why it won't work.
Oh, Will Rogers, when the first disarmament conference
was being held in London, you smile now
when you think about that, when we're in
the biggest race ever right now.
Will said, Those fellows might get somewhere if
it wasn't for human nature.
Now, when you boil that down, that's a
tremendous thing.
I wish he were living today.
I'd like to know what he'd say about
some things going on now.
If we understand that the kingdom is not
to be set up till the king gets
back, the visible kingdom, some misguided souls wouldn't
be riding queer bandwagons headed for some counterfeit
millennium.
You've read about Rip Van Winkle, who took
a long nap, and when he woke up,
when he went to sleep, George III was
the ruler of America, and when he woke
up, George Washington was president of the United
States.
That's a long nap.
And Rip Van Winkle didn't know about the
change, and he started hollering for the king.
He was hollering for the wrong George.
And a lot of people are hollering for
the wrong George today because we don't know
that the real king is coming.
I had a great old preacher on the
West Coast who preached the return of the
Lord the way the Bible teaches.
Didn't have some seminary students there, didn't like
it much.
They decided they'd go up to him and
make a feeble note of protest.
One of them said, Dr. Henson, we just
can't get this out of the Bible the
way you've been preaching.
He said, of course you can't get it
out.
It's in there to stay.
And it is.
The early church lived proclaiming Christ's come, and
they lived with the prospect of Christ's coming,
and they lived in the power of Christ's
contemporary.
I don't know what to think about some
of my brethren today.
I think some of them are saved and
going to heaven, but they never seem to
get excited about the possibility of the Lord
coming back any time.
I think of old W.B. Riley of
Minneapolis, a great old champion of the truth
a generation ago.
He had a friend, a Methodist bishop, and
they were close friends, but their eschatology was
miles apart.
They always got in an argument about prophecy.
And then there came some months of separation,
and the bishop was off on a trip,
and when he came back he said, Well,
Riley, Jesus hasn't come yet.
And Riley said, No, and for your benefit,
bishop, I'm glad he hasn't.
We might feel that way about it indeed.
There is not only the prospect of the
Lord's return, there is in the second place
the possibility of revival.
I didn't say probability.
There's a lot of confusion today about revival.
Some people say that we'll never have another
one, and some don't know what a revival
is and wouldn't know one if it came.
And some are saying we're having one, but
it's a false revival, and I agree in
part with that.
Synthetic revival can look so real that it's
difficult to separate the wheat from the tares.
I don't hear many people praying for one
of the gifts of the Spirit today.
I hear a lot about some of the
others, but I don't hear much about discernment,
the discerning of spirits.
And if we had more discernment today in
the church, we wouldn't be in such a
mess about some of these other matters.
If general revival comes, it won't come with
expos and explos and extravaganza.
The Welsh revival came God's way.
They didn't even have a choir.
They didn't have songbooks.
They didn't have a preacher a lot of
the time.
They had no publicity, but they did have
God.
And I wonder what would happen today if
we'd get tired of all our little plans,
tax the queue and banana bunches and pin
the tail on the donkey and karate experts
and theatrical celebrities and just let God come
in and take over for a change.
We might see one again.
It'll never be worked out by big names
and committee meetings and high-pressure promotion.
The wind blow us where it lifts us,
where it pleases, where it won't please, and
he is sovereign.
You cannot program Pentecost.
Then in the third place, if our Lord
carries and if there's no revival, there's the
prospect of retribution.
And I think that Ruth Graham was absolutely
right years ago when she said as she
looked at some of the formidable statistics that
Billy had compiled about our moral condition that
if God doesn't send judgment on America, you'll
have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah.
And I believe that with all my heart.
I don't say today that civilization is going
to the dogs.
I've got too much respect for dogs.
I wouldn't want to insult the canine kingdom
with any such remarks as that.
Heard of a motel the other day that
put up a sign just in time, you
know they're not supposed to allow dogs, and
they said we've changed their minds.
Said after all, no dog ever set the
place on fire smoking a cigarette here.
No dog ever got drunk here.
No dog ever left without paying his bill.
They will take dogs.
And then underneath had this note to us
folks that if you can get your dog
to vouch for you, we'll let you come
and stay here.
It's a rough day when you've got to
get your dog to vouch for you.
I have no apologies for such a view
of civilization.
I agree with the one time Prince of
Wales who was asked what he thought about
civilization.
He said, I think it's a good idea.
Why doesn't somebody start it?
And I feel that way about this boasted
progress which is the biggest joke that I
know anything about today.
America is at Belshazzar's Feast, and that feast
was characterized by revelry, revelation, and retribution.
And that's what we're having today.
God's writing on the wall.
And the soothsayers and the smoothsayers cannot decipher
the heavenly hieroglyphics.
