In my father's house are many mansions.
If it were not so, I would have
told you.
I go to prepare a place for you.
I won't speak to you about the father's
house in the many mansions.
But when God put my head on my
shoulders, he made it necessary for me always
to know what this means and why.
So, I must go back of the verse
and lead up to it.
And let me begin by making this rather
plain statement, that man is made for the
earth.
According to the tenor of Bible revelation, God
created all things to display his glory.
I do not think you will find a
single verse in the entire Bible that would
contradict that simple statement.
The first is that God made all things
to display his glory, and the second or
third word there is that God selected man
as the extreme instrument through which he might
display his glory.
Looking in his own image and likeness, which
cannot be said and never has been said
about any other teacher.
Then for reasons known to God alone, I
have such a hard time keeping what little
bit I do know inside my head.
I am so glad there's so much that
I don't need to know, and that I'm
not even going to try to discover it
until I get better equipment than I now
have, better techniques to work on.
For reasons known only to God, God chose
the earth as man's sphere of activity.
He chose the earth as the sphere of
activity for this creature made supremely to show
forth the glory of the creator.
He made that man and mankind and us
of the dust of the ground, and adapted
our nature to earth's conditions.
Did you ever stop to thank God that
you were adapted to the environment around about
you?
You could not live on the moon, you
could not live on any of the heavenly
bodies.
As far as we know, none of them
would allow human life to exist.
You certainly couldn't live in the sun, but
you can live on the earth.
God adapted our nature so that we can
live here, as he adapted the fish to
the water and the birds to the air.
And he made the earth to be our
mother, and our home, and our garden, and
our workshop, and our bed.
But, you know, the earth God made and
gave to mankind was not the earth that
you and I know now.
Geographically, it was the same body, but it
was another kind of the earth because it
was the medium of perfect love where God
walked with man in peace and beauty.
And in the beauty of God's living presence,
then heaven and earth bore a glory to
him when God created the heaven and the
earth, and a down-turning of God upon
the earth made the very fields, and meadows,
and arbors, and grassy places glorious and heavenly.
And then came the fall.
Never let the martyrs go out of the
fall.
Never let anybody cling for himself such learning,
as shall challenge your right to believe that
man has a fallen faith.
For that is exactly what he is.
Then came the great moral shock we call
the fall.
A shock that was felt in the heart
of God, and in all of us circumference,
and in the whole nature of man, body
and soul and mind and spirit.
And this fall that we know as the
fall was of such magnitude as was never
known before in all that creation of God.
It was a greater magnitude, greater depth, and
greater comfort than that other fall which we
know in the Bible as the fall of
the angels.
When those strange creatures kept off their first
escape, but left their proper habitation, and tore
it well down into everlasting darkness, for which
the judgment of the great day.
And at that fall of man, he lost
his franchise on the earth, and he can
stay here only for a brief time.
"'Brief life is here, thy portion,' wrote the
old Bernard of Smyrna.
Brief life is here, thy portion, and it
was not supposed to be so in the
beginning.
For God adapted man to the earth, and
the earth to man, and said, "'If you
multiply and replenish the earth with the good,
it shall be thine, and thou shalt eat
of every tree in the garden, and the
earth of the field shall be thine for
food.' And then man came and lost his
franchise, I say, and God said, "'You know,
even now, we've saved a little while, and
that little while that he's staying here, he
suffers the loss of eating with his paradise
of peace and love.
And the earth itself suffers pollution, and then
enters sickness, and disease, and soil, and sorrow,
and mortality, and death itself.
Someone, if you're looking closely, might challenge me
and say, "'Why do you say mortality and
death, because the two are not the same?'
Mortality is the sentence to death, and death
is the carrying out of the sentence of
mortality.
They are not the same.
Death is the finale, the final.
But mortality means the subject who is sentenced
to death.
When God sentenced the great political prisoner to
death, he had him stand in front of
him, and he said, "'Do you want anything
to say before I pronounce sentence?' He said,
"'No.' He said, "'I therefore pronounce that on
a certain day you shall be hanged by
the next until death.
