Is that the Christ that goes to the
office with you every day and you don't
testify to him?
Is that the Christ that you love and
you don't say grace publicly?
Is that the Christ in your home and
when folk come you take cocktails or something
just to be convenient?
Listen, Jesus Christ is the blessed and only
portrait that you say.
No, there have been kings in England, kings
in France, tsars in Russia, caliphs in Baghdad,
maharajas in...
There are millions of kings and rulers.
No, no, no, wait a minute.
He is the blessed and only potentate.
What do you mean the only potentate?
He's the only potentate who lived before he
was born.
He's the only potentate who lived after he
died.
He's the only potentate before whom every king
shall bow.
I'll tell you what, Hollywood up the road
there, they made all kinds of films.
They made the kings of films of David
and Bathsheba.
They could do that without rehearsing.
They know enough about adultery.
They made other films.
I'll tell you what, all Hollywood will never
make a film of the judgment seat of
Christ.
You talk about bowing the knee to Jesus.
What does it say?
His head and his hairs were white like
wool, white as snow, his eyes were the
flame of fire, his feet like burnished brass,
his face like the sun in its strength.
Can you imagine that?
His voice like the sound of many waters.
You talk about the voice of Whitefield.
They said he could say to a congregation
of 10,000 people, Mesopotamia.
He said it like the Welsh people talk
and people would weep.
Even when he said that.
What do you think the voice of the
Son of God is going to be there
when there's a thousand billion people there?
Friends, I'm going to heaven.
I don't know where you're going to heaven.
It's your business.
I'm going to heaven.
I don't want to go to heaven.
I mean, not just to heaven, that's the
first stop.
I want to do better than that.
I want to go to marriage, supper of
the Lamb.
I want to do better than that.
I want to go be part of the
bride.
Anybody going with me?
You know, I love that music of Handel's.
I can play.
I play everything by Handel.
But I like Handel's music.
I like his water music, but boy do
I like his, what do you call it,
his oratorio.
You know, King of Kings, them other sopranos
go up and I think they're going to
burst their lungs.
King of Kings and Lord of Lords and
he'll reign for 10 years.
Oh no, sorry, 10,000.
No?
What a bunch of unbelievers you are.
Oh no, he's going to reign for 10
,000.
No, no, well you sang it in church
Sunday, didn't you?
Well, we've been there 10,000 years.
A silly Englishman wrote that.
I'm not going to heaven for the weekend.
A man asked me once in a meeting,
he said, have you read my wife's book?
I said, yeah, I didn't know she wrote
one, didn't have a wife even.
Oh, she wrote a book.
She went to heaven for seven days.
When she came back, we had to pull
the bed from the wall and she tripped
all round.
I can't do it because my legs are
weak, but she tripped all round the bed
for seven days.
I said, what a terrible thing.
He said, what?
I said, listen brother, once I get inside
those pearly gates, all the angels in heaven
are not going to kick me back.
Do you think I'm coming back to this
dump?
You think you've got oranges in orange state.
You've never seen it.
Oranges in heaven are bigger than footballs.
Well, that's evangelistically speaking.
But we're too earthbound.
We live on earth too much.
We see too much TV.
By God, you ought to be living in
heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
When we see him, his air is white
as snow.
Why?
A token of his passion.
I say we'd rather sing John Wesley's little
hymn.
Gentle Jesus, meek and mild.
And the other hymn that he wrote, all
the tokens of his passion, knowing glory still
he bears.
And then he goes and stands and says,
and every eye shall see him.
And then what else does he say?
Robed in dreadful majesty.
Can you think of Christ with eyes like
a flame of fire?
With feet like burnished brass?
With face like the sun that's straight?
Mary Antoinette had a problem most of you
women don't have.
You guys need to be patient with your
wives.
Oh, it takes a half an hour to
get ready.
I'm in bed when she comes.
Sure, she used to fill all those cracks
up in her face.
She spent 25 years doing it.
She's no better off now.
She fills all the cracks in her face.
Then she gets up in the morning and
washes it all off and fills them all
with powder.
