Father, we thank you that we have access
to the throne.
We thank you for the old song that
says, living he loved me, dying he saved
me, buried he carried my sins far away,
rising he justified freely forever.
One day he's coming, O glorious day.
We thank you Lord Jesus, you died and
you rose again, you ascended.
We haven't much confidence in our prayers, but
Lord we're confident in the fact you're at
the right hand of the Father, making intercession
for this very meeting here in Anaheim this
morning.
Lord we say have your way.
Lord let the truth we've already heard penetrate
deeper than our heads into our hearts.
Lord I pray give us a wholesale burial
this morning.
Let people die by the thousand in this
meeting and rise again in newness of life.
Let China feel this meeting this morning.
Let Africa feel this meeting today.
God I pray just get hold of people
who from today will be slaves of the
Lord Jesus Christ.
Give us the vision that will never never
dim.
We give you praise in Jesus name.
I told Jackie she should have carried on.
I noticed half the congregation's leaving, now I
have to go.
You see the difference between Jackie's preaching, she
leads the way whereas we guys just point
the way.
I said to her a few minutes ago
I wish about 50 of you guys that
are you know slowly dying in that theological
cemetery would get newness of life and go
join her staff.
I mean go join her staff for six
months just as the janitor.
You'd learn a lot more than going to
college.
Yeah but the trouble is you folks are
clapping for somebody else not for yourself.
To make just one sweeping statement, it seems
to me that Christianity began with the apostles
and it's ending with the apostates.
An apostate is not a man who has
wrong doctrine and he runs here and there.
An apostate is somebody who comes up to
the light and backs off from it.
We have thousands of preachers in the country
today who backed off from the truth that
they really know.
I've got the most amazing message to share
with you this morning.
I would say it's not really a text
so much as a message.
It's the orphan, yes okay this subject is
the orphan of our preaching and the Cinderella
of our theology.
Don't get nervous with that.
I preached on the judgment seat of Christ
in a conference some years ago and I
didn't know.
I thought it was wonderful.
I was having a great time.
Then when I finished they said how long
you preached?
I said no they said three hours and
30 minutes.
I'm in training to go to to Hong
Kong.
They have services last six and seven hours.
Isn't that wonderful?
Boy if we had services like that we'd
need a miraculous.
We'd have to raise the dead.
Okay the second letter of Paul to the
Corinthians chapter 6.
Verse 10 says we must all appear before
the judgment seat of Christ that everyone may
receive the things done in his body according
to that which he has done whether it
be good or bad knowing therefore the terror
of the Lord we persuade men but we
are made we are made manifest unto God.
Let me read the first text for you
which is from the book of the Revelation
chapter 20.
Revelation 20 verse 11.
And I saw a great white throne and
him that sat upon it from whose place
the heavens and the earth fled away and
there was found no place for them.
I saw the dead small in great notice.
He says I see.
Read the book of Revelation so many times
he says I see I see I see
because he is a seer.
Where did he see all this?
I mean God God tears the clouds away,
takes the veil off the future and he
sees into eternity.
But he saw it on a prison island,
a place called Patmos which in in the
day of the apostle John was just a
prison colony where they dumped the worst characters
in the whole world and it was there
that God revealed himself to him.
You say the heavens don't open to me.
They open for Stephen when he was battered
to death when his body was bloody and
broken and suddenly the heavens open.
We want heaven to open to us in
a conference but God most likely will take
us to a place of persecution and privation.
Pentecost in the New Testament meant to be
married to poverty, persecution, privation, prisons, pain.
Today Pentecost is married to prosperity and security
and happiness.
The very opposite of what it was originally
in the word of God.
Jackie used a word this morning that hasn't
been used the whole week as far as
I remember and that's the word eternity.
I have a sign in my office and
everybody that comes in sees the sign first.
Lord keep me eternity conscious.
We talk very much and very often about
Jonathan Edwards, maybe the greatest preacher America ever
had, but remember that for seven days he
prostrated himself before God.
Forever there was that moving of the spirit
of God.
And do you remember his prayer?
Lord stamp eternity on my eyeballs.
And once he saw eternity he never saw
anything else.
It's a very dangerous thing to pray because
as Jackie said this morning it's a very
costly experience.
It's not watching a video, it's going through
a process of being broken and remade and
anointed by God.
Make me eternity conscious.
One of the most forgotten characters in America
I think is Stephen Grellet.