But thank God they had one man around
there who knew how to read the writings.
Daniel was not at that orgy, mind you.
Have you noticed they had to send for
him?
They hadn't given him a complimentary ticket to
come and sip ginger ale with all the
alcoholics.
The preacher who stays where he belongs will
have his big chance when God starts writing
on the wall.
This is no day for pulpit pollyannas and
politicians and promoters and performers viewing the world
with rose-colored glasses and painting the clouds
with sunshine and dusting off sin with a
powder puff and spreading cold cream on cancers.
This is no time.
There never has been a time for such
preaching.
Against the background of the Lord's return, revival,
or retribution, there's one other consideration.
And that's what I would call the program
of the remnant.
God has always had his 7,000 who
have not bowed beneath the veil, the church
within the church, the Gideon's band, the master's
minority, the company of the committed, the assembly
of the anyones over there in Revelation.
My Lord told Leah to see her to
repent, and they didn't repent.
But he said, I've got one more proposition.
If anyone, I'll start with one man.
Campbell Morgan said he excommunicated the whole church
and started over with one man.
And I believe that's what God's doing today.
I believe that underneath all our huge programs
and all our religious activity, among all denominations,
it makes no difference.
There's a great undercurrent and a moving of
God among us.
And they know what God's people ought to
do.
Chosen people in the Old Testament, told people
in the New Testament.
Well, what ought we to do?
Let's be practical about it.
Romans tells us in the passage I read,
the night is far spent, the day is
at hand, we're told.
Thank God doesn't say the day is far
spent and the night is at hand.
For a Christian, good news is bad news
and bad news is good news.
When they shall say peace and safety, well,
that sounds like good news.
Sudden destruction is coming.
And then when you read about men's hearts
failing in prayer and fear and wars and
rumors of wars, that's bad news.
But what does it say?
It doesn't say drop your head.
It says lift up your head, because your
redemption draweth nigh.
It's just the other way around about as
a Christian.
And we ought to wake up, we read,
therefore, here.
Awake!
Salvation's nearer than we believe.
We have anarchy in the world, we have
apostasy in the professing church, and we have
apathy in the true church.
And that's the situation.
I'm glad to be in a place here
this morning where something's going on.
I declare I get an old kind over
the country.
And I can appreciate that kid at church
one morning that, well, the preacher was through,
but he wouldn't quit.
You know what I mean.
And he'd looked through the songbook and had
drawn all the pictures he could draw, and
still the preacher droned on.
And so the youngster finally said, Mama, what's
that flag up there?
Well, that's the American flag, son.
You know what that is.
Well, what's that on the other side of
the pulpit?
That's the Christian flag.
And what's that little one with all the
stars in it?
That's for those who have died in the
service.
He said, the morning service or the evening
service.
I don't want to get in trouble.
I like to be in one where you're
alive.
Thank the Lord.
Old Clovis Chapel, that great old Methodist preacher
went to one of these meetings where they
didn't have real stimulation, so some dear song
leader, you know, was trying to create it.
Shake hands with five people this way and
all that sort of thing.
Old Clovis Chapel said, you might as well
try to boil water over the picture of
a glow worm.
I heartily agree with it.
I got in one of those some time
ago.
We had a young fellow up in New
England somewhere, and bless his heart, he was
doing his best.
He was singing There's Power in the Blood.
Well, I've heard him put four powers in
it, but he worked up to six, and
then he got eight in there.
You could have shut your eyes and thought
you were listening to gun smoke.
Now, something ought to happen in church.
It ought to happen, and I like to
go where something is happening.
We're dealing with divine electricity, and we ought
to get either a charge or a shock
when we go to church.
If you get a blessing, you will go
out charged.
If you don't like it, you may go
out shocked.
You may even go out mad, but anything's
better than nothing.
It's this crowd that just goes out that
bothers me so much today.
In vain we sing our formal songs.
In vain we strive to rise.
Hosannas languish on our tongues, and our devotion
dies.
Most people are unconscious when they're singing.
I don't know what they're singing.
If they'd stop in the middle of a
verse and be honest about it, they'd choke
up before they ever got through the rest
of the line.
We're not aware of it.
What does it say?
Wake up.
Our salvation's near.
Sometimes I wonder whether we believe that where
we meet in Jesus' name, that he's really
there.
I'd like to get in a meeting one
time before I die where everybody believes that
for a change.
Tonight, I think I'm going to talk about
that statement, where two or three have got
it in my name, and my subject is,
look who's here.
Now, I don't mean me, and I don't
mean you.
I mean, has it ever gotten through your
thinking that we are to be privileged tonight,
as we are this morning, with the personal
presence of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit?
We've heard it too much, we Americans.
Maybe if we'd heard it for the first
time, we wouldn't get over it all day
and all week and all month.