Then dabs her ears and dabs her nose
and pencils her eyelashes and sticks her eyelashes
on, pencils her eyebrows, clips her nails on.
Poor soul.
What a mess these women are in.
Do you know what I think about Jackie?
She's gone now.
She sat in our house last year and
I kept looking at her feet.
Beautiful are the what?
The feet.
Has any woman ever had better feet?
When I sat at the side of her,
I was remembering when I sat with another
famous woman and her name was Marichal, which
is French for Marshall.
She went to France and had revival.
I stood on a platform with her in
1940.
No, wait a minute, 35, 36.
And she was at the side of me
and the tears were spilling down.
Boy, was she ugly.
She's as wrinkled as a prune.
And the tears were bouncing down her face
and she's singing about vision that we heard
this morning.
I can't remember the first verse of the
hymn she wrote, but I remember the second
one.
There is a love constraining me to go
and seek the last.
I yield, O Lord, by all to thee
to save at any cost.
There is a fire that falls on me
as in the upper room, destroying all carnality,
dispelling fear and gloom.
There is a life to have given me,
a life divine and strong.
And I remember that woman went to the
underworld of Paris and had revival.
I got the whole book on the thing.
The Spirit of God moved on her.
It's true as Jackie said this morning, revival
doesn't begin with comfort and creature comfort, you
have two cars and two refrigerators and you
don't know what to eat when you go
in a restaurant.
It comes when we're starving.
But if you got hungry, you'd run here.
If you hadn't eaten for a month, you'd
go out there, you'd think potato chips were
made of gold.
But you see with all the creature comfort.
It's the same, we go to service, we
know when to start, we know when to
sit down.
We laugh at some people, they're full of
ritual.
You're full of ritual.
The first 10 minutes you clap, the second
minute you dance, the third 10 minutes you
do something else, and you come out stoned
at the end of it.
But not when the Holy Ghost is there.
I say I saw that blessed woman, let
me go back a moment.
At the voice of the Son of God,
every man is going to rise.
Julius Caesar, every other Caesar, every other Tsar,
every other king that ever lived, every criminal
that ever lived.
They're all going to come forward at the
voice of the Son of God.
Last year in this enlightened country, 10,000
teenagers perished driving cars while they were drunk.
But the brewers are going to have to
answer for that, for supplying that liquor.
Every person that is going to stand there,
at the judgment seat of Christ.
And the books were opened.
What kind of books?
The book of memory.
You say I don't have a very good
memory.
You will when the finger of Almighty God
touches it, your mind is suddenly will go
back to everything you ever did in your
lifestyle.
And if you carry your sins there, you'll
be judged for them.
You can get rid of the burden now,
you can't get rid of the bondage now,
you get rid of the failure now.
But can you understand millions and millions and
millions of people?
Gabriel suddenly says, listen attentively.
Maybe Teddy Kennedy comes and has to explain
why that girl died in that thing.
She didn't drown because there's no water in
the lands.
What's the problem?
It's going to be uncovered then.
There's no secret we've gone.
Every knee shall bow and every sin shall
be opened up for exposure.
And every commandment we've ever broken, we'll have
to pay the price for it.
If our sins are unforgiven, there are 12
books or 10 books.
The 10 commandments we have to give an
answer for.
As I said on Sunday night, this is
the darkest period in history.
Why?
Because we've turned out the lamp of witness
in the streets.
The darkness of this day is the church's
gift to the world when she needs light.
The brother mentioned yesterday, for the foster they
have street meetings.
I gave 50 years of my life to
street preaching in England.
Preaching at midday, preaching at midnight.
There they'd sell them at a meeting that
people didn't kneel in the street.
We waited for people to come out of
movie houses.
And there they stood in hundreds at night.
And we stood in the rain sometimes.
We took off our coats and said, if
you want to confess Christ, come and kneel
with us.
And we didn't say, just say, I'm sorry.
We stayed a half an hour or an
hour with them until they were really born
again of the Spirit of God.