That's g-r-e-l-l-e-t.
If ever you see a book on his
life or part of his life read it.
He was a French nobleman.
He came to this country.
His father had vast wealth.
His father was a friend of the king
of France.
He lived in Limoges where they still make
the most beautiful china in France.
And he got into a Quaker meeting in
America.
John Wimber used to be a Quaker.
I don't know what he is now but
he used to be a Quaker.
And so this young man goes into a
meeting.
He comes out.
He walks in a field and at the
side of the field there's a forest.
And suddenly the wind began to work in
the leaves.
And he said every leaf on every tree
became a tongue.
And they all began to say the same
word eternity, eternity, eternity.
He said I fell on the ground like
Saul of Tarsus.
And when he got up he was completely
transformed.
He had what Jackie says everything else was
blurred.
All he saw after that every waking moment
of his life was eternity.
So what did he do?
Organize nursery.
He went to the wondrous cross where the
prince of glory died.
And he died to self.
He died to ambition.
He died to the throne of France.
He died to prosperity.
Do you know what he did?
He walked into France.
He walked over the Alps.
He went to every country in Europe.
He walked over the Alps when he had
to walk in time on his hands and
knees because of the snow and the ice.
He learned as many languages as I have
fingers and toes.
He sat in the gutter and learned languages
from children.
He went into slave camps.
He went into leper colonies.
He even went to the pope.
And everywhere he went he had the same
message of redeeming love.
That that vision never blurred.
I've read about that man.
I still read about him.
I've read about him for at least 60
years.
And every time I read I shrink and
shrink and shrink.
Here is a man that had eternity in
his eyes but also he had eternity in
his soul.
So here is John on the Isle of
Patmos.
Here's a paraphrase I think by an American
writer.
I dreamed that a great judgment morning had
come and the trumpet had blown.
I dreamed that the nations had gathered for
judgment before the white throne.
From the throne came a bright shining angel
and he stood on the land and the
sea and he swore with his hand raised
to heaven that time was no longer to
be.
And oh what a weeping and wailing when
the lost heard of their fate.
They cried for the rocks and the mountains.
They cried but their prayer was too late.
The rich man was there but his money
had melted and vanished away.
A pauper he stood at the judgment.
His debts were too heavy to pay.
The great man was there but his greatness
when death came was left far behind.
The angel had opened the records.
No trace of his greatness could find.
And then again oh what a weeping and
wailing when the lost heard of their fate.
They cried for the rocks and the mountains.
They cried but their prayer was too late.
The gambler was there and the drunkard and
the man who sold them the drink and
the fellow who gave them the license and
in hell they forever did sink.
The moral man came to the judgment but
his self-righteous rags would not do.
The men who crucified Jesus passed off as
moral men too.
The soul that put off salvation.
Not tonight I'll get saved by and by.
No time now for religion at last.
He found time to die.
I know what a weeping and wailing when
the lost heard of their fate.
I'm sure that the hundreds of people this
week have heard the voice of God and
would not obey.
You see there's a sense of independence in
the world today.
Oh nobody's going to push me around.
It's a very wonderful age of science isn't
it?
Isn't it a stupid thing?
We spend billions and billions of dollars financing
men who explore archaeology to find out where
we came from that nobody knows where we're
going.
So what's the good of going to UCLA
to study some science like that we don't
know where we're going.
I've often asked students if you could live
one day with Jesus what day would it
be?
You know almost all of them say the
same thing.
I'd like to have seen Jesus walking on
the water or I'd like to see Jesus
doing this.
But one of the most amazing days is
yet to come.
You see this world thinks that it left
Jesus Christ behind 2,000 years ago.
I remember one day I was sitting in
my office the door burst open.
I knew it's either a burglar or Keith
Green.
And it was Keith.
He comes bouncing in gives me a grab.
Papa he says talk to me a minute.
And he said I've just discovered all roads
lead to the judgment seat of Christ.
I've made a world of difference we discussed
that just a week before that.
And he said I've suddenly realized that all
of us at all times anywhere we're going
to the judgment seat of Christ.
You see it must have been very wonderful
when Jesus when somebody said to Jesus my
brother's dead.
Well don't worry about that but he's been
dead three days already.
Well don't worry about that.
So they went up to the cemetery.
And like like I'm preaching this morning to
the cemetery but anyhow.
And have you noticed when he went to
the cemetery Jesus didn't pray for Lazarus he
just spoke the word.
