Last Sunday night I had the privilege of
speaking to a gathering of maybe about 1
,600 or 1,700 people.
There were actually four small churches that gathered
together for this one big meeting, though we
had various meetings light up during the week.
You know, lots of people think the old
saints have gone and the young ones are
not very bright.
You're more interested in the football field or
the mission field.
You're not very interested in sacrifice or discipline.
And I believe that's true to a great
degree.
So here I go along to a church,
I don't know anything about it.
Found a bunch of young men there.
In the first place I was fascinated by
the fact that there are 20 pastors to
this gathering.
There are six of them I think that
have paid a full-time ministry.
And you know what?
All the six get the same wage, including
the janitor.
Isn't that wonderful?
I guess your preacher's only worth a janitor's
wage anyhow.
But apart from that, I thought it was
very wonderful that they live in that degree.
Then I got to talk with a young
man and they're working in one of the
most difficult cities in America.
This super intellectual has earned a Fulbright scholarship
to Oxford University and he's not going, he's
going to work with this group of people
for less than $20,000 a year.
There's a man there earning $200,000 a
year and he's laying it on one side
and taking $20,000 a year to work
with this church.
There's another fellow there whose name I guess
most of you know.
And his dad is a multimillionaire.
He's taking a 500% cut in his
wages to work in this church.
So do you wonder you get guys like
that?
$200,000 a year, throw it away and
take $20,000.
Cut your salary 500%, refuse a Fulbright scholarship
to Oxford which could open many areas of
the world to him.
But you see these guys are really in
love with Jesus.
I'll tell you where I went.
I'd met one of the men, he might
be called the leader of the group.
They've only been together as four churches for
five years.
But the attraction to me was this, they
have three prayer meetings of two hours each
every day.
And this pastor hasn't missed one prayer meeting
in five years.
They're trying to buy a building in the
city.
It's a very lovely place, it costs four
and a half million dollars.
It has a, what do you call it
now, a dormitory for 75 women on one
side of the campus, a dormitory for 75
men on the other.
It has an auditorium to seat 1,500
and it has another area that will seat
about five to 600.
And they're believing God to give them this
building.
And the exciting thing to me is this,
it's going to be a school of prayer.
It's going to be a chapel for prayer
open 24 hours a day.
Now that excites me.
When you see, I went to the prayer
meeting Saturday night, it was wonderful.
Remember some folk here, used to come to
our Friday night prayer meeting, it was like
that, maybe not as much singing, but the
glory of the Lord filled the temple.
I saw those well-dressed young ladies kneeling
down, reaching out their hands, praying, praying with
tears, praying with brokenness.
It's a unique thing.
But it's the only thing that's going to
turn us around in America.
Singing and clapping is good, but it won't
do us much.
The devil isn't afraid of singing.
I don't remember, of course I have an
old version here.
Am I correct?
Maybe Jack Morrison will correct me.
Did the disciples once say to Jesus, well,
teach us to clap?
No?
I've got the wrong version.
No, I've got the right one, you've got
the wrong one.
I know it's all right in place, but
the devil fears prayer.
And they said, Lord, teach us to pray.
And the other scripture says, pray without ceasing.
I did find something out in a meeting
fairly recently, the noisiest meeting I've ever been
in in my life.
And they called it singing.
I couldn't understand that.
And I suddenly realized we were taking refuge
in a verse of a hymn, a verse
of a psalm that said, make a joyful
noise unto the Lord.
And that's all it was, a joyful noise.
Well, there's a lovely introduction.
Turn now to the second letter of Paul
to the Corinthians and chapter 5.
In the 27th chapter of the Acts of
the Apostles, there's a story of the Apostle
Paul on board a ship.
When he got on the ship, he was
a prisoner.
When he got off the ship, he was
a pilot.
When he got on the ship, they scorned
him.
But remember, the ship ran into what they
call in those days Eurotridon, which is about
the greatest storm you could have been at
sea.
I crossed the Atlantic about 20 times and
about 16 times on boats.
And once in mid-Atlantic, we got caught
in a storm.
But when I got on that ship, the
Queen Mary, it's a football field and a
half long, 82,000 tons.
I didn't think the thing would ever move.
But when we got into mid-Atlantic, the
Atlantic tossed about just like a cork.
Everybody was sick and everybody was distressed.
When Paul got onto that ship, it says
they ran into a storm that lasted 14
days and 14 nights.
There were no stars visible, no sun in
the day, no moon in the night.
Panic struck them.
The seas were boiling, the sails were ripping,
the spars were breaking, the women were screaming,
the children were sick.
And it was, can you imagine 14 days?
What would happen if in America the sun
didn't appear for 14 days?
There were no stars in the sky.
Well, that's what they went through, all the
toil and tribulation and all the navigation stunts
that we have today.
But remember, it says that because of the
distressing situation, and because they couldn't do anything
else, they threw the cargo overboard.
And then they cut the lifeboat off.
And then they threw all the possessions overboard.
And then it says of the Apostle Paul,
when all hope was gone, it was then
he stood up and said, there stood by
me an angel of God this night, whose
I am and whom I serve.
You see, they rejected a prophecy at the
beginning of the voyage.
He told them it was a disaster.
What is a crazy preacher now?
Listen, you better get with it if God
talks with you.
One of the most charming young men I've
met in years, I met this past week.
He'd been going to a Presbyterian church, and
not everybody's like him, I guess.
Anyhow, his dad is a multimillionaire, he has
his own private car, has a phone in
it, he has everything he could desire.
He's got a wonderful wife, she's married, he's
married to a multimillionaire.
The wife, the father of the wife is
a multimillionaire too, so they've got everything.
Well they have three lovely children, the fourth
came along.
And this hologram showed that the new baby
that was coming had no kidneys, it had
Down syndrome, it had a hole through its
heart.
The doctor said, give up, forget it.
Now he's one of those folks who don't
believe in healing.
You won't need to if you need it.
You'll ridicule it, your seminary professor will tell
you it isn't for the day.
But boy, if he's dying, he'll ask for
prayer.
Forget it, don't pray for him.
What's going to constitute in God's will if
he doesn't believe in healing?
So what happened?
They prayed for the child, took it back
to the doctor, examined it again, no change.
The child can't live, it has no kidneys,
the child can't live, it has a hole
through its heart.
If it lives, it would be a freak.
Forget your faith.
You're nice people, sure enough, but don't stretch
it too far.
It's amazing they're afraid to overburden God.
As though you can put a strain on
omnipotence.
Everybody said, listen, you're disgracing us, we're Presbyterians,
we're not those fanatical Pentecostals or, you know,
half Pentecostals, all charismatic.
They went back for the third time.
The doctor came out from checking the baby
up.
He said, listen, I don't know what happened.
He said, the baby's perfectly normal.
The kidneys are there, the hole is healed,
the child looks different.
Have a baby.
Boy, they have about the most beautiful baby,
because Lee's had one since, that's the latest
edition.
I mean, I don't say it's the last
one with them, but it's the latest.
But the baby's perfectly healed.
The doctor said, I don't understand this.
Listen, if you worship a God that you
can understand, you're in trouble.
God owes me no explanations.
He's going to work everything after the counsel
of his own will.
And sometimes when we won't believe, it takes
us through the most painful ways.
Oh yes, the Lord's my shepherd.
He leadeth me by still waters and green
pastures.
That's okay, but when he leads you in
the valley of the shadow of death, how
do you stand it?
That's a test.
Anybody can live by green pastures and still
waters, but what do you do when the
walls go up, the roof comes in?
Well, this is what this is all about.
Let me hurry and read this, so you'll
be here till breakfast now.
Okay, we're in 2 Corinthians chapter 6, chapter
5, pardon me.
