Rescue the perishing, care for the dying, snatch
them in pity from sin and the grave.
Weep o'er the erring one, lift up
the fallen, tell them of Jesus the mighty
to save.
Rescue the perishing, care for the dying, Jesus
is merciful, Jesus will save.
I am missionary Richard Yerby in Japan, daily
calling on Japanese Buddhists to come to God's
Savior to be eternally saved.
You Christian friends, please intercede in prayer for
many of them to repent and to trust
in Christ.
This sermon is titled, Carest Thou Not That
We Perish?
My previous sermon ended with me telling of
worldly Japanese people crowding around the entrance of
Karuizawa church, making a big nuisance of themselves
and damaging church property.
You Christ rejecters who are hearing me preach
this, some of you hate your creator God
just as much as those Buddhist Japanese ice
cream lickers do.
Well, I've got some good news for you.
You do not have to be so foolish
and so stupid as to send your own
self to an eternal hell of fire and
brimstone to weep and wail and gnash your
teeth forever.
You could get down on your knees right
now and cry out to God to give
you a repentant heart and to convert you
from your sins and enable you to receive
Jesus Christ and his forgiveness, cleansing and eternal
life.
Why don't you wise up and do yourself
that greatest favor right now?
I pray that you will do that.
Pray thus wise, Almighty God, please help me
not to be so foolish as to destroy
my own self eternally.
Please draw me to thee, break down my
stony heart, grant me true repentance over my
sins and give me faith to trust in
thy Savior Jesus Christ.
Have mercy on me and help me, I
pray.
Amen.
I pray that God will help me to
faithfully continue preaching out in public.
God bless you Christian friends who support me
financially.
Thank you so much for this great help
you give to me.
I so desire to be a missionary that
is worthy to receive it.
Please pray for me that I will always
be that.
Neither was I quiet, perfect and upright Job
declared.
Though they are sliding him, still he is
waiting, waiting the penitent child to receive.
Plead with them earnestly, plead with them gently,
he will forgive if they only believe.
Rescue the perishing, care for the dying, Jesus
is merciful, Jesus will save.
Think seriously on these next words of mine.
Down through the years I have sadly observed
many preachers quit, quit preaching because few or
no people would listen to their preaching.
My fellow preacher, don't you quit because of
that.
Think on Noah's example of preaching righteousness 100
years with no converts except his own family
of seven other souls.
Think on God commanding Ezekiel to let the
people know there has been a prophet among
them, even if none of them heeds that
prophet.
Think on the many other such examples in
the Bible and if you get absolutely no
positive response from your preaching, that is absolutely
no valid reason to quit preaching and likely
God would be most displeased with you quitting
for that reason.
I have observed somewhat bland pastors in the
U.S. who quit preaching because they cannot
find a church that will let them pastor
it.
I have observed independent pastors try their best
to start a church or at least get
together in their home and such, then after
some time they become so discouraged that they
completely quit because few or none attend.
Somewhat bland evangelists quit preaching because few or
no churches invite them to come and preach.
Here in Japan, I watch Japanese pastors quit
for those same reasons and I watch missionaries,
especially independent missionaries, quit because few or none
will listen to their preaching and few or
no churches or Christian groups invite them to
come as a guest preacher.
What a tragedy that they quit.
Don't quit because you can't get a pulpit.
Make the whole world into your pulpit.
Preach the word out in public, standing in
the face of the human race around you,
and see Almighty God steadily remove the blandness
from your anemic preaching, replacing it with Holy
Ghost power from on high.
It is somewhat rare for a church, Christian
group, or anyone here in Japan to invite
me to come preach to them.
When I can conduct my own services, many
times no one attends, but for not one
split second, I believe that gives me any
reason to quit preaching.
I am still duty-bound to my Creator
to be faithful to His calling to me.
So you please pray for me that I
always will be.
You Christian believers are often around preachers who
are discouraged and are considering quitting because few
or no people listen to their preaching.
Please invite them to listen to this sermon
and pray that they will be faithful to
their calling.