The people outside don't know that there's deliverance
from sin.
After all, most of you go back to
your old ways.
Doesn't Paul writing, was it to Colossians says,
we are his workmanship.
Are we?
Did people see a change in your life
when you're back?
I mean, it's all right seeing blessed assurance
here.
But do we have assurance we can go
into the world and stand against the world
and the flesh and the devil?
You know, we say some very silly things,
don't we?
You know, you hear people say, well, you
only live once.
Forget it, we live twice.
We live once on this planet, and then
we're going to live in the presence of
God.
Are we going to be judged before we
get there?
I don't know all the great hymns.
I think I know hundreds of them, and
I like them.
But you know, one of the most rollicking
hymns that I ever learned in my life
was written in America.
I'll tell you how it begins.
My eyes have seen what?
Okay, when did you see it?
You're singing to a football match or something.
My eyes have seen the coming of the
glory of the Lord.
Did you see him coming with ten thousand
of his saints to revenge his death on
the cross?
Do you see him calling to account all
the bankers, calling to bank all the guys
that are manipulating this oil situation right now,
calling to judgment every wicked man, whether he
lived on the devil's island, Alcatraz, or wherever
he lived, that every man is coming to
judgment.
Nobody's going to escape.
The kings of will come.
The prime ministers will come.
Everybody will come.
One of the most notorious of all the
trials in history was the trial of Warren
Hastings.
He got into India at the time when,
and when England invaded it made millions of
dollars.
And he twisted all the money and he
was brought to England for trial.
Do you know how long his trial lasted?
Seven years.
He sat there on the wool sack.
Edmund Burke, the greatest orator since Demosthenes was
there.
And there's a man sitting, of course with
no TV cameras.
There were reporters there.
And here is a man, one of the
greatest brains in the world, a colossal brain.
And he twisted it and went to the
devil.
And his trial took seven years.
Edmund Burke stood in front of him every
day and recited the crime.
And Edmund Burke never had a note.
He could stand there day after day like
reading a page out of that man's life.
You did this on a certain day.
You did that on a certain day.
You did something else.
Here's a man who's had the world at
his feet.
And he said, when Burke was speaking and
pointing to me, it seemed as though his
finger was like an arrow going into my
heart.
It seemed as though fire was burning.
I was humiliated.
He said, that was the most horrible thing
I've ever had.
I felt the most culpable man in the
world.
In other words, I felt the biggest devil.
He uncovered my lust.
He uncovered everything.
Come on, would you like to go now,
unforgiven as you are, or even as a
Christian, would you like to go and bow
the knee to one whose eyes are a
flame of fire?
Every time I went to see Dr. Tozer,
to walk into his presence was an event.
I just wished he'd live longer.
He died at 66 years of age in
1963.
Why didn't God take me and let him
live?
He would have been more useful to God
than I am.
But I remember walking in one day and
he stopped me as he often did on
the track.
He said, Leonard, I want to tell you
something.
You talked about the judgment seat last time
you were here.
And he said, I've been thinking about it
ever since.
And he said, Leonard look, I want to
tell you, I'm going to be judged not
for what I've done, but why I did
it.
Did you ever realize that?
Not for what I didn't do, but why
didn't I do it?
Who gagged me?
Who bound me?
No one let me do it.
The fear of man, the fear of losing
a job, the fear of the deacons kicking
me out in God's name.
But going back to Edmund Burke, he sat
there, he wriggled, he screamed.
The men in the gallery looked down and
saw that's the man that's been representing us
in India.
He's been feeding himself, he's been stealing, he's
been lying, he's been cheating for seven whole
years.
Friend, what are you going to do when
you stand before a thousand billion people at
the judgment seat?
There'll be nobody there to help you.
The women you lusted with, the men you
drank with, the fellows you cheated with, it's
all going to be, the lid is going
to be taken off.
It's going to be one awesome, awesome judgment.
I remind you again of the lovely hymn.
I remember the first time I heard this
played in England.
I'm sitting in a pew.
I had a very wonderful mother.
