I want you to turn, if you have
your Bible, to the book of Luke.
Gospel as Luke gives it.
I take two selections from, two selections from
that book.
Luke 1, 5.
There was in the days of Herod the
king of Judea a certain priest named Zechariah
of the course of Abiah.
His wife was of the daughter of Aaron,
and her name was Elizabeth.
And they were both righteous before God, walking
in all commandments and ordinances of the Lord
blameless.
And they were, well, both well fitten in
years.
Then in the second chapter, beginning with verse
25, And behold, there was a man in
Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon.
The same man was just and devout, waiting
for the consolation of Israel.
And the Holy Ghost was upon him.
And it was revealed unto him by the
Holy Ghost that he should not see death
before he had seen the Lord Christ.
And he came by the Spirit into the
temple, and when the parents brought in the
child Jesus to do for him after the
custom of the law, then he put him
up in his arms and blessed God, and
said, Lord, now let us bow thy servants
at heart and feet according to thy word.
For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which
thou hast prepared before the face of all
people.
Delight the likeness of Gentiles in the glory
of my people ever.
And skipping to verse 36, And there was
one Anna.
In other words, if you take the H
off the front and the H off the
back, you have a Hannah.
So put it on here, and if you
take them off, you have Anna.
There was one Anna, a prophetess, the daughter
of Samuel, of the tribe of Asa.
She was of a great age, and had
lived with her husband seven years from her
virginity, and she was a widow for about
four score and four years.
She departed not from the temple, but served
God with fastings and prayers night and day.
And she came in that when she did,
parents likewise, unto the Lord, and spake of
him to all them that looked for redemption
in Israel.
Now, I'm going to do a very unorthodox
thing.
I'm going to ignore young people and talk
to older people.
There are three cults abroad in the land.
There are the cult of feminism, the cult
of laymanism, and the cult of youthism.
They're all cults, and they're all in Scripture.
But in order to get along with friends
and influence people, you're supposed to blow your
nose like a trumpet and tell about the
fine young people.
They're just like all the other young people
since Adam's time.
No better, no worse, about average.
And as for knowing anything, the average young
person doesn't know too much.
But when we get over this youthism cult,
get back to Bible principles.
For people went to church together.
They didn't separate the old from the young,
didn't ask how old they were and demand
their birth certificate before you know where they
were allowed to pray.
But everybody worshiped God together, and I think
we need to get back to that.
And any of you young people that may
be listening to me, now if you get
mad, you'll only have to repent and come
and ask me to forgive you, or you
might just as well shut up and be
quiet.
But I'll tell you something, you desperately need
the older people.
And I don't say that because I'm now
getting older, because I've taught that ever since
I was old enough to hold a Bible.
But I want to share with you what
my life has discovered about these four old
friends of God.
There were some old friends of God, four
of them.
I've talked briefly this afternoon, although I promise
you it'll be quite long, about these four
old friends.
Well, who they were walking with God.
It was Zachariah and his wife Elizabeth.
Now, we think of it as being hard
to live for God in times like these.
But I want you to know that God
never missed a lounge for evil times.
And my guess is we ought to stop
kidding ourselves and say, if I had lived
in the days of Christ, I'd have been
a good Christian.
But I can't live now for Christ, this
day of television, jet airplanes, and culture.
I can't do it.
If I'd lived in the days of the
prophets, I should have.
But let me tell you that God never
missed any lounge for evil times.
In the Old Testament days, the greatest souls
were the ones who came up out of
the worst form.
You couldn't think of any worse time than
Enoch would have been, and yet Enoch walked
with God and was not the God chosen.
Then there was Noah, and Noah, as the
times got so bad and corrupt that God
had destroyed the world, and Noah lived like
shame, and yet Noah found grace and God's
trust.
Then there was Abraham, and look at his
time.
There was no revelation, no Bible, no hymn
book, no church, no prophet, no preacher, no
evangelist, no anything.
And here up in Ur of the Chaldees,
as tradition says, Abraham was an idol-maker,
and yet the Spirit of God spoke to
Abraham.
He came true and became the father of
the faithful.
Hands don't make men good, but God does
make men good.
Hands just provide the chance to send out
the people.
Well, and there was Moses.
You know the rotten time that Moses lived
in, and how God blessed him, and Elijah,
that terrible period when they had that wicked
king and that more wicked wife of his,
Jezebel.
And then there was Elijah, and Elijah was
the good God put into heaven in the
chair of fire.
Now, let nobody be discouraged about these times
in which we live, and don't let anybody
excuse themselves for living a shoddy Christian life
in times like these, because we are not
living in times anyhow, we're living in God.