These about-to-quit preachers often come to
you, successful preachers, for advice and encouragement.
Please invite them to listen to this sermon
as I pray that it will be encouraging
to them.
These audio sermons are on my website, www
.christisall.us. Separate those three words with two
dashes, christ-is-all.us. If no one
gives you any tithes and offerings for preaching,
then work a paying job to make your
living.
Many preachers throughout the world do that.
You can do it also.
After working enough hours to pay for your
family's necessary food, clothing, and shelter, there are
still plenty of hours remaining each week to
get out and preach.
If God has called you to preach and
you have obeyed Him by putting your hand
to the plow, preaching His word, then don't
dare to look back.
Don't dare quit because so few people smile
at you, pat you on the back, and
compliment you for preaching.
Don't dare quit because many scorn and ridicule
your preaching.
Don't dare quit because few or none give
you money for preaching.
You be faithful to God's calling.
Preach His word no matter what.
For all eternity, you will be most glad
that you did so.
For all eternity, may that which is forever
said of Job also be forever said of
you and of me.
Neither was I quiet.
Let's pray.
Heavenly Father, please give me the fortitude to
do that, to preach Thy word faithfully as
long as I am in this life.
Make me to fully understand what a terrible
thing it is to turn my back on
Thy calling and to quit preaching no matter
what the reason.
Help me to faithfully hold forth the words
of life to the many lost souls around
me who so desperately need those words.
Help me never to give up and quit
for any reason at all.
Amen.
Down in the human heart, crushed by the
tempter, feelings lie buried that faith can restore.
Touched by a loving heart, wakened by kindness,
cords that are broken will vibrate once more.
Rescue the perishing, care for the dying.
Jesus is merciful, Jesus will save.
One day as I was selling and preaching
on the streets in Karuizawa, battling and building,
as we read of in Nehemiah chapter four,
a more senior missionary came by and chatted
with me.
He talked about street preaching and remarked that
I was one of the three people he
knew in Japan who had this gift.
He had been in Japan 50 years at
that time and he knew a lot more
missionaries than I did, but I knew over
a dozen who preach on the streets.
Anyway, his remark about so few people having
that gift struck me as ridiculous.
That's because essentially all I am doing when
I preach in public is talking, and the
vast majority of people have the ability to
talk.
He himself was a most talkative person, and
most people use their talking ability much, and
when they do so, they tend to talk
about that which they love.
That is simply what I am doing when
I preach out in public, just talking about
that which I love, which is my creator
God and his holy Bible and the mass
of lost hell-bound souls around me.
And likely you also talk much about that
which you love.
Now, I want you to think on that.
Think on it long and hard.
You regularly and habitually talk much, don't you?
And come judgment day, you will give an
account to your creator for each and every
word you have uttered during your lifetime.
Therefore, it would behoove us all to make
much of our talking about God.
May God help us to do that.
Let's pray that now.
Heavenly Father, please help me to do that.
Please help me to love thee with all
my heart.
Please help me to love talking about God,
my savior, more than I love talking about
anything else.
Help me to tell all the lost souls
I can about salvation in Christ.
Help me to be like Job and not
be quiet.
I pray this for all other Christians also.
Amen.
Rescue the perishing, duty demands it.
Strength for the labor the Lord will provide.
Back to the narrow way, patiently win them.
Tell the perwonderer a savior has died.
Rescue the perishing, care for the dying.
Jesus is merciful, Jesus will save.
I have before me on my desk here
two booklets, each a true written story in
Japanese that is also illustrated in picture form
like a comic book.
Each is a heartbreaking story of great misery
and destruction that spiritual darkness wrought upon some
precious Japanese souls.
Each is also a marvelous story of the
wonderful change wrought in some of those lives
when God's marvelous light shined into them.
Please listen as I share one of them
with you now.
This first booklet is the life story of
Miss Yoniko, a Japanese lady born into an
affluent Tokyo family in 1937.
While growing up, Yoniko was closely attached to
her mother, by far her number one love.