Have you noticed that when the man at
the beautiful gate of the temple was twisted
and distorted and he was a tourist attraction
for 30 years.
Jesus passed him by.
Peter passed him by.
John passed him by.
But one day in the in the in
the plan of God.
Peter and John go to him.
And they don't say we were got filled
with the Holy Ghost yesterday we speak in
tongues.
They just said look on us.
And immediately he did that.
They said look on us as though by
our power our holiness.
They wanted to get Jesus Christ the glory.
But they didn't pray for him they just
spoke the word and he was delivered.
So they go to the cemetery with all
the big shots there.
And Jesus just says.
Can you imagine him standing there with all
the critics.
The Jewish theologians.
The Romans and others looking on.
And here's a one man by himself.
And there's a stone and behind it there's
a man who's dead.
And Jesus didn't pray and call down heaven
and call down angels.
He just speaks the word Lazarus.
Boy I'd like to know how he said
it.
Lazarus come forth.
You know why he said Lazarus come forth.
Because if he'd said come forth all the
cemetery would have come.
Because he was the resurrection and the life.
And he says Lazarus come forth.
And they said what kind of a man
is this.
We were on the sea the other day.
The sea obeys him.
The winds obey him.
Demons obey him.
We've seen people go demon possessed.
I don't know how many of you were
here yesterday that brother what's his name Foster.
Did you hear Foster.
How many raised your hand.
Aren't these Englishmen wonderful preachers.
After all Jackie's from England.
She doesn't wear a pigtail.
If I go to Hong Kong I'm going
to wear a pigtail.
Oh I'm sorry I didn't ask my wife.
But boy it was wonderful yesterday to listen.
I mean know what happened a hundred years
ago.
His emphasis on prayer.
His emphasis on street meetings.
His emphasis on rescuing the perishing and care
for the dying.
Some of you men are pretty stupid I
know.
But you don't fish in your bathtub do
you.
Preachers go fishing every Sunday in the same
church.
The same bathtub.
There's people going past the street.
Moral lepers, lame, incurable, blind, demon possessed.
You see we can't you know we have
not exported Christianity.
We've exported American Christianity to other countries.
We've exported English Christianity and it's been bankrupt
a hundred years.
How many go in the power of the
Spirit.
When you go to the bookstore I suppose
you will.
There's a little set of books there.
Oh there's one book you could get on
the ministry of John Lane.
Have you read the ministry of John Lane.
He had a hundred thousand certified healings.
He raised the dead.
He had some of the most amazing movings
of the Spirit of God in Africa.
This is a crisis hour in history for
America.
As I said Monday night.
Now Jesus pinpointed this hour in which we
live.
He says, I'll tell you where we are.
He says as it was in the days
of Noah.
Well what were the days of Noah.
Look at the sixth chapter of Genesis verse
11.
It says what the earth was filled with
violence.
Is it filled with violence now?
There's a man there can put his finger
on a button and wipe out maybe half
of the American army.
The earth is filled with violence.
As we heard this morning you can't walk
down some street you get murdered.
And the earth was corrupt before God.
Isn't it amazing that men in up in
Washington are accused of dabbling with millions of
dollars and when you bring them to justice
say well everybody does it.
Isn't that comforting to know all those guys
are sharks up there.
But this is the most critical hour in
American history, in world history.
And maybe the answer to it is here
this morning.
If God can open our eyes.
I read Hebrews 11 and it crushes me.
I get charged with preaching sinless perfection because
I believe Jesus Christ gives us victory over
sin.
I don't have to be a victim of
sin.
I'm a victor over sin.
I can have the world of flesh and
the devil under my feet.
We are more than conquerors through what?
Our theology?
Our gifts of the spirit?
No more than conquerors through him.
Here's a guy bringing his lunch and his
supper.
Can you imagine going to a meeting in
China where they bring meals in?
I think you're insulting God.
So throw it on the floor.
But anyhow we are more than conquerors through
him that loved us.
There's a dying world out there.
It's damned, it's doomed, it's dying, it's blind.
Is there anything more cruel than putting a
blind man on a road when you know
he'll fall in a pit a hundred feet
up the road?
Well that's what civilization is going to do.
We've made a full wheel to come right
back today to slavery.
There are more slaves in the world at
this moment than any period in history.
But we're volunteer slaves.
We slaves, we, some of you Christians have
voted to smoke yourself to death.