We've got to live on supper.
I don't know whether you've ever heard him,
he's gone to heaven long, but he used
to say that no Christian ever ought to
live under the circumstances.
The Christians ought to live, maybe in the
middle of them, but they ought to live
on top of them.
But we're saying they live in the circumstances
or under the circumstances.
Well, look at the times they had.
There was Herod the king.
He was king of Judea, and Israel was
an occupied country, and the religion of Israel
was at a low ebb.
It was divided between the Athenians and the
Pharisees and the Sadducees, and there was a
corrupt priesthood, and there was nothing good, nothing
to encourage anybody.
The priests were all rotten, and yet here
were four old men and women walking around
on the earth just waiting to go.
God's dear old friends.
And here they were, here were these two
now, Zechariah and Elizabeth, and they had saved
the corruption which is in the world by
love, and they had stayed faithful in a
mess of unbelievers.
And they were both righteous before God.
Don't let any good fundamentalist hear me say
that, because he's a tall ship that can
be brought through with a pail of water,
because nowadays you're not supposed to say anybody's
righteous.
But God said these two were righteous before
God, walking in all the commandments of God's
blameless.
Now, these are comparable times in which we
live.
They're pretty bad times.
Nobody except the liberal would say anything else,
except they're anything but good times.
Wicked men are God in the earth, and
here's what he lives in, and all this
revival on they say.
And there are four dumb people who say
that those that leave are revival times.
You know Buddhism is having a revival?
Baha'ism is having a revival?
Mohammedanism is having a revival?
Shintoism is having a revival?
Animism is having a revival?
Judaism is having a revival?
And the Roman Catholic Church is having a
revival?
If, by a revival, you mean a greatly
stepped-up interest in religion, all religions of
the world are having a revival partly because
they can afford it.
You know, when times get bad, Christianity languishes
because we can't afford to carry it on.
We can't have the big campaigns.
Nothing will cure a big campaign quicker than
depression.
A lot of people that are out, you
know, they're the modern thingy, but just let
depression come and they'll collapse overnight because it's
the good money that's helping us to get
on.
The fact is, there's no revival going on
anywhere in the right sense of the word.
There's just a lot of interest in religion.
People are scared, and so they turn to
religion, but not necessarily to Christ.
Well, you and I can do one of
two things.
We can either walk like Zechariah and Elizabeth
in the middle of all this corruption and
keep ourselves keen.
We can, you know, we can do the
opposite.
We can, you know, we can save them
for the diseases and benefits in the time
in which we live.
We can accept it, accept it as normal,
clap our hands and say, Oh, you've missed
the boat.
I've been told I've missed the boat, but
I replied that I wasn't trying to catch
that boat.
Anyhow, that boat and a lot of other
glasses can go on without me, and I'll
be quite happy.
Well, we can conform to the religion of
our times if we want to.
I weigh 145 pounds, dripping wet.
But I stand here to tell you that
I'm a non-conformist, Christ-born, and a
rebel, and I will not conform to the
times.
Up to now, I've been able to get
a hearing and refuse to conform to the
times, but if the day ever comes when
to conform to the times, and if Christ
will have to go to be heard, then
I'll go out and start where I started
before, on the street corner, police there.
But I won't conform to the times.
They say you're supposed to do it.
They say, Don't you know we have the
same message?
But it's just different times we're living in.
I know the voice of the serpent when
I hear it.
The fist of the serpent is in that,
and I recognize it.
So, we can either conform or we can
withdraw from the whole business and falter from
such turnaways.
Now, there's a place, even in times like
these, for us to live where we can
hear the voice of God speaking to us.
We don't have to be queer, and we
don't have to go to a monastery.
We can do it right in the middle
of the world in which we live.
That's where I am living.
Now, you can live right in Jerusalem that
thirty-three years later crucified the Son of
God, and yet they live right in a
wrong world.
Now, living right in a wrong world means
that you are going to have a lot
of irritation.
The fish that goes along with the current
hasn't any trouble with the current, but as
soon as it gets the other way, the
current gets sore at it.
And just as long as you go the
way the wind goes, everybody will say you're
very fine, and they'll commend you for being
deeply religious.
But if you decide to go God's way
instead of the way the wind blows, they'll
say that you're useless, or that something has
happened to you that you're not quite all
this, or you're a fanatic.
So, you can go along with the times,
or you can be like Zechariah and Elizabeth
and refuse to go along with the times.
And personally, I've decided long time ago I've
decided that.
You know, here's a funny thing, people.
You ought to find this out.
Some of you young people ought to hear
this.
They say that if you don't conform to
the times and find a common ground for
getting along with everybody, that nobody listens to
you.