Therefore, she was most devastated upon her mother's
death when Yoniko was in senior high school.
At that time, Yoniko did not know about
Christ and in her deep grief, she fervently
worshiped her deceased mother as the family's religion
taught her to do.
Finding no solace there, she more or less
cursed the vanity of religion and then she
turned to worldly, clean pleasures and amusement, looking
for help there.
With friends, she madly pursued many thrills, trying
to overcome the pain in her heart, but
to no avail, of course.
She asked one of her school teachers the
meaning of life and got a worthless answer
from him.
Still searching for the true meaning of life,
she went to the library and read books
by godless philosophers who taught that life was
vain and that death was to be welcome.
Folks, what a heartbreaking tragedy that as she
desperately sought for the true meaning of life,
she found no one who had the words
of life to hold forth to her.
Daily, she never walked past a street preacher
holding forth the word of life because there
were none in her path.
Tragic.
Therefore, she chose suicide as her best option.
And on Valentine's Day in 1955, as a
high school senior, she stepped in front of
a train to end her life, hoping to
then be reunited with her beloved mother.
But God spared her life.
Then he soon saved her and raised up
Yoniko to be a bright and shining light
throughout this dark nation of Japan and in
several other nations also.
Those heavy iron wheels of that train cut
off both of Yoniko's legs just above the
knees.
The wheels also cut off her left arm
above the elbow and cut off two fingers,
little finger and ring finger from her right
hand.
She was rushed to a nearby hospital where
the doctors and medical staff put forth every
effort to save her life.
And with God's help, they did that.
But when Yoniko regained her senses on a
hospital bed and came to realize her maimed
and crippled condition, she was more despondent than
ever and more desirous to die.
Daily, she received pills for pain and to
aid sleeping, but would not take the medicine
in the presence of the nurse who brought
it.
Then, when alone, she hid the pills in
a candy bag under the bedsheets, planning to
save up enough for an overdose and kill
herself with it.
Meanwhile, that schoolteacher of hers now felt mighty
guilty about being so worthless to her when
she had asked him the meaning of life.
He recalled that there was a small group
of Christian students at that high school.
So that heathen teacher asked him to go
visit Yoniko in the hospital, thinking a Christian
might have some help for her.
Amen.
You finally got it right, teach.
When three or so of them with a
young missionary visited Yoniko in the hospital, she
was rude and cold to them, most bitter
and despondent.
She resented their smiling, cheerful faces, somewhat regarding
their joyful dispositions as fake.
How could anyone find anything to be truly
happy about in life?
She did her best to give them a
cold shoulder, wanting them to completely leave her
alone.
But they kept coming regularly, singing hymns, reading
the Bible, and such each time.
So, with the Holy Spirit working in her
heart, she soon faced the reality of their
joy being genuine, and that also it might
just be possible for even her to have
such joy in her messed up life.
Time and again, they told Yoniko how much
the Lord Jesus loved her, what Christ had
already done for her, and what he now
desired to do for her.
So one night, alone on her hospital bed,
she opened up her heart to God and
poured it all out to him in a
screaming prayer, God help me.
If Jesus is truly the only begotten Son
of God, then please show me that.
But if that is a lie, I want
to die in this condition.
I have no hope in life and no
desire to live.
If I'm going to be nothing more than
a big burden to other people in my
maimed, crippled condition, then it would be much
better for me to die.
But God, if you're telling me to keep
living, then please help me, God.
That night, Yoniko truly prayed to the true
God for the first time in her life.
Then she soon fell into a deep and
restful sleep like she had not known since
her mother's death, and especially since her own
suicide attempt.
On awakening the next morning, she noticed a
bird outside her window, and beholding its beauty
with joy, bubbling up in her own bosom,
she pondered, I wonder if this joy is
because I prayed last night.
Could God really have heard and answered my
prayer?
With her one remaining hand that had only
a thumb and two fingers, she picked up
the Bible those Christians had left for her,
opened it up at random, and her eyes
fell on 2 Corinthians 5, 17.
Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he
is a new creature.