She was very beautiful, I suppose you can
see that, but anyhow.
The Apostle Paul says God separated him from
his mother's womb.
I think I hold a record nobody else
in the world holds.
It wasn't two months after I was born,
it wasn't two days after, it wasn't two,
no it wasn't two months, it wasn't two
weeks, it wasn't two hours after I was
born I was in a prayer meeting.
Isn't that something?
My mother didn't tell me till 20 years
after.
Good Lord, I'm glad she didn't.
The first day I came home from a
little Bible college, she put her arms around
me, she said Len this is a great
day.
She said you know that two hours after
you were born, the midwife tripped her out
of the room.
I was born properly and I wasn't born
in one of these baby factories that they
call hospitals.
I was born properly.
I was born, I didn't have some big
fat doctor that never knew anything about children.
I had a midwife delivered me, that's biblical.
Be born at home and a midwife.
So you ladies who are pregnant know what
to do now.
You can put that in the offering when
you come tonight.
But two hours after I was born, when
the midwife slipped out of the room, my
mother put her hand on me in bed
and prayed this prayer, Lord.
She prayed for me every day for nine
months when I was protected, but now I'm
in the world.
And two hours after I'm born, on the
bed of the side my mother laid her
hand out and prayed, God make this boy
a preacher or not let him live.
Well if I'd heard that I'd be terrified.
I'm even terrified now when I think about
it.
What a wonderful prevalence.
Listen to what you've sung, you've forgotten about
it.
My eyes have seen the glory of the
coming of the Lord.
He's trampling out the vintage where is what?
Grapes of wrath are.
No we're going to sit down and eat
them.
That's how we live.
Where the grapes of wrath are stored, he
hath sounded forth the trumpet that should never
found retreat.
Oh sorry I should have gone in the
same verse.
He's trampling out the vintage where the grapes
of wrath are stored.
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of his
what?
Terrible swift sword.
He's not gentle Jesus, meek and mild.
He's robed in majesty.
He's so blinding that if God didn't screen
our eyes, we wouldn't even be able to
look at him.
I was saying about Mary Antoinette, the most
beautiful woman I ever was in France.
She grieved the king.
What did he do?
He put her in the Bastille.
You've never seen the Bastille.
When you go to see the home of
another Englishman, he's partly English, George Washington.
When you go to his old home, you
come out of the kitchen, go around the
corner and across to the right, there's a
model of the Bastille.
The walls were 30 feet thick.
They put this little French lady in there.
She grieved the king.
When she went in, she was the most
beautiful woman in the world.
Her face looked like enamel.
It was so gorgeous.
She had a hairstyle that she made famous.
And there she is.
She's led into prison at night.
She's put in a dark prison cell, lonely
in the Bastille.
She heard the clock strike midnight, strike one,
two, three, four.
She's going to die at eight o'clock
in the morning.
At eight o'clock, a man comes in
and there's a little gorgeous lady, the most
beautiful woman in the world.
She no longer has gorgeous black hair.
She no longer has a flawless skin.
Her hair is as white as snow.
Her skin is all wrinkled.
She went to be a hundred years old
in a night.
Why?
Because she knew she's going to lay that
pretty head on the guillotine.
He's going to cut down up it goes
and a bloody head goes down on the
floor.
When I see Jesus Christ, his hair is
as white as snow.
Why?
Lo, the tokens of his passion, though inglorious,
still he bears.
Cause of endless exultation to his ransomed worshippers.
When I see Jesus Christ, he's going to
look a million years old.
His hair will be as white as snow,
his eyes like flames of fire, his feet
like burnished brass, his face like the sun
that's trenched.
Do you wonder, it says in this same
chapter that the heavens and the earth fled
away from him.
What a terrifying aspect.
But he's pulling out his terrible swift sword.
He has sounded forth a trumpet that shall
never call retreat.
Listen, I want to tell you something.
There's not a thousand sudden Hussains can keep
Jesus Christ from coming.
A thousand divorces today, every hour on the
hour won't do it.
A thousand bastards born won't do it.