I sentence you to die.' And then the
prisoner spoke, and he said, "'Your Honor, nature
has sentenced you to die.' He turned around
indignantly and walked away."
Now, the earth has become to us the
symbol of death and mortality, and loss of
eating with all its joys, and the paradise
of peace, and the presence of God, and
health, and safety, and assurance, and rest, and
has become a symbol of all the opposites
of these things, so that the earth has
not a good reputation with Christians.
It never has, but it has.
From the day that God said, "'Thou shalt
rise,' meant that, "'Thou shalt descend,' down to
this very hour, the more spiritual we become,
the less we have to do with the
earth.
The earth, with its darkness, and light, and
shadows, and twilight, with its promises and disappointments,
with its lies, and deception, and pain, and
cries in the night, and sorrows, and dreams,
is a symbol of everything that is unlike
God.
But God did not forget it.
We have been made in his image.
The moment we saw that, we had been
made in his image.
Angels which had not their first estate had
no redeemer.
They were not made in his image.
They were simply made.
Those strange, weird creatures we call humans were
not made in his image.
They had no redeemer.
Lucifer, the son of the morning, who said,
"'I will be like God,' and fell, has
no redeemer."
He was not made in God's image.
But God had made in his image that
creature he calls man.
And so, when that creature fell, God said,
"'I will go down now.' And so, God
came down in the form of a man,
and there is the incarnation.
And he came down to this same earth,
to this sad isle under the man's feet,
and assumed our loss, and took upon him
our demerit.
I like the king of joy, O Christ,
I like the everlasting son of the Father.
And when thou tookest upon me to deliver
man, I'll disopen the kingdom of heaven to
all the leaders, through the sharpness of death.
And so, he redeemed us."
There you'll have the answer to the doctrine
of the church.
This is what the church believes.
This is what the Bible teaches.
What is the present work of Christ saying?
The present work of Christ proposed is to
be an advocate of love, a savior of
his own love, and to prepare a place
for his people in the house of his
Father and our Father.
Now, sin necessitates the separation of body and
soul.
You'll see, I said at the beginning, that
man is made for the earth, and that
is right.
If you will think a little bit about
it, you will find that it is man's
body that is made for the earth.
It was his body that was taken out
of the dust of the ground, but it
was God who blew soul into his nostrils,
and he became Lord of his soul.
It was the unity of God, not in
the body of the man, but in the
spirit of the man, that made a man.
The body is simply the vehicle, the organ
through which the soul manifests itself down here.
That's all.
It is the vehicle, that instrument which the
soul of man uses to express itself.
Just as my right hand, if I were
a musician, might be the vehicle through which
the music in my soul might express itself,
so God has given man a body.
I have said that a hundred times in
this portrait, in various contexts.
Never underestimate yourself, and don't think it is
humility to cry down your body.
God has given us millions of new, delicate,
and tactile, and adaptable, and beautiful instruments.
And if there were no sin, there would
never even be the remotest shadow of a
thought about the beauty and usefulness and dignity
of the human body.
The body, in itself, is simply a service.
It has no power in itself.
There is no will in the human body.
There is no affection in the human body.
There is no thought in the human body.
The thought lies in the human soul, in
the human heart, in the human mind, in
the human spirit.
But the body is the instrument through which
that thought shines and expresses itself.
Let us give you some scripture now on
this.
Listen to this.
Let not sin, therefore, reign in your mortal
body, but he shall be buried in the
lust thereof.
Neither yield to your members as instruments of
unrighteousness unto sin.
Yield yourselves unto God as those that are
alive from the dead, and your members as
instruments of righteousness unto God.
You see, it uses the very word I
use, instruments.
Oh, I didn't think of this when I
used the word.
For God so thinks, he says in verse
17, I see well that since you are
the servants of sin, ye have since, O
David, from the heart that form of doctrine,
which God delivered you, in doing a certain
thing before your servants of righteousness.