I feel like going down the aisle sometimes
shaking everybody and saying, do you believe it?
Do you believe Jesus is coming back?
Could be today.
Do you believe he's going to put the
devil out of business?
That he's going to restore law and order,
and the lion and the lamb are going
to lie down together and he ain't going
to study war no more.
Lovers are going to be raised in their
new Easter outfits.
You have a brand new body.
Jesus shall reign wherever the sun that his
successive journeys run.
For now is our salvation.
Do you believe it?
And they say, well, yes.
Why don't you come too?
Because it says here, not only wake up,
it says look up.
And I would add another one.
Get up.
You know, sometimes you wake up if you
don't get up and go back to sleep
and sleep more soundly than you ever did
before.
I've been in some revivals where the church
did that.
They woke up that week and made a
lot of resolutions and promises, but they really
didn't get up and get down to business.
Jesus said in the garden, Arise, let us
be gone.
Not enough to wake up and let's get
going here.
So let's carry it through in all its
glorious potential and possibility.
Revival is not just an awakening, it's an
arising.
And then it says in verse 12, that
double-barreled positive-negative verse, Put on the
Lord Jesus.
Some church members remind me of a man
trying to wear two suits of clothes at
the same time.
Put on the Lord Jesus.
Put off and put on.
That's the note through here.
Don't just ask God to take away your
sins.
He will, but you must put them away.
He says, Forsaketh his sins, shall have mercy.
There are many people willing for God to
take them away, but are you willing to
put them away?
Put off the old man.
Put on the new man.
Put away lying.
Put off anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy talk.
When you're saved, you're a new creature.
Old things have passed away.
You live in the new man.
Feed him.
And exercise him.
And he'll grow stronger.
Christ lives in you.
You've got a double responsibility.
Put on the Lord Jesus.
Make not provisions for the flesh.
I heard of a boy whose daddy told
him not to go in swimming that day,
and he went in anyhow.
And his father told him.
And the boy said, Well, I didn't mean
to go in.
Father said, Well, why do you have your
bathing suit with you?
Well, he said, I brought that along in
case I was tempted.
A lot of people make arrangements to sin.
Don't make arrangements to sin.
That TV program that's not fit to look
at.
Unholy thoughts.
You can't help bad folks coming along any
more than you can help running into disease,
gentlemen.
But you don't have to open the door
and say, Come in and make yourself at
home.
Oh, I think of Jim Elliot who died
down in Ecuador.
Red-blooded young fellow.
Just before he left the state, they said
a friend took me over to his home
to look at television, and I was convicted
by Psalm 119.37. Keep thou mine eyes
from beholding vanity.
Now, that's not some old mystic token.
That's a red-blooded young fellow who got
convicted.
He was exposing himself.
He was making it easier to sin.
Make new arrangements for that.
That's Joan, the tribe of Ithaca.
Now, against all this background, God grants that
you may join the remnant.
Because one of these days, the Lord is
going to check on our stewardship.
I heard of a fellow on trial, and
the judge said, You're allowed a lawyer.
Now, you can have a lawyer, and there's
a lawyer over here to the right, and
a lawyer over there to the left.
And there's another one outside.
He's out here in the hole.
So he looked right, and he looked left,
and he said to the judge, I think
I'll take a chance on the one out
in the hole.
Well, I know something better than that.
My friend, this morning, I'm not worrying too
much about the right and the left.
I'm concerned about the up and the down,
the above and the below.
That's what concerns me today.
This right wing, do you belong to the
right wing or the left wing?
One of our great black preachers said the
trouble with that is they're both flapping on
the same old bird.
And that's why I don't have much confidence.
Finally, let me say this, or else I'm
going to be as long as that preacher
I told you about a while ago with
the kid drawing pictures in the songbook.
Every time, a preacher friend of mine said
to me, every time I hear Walter Cronkite,
he ends up by saying, and that's the
way it is.
I feel like saying, no, Walter, that's not
the way it is.
That's just the way it looks.
And that's right.
You know, sometimes when I, I do a
lot of walking.
I'm a walking preacher.
I find myself quoting again and again the
wonderful lines of James Russell, Lord.
Careless seems the great avenger.
Sometimes it looks like God doesn't care.
Lord, where are you?
Why don't you come back and untangle this
mess?
Careless seems the great avenger.
History's pages but record one death grapple in
the darkness, twixt old systems and the word.
Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on
the throne.
That's the way it is.
But that's not the way it is because
the rest of that line says, but that
scaffold sways the future.
And behind the dim unknown standeth God within
the shadows keeping watch above his own.
My friend, that's the way it is in
his time.
So don't let the way it seems keep
you from seeing it the way it is.
And pray that God may grant you wisdom
and not just knowledge to understand what you
hope to do.