This is a very interesting scripture.
It speaks of the coming of the devil
and the coming of Jesus.
They come at the same time.
That is strange.
I know there are all kinds of interpretations
of revelations.
Some years ago, these three frogs were said
to be Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin.
But now, of course, we find out that
they were not, neither of those three.
So there must be some other three.
There have been thousands of fellows that claim
to be the two witnesses of revelation.
One used to come to our meeting in
the faith home in Zion.
He wore a skull cap, and he was
a real problem.
He always ruined the meeting, but he was
one of the witnesses too.
And, of course, you know how that Dr.
Evans in the Moody Bible Institute told us
one time that 1,600 books had been
written, each one explaining what happened in heaven
during the half hour of silence.
And so you can have your choice.
And the little colored boy asked his colored
preacher pop, what am the millennium?
He said, don't you know, my son, the
millennium am the same thing as a centennial,
only, of course, he got more legs.
Well, that's about as good an explanation as
I've seen anywhere in any of these prophetic
books.
But, ya baraja la gailo bil ba dolom
bogo, when you open your heart, God Almighty
will put some word of life there.
And he shows us here that not only
ought we to be interested in the coming
of Jesus.
At this time, we ought to be wide
awake to the things that are happening, but
we ought to see here how deeply Jesus
Christ is interested in this great event.
Like a bridegroom that is coming to call
his bride and bring her home and bring
her to the altar, naturally he's deeply interested.
But Jesus, tell me, what is your interest
in this meeting tonight?
What do you think of everyone in this
meeting tonight?
Well, he tells us here, blessed are those
servants whom, when the Lord cometh, shall find
watching.
This is a time for watching, not only
praying, but watching.
Watching for what?
We sing he's coming soon, and we who
live and yet remain shall be caught up
together with them in clouds to meet the
Lord in the air.
I'm not interested in that.
Oh, I'm interested, but there's something preceding that
coming of the Lord, and that's spoken of
here.
Behold, I come as a thief.
And you know, when a thief comes, he
doesn't announce his coming.
The other day we had a thief coming
to this church while we were having a
meeting down here, and he robbed my offering
box.
There wasn't much there, but he spoiled my
box.
That's the thing I didn't like.
But he came like a thief.
He came very softly.
He didn't make a noise.
He didn't ring a bell or blow a
whistle.
He didn't want anybody to hear.
And Jesus says, that's the way he is
coming to his own.
And he's coming at a time when you
would least expect him.
That's the thing we need to be interested
in.
He's coming at a time when the whole
world is in turmoil, and when these demon
powers are let loose upon humanity.
And of course, this battle of Armageddon has
been pictured also as a nuclear war.
It isn't anything like that.
The battle of Armageddon is going on in
a meeting like this, in a life like
yours, in a home like yours.
And the decision that is made by this
war between the contending armies is whether Jesus
Christ shall have a heart prepared to reign
with him forever and ever.
That's the great battle that is going on,
and that's the great battle that Satan is
waging today against humanity.
The great call of Almighty God is to
create sons of God upon this earth without
rebuke in the midst of a crooked and
perverse generation among whom they shine as lights
in the world.
That means they're like Jesus.
If we say that we abide in him,
we ought also to walk even as he
walked.
And that's the thing the devil hates.
He doesn't mind your Democrats and your Republicans,
and he doesn't mind your Communists and your
Nazis.
Those are his legions, and they do his
bidding.
And the saloon in the world and all
these bad places.
But the devil is after you.
He's after you.
He's after sons and daughters of God.
He's after these bodies of ours, because these
bodies are going to defeat the devil.
These bodies are going to constitute the new
Jerusalem.
And God Almighty is going to come down
from heaven and live in these bodies of
ours, and change them, transform them into the
likeness of his glorified body.
That's, the Bible says, what he baptized us
for in the Holy Ghost.
He didn't baptize us to make big shots
out of us.
He baptizes to make us holy, even as
he is holy.
Pure, even as he is pure.
Oh, what a wonderful, glorious call.
I wonder why we don't fly into the
arms of Jesus and make that purity and
make that holiness ours.
He tells us we ought to follow after
holiness.
He tells us that we ought to cleanse
ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and
spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.
And the people that do that, they're going
to reign with Christ.
They're going to be ready when Jesus Christ
comes.