Well, the more I non-conform, the more
people want to hear me.
I don't know why.
Even if they are cowards themselves, they'd rather
admire somebody who isn't, I guess.
So, let me tell you, I'm telling you,
if you want to be heard, don't lick
anybody's palm, and don't follow after anybody.
Stand out for God.
Dare to stand out for God.
But remember one thing.
If you're going to be good when you're
old, you've got to start when you're young.
Zechariah and Elizabeth didn't suddenly get lost in
their family.
That is the result of a long lifetime
of walking with God.
You're going to be ready to be dull
when you're old.
You're going to have to be ready to
live when you're young.
And if you expect the arms of the
Lord to encourage you when you're old, you're
going to have to keep the arms of
the Lord when you're young.
So, remember that.
Now, we conform to God's people.
I love God's people.
I do.
I love them.
I don't always agree with them.
Even when I come to camp meetings, I
don't agree with half I see and hear.
But I'm willing to put up with a
lot of things because they've got people.
And now that we've got people, just like
when you've got a family, you don't agree
with everything your kids do.
And there are times when you wish that
you could get away from them, first of
all, but when you get to the railroad
station, you want to come back.
You know how that is.
But you love them because they're your people.
I don't agree with my people, but always,
but they're my people.
So is God's children.
They're my people.
They've been my people now for a good
many years.
Some of them are in heaven and some
of them are on earth, but they're my
people.
And if you mingle with God's people, who
do you mingle with when you're back home?
I know you're around mingling with the Lord's
people.
Yes, but when you get home, who do
you mingle with?
Who are your friends?
Now, there's a place I enjoy here.
I chose to greet and joy comes with
mercy.
And if you want to be like this
old couple, Elizabeth and Zechariah, you're going to
have to practice the presence of God.
You're going to have to find a secret
place.
You're going to have to go there often.
And you're going to have to turn off
the television and the radio and get your
Bible out.
Dust off that Bible.
Get it out there and learn to read
it.
And learn it all over again.
Well, that's that.
Now, where were those two fine old people?
And do you know, here's the thing I
want to straightly stress.
They had fruit in old age.
They were very old.
It says, well stricken in years, and yet
he was born to them that day, prophet
of prophets John the Baptist.
They had fruit in old age.
And the Bible promises that we'll have fruit
when we're older.
I don't believe ever there ought to be
a time in anybody's life when he leaves
ten pounds and doesn't get any fruit.
I think that we ought to keep on
bearing fruit until we die.
It may be that because of physical or
mental weaknesses, we might not be able to
carry the old load.
That's another matter, and that the man retire
while he's retired.
That's all that.
But you oughtn't quit.
You ought to retire to serve God, not
to quit.
Well, now, let's look at these other two.
Here was Simeon and Anna.
They weren't in relation to Anna, so far
as I know.
They just were Christians around the temple there.
But here was Simeon.
Now, while the Pharisees lived like righteous sepulchers,
and the Sadducees, the liberals of the day,
spread their evil run beneath, and their lawyers
quibbled about words, here was a good old
man who was walking his job right in
the middle of it.
It's a wonderful thing to be able to
walk in the rain and not get wet.
It's wonderful to be able to walk through
a cold wind and come out clean.
It's wonderful to live in a corrupt age
and be uncorruptible.
It's wonderful to live in a bad age
and be good, to live in an unbelieving
age and still keep your faith.
I preached to them.
They were kind enough to ask me to
preach the anniversary sermon at Houghton College here
not long ago.
Houghton College, 75 years old.
75 years old.
I was too nice to tell them that
now I could be a little older by
a few months, but I preached the anniversary.
Why did they ask me to preach the
anniversary?
I'll never know, but they did, and I
preached it.
So when I got up to preach, I
said, Well, I suppose that I ought to
add my congratulations to the rest of the
congratulations that you're receiving by cable, telegram, letter,
and personal conversation.
And I said, I want to congratulate you,
but I don't want to congratulate you for
the reasons you think.
I'm not going to congratulate you for being
75 years old, because that's nothing to live
75 years.
All you have to do to live 75
years is just don't die.
You know, that's all.
There's nothing to it.
If you just don't die, then you'll live
75 years.
There's nothing to that.
There are lots of things older than 75
years.
There are mud puddles in the wall that
were wallowing around there before Houghton was ever
heard of.
And there are crows that tell me living
in the trees.
The poet talks about the century-living crow
that grows old and dies among your branches.
And there's the coral trees out on the
coast that were out there when Abraham walked
in from Ur of the Chaldeans.
So it isn't a great thing that you
should be 75 years old.