A thousand drunkards won't do it.
There's one thing keeps Jesus Christ from coming
back.
That is the bride is not ready.
Come on, would you like Jesus Christ to
come now, five minutes from now, just as
you are, without repairing your prayer life?
Without putting straight some of those things that
are wrong in your life?
Without apologizing to some of those people whose
hearts you know you've broken?
He's not going to give us a day's
notice.
He's coming in a moment in the kingdom.
When we see him we should be like
him.
Not when we see him we have an
hour to get ready to be like him.
He's going to come with his terrible swift
sword.
He is sifting out the hearts of men
before his judgment seat.
This is a judgment seat today.
This is your privilege to get away from
your condemnation.
Get away from your failure.
Get away from your unbelief.
Get away from your selfishness.
Get away from your pride.
There are people in hell that died multimillionaires
and give every blessed penny they have to
sit in your seat this morning.
Just have one more chance.
Oh I know it's popular to preach a
second chance.
Don't believe it.
Did Adam get a second chance?
You sin every day, thought, word and deed.
How many times did Adam sin?
He only sinned once and he got kicked
out of the garden.
And God put flaming cherubim there.
Not seraphim, cherubim.
Cherubim are always there to guard.
We sin with impunity every day.
That's not God's will.
That's Romanism, Buddhism, any other ism.
It's not Christianity.
Christianity is victory over sin.
Christianity is not that I cannot sin.
It's that I don't want to sin.
Do you think I want some other woman
in my life?
I've crossed the Atlantic at least maybe 18
times in that big old ship you've got
stuck up there, the Queen Elizabeth.
And women come and say, would you like
to walk the deck with me or shall
we have a drink together?
I've never, I think I've crossed the Atlantic
about 20 times.
I've never had a woman in my room
even if they want counsel, no siree.
I've kept my vows by the grace of
God.
My neighbor, the father of my neighbor died
last year.
He and his wife have been married 72
years.
Isn't that wonderful?
72 years and that old man never had
a girlfriend.
I mean, never had another girlfriend.
If I can be true to my precious
wife, can't I be true to God?
I don't care how beautiful and rich other
women have been.
I've stayed in castles, I've stayed in all
kinds of places and that doesn't trouble me
at all.
I gave my heart, my life to a
precious woman I've kept faithful.
Well, can't I do that for the King
of kings and the Lord of lords?
I was on the edge of hell.
Oh to grace, how great a debtor daily
I'm constrained to be.
Let that grace, Lord, like a fetter, bind
my yielding heart to thee.
Prone to wonder, Lord, I, it's rubbish.
Oh, you stand in church and sing without
a tear.
It was written by an Englishman to, it
was written by the guy that wrote, uh,
what's his name, John Newton.
He wrote Amazing Grace, which is wonderful.
He writes a silly thing like that.
Prone to wonder, Lord, I feel it.
You stand in church so piously.
Prone to wonder, Lord.
You know, you're coming on the stage.
I don't like choirs.
I see a choir coming in.
I think it's a church clan coming.
We sing so piously as though we're humbled
to sing prone to wonder.
Supposing I go to my wife and say,
darling, you're very lovely.
I mean, I just, is it your birthday
today, Martha?
When, tomorrow?
She's waving me down.
That, that's her deaf and dumb language to
me.
She always does that when she's over.
When I'm getting too hot to voice to,
she goes, I think, I think it's either
today or tomorrow.
She'll be 80.
Isn't that wonderful?
She's sweet and lovely.
We've been married 52 years.
People ask me what's the secret of marriage.
I say, being of one mind, hers.
Would you believe in 52 years, we've only
had two little quarrels.
They weren't real quarrels.
In 52 years, we've lived in peace and
joy.
Dear Lord, when I see Jesus, his hair
is white as snow, his feet like burnished.
Nobody, Paul never saw him like that, no
one else.
Do you wonder this man endured all he
did on the Isle of Patmos?
It's a devil's island, the rottenest, corruptest people
in the world were there.
What happens, the compensation is God opens heaven.