I speak after the manner of men because
of concern for your flesh.
For he hath used your members, servants, to
uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity.
Even so, now yield yourselves unto the members,
servants, to righteousness unto holiness.
So, you see, the human body has been
an instrument.
There are those who do not believe that
Christ could become incarnate because the body was
evil.
God would not come in contact with evil.
The false premise there is that the body
was evil.
There is no evil in the earth's matter.
There is nothing evil in matter itself.
Evil lies in the spirit.
Evil is the mind, is the heart, is
the spirit, is the soul.
They're the only evils there are.
The only reason the human body does evil
is because the human spirit uses it to
do evil.
God is the help of sin.
If your spirit doesn't do anything, your body
won't do anything.
But the spirit can act if I can
bother.
You see, I'm getting around the light of
the many mansions, and the Father's house, and
heaven, and the New Jerusalem, and the City
Four Square, and all that.
What's the philosophy factor of it all?
What leads up to it?
Why?
You simply accept it dumbly as a dogma
and say, Yes, I believe that.
The Bible says it, and I believe it.
Surely you believe it.
You're not a Christian.
You're just a parrot.
And there isn't a parrot anywhere in the
pet shop in Chicago that could be procrastinating
on 316.
Or close to the Apostles' trees after a
while, and getting upseas.
He'd say it in his own way.
And if all we are going to do
is to have somebody keep coming to us
without knowing why it's like that, then we're
simply Christian parrots.
But if we think it through and ask
God Almighty to help us, we'll know why
things are like this.
And so, the body can't act upon the
spirit, but the spirit can act upon the
body.
Now, you want to know the one-notion
scripture on that?
I know it too well, but I'm going
to tell you something.
First thing, it's a three-way thing in
all, isn't it?
It says that Christ also hath once suffered
for sins, the just for the unjust, that
he might bring them to God.
Whom took the death in the flesh, but
christened in the spirit?
I wish also whom went in Christ and
was christened in Christ.
Christian times were disobedient when once the long
-suffering of God reigned in the days of
Noah.
Now, that tells us very plainly that Christ
Jesus was off doing something specific and intelligent
and courageous while his body lay in Joseph's
new tomb.
The body couldn't move.
It could do nothing apart from its spirit.
But while the body lay in earth in
the tomb of Joseph, getting stiff and cold,
his spirit was off the body of Jesus,
preaching in the depths of hell to the
spirit-incursions which before time were disobedient in
the days of Noah.
Now, if that isn't enough, and you say,
Well, I'll give you that in the sixth
chapter of Revelation.
Listen to this, verse 9 and on.
When he had opened the sixth tomb, I
saw unto the author the souls of them
that were slain for the word of God
and for the testimony which they held.
And they cried with a loud voice, saying,
How long, O Lord, holy and true, that
thou not judging of any of our blood
on them that dwell on the earth?
And they both were driven under every one
of them.
And it was said unto them that they
should not, they should rest yet for a
little season, until their fellow servants also and
their brethren that should be proved as they
were should be fulfilled.
Ah, notice here.
Here were some souls, and they were set
up safely under the altar of God, and
they had been slain.
That is, not the souls that had been
slain.
They were the souls of them that had
been slain, as they were.
The souls of them that were slain.
What must claim the body?
Jesus said, fear not them that can kill
the body.
Rather, fear him that can cast both body
and soul into hell.
So, here we have these souls.
Now, what were they doing?
We find that they had intelligence.
We find they had memory.
We find they prayed.
We find that they had a sense of
justice.
We find they know that God is holy
and true.
They know that men dwell on the earth,
and they know that God is a judge
who has ended himself.
And they had shed their blood.
Now, all that was true.
These souls whose bodies had been slain.
So it's perfectly possible for your spirit to
act without your body, but it's not possible
for your body to act without your spirit.
So, you think that your body now can
be good.
And could that be, when the Lord releases
you from the conscience of your body, and
then you're finished and tore away?