But I said, let me tell you this,
when I set the conditions from 75 years
ago to now, the change in philosophy, the
change in politics, the world wars, the depression,
the liberalism, the modernism, the upside-downism, and
all of the wars and the changes that
took place, and I said, let's ensure all
of these changes, hope in life, good and
excellent, but it's in faith of our fathers,
the Holy Faith.
After 75 years, I said, accept my congratulations.
Not that you're 75 years old, but you've
kept true to God for 75 years.
Now, that's what you congratulate people about.
Pharaoh was a good old man, and he
walked with his God that said, Behold, there
was a man in Jerusalem.
As this God had gone up and down
the streets of Jerusalem, examining and testing and
searching, suddenly he cried, Behold, there's a man
in Jerusalem.
His name was King.
God had found him.
He was just and devout, righteous and merciful,
waiting for the constellation of Israel.
That is, he was a convinced believer in
the prophecies of Scripture.
Now, we don't preach prophecy anymore.
Mussolini knocked the crops out from under, and
the Second World War shut all these prophets
up, and I don't know what they've done
with their crops.
Probably burned them or ripped them someplace, but
I still believe in prophecy.
I still think Jesus is coming, and when
Khrushchev mounts the muscles of hell and begins
to crow, I recognize I heard Hitler crow
years ago, and Mussolini, and Tolstoy, and all
that stuff.
Where they're crowing now, I don't know.
But I can guess, and I'm going to
guess where Khrushchev is going to crow one
of these days.
And I'm not worried about that, because I
believe in prophecy.
I believe in the sovereignty of God, and
I'm not afraid to kill him.
I believe it's a sovereign God running his
world.
I believe he's running it, as I said
yesterday, according to his eternal purpose, and I
don't think anybody is going to catch him
unaware.
I don't think he'll notice it.
You, that's that hunk of metal into the
air.
That's the thickness that God would greatly surprise
you.
The God who knows everything that can be
known, and has known it, and does, and
one ever does ask, know all that can
be known?
That poor little thickness.
It's like a half-headed boy playing with
marbles out on a muddy road.
And God Almighty who made the heaven and
earth and all the things that are therein,
and tossed the sun up into the sky,
and the stars to the four corners of
the night.
That God who makes the galaxy beyond galaxy,
and then everybody went into a pillow fight,
even in Washington.
You know, they had to get their smelling
salts out, because somebody threw a little hunk
of metal up into the air.
How serious can you get?
God's still on the throne, my brothers, and
he's still the Lord God of Abraham, Isaac,
and Joseph.
And he's still running his world, thickness to
no thickness.
Well, it had been revealed to this man,
it had been revealed to him, that he
wasn't a guy.
He was a just man and a devolved
man, and the Holy Ghost was upon him.
The Holy Ghost was upon him.
I wrote an article called, How to be
Filled with the Holy Ghost, published in Christian
Life magazine.
The magazine makes me sick, and I tell
the editor every time I see him, but
I wrote, I thought somebody would read it,
and I couldn't read it from the witness.
So, he comes right out with a letter,
a long letter.
And he tried to prove that he couldn't
be filled with the Holy Ghost.
I never replied to the letter.
He wanted to know if I had seen
him.
Well, I never replied to the letter for
about two months.
Then he wrote me another letter.
He sent me a copy of the original
letter, and he said, I'd like to have
the answer to it.
I deserve an answer.
I should have an answer.
So, I finally sat down, and I said,
I didn't refuse to reply, because I don't
know what you think I was discourteous, but
there are some things too sacred to argue
about.
And I said, my relation to the Holy
Ghost is too personal and too sacred for
me to argue with a man that believes
as you do about the Holy Ghost.
And this man went on to show in
about a page and a half that being
filled with the Holy Ghost was an unrealizable
ideal.
He said, it's just an ideal God has
set up there, but you never can reach
it.
Then I said, I hope that I may
in therapy conclude my letter by saying that
if, he said, I feel, you would spend
as much time trying to be filled with
the Holy Ghost as you do trying to
prove you can't be, the Church of Christ
might come out of her boulders.
Sincerely yours, A.
W.
Church.
But he hasn't replied.
I don't know whether he ever will.
But this man was a good man, and
the Holy Ghost was upon him.
In an awful time of corruption, the Holy
Ghost was upon him, and he came by
the Spirit into the temple, the only way
to come, and it had been revealed by
the Holy Ghost.
We are living in times now when people
are afraid to say the Holy Ghost revealed
something to me, because they will send for
the dogs at me and have them put
away.
Well, they say, you've got your Bible now.
You've had the Holy Ghost revealed.
Well, they had their Bible, too, remember?