I mentioned the apostle being on that ship,
and all hope has gone.
And he says, we threw out four anchors.
And this is a day in which we're
sailing into a storm.
I have three different prophecies from people that
don't know each other, that say that when
Mr. Bush comes into power, there's going to
be a period of four years of intense
evil and trial, particularly for Christians.
My neighbor was with, uh, Billy Graham, no
our neighbor was with Dave Wilkerson two weeks
ago.
And the last prophecy David has made is
that by October this year, the whole market
is going to collapse.
We're going to go into a state of
chaos beyond anything we've ever known.
So then if you don't have an anchor
in trouble, this fellow says, Paul says, we
cast out four anchors and we wished for
the day.
Let me take the first anchor in chapter
5, verse 1.
We know if our earthly house of this
tabernacle were dissolved, we have a doing of
God, a house not made with hands, eternal
in the heavens.
So you see, he has assurance.
He has a home in heaven, he doesn't
say that.
He says we have a home eternal in
the heavens.
So come hell or high water, the point
says, what does it matter?
We have a home eternal in the heavens.
You know, once you got into heaven, five
minutes after you've been in heaven, you wish
you'd been more sacrificial, you wish you'd been
more prayerful, you wish you'd been more spiritual,
you wish you'd been more worldly.
Do you know, do you know a place
better than heaven?
If you do, stick up your hand.
I thought you were ignorant.
Nobody raised their hand.
What place is better than heaven?
Earth.
This hell hole, for this reason, while you're
like this in mortality at this side of
the barrier, you have a chance to repay
your lives, you have a chance to sacrifice
more, you have a chance to fast more,
you have a chance to pray more.
Once the threat of life snaps, whether it's
on the narrow way that leads to destruction,
or the broad way that leads to destruction,
or the narrow way, once the threat of
life breaks between here and the judgment seat,
there's no U-turn.
You're making a score right now.
Oh, heaven is beautiful, there's no tears.
Who says so?
The book of Revelation, it doesn't.
Yes, it does.
Give me the verse.
You give me the verse, okay.
But what do you do with the other
verse that says, he wipes away all tears
from their eyes?
When is that?
Is it embarrassed believers who suddenly wake up
in eternity and say, oh God, if you'd
give me 10 years on earth, I'd pray
as I've never prayed, I'd fast as I've
never prayed, I'd ask for vision I've never
had.
Is it appalling?
I know these rascals who've been on TV
and got messed up with women, okay.
Do you know what happened?
The devil took them to the top of
the pinnacle and said, jump down.
And they did, and crashed.
They thought they could ride the storm on
popularity, and they can't.
You see, the greatest ministry, the greatest work
this side of eternity, is ministering the gospel
of the Lord Jesus Christ.
It's the most painful, and it's the most
profitable.
It will give you more joy, it will
give you more sorrow.
You see, you've got the cloth in your
hand.
You are just as spiritual as you want
to be.
I know you've made vows you won't watch
football.
Did you watch it?
How many, come on you guys, stick your
hands on TV.
How many of you watch the whole, what
do you call it, Superbowl?
How many watch the Superbowl?
Come on, one hand, two.
Come on the rest of you sinners.
Three.
Come on, be honest, you'll be honest, there's
a judgment seat printed.
Did you watch it all?
Did you watch the Superbowl?
Good for you.
He's gone, he's gone in grace since last
year.
Pardon?
Oh, he checked the final score, what, 50
minutes before it finished?
He says, we know if this earthly house
were dissolved, we have a building of God,
a house not made with hands, eternal in
the heavens.
Wait a minute, if you read through the
writings of Paul, you'll discover that over and
over again, he talks about that the ministry
be not blamed.
And he talks about the discipline that's needed
in the ministry as well.
Okay, nobody suffered more than the Apostle Paul.
What does he say in his catalogue of
sufferings in 2 Corinthians 11?
He says, are they ministers of Christ?
I speak as a fool.
Now here's what he got, these are his
wages.
Five times I receive 40 stripes save one.
What's five times 40?
200, minus five, 195.
Well look, the first time they put him
into a whipping post, tied him to that
post, there was a lictor's lash, which was
a main piece of leather with at least
five strands at the end.
On the end of every strand, there was
a pin, not made of metal.
Yes, I mean, it was made of metal,
it was made of copper.
And copper is the most tearing, sharp thing.
Imagine he gets five, he gets 40 stripes,
and all the time that's happening, you know
what he's saying?
Under his breath, every time that lictor's
lash came and clawed his back, and by
the time he'd done his back was like
a mass of jelly, like a ploughed field.
And every time that rotten devilish thing came
on him, do you know what he was
saying under his breath?
None of these things move me.
He didn't say none of these things hurt
me, but he said they don't move me.
I don't change my attitude to God, because
things have gone bad.
195 times he's lashed.
Well the first time he had 40 stripes,
I'm sure he counted down, but the second
time his back was more tender, the third
time he was worse, and each time he
went his back was more sore, and more
sore, and more sore.
So what?
He'd already written to the Corinthians and said,
at the end of the fourth chapter, we
look not the things that are seen, but
the things which are not seen.
For the things which you see in the
temple, and every moment that thing tore his
back, he was saying this is going to
pass.
I have a home eternally in the heavens.
Tear my body apart if you want, nor
do I care.
It's only temporary, it's only a few minutes,
it won't last very long.
You see the last thing we want to
talk about, particularly in America with all our
comforts, is suffering.
You know it's one thing to get a
good dose of salvation, and a good dose,
if you like, of sanctification, get the anointing
of the Spirit, but it's maintaining the fire
that matters.
This week I was thinking over in my
mind, I love to go to the old
Methodist hymn book, and here is the greatest
man that ever lived after Jesus, far as
I'm concerned, the Apostle Paul, and yet he
has the greatest catalogue of suffering.
John Wesley and Charles Wesley, two of the
most brilliant men that ever lived.
They came onto the scene in a time
of absolute death in Christianity in England.
Every other shop was a gin shop.
There was open immorality in the streets when
they had voting and so forth.
And a bloody revolution swept over France, and
the French people tossed the monarchy into the
garbage can.
They put up their standard liberty, fraternity, and
equality.
And Leckie, a secular historian, not a Christian
historian, and Leckie, a secular historian, says that
terrible river of blood was going to engulf
England.
And then two men stood up.
There weren't two, there were three.
And the first wasn't Wesley, it was George
Whitefield.
And they proclaimed the everlasting gospel.
They didn't talk about issues.
They didn't talk about adultery.
They didn't talk about drugs.
Those opium men, what did they do?
They preached the everlasting gospel.
Today we're preaching trivia.
We're preaching drugs.
We're preaching about divorce.
We preach about other things.
But it's the eternal verities.
Paul preached the whole counsel of God.
And I say again, when Wesley came on
the scene, it was a dramatic thing.
Remember, he was the most religious man you
could find in England.
He's a reproduction of Nicodemus.
He's a scholar and a gentleman.
He belongs in the next highest family to
the royal family.
And he's already a very expert in religion.
He could have recited the Apostles' Creed, the
Belgian Creed, every other creed you like.
He could have recited the 39 articles by
Pearson, which is basic in the Church of
England.
There was hardly a thing he couldn't do.
But he was still unsaved.
He was still unborn.
And Mrs. Wesley, that amazing woman that had
what, 29 children?
No, 19 children.
29, it's gone up.
Inflation.
19 children.
And they became one of the most amazing
families in history.
And one day she had a little book,
and she gave it to Charles.
She said, you read this thoroughly.
Then pass it to John.
And John read it, and he set it
on fire.
And then after John read it, and Charles
got it, and he said to a man
sitting in the base of a window there
in Christchurch at Oxford, he said, George, read
this.
