There have been a number of requests for
tapes, and so this has been videoed and
audioed, and if you want to make, if
you want to get them, you need to
see someone at the door.
Do the whole series right through, well, maybe
till Easter.
I don't know how long.
But anyhow, we want to give you something
to take home and think about if you
want to take a tape of it.
Isaiah 64.
Oh, that thou wouldst rend the heavens and
come down.
I meditated over this early this morning, and
realized that while all praying men are not
prophets, all prophets are praying men.
That's a secret of their strength.
Years ago, in 1940, when the Germans were
battering England, I pastored a church in a
city called Bath.
The Romans were there.
They started building the city in 55 B
.C. Very beautiful city, maybe the most beautiful
in England.
And each time I went to the sanctuary,
over on the right there was an old
disused theater.
Not a movie house, a theater.
On the top of it was a bust
about as tall as I am, just a
head and shoulders, of a man by the
name of David Garrick.
He was contemporary with Wesley and all that
marvelous bunch of hymn writers like Newton and
Cowper.
And he is considered as the greatest, in
those days, the greatest Shakespearean actor that had
ever lived.
And some people say that that's true of
him even today.
Somebody told him that this man with an
amazing voice, maybe one of the most amazing
voices in history, was that of George Whitefield,
a contemporary and at one time a co
-worker with Wesley.
It was said, I don't know if it
was ever proved, that in the theater, George
Whitefield could make the congregation, or whatever you
want to call them, the gathering there, he
could make them weep just by saying the
word Mesopotamia.
He had a very musical voice.
It was like a church organ.
It could thunder, it could whisper.
A man got saved sitting on the side
of the road, a mile away from where
he was speaking without any amplification, and the
man got saved.
They can't even hear if you put all
the amplification on these days.
People are too deaf to hear.
Well, somebody told this amazing Garrick that George
Whitefield was preaching at Mile End Waste, I
think it was in London.
Would you believe he got up at five
o'clock in the morning to go hear
that man?
Oh, mercy!
Can you imagine two and three thousand people
waiting at five o'clock in the morning
to hear a preacher?
You couldn't get them there today if you
offered them a free breakfast of two eggs,
three strips of bacon and four pancakes.
There was a hunger for the Word of
God.
George Whitefield had one word in his vocabulary
that all the great saints have had, I
think, and it was that word, O.
Somebody said to David Garrick, you should hear
him say it.
He's not an actor.
You should hear him say that word, O.
It will move you to tears.
So, he went that morning at five o
'clock, a dirty English, foggy, wet morning.
There was George standing on a barrel and
preaching one of those hellfire sermons.
When he got to the end of his
tether, as you would say, and he didn't
know what else to do, he would yearn
over them.
He would say, O!
And people would begin to weep.
It's the language of this amazing man here,
Isaiah.
He is in the classification of the greatest
men that ever walked the earth, as far
as I'm concerned, and they're called the prophets.
Dr. Bugs Bazin was a Jew who was
converted in this country, a very brilliant Jewish
scholar.
He has a marvelous book on Isaiah, if
you can find it anywhere.
I remember this lodged in my mind when
I was reading from him years ago.
He said, the prophet, by the very nature
of his calling, is a tragic figure.
He has a broken heart over his lost
nation and he has a burning spirit and
a burning love toward God.
So, he feels the pull toward God and
he feels the pull to his bankrupt nation.
Do you remember reading when, who was it?
Someone came to David and said, your son
Absalom has been killed.
Absalom was trying to steal the crown off
his head and the throne from underneath him.
You would imagine he would have said, it
serves him right.
He'd been a traitor all his life.
He's never, never been worthy of my name.
But when they said, your son Absalom has
been killed, his heart broke and he says,
oh, Absalom, my son.
When Ezekiel saw the desolation of the nations,
remember in the 9th chapter he cries, oh,
that my head were waters.
In God's name, how many preachers do you
think want a broken heart over the sin
of America today?
Do you expect your nice, well-starched, well
-dressed preacher to stand in the pulpit Sunday
and say, oh, that God would give me
a broken heart for, for my city.
They're all looking for new theological menus to
feed people with.
You won't do a thing any more than
me giving you a menu if you're hungry.
I say, forget about the meal, read the
menu.
That's all we say in most churches, any
more on a Sunday.
Here it is in the book, believe it
or receive it, and they go out as
dead and unmoved as when they came in.
What is this man crying, yield, what's he
calling about?