They had everything from Genesis to Malachi.
And the man's communion was perfectly familiar with
the Old Testament scriptures, the Psalms, the Proverbs,
and all of the prophets down to Malachi
with Genesis.
So what we need better is not less
Bible, but we need more revelation.
We ought to study the Bible as much
or more than we do now, but we
need revelation.
You can't have revelation without the Bible, but
you can study the Bible a lifetime and
never have revelation.
The Holy Ghost has revealed, too.
You can't get it from going around in
your eyes on a text.
The Word of God you have in you
is only the shell of truth.
The truth is in the Spirit.
The Spirit has to reveal the truth, too,
and we can be students of the Word
all our lives and let not know the
truth, and never have a revelation of the
Holy Ghost to our hearts once.
This old man had, and God had honored
him here, and put him out here, this
old man, one of the fine old men
of the scriptures.
What a fine old chap he was.
He was the salt of the earth and
the seed of survival.
And men like him kept Christa, kept Judaism,
from rotting completely away before the Lord came.
Well, then, now let's go to Hannah.
I want to call her Hannah, but her
name's Anna.
She was over a hundred years old, and
it said she departed not from the temple.
One version says she never got far from
the temple.
I love that, that dear old soul.
Anybody came around and said, I've got a
letter for Hannah.
Why have you framed her?
Well, I don't know exactly, but you go
down to the temple and wait around.
She'll be there.
But she never got far from the temple.
You framed her there all right.
Right around the temple, he said to the
dear old soul in Chicago that she lived
near the church and she could see him,
and every light went on, she came to
service.
She was too old and puzzled to know
what was going on.
Maybe it was only a board meeting.
But then I showed up.
She was never far from the temple.
Since that, she'd come here and take him
to a rest home, and she comes up
to church.
But as long as she was able to
navigate under her own power, just let the
light flick on in the church and she
was there.
Never this far from the temple.
All of these old abbots that love the
church, don't you?
I do.
These old abbots.
They get old.
If I see some of you, God bless
you, if there's no old, only I see
my very little youth.
But you're getting old.
But you're not far from the temple.
You're starting to hang around.
Young people look at you as an old
relic.
Think of yourself.
They'd want to hang you up on the
wall along with a duffel and a spinning
wheel and an old fuzzy whip.
You belong to another age.
But you're not far from the temple.
You're around when the first benediction, or the
first amen, starts.
You're there.
Hannah wasn't far from the temple, says she.
And she served God and she didn't miss
anything.
And when they brought the little Jesus in,
Hannah was there.
You know, if she'd been like Duncan, told
him to come to church at weddings and
funerals, she'd have missed it.
But she was there every time she could
get there.
So she was there.
No matter when Jesus had been brought in,
Hannah would have been around.
If she hadn't been there when he came,
she'd have been there before he got away.
Because she was an inhabitant of the temple.
She was a bird that laid her nest
near the house of God.
And I love that.
Well, these are the four old friends of
God.
You old people, I want you to take
comfort.
You younger people, I want you to take
warning.
Here are these four old people.
Well, what have the years brought to you?
Now, the years have gone by.
You're not old, but you're older.
There are no old people, just older people.
Now, there were old people there, but not
now.
Well, now somebody will say, well, that tells
you I've grown older and wiser.
Well, I hope you have, and it's possible.
And these four older friends, they have grown
wiser as they've grown older.
But you know you can grow older without
growing wiser.
Ever think of that?
We imagine that we grow wise naturally.
No, no, you don't.
In order to grow wiser as you grow
older, you've got to be a student of
life.
And most Christians aren't a student of life.
They're not students of life at all.
They just gossip and don't read anything but
the newspaper, and read his digest, and only
read the jokes and read his digest.
And they only read the funnies in the
paper, or the murders and rapes.
They don't care much about anything else.
Yet they're Christians.
They have family plans or they can't leave
them.
But they're not students of life.
And yet when they get old, they say,
I'm older and wiser.
Don't be so sure of it, Papa, because
it may be you're just older.
Well, well, well, it may be you're older
and wiser, but it could be that you're
not wiser, just older.
To be older and wiser, you've got to
be followers of the light.
You've got to have to walk in the
light.
You know, some people lose their place in
their lives because they have life and don't
walk in it, and they're bogged down there
and never get one inch further.
So when you're bogged down one inch and
go off a little cross, you never get
beyond that.
And they say, I'm older and wiser.
No, you're just older.
You have a facility to walk in the
light, and the result is the light has
dimmed down.
And now, you say, but my conscience doesn't
bother me.
That's because you're getting old, and your conscience
is getting numb.