Why can't it move your body along?
Because God has said, Uncle, thou shalt return.
Sin has done this thing.
It has been that has separated us from
our spirit, made it necessary.
Somebody says, Then why have the heavens at
all?
And that's what I'm moving up to.
Why have the heavens at all?
There are those who teach that there is
no such thing as a heaven.
That earth is to be man's heaven.
Earth is to be man's ultimate residence.
It is to receive immortality, and then earth
is to be his sphere of operation.
And you think that that is in soil.
It's thought otherwise all through the Bible.
Why then, if man was made for the
earth, and belongs to the earth, and is
at home on the earth, and breathes earth's
air, drinks earth's water, eats earth's food, walks
upright along the earth, and adapts himself to
a changing climate, why then is a heaven
necessary?
Why is there any heaven above?
Why any place beyond the sky?
It's God he sings of.
Well, the answer is this, that God made
us in his image, but did not make
our bodies so, but made our spirits so.
And when we sin, body and soul and
spirit and mind, and fell in that indescribable
calamity that was after the fall, God sent
his Son to redeem us.
And I'd like to correct any of your
thinking, if you have been thinking wrong about
this.
I'd like to correct your thinking on the
idea that Jesus died to reclaim us, or
that he died to restore us.
Well, he died to do both of those
things, but he died to do infinitely more
than either or both of those things.
For you see, my brethren, Jesus Christ did
not come down as Adam's other half, or
as Adam's friend or advocate, to restore man
back to the image of Adam.
That would have been a restoration.
That would have been a reclamation.
That would have been undoing the work of
the fall.
He came to do infinitely more than that.
He came to raise us not to the
image of Adam, but to the image of
Christ.
The first man, Adam, was a living soul.
The second, Adam, was a life-giving spirit.
And the first man, Adam, was nailed over
earth, so that the second man is the
Lord from heaven.
And redemption, then, is not to pay back
dollar for dollar and straighten man out, and
restore him into Adamic roots.
The purpose and work of the lack of
being redempted in Christ Jesus is to raise
man as much above the level of Adam
as Christ is above the level of Adam.
You and I are not gauging upon Adam
and being transformed into his image.
We're gauging upon Christ, and by the Spirit,
we're being transformed into his image by the
Spirit of the Lord.
So, earth was, we might say, good enough
for that being who was created out of
clay.
But it's not good enough for him who
is redeemed by royal blood.
Earth was fit and proper to be the
eternal dwelling place for that creature who was
made by God's hands.
But it's not appropriate nor sufficient to be
the eternal dwelling place for that being who
was begotten to the Holy Ghost.
Every Christian, every true Christian, is begotten, born
again in the seed of the Word, born
up off of the fallen Adamic plane onto
the unfallen Christ plane.
He belongs up there.
But in sin, in the meantime, separates body
and soul.
And now our redeemer is about to leave
the earth.
He has come and done his work, God's
redeeming, man-redeeming work.
And he's about to go.
And he calls in my father's house.
There are many mansions.
And I go to prepare a place for
you.
And if I go to prepare a place
for you, I will come again and receive
you unto myself.
And where I am, there ye may be
also.
Jesus Christ claimed that he never left the
bosom of the Father.
He said, The Son of Man which is
in the bosom of the Father.
Yes, he claimed.
While Jesus was on earth as a man
walking among men, by the mystery of the
ever-present God, the indivisible substance of the
Deity, he could remain in the bosom of
the Father.
Indeed.
So you and I are to be elevated
and promoted.
Wouldn't you like this?
Wouldn't you?
Wouldn't you wish you might have seen Adam?
Wouldn't you wish you could have seen Adam
and me?
You'd never want to look at anybody else
again.
That's perfect prayer.
God smiled and molded his way, and knelt
down to the bank of the river.
Like a man extending over in her gaze,
that great God that had set the sun
in the sky and tangled the heavens with
the sun in the sky, that great God
made a man, and blew into him the
breath of life, and he became a living
soul.