Oh, he says that thou wouldst rend the
heavens, an admission that he cannot rend the
heavens.
An admission that he's not trusting in the
other people round about, the top echelon, if
you like, in the kingdom of Israel.
He isn't asking to form a committee.
He isn't asking for people to uphold his
arms like Moses had.
He says, oh, that thou wouldst rend the
heavens and come down, that the mountains might
flow at thy presence.
Let me read to you a little here
from the 19th chapter of Exodus where God
came down.
Exodus 19, let's read from verse 9.
The Lord said unto Moses, Lo, I come
unto thee in a thick cloud that the
people may hear when I speak with thee
and believe thee for ever.
Moses told the words of the people unto
the Lord.
The Lord said unto Moses, Go unto the
people and sanctify them today and tomorrow and
let them wash their clothes.
And be ready against the third day.
Verse 12, Thou shalt set bounds unto the
people round about, saying, Take heed to yourselves.
Go ye not up unto the mountain or
touch the border of it.
Whosoever toucheth the mountain shall surely be put
to death.
They shall not on hand touch it.
But he shall surely be stoned or shot
through.
Whether it be beast or man, it shall
not live.
But when the trumpet soundeth long, they shall
come up into the mount.
Verse 14, Moses went down from the mount
to the people and sanctified the people and
they washed their clothes or cleansed themselves.
It's typical of them.
He said unto the people, Be ready against
the third day.
Come not with your wives.
It came to pass on the third day
in the morning that there were thunders, notice,
and lightning and thick cloud on the mount
and a voice and a trumpet exceeding loud.
Verse 19, When the voice of the trumpet
sounded long and waxed louder and louder.
Well listen, I ask you in God's name,
how do you think they felt?
Here's thick darkness.
Here are the rolling thunders.
Here are the flashes of lightning.
Here is the voice of God.
Here is a trumpet.
And it gets louder and louder.
So he's determined to get their attention.
Verse 18, The mount Sinai was altogether on
smoke because the Lord descended upon it in
a fire.
The smoke thereof ascended as smoke of a
furnace and the whole mountain quaked greatly.
And when the voice of the trumpet sounded
long and waxed louder and louder, Moses spake
and God answered him by a voice.
And the Lord came down upon Mount Sinai
on the top of the mountain and the
Lord called Moses onto the top of the
mount and Moses went up.
And the Lord said unto Moses, Go down,
charge the people lest they break through unto
the Lord to gaze.
Oh boy, that's something we like to do
today, isn't it?
Something flashy, sensational, on TV.
Miracle healing services.
What have we got?
That God is a jealous God and he
hides himself in thick darkness.
I wonder if we cry to God tonight
for God to descend in our midst, whether
tonight or in the course of the next
few weeks.
Are we really prepared for what God may
do?
Come with some shocking revelation of his majesty?
Instead of revealing more light, plunging us into
more darkness until we fight our way through?
Stuff our ears to every other voice until
clearly we hear his voice?
How different to come into the awful presence
of the living God that even if a
beast came on the mountain where he was,
it died.
Or if a person pushed through, they died.
But we come to a mountain that can
be touched, Mount Calvary.
We come to a God who has revealed
himself as light.
Verse 19, When the voice of the trumpet
sounded long and waxed louder and louder, Moses
spake to God and God answered by a
voice.
And the Lord came down upon Mount Sinai
at the top of the mount, and the
Lord called Moses to the top of the
mount and Moses went up.
The Lord said unto Moses, Go down, charge
the people, lest they break through unto the
Lord to gaze, and many of them perish.
Verse 23, Moses said to the Lord, The
people cannot come up to Mount Sinai, for
thou chargest us, saying, Set bounds to the
mount, and sanctify it.
The Lord said unto him, Away, get thee
down, and thou shalt come up, and there
and with thee, and let not the priests
and the people break through to come up
unto the Lord, lest he break forth upon
them.
So here we have a people wanting to
come near to God.
God says no, holds them off, the priests
cannot come, the people cannot come.
But there's one man that can come.
Read what about the, I didn't check it,
about the 24th of Exodus, where you remember
Moses and how many?
Seventy plus four left a million people behind
and came up to the mount.
And then after they left a million behind,
they leave the seventy behind.
After they leave the seventy behind, the four
go, and then gradually there's a process of
elimination until Moses is there by himself on
the mount.
And then when he got there, after that
tremendous expenditure of effort and time and suspicion,
where's Moses going?
Who does he think he is?
All you have to do is to decide
a little, to walk a little closer to
God.