This is the best thing you'll ever read,
if you want a copy of that by
the, George, what do you call him?
Jack Morrison.
Be glad to sell you a copy.
The life of God in the soul of
man.
You're not a Christian because you gave up
smoking, because you joined a church, because you
were baptized.
All that happened when you got baptized was
you went in that tank of wets, a
dry sinner, and you came out a wet
sinner.
You need more than that.
You need to be born again of the
Spirit of God.
A supernatural working of the Spirit of God.
So it came to George, it came to
John Wesley, it came to Charles Wesley, and
it came also to George Whitfield.
But listen, you've got John Wesley, dear God,
that man had more zeal when he wasn't
saved than we have when we are saved.
Do you know he came to, he came
over the Atlantic, it took him, you can
do it in three hours now, if it's
a good English play.
Not American, they fall apart.
If you're going to England, go in the
Concord, it'll take you three hours.
It took Wesley three months to come.
In a ship they wouldn't allow up a
river these days.
It came to Georgia because he knew about
Indians who were deprived and forgotten and neglected.
So he came there to preach the gospels
at a very, very sincere Church of England
minister.
What happened?
Well there were no hotels, even McDonald's wasn't
there.
So he ate what he could, he ate
off berries, he slept in the mud, woke
up in the morning with his hair fastened
in the mud, pulled one arm loose, pulled
the other arm loose, pulled one leg loose,
pulled the other leg loose, then stood up,
brushed the snow off his body he said,
and I stood up and rejoiced and sang
the doxology.
That's the man before he's saved.
He had a zeal and a compassion for
those who are lost and have such great
need.
But what does he do when he gets
the anointing of the Spirit of God?
That's the whole secret.
How many times you've been to an altar
and get a stir of it and then
a week after it's gone.
You see what Charles Wesley did was set
his brother's theology to music.
So Charles Wesley says to him, and it
became a favorite of Wesley's, give me the
faith which can remove and sink the mountain
to a plain.
Give me that, give me the faith which
can remove and sink the mountain to a
plain.
Give me that childlike praying love which longs
to build my house again.
Thy love let it my heart or power
and all my simple soul devour.
Listen to him.
Here's a man with a colossal intellect.
Here's a man who has more genius without
him than any man in England.
Here is a man who read his Bible
in Spanish, read his Bible in English, read
his Bible in French.
He memorized scriptures, memorized so many things he
wasn't wasting time at all.
He redeemed the time.
Then he says, enlarge, inflame and fill my
heart.
I had in the last five years, if
you hit the devil he'll hit you back.
In the last five years about three strokes
and two heart attacks.
They took me into a ward in the
hospital, took me into a, I don't know
what they did with me, all kinds of
stupid things.
And anyhow, the doctor came in, he said,
you know, he said, you know that pain
you had in your head?
He said, we checked and we thought maybe
you had a growth in your head.
But he said, don't trouble preacher, there's nothing
in it.
Well, that wasn't very nice.
He took another test a few days after
and he said, pastor, preacher, you've got an
enlarged heart.
I said, pray to God.
What do you mean?
I said, the Psalmist was crying for one
country, enlarge my heart, enlarge my heart.
So I got one.
So Wesley says, this man of vision, this
man who had already crossed the Atlantic a
couple of times at least, this man who
sacrificed, sold what he had and gave it
to the poor, sure he made money.
Just before he left England, well it was
before that, it was 1942, when the Germans
bombarded London, the whole of the Admiralty, the
aristocrats moved out of London to a city
called Bath, which was founded in 55 BC
by Julius Caesar.
It's a very beautiful city.
And I forgot my connection there, what was
I going to say?
Okay, well I went to a school.
The Admiralty were in a very wonderful old
grey granite building, big marvellous place.
All the officers were there with a gold
braid and all the rest of it.
But do you know that was the building
that Wesley put up in the 1700s?
He built almshouses, he built homes for the
poor, he put his money into Bibles, he
put his money into hymn books, he put
his money into supporting preachers.
Listen, do you know what?
In Wesley's day when a man went home
and said, well darling I want to tell
you something.
What are you looking so happy about?
I've been in a Methodist meeting.
They were singing that hymn, the joyful news
of sins forgiven, of health subdued and peace
with heaven.
And do you know what?
No, don't tell me, don't tell me.
Tell you what?
Tell me you've joined Wesley's travelling preachers.
Well darling I had to do.
The way he presented a need and told
me I'm a link between an eternal living
God and a damnation of sinners.
I told him I'll sell my farm if
need be, I want to be a preacher.
But she said darling you know that none
of Wesley's preachers live to be more than
32 years of age.
Dear God our preachers don't get their mouths
open till they're that age.
And they're all looking forward to a pension.
Most of them I'll pension them off tomorrow.
But you see this man has a holy
fervour, enlarge, inflame and fill my heart with
boundless charity divine.
So shall I all my strength exert and
love them with a zeal like thine and
turn them to a pardoning God and quench
their brands in Jesus' blood.
You say that's 200 years ago.
Before we left Ireland I went to a
mission hall that may not be standing after
the bombing in Belfast.
It was about the size of the middle
of this room.
It was made of tin.
When I went in the door there's a
picture behind the desk of a lady with
lovely little curls and a lace choker collar.
And it looked exactly like my mother.
It was one of the most amazing women
that Ireland's ever had.
Amy Wilson Carmichael.
A woman who got a one-way ticket
to India.
There's a new life on Amy Wilson Carmichael
by.
Come on where's my Irish wife?
Yes Elizabeth Elliot has written it and it's
fabulous.
You need to get it.
Anyhow she went thank you dear.
She went out to India.
Do you know when she went she had
a curvature of the spine?
Do you know the last three years of
her life they lifted her in out of
bed?
Come on you lazy guys what do you
do?
I hear Tyson was fighting last week.
I saw just one come in.
Somebody asked him when you're not fighting what
do you do?
And he said I do the same thing
I do every time.
When I'm fighting and not time I'm up
at four in the morning.
I run so many miles and I just
keep up the same diet.
I must keep in condition.
Come on dear God do you keep in
condition or do you keep alive because you
come to meetings?
Lots of Christians are not living in Christ
they're living on meetings.
Particularly sensational meetings.
But Paul says it's Christ in you the
hope of glory.
You see this man on the Damascus road
had an encounter with Jesus.
You can listen to preaching and die listening
to it.
But nothing will happen to you if you
have an encounter with Jesus.
And that's why this man is so bold.
You see a man with an experience is
never at the mercy of a man with
an argument.
So that's why he throws this text to
the people.
But I didn't read yet but there it
is.
Therefore if any man be in Christ he
is a new creation.
All things have passed away and all things
will become new.
It doesn't alter this what I was saying
here.
Let me go through the minute.
He says of the Jews five times received
I for this type.
And when they're the flesh of his bag
is saying a light affliction.
Dear God let me read this to you
for a minute.
Here's what he suffered.
Of the Jews five times received I for
this type say one.
Three times I was beat with rods.
Once I was stoned.
Wait a minute he stood and said nothing.
When young Stephen was stoned to death it
isn't a fear.
But it's a model universe.
When he was being stoned nobody helped him
either.
Can you imagine the first rock that he's
young Stephen?
We don't believe he was 20 years of
age.
And that is suffering for Christ's sake.
And nobody went to help him.
So when he comes back on Paul nobody
comes to help him.
Thrice I was beaten with rods.
Once I was stoned.
Thrice or three times I suffered shipwreck.
A night and a day I was in
the deep.
In journeyings often.
In perils of waters.
In perils of robbers.
In perils by my own countrymen.
In perils by the heathen.
In perils by the city.
In perils in the wilderness.
In perils of the sea.
In perils amongst false brethren.
You know if that guy had been smart
he'd have said now look out.