Old things are passed away.
Behold, all things are become new.
This is the answer to my prayer last
night, her heart echoed.
The old person of me existed until last
night.
Starting today, all of me has completely become
a new person.
Look, I've got three fingers.
Nurse, bring me a pencil.
Look, I can hold a pencil and write.
I can do anything because I have three
fingers.
It's not like I only have three fingers.
Thanks be to God that I have three
fingers.
Amen and amen.
Suddenly, Yonico's heart was flooded to overflowing with
a desire to live, to learn all she
could about God, and to tell everyone she
could tell about the marvelous things God wants
to do for them.
One of those Japanese Christian high school guys,
Mr. Tahada, soon proposed marriage to Yonico.
Because of her physical condition, that marriage tore
at her heart.
No, she cried to him.
I'm just part of a human being.
You don't want me for a wife.
But he pleaded with Yonico to pray about
it.
And as she did, God led her to
say yes.
So they married, and God blessed them with
two daughters, born from Yonico's maimed and crippled
body.
What a most splendid love story, and ever
so true.
And Yonico certainly hasn't been quiet about what
a marvelous change the Lord Jesus Christ brought
into her life, giving her so much to
live for.
She has won a multitude of lost souls
to Japan and has been a tremendous blessing
to many Christians, including me.
I have had the meeting Yonico and her
family in person, once hearing her testimony in
a church service here in Japan.
She told of going from house to house
to witness the people about her wonderful Savior
walking on artificial legs to do that.
So much of Japan is hilly with steep
inclines on many streets.
Yonico told how she was not able to
walk forward on much of an incline as
she would soon tip over, either forward or
backward.
So when walking uphill or downhill, she would
have to turn sideways and take short, jolting
sidesteps to maintain her balance.
Doing that, there were times when she jolted
the stumps of her legs against those artificial
limbs until the stumps bled.
Why?
Because she refused to be quiet about the
miraculous help and the perfect change that Christ
has for any troubled soul.
Now as for me, I have two strong
legs and feet, plus all my arms, hands,
and fingers.
Therefore, God forbid that I should constantly go
quickly and tell, as Matthew 28 7 commands
us, go and tell, constantly go and tell
everyone about the eternal hope in Christ.
Neither was I quiet.
My fellow Christian believer, just look at the
healthy, sound, whole body with which God has
blessed you, and seriously consider that it is
you who decides whether to expend your body's
energies on your own sinful, selfish pleasures, or
whether to expend those energies going and telling
doomed, sin-darkened, miserable desires to die souls
what marvelous hope awaits them in Jesus Christ.
Let's pray.
Lord Jesus, help me to seriously ponder that
choice right now as for all eternity.
Break my heart all to pieces over the
miserable plight of lost mankind, and please set
me on fire with a burning passion to
go and tell everyone I can about the
help that Christ offers to them.
Please help me not to be quiet.
I pray this prayer for all other Christians
also.
Amen.
Yonico's maimed and much-used body played out
on her at age 63 or 64, sending
her on to heaven, joining that great cloud
of witnesses that compass us about, observing our
Christian service down here now.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, let's give those
deceased and gone-ahead souls a good show,
and all the huge heavenly hosts now looking
on, and especially our Savior who gave his
life's blood to purchase our redemption, and is
not willing that any should perish.
Night is soon coming when no man can
work.
Harvest time will soon be past.
Let us wisely redeem the time, faithfully occupying
until Christ soon comes.
Even so, come Lord Jesus.
Fellow Christian, listen now.
Void of all joy of life and in
the lowest pit of grief and sadness over
her mother's death, high school student Yonico did
not cross paths with any street preacher along
the road of life as she tried the
pathway leading to suicide.
Thus, just about every day here in central
Japan, I stand out in public in the
pathway of such Japanese Buddhists holding forth the
word of life and the word of hope.
You who support me for doing so, I
heartily thank you.
May each of you and each of us
do God's will for us regarding fishing for
man.
Yonico is looking down upon us.
Many others are looking down upon us fellow
Christians.