And that was man.
And then raised him in redemption infinitely beyond
that life.
And now he says, I have gone to
prepare a place for you.
That bottle that he gave him, it disintegrates
and drops away like a cocoon.
And the spirit of the man pours away
to the breast of God.
I've said a hundred times that a Christian
oughtn't to make so much of death.
The fact that we Christians are so everlastingly
neurotic about dying indicates that we're not very
certain spiritually.
If we were, well, we should be spiritually
on the alert, expecting as a child lying
in bed all its dark wings of the
morning light, Christmas morning.
And if you and I were to play
spiritually where heaven was so close we could
hear its warmth and see its light, we
wouldn't go so frantic if we got something
wrong with it.
Can you imagine a man who is going
to leave Alaska and be given a glorious
estate of 500 acres and forests?
Can you imagine him running white-faced to
his wife and saying, honey, I'm afraid the
time draws nigh.
When I shall leave this tight-locked financial
estate, it is, yes it is, to haunt
the land up there and go to Florida.
He says, boy, some signs and indications I
think we're about ready to move.
And if the Christians were where they should
be, I'm quite sure there wouldn't be such
frantic running for somebody to pray for me.
I had to questionize it.
Pray for me.
I'm afraid I'm a Christian who has to
go to heaven.
It was that sharp-brained, vitriolic tongue holding
his parents down.
And so the Christians didn't believe in heaven
as they said they wouldn't hesitate so long
to go there.
In my father's house for many nights, I
go to prepare a place for you, the
spirit of just men made perfect.
A gathering place, a home of God's elect.
Let your mother Dutch know that she's going
to have before too many weeks a nest
full of ducklings to pull them down on
their own white breast and line the nest
with sound.
You might not know this, but a farmer
knows this.
When a mother rabbit knows that there are
some little, sightless rabbits coming into the world,
you get your eyes open in ten days,
some probably, but you get your eyes open.
But when the mother rabbit knows that these
little ones are coming, she tears the fur
from the under part of their body and
lines the little depression in the earth.
And when the little ones are born, sightless
and all but pale, they're laid in the
loveliest and most beautifully lined little jewel box
where the song of death.
When the human mother knows that there will
be before long coming into her house and
home a little one.
I've known a great many mothers in my
time, but I've never known one yet, never
known one yet.
I've walked up with it, brought it to
the event, to shout and shout.
And we're laying it in a pool, baby
blankets, in boots, in rags, in water bottles,
in all sorts of things.
We prepare for those we love.
In my father's house are many men, and
I go to prepare faith for you.
And he's preparing faith for those who shall
be born up out of the agony and
stress of this world into the love of
the everlasting kingdom into that world above.
And what do you suppose he's up there
for?
He's up there to be a high priest,
of course, and a sinner, I suppose.
But he's up there getting ready too.
And if he made a duck, he'd take
her down from its breast to line the
nest, for it's lovely.
If he made a green rabbit, he'd hardly
enough grain to go home.
Young, if he put in his heart and
his instinct to pull her from its breast
to line its nest, for it's young if
he puts in the heart of a human
mother and her yearning to get ready for
these little visitors.
Don't you think that he is acting quite
as he did with his own humanity when
he prepares a place for his people.
Therefore, no Christian ever ought to be afraid
to die.
You don't have to be.
It's my father's house.
You know that he said, my father's house.
And if it's his father's house, it's our
father's house, because he is our elder brother.
And he said that he saw in the
book of Hebrews 2, that he is the
eldest among many brethren.
It tells us that in Romans and Hebrews.
He is the firstborn among many brethren.
And he says, I go to my father
and your father.
Didn't he say that?
My God and your God.
And if the father's house is the house
of his son Jesus, it's the house of
all of his other sons-in-law.
We Christians are better off than you know.
And therefore, if you have to, or you
stagger along another year with that 54 model,
you know, I wouldn't feel so bad about
it, boy.
You have a mansion if you're a true
Christian.
