I have a very solemn message for you
today, friends, and it lays heavy upon my
heart.
I believe a thrice holy God has to
give an evangelist a burden for souls.
It's not a natural thing to care about
someone dying and slipping into hell.
I believe that burden comes from God.
I believe God has a burden for souls.
The apostle Peter tells us so.
The Lord is not slack concerning his promise,
as some men count slackness, but is longsuffering
to usward, not willing that any should perish,
but that all should come to repentance.
God's burden for souls is evident in Calvary,
where his only begotten son hung naked on
a bloody cross as a substitute for sin.
I believe God's heart broke that day, if
I may so speak, when God had to
turn his face away from his bloodstained son,
as he became a curse for us.
And I believe, friends, that God's heart breaks
every time he has to send one of
his creation to a smoking furnace of hell.
And I believe you are breaking God's heart
right now by your rejection of his son
and by your willful slavery to sin.
By his grace, the Holy Spirit has been
wooing you in answer to someone's prayers, and
you still strive against the Spirit because of
your love for self and sin.
Peter said that God wants all to come
to repentance.
Maybe you're a good church member who has
never repented.
Repentance means that the love of sin dies.
Maybe you're sitting in the presumed safety of
a church sanctuary, but your legs dangle over
hell below.
Like I said, I believe God gives grace
to an evangelist to have a burden for
souls.
I've spent entire nights out of bed on
my knees, crying out to God with tears
streaming down my face that God would break
some hardened sinner's heart in the morning service
where I was due to preach.
And God did just that.
He answered that prayer as a young man
came bounding down the aisle, jumping up and
down, exclaiming, God saved me.
He really saved me.
God saves man because he has a burden
for souls.
It broke God's heart to kick Adam and
Eve out of paradise, but they had become
unfit for it because of sin.
And man today is unfit for heaven because
of the very same thing, sin.
God had such a burden for souls he
sent his son to suffer and die in
the stead of sinners.
Amazing love.
Oh, what a burden for souls.
And Christ Jesus was obedient unto death on
a bloody cross because of his burden for
souls.
I have one verse today, friends, from a
message, and one verse alone, and I believe
this verse says it all.
In Ecclesiastes 1.4 we read, one generation
passes away and another generation cometh, but the
earth abideth forever.
This tear-soaked earth abides forever as one
generation comes and lives and dies, and another
generation follows after it.
If you want a reminder of the brevity
of life and the people who have walked
this earth, go take a stroll through your
local graveyard and read the names on all
those headstones from past generations.
Death, friends, is no respecter of persons, for
all men die.
There is a calendar up in glory, with
a certain date circled in red, and that
day is your red-letter day, friend, when
it is your turn to die.
God knows the end as well as the
beginning, and he knows the exact date of
your impending death.
Death can come to you quite suddenly, without
any notice or advance warning.
For man also knoweth not his time, as
the fishes that are taken in an evil
net, and as the birds that are caught
in the snare.
So are the sons of man snared in
an evil time, when it falleth suddenly upon
them.
Last December, I was at my daughter's college
graduation, and afterwards we went out to celebrate
at a local restaurant, and the very next
day I was lying in an ambulance on
my way to the hospital with a sudden
heart attack.
All four of my arteries were blocked ninety
-five percent, and I was a ticking time
bomb ready to explode.
I didn't know previously I had heart trouble
until then.
Well, I lay in the hospital for the
next sixty days, while I had quadruple bypass
surgery and a pacemaker put in me, and
I say all that, because life is short
and unexpected.
For one day I was celebrating a thing,
and the next day I was standing on
the verge of eternity.
One generation passes away, and another generation cometh,
but the earth abideth forever.
It is my prayer, friends, that the Holy
Spirit would speak to hearts through this message
and disturb someone, that God would take your
blinders off and show you where you were
going, that the very devils in hell would
jump up out of those twisting flames and
make a grab at you to get your
attention and show you that you deserve nothing
but to go to hell.
You are guilty of breaking God's strict holy
law, and God says he will in no
wise clear the guilty, that there are chains
awaiting you in that prison of outer darkness,
where the screams and shrieks of the damned
will so unsettle you that terror will be
your only companion, like Charles Dickens' three spirits
that visited Scrooge.
I pray that your sins will now rise
and appear before you and haunt you and
disturb you and bring conviction to awaken and
alarm you to your present danger of dying
in your sins and being thrust into a
Christless eternity, God could remove you, friend, from
this earth quite suddenly, especially with a plague
in the air.
Turn to God and become a seeker of
him, and pray that you will receive a
revealed Christ for forgiveness of sin.
Jesus is the only remedy for sin, but
he can't save unless that remedy is applied.
I know I'm a sinner, and the only
hope for pitiful little E.
A.
Johnston is when Christ's life is laid down
and applied to me.
You must get to Christ, friend, and get
under his blood.
Oh, friend, I hope you don't hear only
this poor preacher's shaky voice, but that God,
in his mercy and by his grace, that
you will hear his voice of authority as
it comes in power and majesty to you.
Only God can raise a dead man to
life, but you have to hear from him.
God says in Isaiah, Look unto me, and
be ye saved, all the ends of the
earth, for I am God, and there is
none else.
And Jesus said, I am the bread of
life.
He that cometh to me shall never hunger,
and he that believeth on me shall never
thirst.
The gospel is for the hungry, the weary,
and the thirsty.
Let me ask you, friend, are you hungry
for God?
Are you weary of your sins?
Are you thirsty for Christ?
Then come to him, and believe on him,
and own him as your Savior and Lord.
Throw down your shotgun of rebellion at his
nail-pierced feet, and surrender all you are
to all he is, and he is Lord.
He is Lord.
I don't want you to go to hell,
friend.
I'm being true to your soul.
Repent of your sins, and lay that sin
burden down, and come clean with God, and
come to that bloodstained Christ who is the
only refuge and remedy for sin.
Get serious with God, friend, and he will
get serious with you.
God has a burden for souls.
Let us pray.