Men in the street have voted to get
venereal disease and some other thing.
We've got slaves but we've got slaves in
the sanctuary and God needs to deliver us.
Okay Jesus goes and says there, Lazarus come
forth.
How did he come forth?
He was bound hand and foot.
He comes out like this you know shuffling
along.
What's the next thing?
Loose him and let him go.
Some of you have been shuffling for 20
years.
You're still bound, you're still gagged, you didn't
testify, you didn't sacrifice.
And God came here to liberate you.
Okay let's go back again we're going to
look at Lazarus.
Come forth and he comes forth.
Now what does Jesus say to him?
Oh oh oh I wish I'd seen you
the other day.
I wish I'd seen you when you opened
the eyes of the blind.
Bartimaeus on the road, he's another tourist attraction.
Now we've lost him.
I wish we'd seen his miracles.
And Jesus says this, listen there is coming
a day in which all who are in
the graves will hear the voice of God.
At the voice of Jesus Christ they will
rise, every one of them.
Every person that died away there from Adam
right down to the final moment.
Again as Jackie said it depends what you
see.
If you read that marvelous wonderful Hebrews 11.
I can read that.
You know people say again I preach sinless
perfection.
I do not.
I believe victory over sin.
Okay oh well the argument is you need
a little bit of sin to keep you
humble.
Why not have a lot and be real
humble?
I don't know sin that will do you
any good.
I don't know sin that will bring you
to maturity.
It will bind you.
It will keep you from maturity.
It will keep you from vision.
So go back to Hebrews 11.
What's it about?
Vision.
The scripture tells me Cain built a city.
John saw the city.
Abraham looked for a city.
Whose builder and maker is God.
But there's another man there.
A man who lived in a house worth
millions of dollars.
He was a statesman.
Read the seventh chapter of the Acts of
the Apostles.
And before ever God came on to Moses.
It says he was mighty in Egypt.
Because he was a statesman it said.
That Moses even before God touched him he
was a statesman.
Now he wasn't an orator because he, he
what did he do?
He stammered.
But he was a lawmaker.
And then suddenly he turns his back on
the richest family in the world.
And instead of having a seven course dinner
and people just bowing to him.
He runs out in his robe and he's
still wearing the same robe 40 years after.
It's all torn and tattered with chasing after
sheep.
There's a wonderful man you'll hear him at
the conference someday by the name of Carter
Conlon.
He's up in Canada.
He's the most anointed man I know in
the world maybe today.
What did he do?
He gave up his career in the, in
the police force, the criminal section.
And he went on the mountain for four
years.
Dear God how dare you go for four
years.
So you can't live four hours without your
TV.
I hope they'll bury it with you.
You'll need it where you're going.
But anyhow.
And there that beautiful man is.
He's been on the mountains four years with
God.
He's learned the ways of God.
He's come back ministering every week in the
anointing of the Spirit of God like nobody
I know today.
But we don't like loneliness.
We like the crowds.
Jesus spent 30 years before he ministered.
John the Baptist was with wild beasts 30
years.
Loneliness is the test.
Jesus says all who are in the graves.
Can you imagine that?
Nobody knows how millions, many millions of people
are there.
Let me say that a minute again.
Well I want to emphasize it that God
has an emphasis there.
Moses has a career coming up.
But why did he, what did he leave?
Moses you've left the treasure, you've been here
three years, 20 years, 30 years.
You could have been going down main streets
in a chariot.
Everybody by the means saying his majesty Moses.
And here you are in the backside of
the stinking sheep.
What are you doing here?
It says he forsook Egypt.
Now listen, he esteemed the reproach of Christ.
What do you mean?
Not the kingdom of Christ, not the glory
of Christ.
One day God pulled the skies back and
he saw.
What did he see?
He esteemed the reproach of Christ greater than
all the treasure of Egypt.
Why?
Because he had respect unto what?
The recompense of the reward.
Do you remember a song we used to
sing a few years ago?
It'd be worth it all when we see
Jesus.
Don't you think it will?
Life's trials will seem so small when we
see Christ.
One glimpse of his dear face all sorrow
will erase.
So bravely run the race.
You see the apostle day once, one apostle
Paul sat down one day.
You read the last verses of the fourth
chapter, the second epistle of Paul to the
Corinthians.
What does it say?
Our light affliction which is but a foment.
In God's name what does he mean our
light affliction?