There's a lot of things you need to
have you don't have anymore because you're losing
your feeling to some degree as you get
older.
Well, if we're going to be like this
as we get older, we're going to have
to be disciples of Christ.
That is only use of Christ.
Most Christians just accept Christ, and then sit
down and sit away some.
Can't do that.
That's why I don't believe much in modern
evangelism.
They're Christ-susceptive all the time.
I want to accept Christ.
Then you go out and do the things
from that time right on.
And there's nothing you won't do.
When I accept Christ, I accept him as
my Lord and Savior and Teacher and Master.
And I'm to be a disciple of Christ.
And if I'm in the school of Christ
a long time, I'll be older and wiser.
But if I just accepted Christ somewhere back
there and got rid of him, well, I'll
just be older, not wiser.
And then, to be older and wiser, we've
got to learn from our own mistakes.
Most people can't do that.
That's a trick, I tell you, my friend,
to learn from your own mistakes.
Most people refuse to admit their mistakes.
They won't, they won't admit them.
You've got to learn from your own mistakes.
And it's very hard.
I admit it's hard.
It's hard.
Especially it's hard before you're wise.
Even if you've been mistaken.
You ever think of that?
I mean, it's hard, but you've got it
to do.
And then, if you're going to be wiser
as you get older, you've got to take
an attitude toward life that is reverent and
serious and humble.
You've got to become a mystic as you
get older.
I'm afraid of these hard, old Christians that
are all dollars and cents.
You've got to take a reverent attitude toward
life, serious and humble.
And toward God you've got to take an
attitude believing in the good and the wicked,
of course.
Now, if you have lived in the life,
obeyed God, loved all God's words for God's
sake, obeyed the scriptures, done what you were
told, prayed a lot, read the Bible regularly,
and stopped messing with yourself, maybe you've gotten
wiser as you've gotten older.
Hannah was.
Hannah.
And so was Kenyon, and so was Zechariah,
and Elizabeth.
They were the very wise, old people.
And you know, when I think of my
Christian life as a young person, you know
who helped me?
Not any young person ever helped me when
I was young or didn't help me.
They wouldn't know how.
They couldn't.
I don't blame them.
They just couldn't.
But I think that some of the dear,
old people around the local streets, they've been
helped to know how.
Their memories are etched.
Fr.
Dr. Truman mentioned one Fr.
Lohr.
Now, Fr.
Lohr was a little bit clear, but he
was clear over on the happy side of
things.
He said that he was God's Daddy.
He used to get up and dress fine
and say, I'm God's Daddy, and the Daddy
that takes care of these gardens.
He said, I'm not worried.
He said, I couldn't get sick of a
lot of things.
And to say that he was well, he'd
jump up and down.
And he must have been in his eighties
when I moved.
The Lord took him off the head and
set him in, and he went over there
as far as I know well now.
He was perfectly right.
He was a clear, but he wasn't a
clear.
I can stand a man who's clear on
the happy side.
And he was.
And there were a lot of others around
there, old men and all.
He used to raise his feet up to
heaven and pray, and he'd say, say, I
don't want to go out of there.
The beauty of a mistress, the beauty of
St. Francis, St. Augustine, something beautifully wonderful, and
far away, he'd look you right in the
eyes.
I remember him.
I don't remember the kids, you know, or
the wild cats.
I remember these old fellows.
And I was only myself, it's funny.
But I learned from them.
If you're wise and old, there's some say,
I've grown as a tree grows.
And I hope you have.
But not necessarily.
Because you don't grow automatically.
You only grow as you follow Christ and
carry the cross and meet the conditions of
growth.
And you know what the conditions of growth
are, they're three.
Life, that is exposure to the truth.
Faith, that is the presence of the Son
of God.
And mercy, that is the child of the
Spirit.
That's the only way you grow.
But then remember, there are other ways of
making progress besides growing.
When there's progress, sometimes that's only one figure's
feet growing.
Other figures' feet have to do with the
war, a war is to be won.
And if you've been, if you don't have
any power of control, if you're not fighting,
you're never out of that old, very tired
from the battle, brother.
You've got your physical needs, you can't think
anymore.
Well, you ought to have a faith to
turn around the world.
To turn around the world.
And one can find, life is strong as
a dreamer.
Instead of progress through growth, it's a dreamer.
And the dreamer may be colorless and dark
and only asking for grips and steadfastness and
ability to suffer and patience and faith, but
it's a dream.
We write poetry about the dream, the Christian
life as a dreamer, and it's often written
poetry, because we said it's a good music,
it's singable.
But when you're living the dream, it isn't
singable at all.