I've got seven books coming out on perils.
Number one perils of the deep.
Perils of something.
It's amazing this guy wrote 12, 14 epistles
if you give him Hebrews.
And he never got a dime of reward.
Can you imagine what he's going to get
in eternity?
And for all this suffering.
It's easy to read Jesus led as a
lamb to the slaughter in church.
But supposing persecution will come to America unless
there's a revival.
I'll guarantee you that.
So young people you better get anchored to
something.
Because before too long.
Well the option right now for America is
concentrating prayer or praying concentration camps.
If you hang on to Acts 4.12
that neither is there salvation in any other.
You'll suffer for it before long.
Isn't it amazing a guy's written.
What did he write?
These Satan's letters.
What are they called?
I can't hear.
Satanic verses.
The whole world is talking about it.
The whole Islam world is raging mad against
it.
But dear God when they sent a filthy
devilish diabolical picture of Jesus the last temptation.
You didn't match the streets.
Oh well it's the last days.
Come on you are cowards.
You should have marched through the street protesting.
This is our redeemer.
This is our savior.
I don't think you have to get violent
about it.
But dear you God did you get vocal
about it.
Oh you stand in church and sing we're
the whole realm of nature mind.
Forget it.
You won't give him an hour out of
bed every morning.
You won't give God his own day.
You spend that Saturday or Sunday afternoon as
it was another day.
We're going to get narrowed down out of
this.
There's going to be circumstances before long that
will divide the sheep from the goats.
There'll be more backsliding than any period in
history.
It doesn't matter what you do.
This man hangs on to a piece of
wood in the Mediterranean.
He's bashed up against a rock.
He says it's a life affliction which is
but for a moment.
This isn't much.
I've got a home eternal.
I'm not going to heaven.
I have a home eternal in the heavens.
I don't know about you but I'm not
going to heaven for the weekend.
I'm going to stay there forever and ever
and rejoice in the presence of the Lord
Jesus Christ.
But that's not all.
Then he adds this.
In weariness and painfulness, in watchings, hunger, thirst,
fastings, cold, nakedness, but either of those things
which are without, that which cometh for me
daily, the care of all the churches.
You see it doesn't matter what you do
to his body.
You can afflict him.
You can tear his flesh.
You can half starve him.
He says in weariness, hunger and painfulness.
And he says add them all up together.
They're nothing compared to the agony of loving
the church of Jesus Christ.
You know again, I'm sorry that these wretched
men have got the, they tell me, and
I don't watch TV at night, they tell
me that the comedians have had a great
time joking about the wickedness of the PTL
leader with that woman and Oral Roberts or
Swaggart.
And they've scorned and ridiculed and now talk
about evangelism.
I have preachers come in my office.
I say what do you know in Asia?
They burst into tears.
I'm embarrassed to say I'm a Pentecostal.
I said some of the best saints I
know are Pentecostals.
But listen, when you finish arguing about pre
-trib, post-trib and mid-trib, nearly everybody
agrees that we're living in the day of
the Laodicean church.
Listen fellas, if you're not happy, go out.
If you're not serious, I am.
I don't sweat and pray in blood to
be laughed at.
Kids in the streets in China today, girl
14 years of age.
I have a document on this.
She went and was witnessing to people in
the street.
She's 14 years.
How old are you?
14?
Yeah, we're not far off.
What about your buddy?
Oh, he's 11, I should think.
15.
Well, you should act as though you've grown
up.
So what, this girl's on the street.
I've got a document on my desk that
shows me about this girl, 14 years of
age, witnessing.
And the police came along in China and
got all of her and gagged her and
carried her to a place.
And they beat her up and threatened her.
And they cut the robes and let her
free.
And she went back and witnessed on the
same spot with tears pouring down her face.
I'm glad to suffer for Jesus.
At 14 years of age?
It's staggering what's happening these days.
That's not going to come on TV.
It's not sensational enough.
The spiritual things are not projected, only the
carnal things.
Paul says, well, here's one of his anchors.
We have a home eternal in the heavens.
It's not difficult to surrender everything when you
really get a concept of the wondrous cross
on which the Prince of Glory died.
Again, to go back to Amy Wilson Carmichael,
for 30 odd years, she never went home
to Ireland after she got out to India.
And for the last three years of her
life, they had to lift her out of
bed because of a weakness.
So what?
Here she is with hundreds and hundreds of
children that were going to be thrown in
the rivers, and she becomes mother to them.
And Wesley said, give me the faith which
can remove.
Amy Wilson Carmichael says, give me a love
that leads the way.
A faith which nothing can dismay.
A hope, no disappointments tired.
A passion that will burn like fire.
Let me not sink to be a cloud.
Make me thy fuel flame of God.
Oh, what a good exciting meeting.
Life is not just exciting, it's more than
exciting if the indwelling Christ is there.
And you get up each day with the
presence of the Spirit of the living God.
Makes all the world of difference.
So I'm going to skip over this now.
Because he said we have a home, a
house not made with hands, eternal in the
heavens.
He's saying emphatically, he's emphasizing points in his
life, but he brings us into it.
In 2 Corinthians 5 and verse 6, he
says, we are confident, I say, to be
absent from the body and to be present
with the Lord is better.
Wherefore, we labor that whether we're present or
absent, we're except of him.
Now listen to this awesome thing.
He says we must all appear at the
judgment seat of Christ.
I think it's, is it Montgomery Boyce?
Or Boyce Montgomery has a book.
Where is history going?
I'll tell you where history is going.
It's going to the judgment seat of Christ.
And Paul says, knowing therefore the terror of
the Lord.
You see, we don't talk about that.
Everything's loving and sweet and sugary, but there's
no anger like the anger of God.
Oh, I like to sing Wesley's lovely hymn,
gentle Jesus meet.
Forget it.
That Jesus has come in is not gentle.
It says in the 2nd Thessalonians, 2nd Thessalonians
in chapter 1, it says that Jesus is
coming how?
I can't find it here.
He says he's coming from, to earth with
10,000 of his saints.
Pardon?
Yeah.
2 Thessalonians 1 verse 7.
Well, can you imagine that?
Wesley has a hymn in which he says,
lo he comes with clouds descending, once for
favoured sinners slain.
Thousand, thousand saints attending, swell the triumph of
his praise.
Listen, Jesus may talk to your heart tonight,
you'll turn him off.
You've got your own life.
You're going to do something else.
It's my life.
It isn't that you're saved.
The moment you were saved, you lost rights
to your life.
You lost rights to your career.
You've no right to plan the future without
him.
He's coming once for every favour.
You may obey or disobey Jesus Christ, and
I've got news for you.
If you die and go to the grave,
at the voice of the Son of God,
everybody who's lived since Adam is going to
rise.
No disobedience, no postponing it, no holding off,
no saying I'm rich or wealthy, or I've
done a lot of good, forget it.
I'll tell you the last thing that Teddy
Kennedy thinks is he's going to stand before
Jesus Christ, and give an account of the
girl that he was with that night when
she was drowned at Chappaquiddick.
She didn't drown, for the simple reason that
the, what do you call it, the autopsy,
there was no warts in her lungs.
She had air there.
She died of asphyxiation.
She had nothing in her lungs.
She had a baby in her belly, whoever
put that there.
Do you think that this man who paid
off his religion and got to the Pope,
and got an absolution for his sin, does
he ever think he's going to stand there
not as a Kennedy, but as a sinner,
with a billion, billion people watching him, and
every sin he's ever committed is going to
be read out of the record of God.
And the same for everybody.
Al Capone, it makes no difference what the
Mafia has done, it's going to come out
at the end.
I'll tell you one thing, I'm not very
smart, but I'll make a guess, a guess,
there isn't one evangelical in the Mafia.