And all of our New Testament testifies to
that great truth.
You can't mistake it at all.
It's there.
The reason we don't find it is because
we don't want it.
When you really want him, when you really
want Jesus Christ, you'll want holiness.
You'll want to be pure, even as he
is pure.
And when you want him, you will seek
him with all your heart, and you will
cry with your lambs all trimmed and burning
bright, and your vessel filled with oil, and
you'll say, come, Lord Jesus.
Oh, Lord Jesus, how long, how long?
Every shout, but don't come yet.
You remember how Mr. Bender told us?
They came out of a prayer meeting in
Pennsylvania, and they had to go over a
hill.
And the whole band of saints got to
the top of the hill, and then something
happened.
They saw the northern lights, like they'd never
seen them before, in colors of the rainbow.
And they converged right above them, right in
the zenith of the sky above them.
And then they saw a cup, or rather,
a chalice made of gold, and it tipped,
and oil came out of that chalice.
And they were all charmed.
They all said, Jesus is coming.
I, Jesus is coming.
They were sure.
They all looked up.
They all expected, presently, the Lord Jesus to
appear.
And the little boy got hold of his
mother's skirt.
Fortunately, this was years ago.
Did you hear old Thomas telling how a
little boy was lost in the supermarket?
And the policeman said to him, uh, where's
your mother?
He said, I don't know.
The policeman said, you ought to hang on
to her skirt.
He said, I can't reach it.
But this boy was able to reach the
skirt of his mother.
And he said, mother, give me two cents.
She said, shh, Jesus is coming.
You don't need two.
Yes, I need two cents right away.
Give me two cents.
What's the matter?
Oh, I stole two cents down in the
grocery store.
I've got to run and give it back
to the grocery man.
It's night, but anyway, he had something to
make right.
Jesus is coming.
Thank God.
And oh, how interested he is in those
who prepare themselves.
Blessed are those servants whom the Lord, when
he cometh, shall find watching.
And why watching?
And keeping their garments.
Why keeping their garments?
Because the devil is working today to defile
this wonderful garment.
And what a garment it is.
It's his righteousness.
They that receive abundance of grace and of
the gift of righteousness are not overcome by
sin, but they reign in life.
The life of Jesus Christ overcomes the forces
of death and sickness and sin and uncleanness.
They receive abundance of grace.
And what is this abundance of grace?
Why it's that divine nature that is offered
to us in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
It's that divine Son of God, whom God
brought again from the dead, that he might
live within our hearts and within our bodies
and make us perfect in every good work
to do his will, working in us that
which is well-pleasing in his sight.
And oh, that wonderful work he began when
on the cross he shed his precious blood
to give us these garments of his righteousness.
How pure, how spotless is a soul that
has confessed his sins to God and has
received salvation.
There is no condemnation to them which are
in Christ Jesus.
But many are called and few are chosen.
And he says, some of you have not
defiled their garments and they shall walk with
me in mine.
That's what Jesus is interested in.
It caused him his precious blood to cleanse
me, really to cleanse me within.
Give me a clean heart.
Give me a new heart and create the
right spirit within me.
Bestow upon me his own holy ghost.
And hallelujah, there's no condemnation to them which
walk not after the flesh, but after the
spirit.
But God alone knows how many people are
defiling their garments.
That's where the battle of Armageddon comes in.
It's the powers of hell that have come
out of the bottomless pit and are blacking
the sky and darking the sunlight, darking the
gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, so that
you can see through.
And what is it?
Jesus makes it very clear.
He says his coming is like the sun
that arises in the east and shineth even
unto the west.
I don't believe that's correct, correctly interpreted when
it says the lightning.
The lightning doesn't shine from the east to
the west, but the sun does.
And the gospel age was the offer of
almighty God, of the grace of God that
bringeth salvation and cleanses men from all sin.
And that's why he says where the carcass
is, the vultures will gather, and the vultures
have come out of hell and have walked
off with all of humanity.
What uncleanness we find today even in the
church.
The Roman Catholic church used to be an
obstacle, used to be an example of wickedness,
but today the Protestants are worse.
Beloved, here is the great call of the
king, thank God.
Blessed are they that keep their garments clean.
Thank God.
Thank you, my Lord Jesus Christ, because that
precious blood that cleansed me in the beginning
will keep cleansing me and keep me clean.