Read the eleventh chapter.
In weariness, in fastings, and night and day,
in the deep, in perils of unknown countrymen,
in perils of the deep, in perils of
false prophets.
And then he uses one word that covers
acres of suffering.
He says in deaths oft.
What does he mean in deaths oft?
There's a time when he died to sin,
but also he says I die daily.
That's the killer isn't it?
You can make a vow in here and
before you get out the devil will say
come down from the cross and you save
yourself.
That's the perennial challenge of the devil to
the believer.
Come down from the cross.
Why should Jackie give up fame and fortune?
She's gone out now.
She wasn't insulted.
She had an appointment.
If she'd run out I'd have shouted after
her.
She had to go.
But Jackie could have been a married woman
in England, married to some society.
She comes from a very high class family.
And there she plunged into a ghetto.
One of the rottenest places in the world.
And she has no children.
She has hundreds of children.
But you've got to keep your eye on
the ultimate.
I'm looking at God.
The city's builder and maker is God.
Moses forsakes everything.
He doesn't write a story about it.
Because he said I've seen the ultimate.
I'm looking at that day that Jesus Christ
is going to come in his majesty, in
his glory.
Millions of people have in thousands of churches
have said hundreds of times thy kingdom come.
Ask them what it means.
Do we believe one day he's going to
rule the whole world?
Every government will be under his dominion?
Do you believe that the city that has
no curse, it has no impurity, it has
no cheating politicians, it has no vice, it
has no corruption, everything is pure and holy.
That's the city of God that dear old,
uh, who was the guy who wrote the
city of God?
Augustine, thank you.
Did you know him personally?
Okay.
Augustine.
You know my dear old friend Dr. Tozer,
he's a marvelous man.
How many of you read Tozer's books?
How many of you haven't?
Good, well buy them, but buy mine first.
I never met a man who had an
intimacy with God like Dr. Tozer.
I spent many hours with him in prayer.
I mean he had a wonderful sense of
humor.
He was a little man with a narrow
face, and small shoulders, and a bit knock
-kneed.
And uh, he said, you know brother Leonard,
I go down the street, I see a
donkey.
He said, I wave to it and say,
hey brother I know you, what you like.
I have a long face too.
So, but he had an intimacy with God
which was most amazing, I thought.
He never shifted in any shape or form
from, from moving towards that great city.
Okay, the day is coming in the witch,
all over in the graves.
Can you imagine that?
16 million perished in World War I.
15 million perished right after it with an
epidemic of flu that swept the world.
How many men are going to die in
this war?
I don't know, and I, I hope not
many.
But they're going to come out of the
Roman Empire, the Medo-Persian Empire, every other
empire, everybody that's in the grave, at the
voice of the Son of God, they're going
to rise and come forward to judgment.
Do you think that Teddy Kennedy ever dreamed
he'd stand there with billions of people looking
on and see Jesus Christ?
You see, we'd rather sing that lovely hymn,
wouldn't we?
That little hymn of uh, John Wesley's, Gentle
Jesus, Meek and Mild.
Do you know that hymn?
I sang that at my mother's knee from,
until I was 10 years of age.
And uh, I'm just going to look a
minute here.
I saw a great white throne and him
that sat upon it.
Jackie was talking about vision.
Do you ever vision the Christ you're going
to see, not gentle Jesus, meek and mild?
Here's what he's like when you see him.
It says in Revelation chapter one, I turned
to see the voice that spake with me
and I saw some golden canvas.
Here is Jesus Christ, no longer a little
boy, no longer smacked in the face, no
longer somebody spits on him, no longer somebody
pulls his beard.
You sang it at every knee shall bow.
Were you singing a bit of a lovely
song?
Oh hail the power of, oh that with
yonder sacred song we at his feet may
fall, when the most ultimate glories will be
when we see Jesus Christ and every knee
shall bow.
If the Catholics were going to be judged
by the Pope, they might get away with
it.
If the Buddhists were going to be judged
by the Buddha, they might get away with
it.
Confucius, we're going to get judged by Confucius,
they might do it.
But no, so the Buddha is going to
bow the knee to Jesus.
Confucius is going to bow the knee to
Jesus.
Every knee shall bow, every king.
Who is this man despised and rejected of
men?
What does Paul say to Timothy?
He gives Jesus a little cab in all
of his own.
He says, Jesus is the blessed and only
potentate, the King of kings and the Lord
of lords.