He saw into eternity what nobody else had
ever seen.
Read the book of Revelation.
Yes, sir, he, he's getting his sword ready
to thrust in our generation.
There isn't a government in the world can
help us.
Mr. Bush can have all the optimism he
needs.
We're not getting out of this.
We're going in for judgment.
We've had more privilege.
We eat more food than anybody.
We drink more food than anybody.
I don't go in a, I don't go
in a store to buy groceries.
No, I've, how can I?
There's 30 kinds of brown bread.
There's 30 kinds of other bread.
There's 30 kinds of fish.
There's 30 kinds of food.
And as our sister said this morning, the
rest of the world is starving and we're
not even thankful for it.
The time will come, the word of God
said, when people will do wicked things, but
also there'll be unthankful and unholy.
Okay.
Noah Webster gave us a dictionary.
Remember that you've got Noah Webster's dictionary.
What did Daniel Webster give us?
Daniel Webster was a statesman in America.
He was an orator.
He's a brilliant man.
One day he was sitting there with his
peers, some of the greatest brains in America.
And one of them said, Dan, tell us
what is the greatest thought that ever went
over your mind?
And immediately he answered, the greatest thought that
ever came over my mind is my personal
accountability to my maker.
My personal accountability to my God.
Yes, sir, everybody, everybody, no matter whether kings
of the earth, I can't wait.
He is the blessed and only potentate.
I remind you of that.
No king in history has had every king
in the world bow their knee to him,
but Jesus Christ will have it.
Have you realized that every judgment that's ever
been passed in America anywhere, every judge is
going to bow before the greatest judge in
history.
Every king is going to bow before the
greatest king in history.
Every genius is going to bow before the
genius that ever lived.
Jesus Christ is the essence of wisdom and
power.
We sing all come, let us adore him.
We don't know much about it.
What does John say?
This is a silly teaching going around now,
that Jesus is kind of whimpering, he's sorry
for himself.
And he comes along to you and says,
you know, I'd like somewhere to lay my
head, Buncombe.
He's said that before the cross.
He isn't talking to a young, if he,
if Jesus Christ said to Nicodemus or Jesus
Christ said to the rich young ruler, I'm
looking somewhere to lay my head.
They say, oh, it's okay.
Come and live with me, boss.
I have a lovely place.
You can do it.
But Jesus didn't say that to the rich
young man.
And there's another interpretation that was beautiful that
Jackie gave this morning.
It doesn't say he had money.
He was very rich in possessions.
Maybe he's rich in his social life.
Maybe he's rich.
I'm sure materially he was.
Jesus didn't say, I'm looking somewhere to lay
my head.
He said, come and live at my place.
I live like a king.
Jesus said to him, sell all you have
and not only that, but take up your
cross and follow me.
And he didn't want to do that.
It's too humiliating.
No, sorry.
Jesus Christ is not looking for somewhere to
lay his head.
I'll tell you what he's looking for.
I noticed that notice there's a lot outside
and it says the Marines are looking for
a few what?
Good men.
Jesus is looking for, he's looking for a
few dead men and men that have been
to the cross.
He's not looking for somewhere to lay his
head.
He's looking for somewhere where somebody will die
and rise and live in resurrection life now.
That's what he says.
If ye be risen with Christ, seek those
things which are above.
What Paul saying, I told you the other
night, speaking on Galatians, Paul says the world
is crucified to me.
You can do anything to a man once
he's nailed to a cross.
You could throw a bucket of filth on
him.
You could pull his beard.
You could spit on him.
You could do anything.
And people did that.
It was a public exhibition when a man
went to a cross at six in the
night.
But you go at six in the morning.
He's a bloody horrible spectacle.
Those big vultures come and rest on the
cross.
They pick out his eyes.
They tear open his belly.
His blood runs out.
The dogs come to lick up the blood.
No woman ever ran to her husband on
a cross at six o'clock in the
morning.
That's the most repulsive thing.
I tell you what, there's one thing as
cruel as the Romans were.
They never crucified children.