Take the inference.
What was it saying?
We must all appear at the judgment seat
of Christ, that we may give an account.
You see, that's for the believer.
The judgment seat of Christ is for the
believer.
The great white throne of Revelation 20 is
for the sinner.
But in both cases, doesn't it say in
Revelation 20 that the heaven and earth passed
away?
Doesn't it say in the sixth chapter of
Revelation, the kings of the earth, the great
people, the merchants, the capitalists, the governors, everybody?
It's the last round up the cowboy said.
I've been trying for 10 years to write
a book on the judgment seat, I haven't
got through the first part.
But I cancelled all preaching this year, except
maybe one place, and I'm going to give
my time to this awesome aspect of the
judgment seat of Christ.
Listen fellows, you better watch your step.
I may sound rude to you, but I'll
tell you this, you won't have your daddy,
you won't have your preacher, you won't have
your wife, you won't stand there.
You say, I couldn't stand up before the
crowd.
This is no crowd.
When you talk about millions and billions and
trillions, in the awesome majesty, the theatre of
the universe, not with gentle Jesus, meek and
mild, but Jesus, the King of kings and
Lord of lords.
Jesus, the judge of judges.
Jesus who needs no books of reference.
Jesus who will give a total account to
you, reminding you of the deeds that are
in the body, whatever they are.
The great white throne, the father is there,
or some say both will be there.
But this is an aspect that we don't
hear much of very often, do we?
When did you last say your preacher preached
on hell?
When did he last preach on what shall
be the end of those who obey not
the gospel of God?
You see that man has made such a
hell of this world.
God isn't going to let men into heaven.
You know, people say, oh, old so-and
-so died.
That man has been a pain in the
neck of the last three preachers.
He suddenly goes to heaven.
If he got five minutes too long in
the sermon, suddenly he sent a letter or
he called the pastor.
How is that guy going to live in
heaven for a billion years in the presence
of God?
He'd be bored to death.
If you can't enjoy God in a meeting,
you sure won't enjoy him after you die.
His holy presence will be so stunning.
It's going to be awesome.
Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we
persuade men.
Let me skip down to this quickly.
He said in verse 18, Christ has given
unto us the ministry of reconciliation.
And now in verse 20, he says, we
are ambassadors for Christ.
In verse 3 of the next chapter, chapter
6, he says, giving no offense that the
ministry be not blamed, that we approve ourselves
as ministers of God.
Read that when you go home.
By suffering, and long-suffering, and kindness, and
so forth.
And he goes through that awesome list again.
But wait a minute.
Paul says, listen to it, if any man
be in Christ.
Who is this?
Is he a rookie?
This is a man who's been in death
oft.
There may be another death worse than this.
We read that in that 11th chapter there,
didn't we?
He's not trying to show you how much
he's suffered.
You say, do I have to take this?
No, but listen friend.
There are some people in Russia today are
taking this.
There are young men your age dying every
day in Russia.
You may come to, oh it won't happen
in America.
Listen, I happen to be a few years
older than you.
I happen to remember that Mussolini, no Stalin,
came up as the first of modern dictators.
And it said in Stalin's time, he liquidated
about 6 million his own people.
Well right after Stalin, Mussolini came.
And Paul began to preach about Mussolini in
the revival of the Roman Empire.
After Mussolini came in, then came Hitler.
No, no, we're a military people, the people
said in Germany.
We'll never follow some dumb guy like Mussolini.
But they got a man who was infinitely
worse.
And all these dictators have had their day.
I don't know what the apostle meant altogether,
and neither does anybody else for that matter.
But I like what he says this.
I skipped over it when we were reading
it.
He says, I was in labors more abundant,
in stripes above measure, prisons more frequent, in
dead soft.
Look, I tell you in God's name, that
covers acres of suffering.
Many times in prison, many times facing death.
Rescued at the very last moment, when he
was gasping his worst.
And he didn't worry about it.
He said, none of these things move me.
And why do I worry?
I have a home eternal in the heavens.
If I die here, it's game.
I've nothing to lose.
If I stay here, I'll explore more of
the possibilities of grace.
Why does he say, if any man be
in Christ, he's throwing it in the face
of the mightiest military machine in the world,
the Romans.
The greatest intellectual powers in the world, the
Greeks.
The greatest religious groups in the world, the
Jews.
And he throws it in the face of
all of them.
Not only that, he throws it in the
face of the world of flesh and the
devil.
I don't care how corrupt a man is,
he can be cleansed.
I don't care how impure he is, he
can be purified.
I don't care how devilish he is, he
can be made a saint.
He says, if any man, anywhere, at any
time, be in Christ.
And there are two things he uses so
often.
In Christ, and Christ in you.
If you come to my office and you
start telling me you're a Baptist or a
Methodist or something else, I'll say, look me
in the eye and tell me, does Christ
live in you?
Do you know, not one person, not one
preacher in 50 says yes.
He tries to tell me the day was
said and who preached and what the text
was.
Forget it.
If any man be in Christ.
You see, Paul made up his mind that
the biggest, if I dare say, the biggest
headache God ever had, the biggest challenge to
God, was a man who was going down
the Damascus road, breathing out threatenings.
Read his record in Acts 26, where he's
before a gripper.
And he says, the man you're looking at,
I persecuted the church of God.
I tore families apart.
I drove them out.
I was totally evil.
I hated this.
He said to the Galatians, he said, I
preach the faith now, that once I destroyed,
he was the devil's best agent on earth
and he became Christ's greatest lover.
No, he didn't end up in Romans 7.
Forget what your preacher says.
Oh, we make an excuse.
You see, we're born depraved and we've this
and we've that and we've the other.
Listen, I know what he says in Romans
7, but when he comes to the end,
he says what?
Who shall, who shall help me?
All wretched man that I am, who shall
deliver me from this body of death?
He has a sentence of death in himself.
Who shall deliver me from this body of
death?
Okay, the Romans were a pretty wicked crowd.
I can't find any record, if you know
any, Brother Jack, tell me.
I don't find anywhere where they ever crucified
children.
They crucified people.
Sometimes they crucified them on a letter X,
stretching a man's arms and legs on an
X.
Sometimes they crucified him on a three with
a big spike through it.
They stuck him on it and turned him
round and left him hanging.
Sometimes they put him on a cross, the
traditional cross like this, where his head was
supported.
Sometimes it was like a letter T, there
was no support.
But listen, when there's a malefactor going to
be crucified, a wicked, then it was reserved
only for the most wicked men.
I preached to maybe 1600 people the other
night, and I said to men, why did
you let God put to death that darling
lust of yours?
The pride, laziness, covetousness, sexual lust, put it
to death.
I said in his congregation, there's maybe 50
men, and you know that inwardly you're defeated.
Oh, in the church you're a good guy.
You give money, you're an officer in church,
but when you're by yourself, and when you're
in the world, you're a coward, and when
you're alone, you're defeated because of inward intuity.
I said, I'm not going to sing and
ask you to come forward.
I said, listen friend, and I said to
you guys again, remember guys, you young guys,
you're going to stand here before billions of
people with everybody looking on.
I said, you won't be able to say,
please Lord Jesus, before you sentence me, ask
them all to close their eyes.
I'm very nervous and embarrassed.
I said, listen, Jesus didn't say when he
was going to Golgotha, close your eyes.
You see that thief in front of me?
You see this thief behind me?
I'm embarrassed in this company.
I said, I'm not going to ask you
men.
I said, right now you know your inward
defeat.
You have no appetite for God.
You have no passion for the Lord.
There will be a hellfire.
You'll shriek and shout, get excited, a ball
match, and you're deaf and dumb when it
comes to the house of God.
I said, I'm not going to sing right
now.