And thy word, like a two-edged sword,
will be a discerner of the thoughts and
of the intents of the heart.
And it's a strange thing that right in
the midst of the description of this great
battle of Armageddon that's produced by these four
frogs, these demon powers, right in the midst
of it, Jesus has a church that's keeping
itself clean and spotless.
And he says, blessed are they.
He doesn't say blessed are they that speak
in tongues and that think well of themselves
and think they're better than others, but blessed
are they that keep their garments.
Thank God that's a call that comes out
of heaven to me, to my own personal
life, from the person that's more precious to
me than all other names.
Jesus, the name above all names.
Jesus, my only joy, be thou as thou
my prize will be.
Jesus, be thou my glory now and through
eternity.
And this wonderful verse in this call of
God presents to all of us and especially
to our young people, a marvelous opportunity.
We talk about juvenile delinquency and today all
kinds of movements are called into function.
Juvenile, teenage challenge and so on.
What is the teenage challenge?
Beloved, a rod for the back of a
fool.
That's what it is.
What shall young people do?
They ought to learn to obey.
Ought to learn to be clean.
Ought to learn to overcome sin.
Ought to be made men and women of.
I was so glad recently I was invited
to dinner someplace.
It was a German family and they have
some children and they have a boy, always
about seven years old.
And when we were at the table, this
boy reached for a roll and it wasn't
soft enough, so he put it back.
Mother said, here, you touch that roll, you
eat that.
Where do you find mothers that do that?
Our children are raised like hogs.
That's what's the matter with juvenile delinquency.
The devil will move in if God Almighty
has refused his throne.
And in a Christian home, God must bring.
And our privilege is to train our children
in the fear of God.
What would you do, you boys, if your
name was Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego and Daniel
and you were brought into Babylonia among thousands
of other boys that quickly take the cigarettes
and smoke them and drink beer and, and
swear and do exactly like other boys.
What would you do?
Would you let the fear of God rule
you like Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego?
They knew that they were risking their lives.
They were kids.
They had the best opportunity now to get
away from their mother's skirts.
I've seen children who live with their parents
and they don't respect them at all, don't
obey them at all.
Here's Daniel, a man greatly beloved, backslidden Israel,
carried into captivity in such a way.
Well, read the lamentation of Jeremiah.
Read Jeremiah and see how severely God judged
uncleanness and judged sin.
Thank God.
Thank God for his holiness.
Thank God that he makes me partaker of
his holiness.
No other kind of holiness will do.
No other kind of purity will do.
A purity within my heart, a purity in
my mouth, like the mouth of Jesus Christ
in whom no guile was found, a purity
in my body like the son of God
who was not defiled.
What would you do if the question came
before you now to fall down before an
image and worship it or to be cast
into a burning fiery furnace?
That's very real.
But those boys considered it a great privilege
to be faithful to God and they didn't
have the faith that we have.
They didn't have the light that we have.
Beloved, we have the light that Jesus Christ
is coming, coming to judge the wicked and
coming to gather us unto himself.
And what would you do if you had
to make your choice?
Every one of us will have to make
our choice, not between a fiery furnace and
death, but between sin and the fear of
God, between obeying the Holy Ghost and obeying
the spirit that now worketh in the children
of disobedience.
Thank God for fathers and mothers who take
their children as a heritage of Jehovah and
like the parents of Moses, bring them up
with the fear of God and live holy
lives before them.
And know that when a child comes into
my home, eternity comes into my home.
The kingdom of God has come into my
home.
The king says, he that receiveth such a
child in my name receiveth me.
And all for fathers and mothers who live
that kind of a life and who train
their children to fear the law.
I told you before about a mother in
Germany who was told by some other Christians,
why don't you send your girls to a
beauty parlor?
Why they look like old maids.
You've got to make them acceptable to this
age.
She said, I'm not training my girls for
this age.
I'm training them for eternity.
And it doesn't mean that you have to
look like an old maid.
In fact, the old maids are in the
world, not in the church.
In the church are the bride of Christ.
They attend upon the Lord without distraction.
Beloved, beloved, let's stop talking about the coming
of the Lord unless we really prepare our
hearts and keep our garments white and spot.
And our young people have that privilege.
When they made a soldier out of me,
I saw how hundreds of men, mind you,
there was one, I had to answer the
officers because I refused to bear arms.