You'll be criticized more in the church than
you will in the tavern down the road.
Maybe the pastor will jump on you.
Do you know one of my young men
is fasting two days a week?
Do you know one of my young men
spends a whole night in prayer?
Pretty embarrassing for a dry pastor, isn't it?
But Moses is not afraid.
He goes up on the mount to the
voice of God.
But when he gets there, God keeps him
for seven days in quietness.
God doesn't speak.
Didn't I think I would have done?
Well, I would have said, well, I missed
it.
I mean, I know God isn't discourteous.
I mean, He wouldn't have kept me here
for...
I've been here seven days.
Nobody's said a word.
I haven't seen a human being.
I can't see down in the valley.
And yet he stayed and he heard the
voice of God.
I tied this in, in my thinking anyhow,
with that word in Malachi that says, the
Lord whom ye seek.
Well, honestly, come on now.
Don't answer audibly.
You don't have to.
Did you come here tonight to meet God?
Or did you come to hear a sermon
about Him?
How many people will go to our sanctuaries
on Sunday, whether they have a hundred in
or two thousand or three or four thousand?
How many expect a confrontation with deity?
The amazing thing to me about this wonderful
man here, Isaiah, that he is the man
who has already had for himself that amazing
vision, you remember, in the sixth chapter, where
he sees that holy being.
John 12 says, it was Jesus he saw,
because no man has seen God at any
time.
Now, notice that here, Isaiah doesn't say, O
God in mercy, send the cherubim to help
us.
Lord, send the seraphim down to walk amongst
the people.
If they see seraphim with flaming wings and
hear voices of seraphim, surely they'll repent.
He's gone beyond that.
This is the man who not only had
the vision in the sixth chapter, but he
had a terrible, terrible, horrendous vision in chapter
one.
Look at it for a minute.
You can see how far their corruption has
gone in one single verse without reading the
whole chapter.
Verse nine, except the Lord of hosts hath
left us a very small remnant, we should
have been a Sodom.
This is the nation that had the prophets.
The most God-favored nation that ever lived.
People say, that's America.
Forget it.
The greatest nation that God ever blessed was
surely Israel.
What do you do with towering figures like
Jeremiah?
What do you do with men like Isaiah?
That old man, Bucks Basin, that I was
telling you about, says here is Isaiah, the
supreme man of God with buckled knees and
streaming eyes crying, God, come!
Oh Lord, come down to us.
Without you we're shot.
Without you we're sunk.
They have had these amazing prophets and yet
they've corrupted themselves.
Except the Lord of hosts had left us
a very small remnant, we should have been
a Sodom and we should have been like
unto Gomorrah.
Hear the word of the Lord, ye rulers
of Sodom.
Now he nails one on it.
You're ruling over Sodom.
You think you're the chosen of God?
You corrupt rebels?
You renegades?
You shareholders in iniquity?
You know, you could put the name of
America in here or England if you like.
Verse 19 says, If ye be willing and
obedient, ye shall eat the good of the
land.
But if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall
be devoured with the sword.
For the mouth of the Lord hath spoken
it.
He doesn't say the mouth of Isaiah has
spoken it.
He says the mouth of the Lord has
spoken it.
Some of you were in our little fellowship
last Sunday morning.
We had those two lovely twins.
Men about 40 years of age.
They sang.
They admitted they weren't professionals.
I'm glad they did because they out sang
all the professionals I've ever heard I think.
They were just beautiful.
We had lunch with them and then David
Rokison brought them to our house and we
stayed maybe nearly two hours and talked.
And David's heart is with lost people.
You know that.
In fact, use this technique.
He's the only big time evangelist that goes
on the streets and meets people eye to
eye.
Eyeball to eyeball.
David mentioned about the gay people.
The gay community up in San Francisco.
One of those lovely little guys opened his
eyes.
He said, Mr. Wilkerson, gay, what is a
gay community?
What is a gathering where all the homosexuals
and lesbians live?
Oh, we don't have that in Poland.
Isn't that something?
A nation that's jammed in between strong communism
and strong Catholicism and they have no pornography
and they have no lesbianism and they have
no homosexuality.
James Robinson, the other day, I heard him
say, we've got a message.
We can change Japan.
I thought, well, Jimmy, James, it's right at
home.
There's a revival in the nation.
I've never seen it.
What does revival do?
It changes the moral climate of the community.
The last revivalist in America, as far as
I know, was a dear old man I
never met.
I wish I had.