I won't move you emotionally.
Go to hell if you want to go,
or answer the opportunity now to get cleansed,
delivered, be crucified with Christ and live.
We're not going to sing, get up and
come.
Do you know there must have been a
hundred Martha, well a hundred came or more.
They came almost trampling on each other to
the front and began to weep and seek
God.
You see the Bible says, behold, this is
the accepted time, behold now, this is the
day of salvation.
If God knocks on your heart tonight and
you don't delight in him, you'll knock at
him and he won't answer.
You don't have God on a string.
You can't give up your dirty living when
you want and skip into heaven on the
prayer of somebody else.
Jesus Christ gave all and therefore he demands
all.
So he says, if any man be in
Christ, he is a new creation.
You get a new personality, he gets a
new heart, he gets a new vocabulary, he
gets a new mind, he gets new emotions.
That is if he's born again of the
Spirit of God.
He doesn't get that by a decision, coming
to the front and going out and living
as he likes.
He has to let Jesus Christ take total
control of his personality.
Okay, so I say, you could be crucified
on an axe, you could be crucified on
a straight pole with a big spike through
and thrown that way.
There was another crucifixion which was worse of
all and that was, if you murdered a
man, they took that murdered man and tied
him to the man who murdered him, strapped
him.
So then they stood him up and said,
look, off you go.
So there he is staggering with a body
tied to him.
He wakes up in the morning looking into
those fishy eyes.
By the end of the day the body
smells, by the second day it's worse.
And he keeps going on like that and
gradually that stinking body takes over and it
kills him.
And he says, I have a body of
sin in me.
Oh no, we say you get everything when
you're born again.
Well then, why did Toplade, he wasn't a
holiness preacher.
Toplade, he wrote the hymn, Rock of Ages,
clap for me and you sing it often,
be of sin, the double cure.
What's the double cure?
Cleanse me from it, guilt and power.
You get Charles Wesley.
I forgot the hymn he wrote.
I know Toplade wrote that one.
Oh, love divine, oh love excelling, he wrote.
Finish then thy new creation.
There's hymn after hymn that we've sung and
they, we sing them as easy as that,
don't we?
We don't think twice about them.
They tell me almost every time a film
wants a hymn, it's Rock of Ages, clap
for me, they sing one stanza.
They don't sing the last stanza, while I
draw this fleeting breath, when mine eyes shall
close in death, when I soar to worlds
unknown, see beyond thy judgment throne.
One of the most exciting hymns ever written
was written by a woman in America.
It's called Battle Hymn of the Republic.
What does it say?
My eyes have seen the coming of the
glory of the Lord.
He's trampling what?
Out the what?
The grapes.
You believe he's trampling out the grapes of
wrath?
Do you think we're going to stand there?
He's going to draw his terrible sweep, he's
going to stand before his judgment seat.
We sing it at football matches or anywhere.
We don't believe a half of the hymns
we sing and therefore every meeting is an
opportunity to escape from the wrath to come.
And after that living victory, okay.
I'm walking around with a body tied to
me, a wretched stinking body.
I've had it a month.
I wake up every morning and there I
look into the glassy eyes.
I wake at night, there's that stinking corpse.
I see a friend.
I see my friend Jack and he says,
well then I'll cut you loose.
So he cuts the ropes off my legs
and hands from the corpse.
And just then a Roman centurion comes up
and he says, what are you doing?
Oh I'm delivering my friend.
Is that legal?
He said yes on one condition.
What is it?
That we tie the body to you.
You can't let him go because you like
him, he was a good neighbor or he's
a relative.
The only way you can cut that stinking
corpse from him is that we tie it
onto you.
Do you love your friend now?
Oh no, no, no, no.
So Paul says, what do I do?
I've kept the law blameless.
I've observed the Sabbath.
I've made the sacraments.
I've made all the sacrifices that this wretched
thing hangs on.
What shall I do?
Oh wretched man that I am, who should
deliver me?
There is no deliverer.
No wait a minute.
He says, I thank God through Jesus Christ
my Lord.
And he is the only one who can
deliver.
Your goodwill won't do it.
Your hatred of sin won't do it.
Your resolve to lead a better life.
How many times have you been to meetings,
young meetings and others and vowed you'd read
your Bible more, vowed you'd pray more, vowed
you'd give more tuition.
And all your vows are at your feet
in ashes tonight.
I'll tell you what, once a man goes
to the cross, really surveys that wondrous cross,
something very glorious happens.
I'm going to close quickly.
I've quoted characters in history, changed history.
When Wesleyan took over, England was born again.
Everything was transformed.
Do you know what cost, do you know
why you're taxed up to your ears tonight?
Because of one thing, S I N, sin.
We have to have jails, not for Christians.
We have wars and rumors of wars, not
by Christians.
The most expensive thing in the world is
sin.
Selfishness.
One of the young guys I was with
this week, Martha, precious Martha and I got
the last half hour.
If I'd known Martha dearly at the beginning
of the week, I'd have made a point
of seeing that he's a brave young American.
He made up his mind.
Everybody's criticizing, what do you call him, Dan
Ortego, is it?
Nicaragua.
In Nicaragua.
I'll go and see him.
He went to see him.
And he said, I don't know how I
got in, but God just opened the door
and I got to spend an hour with
him.
And he said, he talked to me for
a while.
He said, listen, we watch your TV from
America.
It doesn't mean that much to us.
You're Christian, you're evangelist.
We're not interested in that stuff.
Come here.
They took him in a room about 30
feet long.
It was black.
And on the wall were written names, all
these Spanish names, maybe 150 of them.
And I always forget and he forget.
Dan Ortego?
Dan Ortego said, look, young man, you see
all those names there?
Every one of those is a close personal
friend of mine.
And everyone with a line through has died
already for his country.
You'll never win Central America until you're afraid
to die for your country.
There's an awful lot of truth in that,
isn't it?
Don't you say, I'd die for Jesus.
You won't even fast for him.
You won't even turn off that damnable TV.
You can watch it for hours and you
don't worship him.
Do you think that makes him happy?
Because you put an extra buck in the
missionary offering?
Last night I talked with our precious son
in South America, David Paul.
I think one of the greatest guys living
today.
He's living in that hellhole which is a
combination of Roman Catholicism and voodooism.
He's a thousand hardships we don't think about.
And I said to him, Arthur said to
him, what about so-and-so?
Oh, he said that young, brilliant young man,
I think he's a New Zealander.
Anyhow, he's been in England for a few
months.
And he said he came back.
And while he was in England, I think
he actually met this lady.
What's her name?
Jackie Pullinger.
Have you ever heard of her?
Well, in Tokyo, you know about the Great
Wall of China.
I went to Tokyo once, didn't stay that
long, three or four days.
But in Tokyo, there's a walled area which
is still an original part of England.
But now it's taken over by the gangsters,
the crime.
Everything is that you have in America and
London is intensified.
It's deeper, it's filthier, it's more arrogant.
It's a bloody area.
It's an area where almost every man you
meet has killed somebody.
And here's this precious English lady.
She got tired of conventional Christianity.
Do you ever get sick of it?
Let me skip away a minute and come
back to it.
Remind me about it, where I left off
about this one.
I went to a meeting in Fort Worth
not long ago.
Jack Taylor was there.
Paul Kane was there, the man who's been
hiding away from God for 25 years, waiting
on God.
Come out now with a supernatural ministry.
25 years, didn't go out.
Jack Taylor was there.
Paul Kane was there.
Rick Joyner was there.
A host of preachers were there.
At the end of the meeting, God had
come and Jack Taylor backed off.
He said, listen, I'm not touching this meeting.
Somebody once touched the ark and they fell
dead.
I won't touch it.
And then he said, listen, I want to
tell you, I'm sick of what I see.