And sister, if you have to wear that
dress the third time, I wouldn't let it
get me down.
I'd wear it.
And if you can't have that house and
church, ranch, house, all on one floor, you
have to have roller skates to get from
one side to the other.
If you can't afford it, don't let it
trick you.
My father's house are many mansions.
Why am I saying he passed anything to
show them out?
But we should be so foolish as to
get our affections set on things which are
on earth.
For, guess what?
We're only here for a little while.
Oh, I'm looking for heavenly-minded Christians, and
they're hard to find as white deers.
Hard to find as holy souls.
We've got a two-compartment heart.
We believe in Jesus Christ and yet eternal
life is one of these compartments.
But there's another compartment worth as worldly as
you.
May God deliver you.
And help us to deliver so that we'll
not be afraid of death.
We'll not be afraid of tomorrow, nor afraid
of the future.
We will not.
And we do allow ourselves, on time when
the TV sets up, to be burned out.
It's Saturday night, we can't get service till
Monday morning.
And we're forced to the bitter necessity of
spending a little while without it.
Sleep a little bit.
Couldn't get along without schoolbooks that long.
I think.
I don't know who he is, but I
could be shot in the dark.
I've heard this.
That's a problem.
Couldn't get along without him.
Can't get along without the TV.
Dear dear dear God, what am I scared
about?
My father's house.
And my own brother.
He's been up there fixing it up for
me.
And he said that if that wasn't the
case, he surely would have told me.
But he didn't tell me that he wouldn't.
He didn't tell me that he would.
Therefore I believe he's fixing up a mansion.
He will fix me up a mansion which
forevermore shall stand.
For my stay shall not be strengthened in
that happy holy land.
Now there's much more.
And I think I probably owe you much
more.
Let me give you three more minutes.
Then I'm going to close.
But I want to read to you a
man called Visions.
He said, I saw a new heaven and
a new earth.
For the first heaven and the first earth
were passed away and there was no more
sea.
And I saw a new Jerusalem coming down
from God out of heaven.
They said it was a bride to join
her husband.
Isn't that too bad?
And he relegated it to the funeral.
And they never dared talk about it unless
there was a corpse in the presence of
the bereaved.
Oh brother, the man who wrote this wasn't
on his way to the funeral.
He was on his way to the new
Jerusalem.
And I heard a great voice out of
heaven saying, God is a man.
You will dwell with him and they shall
be his people, and God himself shall be
with them, and he shall be their God.
And God shall wipe away all tears from
their eyes, and they shall be no more
debt, no more sorrow, no more crying, and
there shall be no more pain, for the
former things are passed away.
And he saw the great and beautiful city
having the glory of God, and her life
was like unto a stone, and most precious,
even like a chalice, clear as crystal.
And he describes it, and then says, And
I saw not all the temple therein, for
the Lord God Almighty hath little lamb of
the temple of it.
And he said, And he who needed the
sun, neither of the moon, to shine in.
For the glory of God did lighten it,
and the lamb is the light thereof.
Oh brother, I'm not so sure about the
old camp-making song that glory in the
fact that we'd be worse sun and moon
were not needed.
I'm not sure about the ever closer to
the truth than this fit and dignified modern
theology that will allow you to get happy
about your future home.
If we compelled everyone to fall in line
with our modern use of things, we'd never
let a bride look forward with anticipation to
her coming marriage.
We'd never let a soldier look forward to
his parole home.
And if they did look forward, don't they
have to keep their mouths up and act
dignified?
Why don't we let ourselves go?
When the Church of Jesus Christ stopped being
happy, she stopped being powerful.
When she stopped being enthusiastic, she stopped being
effective.
When you get happy about something, it doesn't
make any responding difference.
Somebody will come around and want to know
how you got that way.
And if anybody, any people in all the
white world have something to be happy over,
it's Christ.
Redeemed by the blood of the Lamb, yesterday
behind them, still under the blood forever and
forever and a day.
Remembered no more or forever.