By the name of Mordy K.I. Hamm.
Isn't that a name?
Mordy K.I. Hamm.
An old man asked me four or five
years ago, do you ever meet Mordy K
.I. Hamm?
No, sir.
Did you?
Yes.
Oh, I wish I had.
Oh, he was a wonderful old man.
He would come with a big tent to
Lindale.
After being there three nights, he had to
have a police escort to get him to
the pulpit.
And a police escort to get him out
of it.
Do you know anybody that scares the devil
enough now to need a police escort to
get in his pulpit?
Why, we've got the red carpet, we've got
the mayor on the platform, and all the
big shots, and broken down film stars, and
sportsmen with burst lungs that can't...
So they all fall back and become Christians.
They've lost their voices, so they sing gospel
rock.
Or is it rot?
Which is it?
Rock.
OK.
He had no techniques.
Isn't it just pitiable when a man only
has God?
Wouldn't it be wonderful when God Almighty strips
him of all this stuff?
It's good.
I'm not kicking against it.
I think within the next five or six
years, all the big shot evangelists will be
off the air.
Whoever gets in, the economy is going to
collapse totally.
Not locally, not nationally, but worldwide.
It's going to be an epidemic in the
not-too-far-off distant days.
Oh, James says, we can take the message
to Japan.
Why?
Japan has over 100 million people.
They have less than 20 murders a year
in Japan, and we've almost 20 a week
in New York State.
If I were a smart Japanese, I'd say,
go back and clean your own doorstep up.
A heathen country, again, Poland, with no pornography,
heathen to me anyhow, no pornography, no homosexuality,
no lesbianism, no dirty films, and we go
to tell them how they can be saved.
So, we should.
I'm not arguing against that.
We go to Japan.
Well, listen, dear friend, I wouldn't care if
Billy, Billy, ah, well, Billy Roberts and Oral
Graham, I was going to say, but that's
all right.
If they were standing here tonight, I'd say,
I'd say, gentlemen, look, you have had more
millions of money to move this nation to
God in the last 25 years than we've
spent since the day of Pentecost, and you've
done nothing.
We don't have a message big enough for
our generation.
Sin-soaked, sin-saturated, sexually mad.
I think the newscast today said 400,000
teenagers will contemplate suicide in America alone this
year.
Over 1,000 children run away every week.
Well, it's 50,000 a year.
Only 5,000 of them are found.
Where are the rest of them?
What are they?
Are they slaves in somebody's backyard?
Are they used for child porno?
Are they locked up in some hotels?
A massive slave, white slave traffic?
We have more divorces than ever.
If the crime rate goes up 1%, boy,
they put it on every newscast.
They've departed from that.
And they've gone after strange gods and gone
after strange flesh.
All this, and we'd better button our lips,
I think.
Tonight, maybe for a little while.
And yet, not if you have a broken
heart.
Because we may cry, and God will hear
us.
We will cry, and God will hear us.
But remember Malachi says this, who shall abide
the day?
We may call the Lord whom ye seek.
Shall what?
Suddenly, shepherds were in the fields watching their
flocks by night.
And suddenly, there was a sound of the
heavenly host.
One minute, it was a normal night watching
sheep.
The next thing, there was a divine revelation
or manifestation.
They were all waiting together in the upper
room.
And what?
Suddenly, up to this moment, it's normal.
The usual.
And suddenly, there's a divine invasion.
Suddenly, there was a sound of as a
rushing mighty wind.
And the world hasn't been the same since.
The Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come
to us.
Wait a minute, who shall abide the day
of his coming?
If Jesus suddenly walked down this aisle like
he walked in the midst of the seven
golden candlesticks, would we stand, or would we
fall prostrate and worship him?
Would we say, come, I know you can
see every crevice in my heart, every bit
of carnality, jealousy, pride, envy, greed, lust.
Thy kind but searching glands can scan the
very wounds that shame would hide.
But a man in his despair spiritually who
had already made a great name as a
preacher, one day got desperate for God.
He cried, search me, O God.
He doesn't say, search Jerusalem or search some
other place I'd like to hop down here,
fill these chairs, let those people come in.
Good, don't worry, we're glad to see you.
Now the chance to breathe.
He is desperate for God.
His ministry has been fruitful so far, but
he realizes that somehow there's some tremendous obstruction
in his life.
Do you feel like that tonight?
Are you something that's shutting God up from
having perfect way in your life?
So he wrote to him, search me, O
God, my actions try and let my life
appear as seen by thine all searching eye
to mine my ways make clear.