And one of them said, I'm, my father
prays every day, he said.
And if my father was on the German
side and I met him in combat, it
would be my greatest joy to kill him.
I said, well, if Uncle Sam has to
depend on that kind, on that brand of
heroism, then God help America.
That's the way they talk.
That's the way they live.
And beloved, the whole business today in the
world, all this great movement, it's, it's the
demon powers that the devil has spewed out
of his mouth and fills the air with.
And you and I have the privilege of
being filled with the Holy Ghost, being controlled
by the spirit of God, being transformed by
the renewing of our mind, being overcomers.
And that overcoming has to begin in the,
in the cradle of a baby.
Psychologists were mentioned the other day, or people
that have to do with children.
And they said that a child's character is
formed before he's seven years old.
No, a child's, a man's character, a woman's
character is formed before he's six months old.
My father knew that.
He used to stick before we were six
months old.
He knew that whatsoever is born of the
flesh is flesh.
He used it wisely.
But he put the fear of God into
our hearts, and it's the privilege of every
father and mother to do that with their
children.
But it's the privilege of every one of
us who are older to keep our garments
spotless, clean, and pure.
But I'm talking about juveniles, about young people.
What stupidity, what idiocy to open the bars
and, and let all the pornography be swallowed
by them like a lot of hogs, beloved.
What we need, what young people need is
some teaching about purity of heart, purity of
mind, purity of body.
And that's the place where God gets his
sons, where they don't say yes and don't
yield to the temptation of Nebuchadnezzar or Belshazzar
or Darius.
They brave the lion's den.
They brave the tyrant's steel.
They brave the wrath of the devil.
They brave the laughter of the world.
And they've got the fear of God in
their hearts.
That's what we need.
That's where the cleansing comes.
That's where the pure garment is worn.
And I know what God can do.
He did it for me as a boy.
He put the fear of God in my
heart, not to fear, but to rejoice in
God, to love God, to love Jesus Christ.
Strange, but God did it.
I know God will do it for our
boys and girls, if they're given a chance
to talk, if they're given a chance to
know Jesus, to know the purity of the
Son of God, the manhood of the Son
of God.
What a man, my son, in whom I
am well pleased.
And it took that son, and God smote
him, and it pleased the Father to bruise
him.
And he had to suffer and die and
be baptized with blood, that he might baptize
you and me with the Holy Ghost.
And now he is looking upon us, and
he says, blessed is he that keepeth his
garment.
I've got something to do.
You have something to do.
He's given me a snow-white garment, and
if it hasn't remained snow-white, he says,
repent and do the first works.
Remember whence thou art fallen, and do the
first works.
Get back to the cleansing of the blood,
and be sure you're clean, and be sure
you're spotless.
Jesus' blood has never lost its power.
And the reason we're not more filled with
the Holy Ghost is because we grieve him.
Our fleshly thoughts, our careless words drive away
the Holy Ghost, and God wants a people
who know that they're in the midst of
this terrible war.
I said some of the greatest wars in
the universe are fought over a church like
this, over a home like yours.
That's where the decision is made whether Jesus
Christ shall have one soul.
And when Israel had refused to follow God,
God had two men, Caleb and Joshua, and
with them he took that promised land.
And when all Israel had gone into captivity
after God had spoken, read Jeremiah, look what
they did, how they tried to kill him,
and how they finally dumped him into the
mud, so that he sank in the mud
and nearly drowned, if it had been for
a colored man that pulled him up.
People don't want to hear the truth.
Why?
Why not?
Isn't the truth wonderful?
Isn't beauty for ashes better and gold for
brass?
Isn't holiness a wonderful call?
What would fathers and mothers rather see their
children fulfilled in than to become like Jesus?
That's the call of God.
And what would you rather be than to
be like Jesus?
That's the call of God.
And today more than ever, beloved, he comes
as a thief in the night.
And sometimes you can hear his footfall.
You can hear his whisper.
He says, come away my sister.
Come on, come on.
My head is filled with dew.
My locks with the drops of the night.
They've chased me out of every temple, out
of every church.
They've chased me out of their organizations.
They don't want me.
They don't.
Come away, my sister, my love, my dove,
my undefiled.
I like that word, my undefiled.
Undefiled.
Beloved Jesus offers to keep us undefiled for
his coming.