I'm sick of meetings.
And he goes to some of the biggest
meetings in the country.
He said, I'm sick.
I've seen people marching with banners and all
this stuff that we have, you know, when
the Holy Ghost is coming, you try and
fill up the atmosphere.
And over and over he said, I'm sick,
I'm sick.
I don't want to live if God has
nothing better than this.
And he said to the congregation, will you
say this after me?
Be careful.
I'm sick of what I see in religion.
I'd rather die than live like this.
Do you know the whole congregation?
I'm sure the most seven of the people
all recited the same thing.
I thought that was awesome.
But here's a little brave woman living inside
that wall in that closed area down in
Hong Kong.
I call her the Mother Teresa of the
evangelicals.
Mother Teresa.
And I've been in that lousy, wicked, vile
city of Calcutta.
You can see kiddies in the street, lepers
in the street, going to train stations.
You have to tiptoe over bodies because that's
their hotel.
If they don't get protection, they've no protection.
So Mother Teresa, at least 12 times a
day, maybe 20, she cradles a dying, stinking
form where people have hardly any cheeks.
There are lepers there.
And bless the woman, Mother Teresa gets down
and cradles them in her arms and talks
to them and talks about Jesus.
But what good does it do?
This woman is leading people to Christ.
She's not comforting them the last five minutes
before they die.
She's given her life for that.
Forget about going to a foreign country.
Young people come to my office.
We're just back from the Philippines, one young
lady said.
20 of us went from our church.
What did you do?
Could you speak the language?
No, but we smiled and told them Jesus
loved them and he gave them a track
below me.
Go live there.
People not waiting for a guide post that
points the way.
They're looking for a guide to lead them.
You see, that's why I like this blessed
man, the apostle Paul.
He glories in tribulation.
What does he say?
I glory in tribulation, in necessities, in reproaches,
in that sinning.
Everything everybody else runs away from, he embraces
it.
That's what I call worship.
When you can take something that's so objectable
to others and it's pure and good and
you can embrace it, that's worship.
It's more than clapping your hands and gazing
up in the sky vacantly.
It's taking up your cross and following him.
It's easy isn't it to stand and sing,
we're the whole realm of nature mine.
That would have present far too small.
You're not impressing anybody, neither God or anybody
else.
You see, what it's going to take to
turn America around is some role models.
That's why I love that team of men
I was with last week.
Boy, when you look at those guys could
all be earning vast sums of money and
they're living in a poor state.
They've taken vows almost of poverty, vows of
discipline, vows of purity and they're not in
a monastery.
They're rubbing shoulders with the world during the
week.
I tell you that's the most enjoyable week
I've had for a number of years.
That these young guys on the edge of
a career that could make them multimillionaires say
no, we're going to spend our time in
prayer.
You know the one pastor there, I've told
you they have three prayer meetings every day.
Three hour, three two hour prayer meetings and
they're going to start having a night of
prayer.
And one of the pastors there for five
years has not missed one day of prayer
in that sanctuary.
So they're getting welded together.
I believe they're going to see the glory
of God.
I believe they're going to see resurrection life
and resurrection power.
This much is very sure without trying to
be a prophet or the son of a
prophet.
What we've had of so-called Christianity in
America and England in the last 25 years
has done a thing for us.
This young man from England this week says,
boy you think things are bad here.
In England they smoke, they drink.
I had a man came in my office
not long ago.
I said, how's your sister?
My sister, she's furious, she's blazing mad.
Well that's a change, she was only mad
last time I heard about it.
She's angry, she's blazing mad.
Why?
She's trying to join the Jehovah's Witnesses and
they won't let her.
She's been for three years knocking on their
door.
Why?
You stink.
She smokes.
You can't be a Jehovah's Witness and smoke,
you can be a Baptist and smoke.
Maybe a Pentecostal and smoke, I don't know.
Isn't it amazing that lots of these people
have more discipline than we have?
More concern?
If any man being Christ, that includes you,
it includes me.
I'd love to write a book on people
I've seen transformed by the power of God.
Come from death unto life.
When you're dead, this book doesn't mean a
thing.
But when you come alive it's a series
of love letters.
You brood over them.
He means me.
Christ loved the church but he loved me
and gave himself for me, says Paul.
And because of that, what can I do?
I like the great American hymn, My Faith
Looks Up to Thee.
One stanza says, As thou hast died for
me, so may my love to thee pure,
warm and changeless be.
People in love don't have a world called
sacrifice in their vocabulary.
You don't sacrifice if you love a person.
You see, true love thinks of the ultimate
pleasure of the one it loves.
And the only reason you're on earth tonight
is to give pleasure to God.
How much pleasure do you give him every
day?
Ask him at the end of the day,
Lord Jesus, have I given you pleasure today?
Haven't I spent time?
And he says, how many hours do you
spend before TV?
Three or four hours.
How much time in prayer?
Three minutes.
So does that make God happy?
Where do you get your pleasure?
Oh, I laughed at some stupid half-witted
guy on TV.
You know, these girls with faces like angels
and models like alley cats.
They're our heroes today.
They get millions of dollars.
And the devil's got the whole world in
his grip.
And it's not preaching alone that's going to
transform it.
It has to be that your life and
mine, it's so possessed by God that we
live and move and have our being.
We're a new creature.
You don't curse anymore.
You don't think evil anymore.
You don't do wrong anymore.
You're a new creation.
And once that happens, people will ask, why
are you different?
Why is your temper gone?
Why is your pride gone?
Why are you so different?
Oh no, I'm not going through some regimentation
of church.
Christ has invaded my personality.
He dwells in me.
And because of that, I'm a new creation.
I have a new heart, a new spirit,
new desires.
And life is so joyous.
Sure, there'll be more tears.
Jesus is a man of sorrows.
And he'll give you the joy of the
Lord.
He'll also give you the burden of the
Lord.
You see, you young folk can do more
than us older folk.
There's not much respect for old age anymore.
Not that I care a hell of beans
about that.
But you see, you've got these young people,
like this woman there in China, pardon me,
in Hong Kong.
This young girl, 14, in China.
Other countries are sending her stories now that
simply raise my hair.
You see, we're trying to evangelize.
A guy today said, send us money, we
want to evangelize the world.
His own city's gone to hell.
He's just being caught in immorality.
Send me money to evangelize China.
Listen brother, turn your own city upside down,
then tell the people what to do in
China.
We've got our people blazing with the love
of God that sacrifice isn't even mentioned.
It's a privilege to carry the burden of
the Lord.
Paul says, that which cometh upon me daily,
the care of all the churches, it's more
than having my back skinned, it's more than
suffering a night and a day in the
deep, it's more than weariness and painfulness, and
then I do it joyfully out unto the
Lord.
Were the whole realm of nature mine, it
were an offering far too small.
Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul,
my life, and my all.
I could say some more but I won't.
And I'm certainly going to sing and get
you all emotional.
You know your failure.
You know that besetting sin.
You know that pride in there.
You know that secret lust.
You know that laziness after God.
You're just a nice little calm Sunday school
teacher, decent guy, gives an offering.
That isn't what Christ wants.
He wants the sum total of your personality,
your spirit, your soul, and your body.
And he wants to be in control of
the whole thing.
I remember as a youth leader, I'd read
David Brainard's life, I got excited about it.
I lived on the edge of Sherwood Forest,
the northern part in England.
I took my mother's doggy at night and
tied it to the stump of the tree,
and I spent hours in prayer alone.
I got up Sunday morning, and I lived
furthest from church than anybody else.
I lived on the perimeter of the city.
I went into the woods to pray, then
I went to a team of young people
that met Friday nights at 7 and prayed
till 9.
We met Sunday morning at 7 and prayed
till 8, and that really set us going.