You get grips in your shoes and stressors
up your shoes and pounds of stones out
of your shoes, and you get lusty and
you join these dreams.
You just look up to God and say,
God, I'm on my way.
I hope I make it.
I trust you.
And go ahead.
And the Lord will bless you and will
curse you, and after a while, you'll get
a new start and go on.
But don't let them imagine the Christian life
is all just truth.
It isn't.
It's not all a bowl of clay.
There's a whole lot in the Christian life
that isn't a bowl of clay.
It isn't a continuous truth, and there isn't
a lot of time.
Christianity now is a second Christ and then
on Christmas.
That's Christianity of the day.
Christianity's an endless Christmas, according to the modern,
unbeliever's way of looking at things.
Unbelievers, I mean evangelical unbelievers.
Well, if you want to go and get
along with these four or five people, there's
some things you've got to learn.
Now, you've been traveling, and I want to
ask you a question.
You've been traveling a good many years, some
of you, but have you been traveling in
a straight line or have you been traveling
in a circle?
Out in the state of Illinois, it was
perfectly flat.
You could place checkers all over somewhere over
the landscape.
We went out one time for a little
ride with some friends in the country, and
we saw a beautiful sight, a red vine,
a wagon, and a farmer with a straw
hat on, working around there.
And I said, isn't that a little romantic?
That's beautiful.
We drove on and made a few friends,
and we soon came to another red vine
with a man out in front working alongside
the wagon.
I said, look, there's finally quite a lot
of life out there.
There's proof of uniformity.
And we drove on for a while, made
a few more friends, and saw another red
vine and a wagon.
Out in front, the farmer working back, and
in the last century, my first call, I
said to the driver, do you know what
we're doing?
We're driving in a circle.
I said, this is the same three vines.
These three vines are all the same vine.
You haven't been making any progress at all.
You're lost.
And he said, that last year in Illinois,
you know, everything's just like everything else.
Flat.
No more bumps and digs to carry around,
like they have around here.
And that's the way it was.
Well, I remember the story I heard when
I was young of a wooden-legged man
who had one wooden leg, and he got
a little absorbed in a little too much
mountain dew, and he started home in one
of these little towns.
It could have been out here in Newfoundland,
I don't know, but the sidewalks were made
out of wood, and one of them was
a, was a, no, there was a hole
in the thing.
There was a knothole was in it, and
he got a wooden leg and he got
up in the knothole and walked all in.
And one of the, one of the ways,
one of the, and the son of you,
God bless you, and don't call me now.
You can bite the feet of God and
carry the Bible, but you don't call me.
You sit up there making a wooden leg
in the knothole, and you come to camp
once a year, you go to church, you
come to missionary conventions, but you haven't made
any progress.
You're just waiting there.
You're walking around with a wooden leg, traveling
in circles.
That ain't, it ain't my intention, but I
wonder if the blood of atonement means more
to us than it used to mean.
I wonder if we've conquered that bad habit.
How about it, Grandpa?
When you were young, you had a temple,
and you used to bring it on your
I.C. grandfather.
But you've had 40 years to get your
temple sanctified.
Have you been sanctified, or you still get
mad when things don't go right?
I don't mind telling you this.
I've got no confidence in a Christian who
gets mad.
If he gets mad, he isn't sanctified.
If he gets mad, he doesn't have virtue.
And honey, I have no compliment from people
at birth.
If they're ever prepared to pray, haven't got
cleansed from their nasty senses, they're not making
progress at all.
They're giving you a tongue.
Mother, what about it?
Years ago, I preached over there, and I
told some of you then that what you
need to do is put your tongue out
for all you do, so you can have
that much clear thought, and you'll do better.
You'll get back home and stop talking, and
you'll grow in grace.
Have you done it?
Well, you've still got what you used to
do.
Well, we've got to get the strange ways
out of our lives and get purified.
You know, brethren, this is an awful thing
to say, and I say it often to
say it, but I'm quite an example of
the human being, and I have never believed
that in order to be a good Christian,
you have to stop looking at things.
If you know you're nothing, you're nothing, you're
nothing, you're kind of a monkey Christian that
I don't go for.
I believe the Lord sent me into the
world to study the Lord, pray, help people,
and have looked the King over.
And you know what I've noticed?
I've noticed so many Christians as they get
older, they get careless.
But I've not only stopped dressing decently, but
they get careless in their Christian lives, and
they get indifferent.
And I've noticed that as we get older
we get gluttonous and clownish.
And there's nothing quite so awful as a
clownish old man.
You know, the young fellas cracking jokes, that's
different.
An old fella, he ought to know better.