God the Father, Christ the Brother, the Holy
Ghost, the Advocate and Comforter.
And our brother gone to his father's house
and our father's house to prepare a place
for us.
Leaving behind him the promise that he would
come again.
Don't send Moses, Lord.
Don't send Moses.
Don't pray to Moses, Lord.
He'll break stone.
Don't send Moses.
Don't send Elijah home, dear Lord.
I'm afraid of Elijah.
He falls down every minute.
Don't send Paul.
Paul's so learned, he makes me feel like
a little boy when I read his epistles.
Don't send him.
I'm afraid of Paul.
Oh, Lord Jesus, come yourself.
Come yourself.
We're not afraid of you.
You took little children, put lambs to your
fold, and we're not afraid of you.
You gave the woman pig and the donkey,
we're not afraid of you.
Come, Lord Jesus, come to you.
Ah, the people of God ought to be
the happiest people in all the wide world.
In this whole sermon tonight, I've got along
on two little undersized and unique amens from
the congregation.
That's right.
That's been your contribution to my sermon tonight,
brother.
One man said amen twice and didn't say
it very loud.
Oh, my father's house, your father's house, and
this father's house, waiting there, shining in splendor,
above all diamonds, above all rubies, above all
royal gems, waiting for his people to come.
Are you ready?
Do you know now what the blood-washed
Egypt means?
Whatever the past has been, are you ready
now?
Whatever yesterday was, what is today?
Whatever you've done, and what you've accepted and
believed and practiced, are you now ready?
Let's pray.
My father's house are many names.
If it were not so, I would have
told you.
I go to prepare a place for you.
We speak to you about the father's house,
in the many names.
But when God put my head on my
shoulders, he made it necessary for me always
to know what this means and why.
So, I must go back of the verse
and lead up to it.
And let me begin by making this rather
tame statement.
That man is made for the earth.
According to the tenor of Bible revelation, God
created all things to display his glory.
I do not think that you will find
a single verse in the entire Bible that
would contradict that simple statement.
That God made all things to display his
glory.
And the second proof revealed there is that
God selected man as the extreme instrument through
which he might display those glories.
Making him his own image and likeness, which
cannot be said and never has been said
about any other creature.
Nameful reasons known to God alone.
I have such a hard time keeping what
it is that I don't know inside my
head.
I am so glad there's so much that
I don't need to know.
And that I'm not even going to try
to discuss until I get better equipment than
I now have, better techniques to work on.
For reasons known only to God.
God chose the earth as man's sphere of
activity.
He chose the earth as the sphere of
activity for this creature made supremely to show
forth the glory of the creator.
He made that man and mankind and us
of the dust of the ground, and adapted
our nature to earth's conditions.
Would you ever stop to thank God that
you were adapted to the environment around about
you?
You could not live on the moon.
You could not live on any of the
heavenly bodies.
As far as we know, none of them
would allow human life to exist.
You certainly couldn't live in the sun, but
you can live on the earth.
God adapted our nature so that we can
live here, as he adapted the fish to
the water and the birds to the air.
And he made the earth to be our
mother, and our home, and our garden, and
our workshop, and our bed.
But you know, the earth God made and
gave to mankind was not the earth that
you and I know now.
Geographically, it was the same body, but it
was another kind of earth because it was
the medium of perfect love where God walked
with men in peace and beauty.
And in the beauty of God's living presence,
then heavenly full glory shone when God created
the heaven and the earth, and the down
-climbing of God upon the earth made the
very fields and meadows and arbors and factory
places glorious and heavenly.
And then came the fall.
Never let the marginal you out of the
fall.
Never let anybody cling for himself such learning.
As shall challenge your right to believe that
man has a fall in peace.
For that is exactly what he is.
Then came the great moral shock we call
the fall, a shock that was felt in
the heart of God and in all of
us circumference, and in the whole nature of
man, body and soul and mind and spirit.
And this fall that we, this disaster that
we know as the fall was of such
magnitude as was never known before in all
the vast creation of God.
It was a great...