It ignited us.
When I read about this young American who
could kneel in the snow up to his
chin and pray, and weep and travel.
When he sneezed, your thing sort of spread
the snow with blood, and it was his
sneezing.
He'd broken a part of his lung.
If he coughed, he spit out what looked
like a rose bud.
It was a part of his lung.
He died almost at 28 years of age.
What happened?
Why does God waste a life like that?
He didn't.
Let me read the sentence in a minute.
Okay, here's a man dying.
His darling sweetheart looks at him.
His diary is written by his prospective father
-in-law, Jonathan Edwards.
Okay, almost 200 years afterwards, there's a young
man in England by the name of William
Carey.
He read the life of David Brainard.
Because he read the life of David Brainard,
he gave his life to God, and he
became the first missionary, the first Baptist missionary
too, to go to India, to go to
India.
Right after that was a young Englishman, the
most brilliant student in England, by the name
of Henry Martin.
Henry Martin was a senior Angler in the
University.
He carried off the Smith Prize at 20
years of age.
He had a colossal intellect.
If he stayed in politics, he would have
become a Prime Minister of England.
If he stayed in religion, he would have
become the Archbishop of Canterbury, no doubt.
Well, he was a product of a man
by the name of Charles Simeon.
The revival under the Westleys didn't do a
thing for Cambridge University.
It did something for Oxford, now Cambridge.
Why?
Because Charles Simeon was in a church there,
and he so preached the gospel, and so
made people realize it's not a case of
confessing sin, get rid of your lousy sins,
let Christ invade you, take full control, and
do as he likes with you.
So what happened?
The deacons, under this intense preaching, the deacons
ripped all the seats out of the church,
and stored them up in the churchyard, and
Simeon went on preaching till God came, the
glory came.
They boarded the church up, they had to
set the boards down.
Simeon went on preaching.
Students began to come.
One of them was Henry Martin.
He listened to this God-intoxicated man, this
man who wept over the students.
You're wasting money, you're wasting your time, you're
wasting your life.
You may as well not have eyes.
And he was marvelously changed by the power
of God.
So what happened?
When God got hold of him, he left
Cambridge, he went to India, he got a
Bible, I think it's the Greek New Testament,
translated it, used his brains for God, he
translated the Greek New Testament into Hindustani, and
when he finished that, he took a boat
halfway across the world, went to Cairo in
Egypt, and he worked on the same Greek
Testament, and translated the New Testament into Arabic,
a more difficult language.
All right, the last thing.
I should have said a bit before, okay.
People are criticizing the church today.
The church, she's got nothing.
The preachers stink.
The people are just as worldly, the women
are just as worldly.
People belong to the serfs.
People are selfish as anybody else, they're greedy
for money, they're bad-tempered.
I don't see any difference in the Christian,
wait a minute.
I don't care a hill of beans what
the world says in one sense, but Jesus
died to save us.
I love that hymn, we'll sing it sometime
maybe.
The church is one foundation, remember that hymn?
It's Jesus Christ our Lord.
She is his new creation by water, and
the word from heaven he came and sought
her to be his holy, what?
Bride.
With his own blood he bought her, and
for a life he died, okay.
And that same Jesus said of the church
in the Laodicean period that you and I
are living in, this is what he says
of the church he died for.
She's poor, wretched, naked, blind and miserable, okay.
Our princes in England want to get married
in Westminster Abbey.
Three thousand people in the world have chosen
out of all the billions, and they sit
in that place, above the, what they call
the high altar, there's an organ there, a
multi-million dollar organ.
There's a guy there, and he's sitting there,
he's going to pip, pip, pip, here comes
the bride, here comes the bride, you know
some of you ladies heard that and enjoyed
it.
But he says, listen I can't see when
the royal carriage comes, what happens?
Well there are men there with big trumpets,
a fanfare, six of them, and when the
royal carriage pulls up in front of the
cathedral, they'll pipe, and as soon as you
hear that you press those keys, here comes
the bride, here comes the bride.
So the trumpets sound, this fellow suddenly starts
picking out, here comes the bride.
At that very moment a woman comes through
the gate, the doors of Westminster Abbey, she's
stark naked, she hasn't a stitch, she hasn't
been bathed for weeks.
She stinks, and she's stark naked, and she's
blind, and she rushes and crashes into a
pew, and cuts her leg, she's all bloody,
and she rubs it, and then, oh dear,
and then she goes tearing down the aisle,
and one of the soldiers grabs her and
says, what are you doing here you stinking
wretch?
She says, I'm the bride.
Bride?
Are you, can you see what you're doing?
No, no I'm blind.
And you're stark naked lady, and you stink
like a hog.
Are you telling me Jesus Christ, the Son
of God went through the agony of Gethsemane,
and the hell of the cross, and descended
into the depths and came back again?
Is that the bride he's coming for?
What if you're in that dirty movie house
last night, or somewhere else?
Do you think he's going to search the
city to find out where you are?
You're not going to get one minute's notice
to get cleaned up?
If you really believe in the immediate rapture,
it means you're living in purity, because he
that hath this hope in him purifies himself.
If you're not living in purity, you don't
live it, you don't, it doesn't mean a
thing, you're contradicting it.
That's why I cry day and night, dear
God, Jesus you can't come tonight.
Sure you can come to the church in
South America.
People go to a youth meeting Friday night,
they stay all night, pray all night, pray
all Saturday, pray all Saturday night, and the
house is filled with glory, and these are
teenagers.
Some of them ten and twenty thousand, they
don't need some stinking Christian rock music, rock
music should be.
They're so in love with Christ, they've been
so transformed, they've been so delivered from heathenism,
they're so marvelously liberated from bondage, they want
to stay all night and worship.
Jesus Christ is coming, I'm sure of that,
but he's not giving America a month's notice.
Look, either we have a Holy Ghost revived
in the next ten years, or you forget
all about the future of America and England,
there won't be one.
The destiny of America is not hanging on
the White House, it's hanging on the God's
house.
He that hath this hope in him purifies
himself.
Are you pure tonight?
Only the pure in heart see God.
Not just when we die, but even now.
Fellowship with him is supersedes anything you've ever
dreamed of.
What's the body of sin?
Is it a bad temper?
Is it secret lust?
Is it lust for money?
Is it lust for power?
What is it?
What's the body of sin that's tied to
you today?
I can't do a thing.
There's no magic in coming here, though if
it helps you it's worth coming.
You can go home and I was going
to say, have it out with God, let
us read together.
Read Romans chapter 6, telling you want to
enter in to be crucified with Christ.
You see, it all happened when Paul said,
I am crucified with Christ.
He didn't die saying, it is sin that
dwelleth in me.
He died saying, it's not I, it's Christ
that liveth in me.
And Christ does not live in some lousy,
dirty heart, dirty mind, dirty spirit.
He wants to live in the hearts of
those who are pure.
The only way to get purified is to
get rid of the dirty old man that
lives in there and let him come and
live in all his purity.
Father, I thank you for the privilege of
sharing these thoughts with these dear people tonight.
Lord, we are very conscious, all of us
are clamming for our finals.
Before long, we're going to have to stand
and give an account for the deeds that
are in the body.
We realize at that moment it won't be
any excuse that we were too busy to
pray, too busy to testify, too busy to
sacrifice.
We look so ridiculous at your throne when
we stand there with the martyrs, with the
apostle Paul and all the other saints.
Lord God, have mercy on us.
You've been so patient with us.
We've made our vows and we haven't kept
them.
We started all sorts of things spiritually and
never finished.
But I pray that somewhere in some bedroom
tonight, somebody will get through to victory, get
totally delivered, abandon themselves, cancel their own plans
and let Jesus Christ be Lord of all
and Lord in all.