The son of God standing down on his
old bald head, he ought to be ready
for heaven, he ought to be able to
take off like a helicopter without any wear
and tear on him, right straight off into
the heavens above.
Instead of that, we find a little clown
hanging around, a teasing old fella.
Had a teasing old man in that church
in Chicago.
He died and he didn't have no attention
to him.
He died, and he was so teasing that
when the kids made any noise he'd get
up and walk down the aisle and stare
at them.
And they were scared of the old fella,
and that he was quite a Christian, you
know.
They're noisy Christians.
But they were teasing.
Some get greedy when they get old.
Isn't that awful?
Listen, getting greedy about your money when you
get old reminds me of what happened out
in a prison somewhere in the West.
They had a bunch of fellas around there
sentenced to die.
They were in death row and they died.
And they came to them and they said,
now you've got a lot of books here.
Here's a list of books.
And you can have any book you want.
And one of them says a book he
wants to read.
One who had four or five days to
live says this book.
And what do you suppose the name of
the book was?
Out of a boy from the states in
England.
He was going to die in four or
five days, but he wanted to read up
on his English.
So at least he would die dramatically.
How completely silly English is.
Now it's just as bad to be greedy
when you're old.
You can't take that along, Pop.
Why don't you let us do your mission?
Why don't you give us the work of
God?
You'll come in in one piece.
We'll drag you and pick you up and
slide you down into oil or whatever there
is in those days.
And when you go back, you're going to
get treated just exactly the same.
You'll just be in one piece.
There'll be nothing you can take with you.
So how perfectly silly to try to pile
up your money when you're old.
Yet I found greedy old people.
Doctor, I know women all don't do any
of that, folks.
But, uh, well, what can we do, fam?
Just mourn the waste of years.
That's my, that's about the only grief I
have is the waste of years.
People think I'm a very busy man.
I get letters almost half the letters I
get that say, I know you're a very
busy man.
Oh, if they knew how much I love,
and if they know how lazy I've been
down the years.
I'm used over it.
Let mourn the waste of years.
And you young people, take example from this,
and don't waste yours.
And pretend to take advantage of every opportunity
to look at Moses and Jacob, and how
they had no chance.
And yet, they grabbed hold of the least
little bit of information they could get and
made good on it.
So take a stumbling block to you, to
old professors who aren't living right.
Back in your home church, when you were
a little older too, nobody in it under
50, you would say, how many did you
do for them young people that's going to
the dogs?
You don't know that some of them started
to go to heaven and saw you and
turned off to the dogs.
I wonder how many of did you
do
for
them?
don't know that some of them started to
and saw and turned You don't know that
some started to go to heaven and turned
off to the dogs.
I wonder how many did you them young
Other people would be glad to live in
the better enough, in the 60s.
Some people live so the only thing they
can do in the world is die.
And the greatest thing they can do in
the world is to die.
Others live so that people agree when they
die.
They were darker.
They weren't old.
But boy, they could chew up a new
needle.
Chew what was sold, and trade what was
sold tomorrow, and help the poor, and pass
out clothing to the poor, and one day
something hit him, he died.
And they gathered around and they said, We
can't give her up.
She's indispensable.
And they sent for Peter and explained the
circumstance, and Peter said, Well, I didn't think
there were any indispensables, but look who's here.
So Peter said, Get out of here, everybody.
And he laid his hands on him to
roll him from the bed.
He went back to a needle.
She was so useful, they just couldn't let
her die.
But some people are so useless, that the
only thing they can do is the church,
is the phone.
Oh, man.
If we're older, let's try to walk with
these four.
If we're younger, let's try to throw it
in.
But if we get older, we'll be like
them.
Let's go.
Oh, Lord Jesus, Thou ageless, timeless, immortal One.
Time hath not laid its hand on thee,
and the years have exacted no tribute from
thee.
Thou remaineth in thy years for evermore.
We thank Thee that in the very near
future Thou art going to impart to us
the immortality which is Thine.
And we shall be glorified and so delightfully
entreated as Thou art.
And Thou art going to give us of
the same deathless, immortal body and mind that
relished it without its past.
Oh, Christ, prepare us for that day.
And we can save us from bogging down
and getting sulky in silence.
Help us to pray to our God to
be as fresh and warm and vigorous as
the old temple of our body and heart.
Forgive us for our wasted years.
Forgive us for the people that we have
turned aside by our conduct.
And may we pray that from now on,
everybody will, when they see us, want to
turn to our Savior because they saw us
live.
Bless us, we pray, through the rest of
this afternoon.
We will assert, we will spoil the discourse,
touch the mind of the troubled, warm all
our spirits together, and greatly bless us.
We ask in the name of Jesus Christ.
Amen.