Search all my thoughts, the secret springs, the
motives that control, the chambers where polluted things
hold empire or the soul.
Search till thy fiery glance hath cast its
holy light through all and I by grace
am brought at last before thy face to
fall.
I write that out of the search me.
My actions try, let my life appear as
seen by thine.
Search all my thoughts.
One of the most daring things I think
that David the Psalmist wrote.
Well, in Psalm 51, you remember it says,
hide thy face from my sins.
When he's lashed with guilt, when he's tormented
with conscience, he doesn't want God to come
near.
There's a burglar whistle for the cop to
come and arrest him.
He's weighed down with guilt, with transgression.
So in that 51st Psalm, he says, hide
thy face from me.
In Psalm 139, when as far as I
can understand, he's living as near to God
as ever he lived.
He bears his heart in to the Holy
One who is called in Habakkuk, where it
says there that he is of holier eyes
than to behold iniquity.
David says in Psalm 139, search me O
God.
And know my heart.
Try me and know my thoughts.
Sift me.
Don't let me intrude in it.
Come down again in springs where evil thoughts
hold empire over soul.
Maybe I said this last week.
I'm not sure, but I'll say it again.
It's sure worth it.
You see, the reason we don't miss revival
is we've never been in one.
We've had some little boy come along just
out of the seminary.
And he has to tell you how much
he learned in the last three years.
He's as cold as an iceberg.
But what about revival coming with holy fire
from heaven?
Who shall abide the day of his coming?
When God comes with holy fire next time,
he'll go to his own house, to your
house, to the White House, with the last
opportunity, to the sex perverts at
the side of the dock in Liverpool.
A young German there with a Heinkel or
a Messerschmitt comes.
He does a dive bomb and he drops
his bomb right down the funnel of the
ship.
It goes down, down, down into the boiler
room and exploded.
It blew one side of the boat out.
You know, they have propellers about this height
made of bronze, mixture of brass and so
forth.
When that thing burst, it blew part of
the propeller off that was found two miles
away on a hill.
They checked and found it fitted to the
propeller, should be on the propeller of the
boat.
Here is a man standing on the dock
it didn't even singe a hair on his
head.
He saw the boat going away.
That must have been the shock, don't you
think?
Boy, I'd have scratched my head to get
a hole in it, I think.
Am I seeing things?
Yes, brother, you are.
That ship that was there a few minutes,
part of it is on the hill two
miles away, the other has gone down here
and here is a fellow standing, gazing.
Boy, I'd like to see that again.
Well, maybe you would, but you won't.
So near to an explosion that could blow
a million dollar ship away as though it
were made of paper.
And then they never felt a thing.
A righteous man can give his daughters to
these perverts?
Well, I've got something worse than that.
I can't prove that they were and you
can't prove that they weren't.
I believe with all my heart that Ananias
and Sapphira were in the upper room, filled
with the Holy Ghost and three chapters after,
filled with the devil.
Look, if people could live in the upper
room and then go out and be hypocrites,
what in the world do you think they
can do in our churches today?
I hear a fellow yelling over TV sometimes,
Sunday morning, he doesn't like divine healing, he
doesn't like this, he doesn't like the other.
Well, I don't like the young people in
this church.
They tell me they go mixed bathing in
their bikinis and they go drinking cocktails and
they smoke.
Why not start at home?
It's too easy to shoot the enemy down
a few miles away.
Ananias and Sapphira are in the upper room.
I discussed this with Brother Dave the other
day.
He says, well, I think you're right.
And it was he that reminded me.
He said, well, look again.
Here is Lot, a righteous man, yet he
gets caught up in that rotten system somehow
of living and he can give his children,
like throwing your baby to the wolves.
Ananias and Sapphira lied to the...
Oh, is that what preachers do at Pentecost?
You mean Peter pronounced him a death sentence?
I don't think he did.
So, why did they die?
I may be wrong, but I'm sure I'm
right.
I'll tell you why they died because in
the upper room they suddenly had a revelation
of the holiness of God.
And then they saw their corruption and they
died of shock.
They died of fear.
They died of shock.
No matter how they died, they died.
And they died immediately after the most amazing
invasion of God in history until the next
one.
As I've said so often, I'm living to
see a Pentecost that will out-Pentecost Pentecost.
Something that isn't a blackboard theology of Pentecost.
Some place where people come in the meeting
and start gasping inwardly because they know the
holiness of God is here in a way
they've never known that before.
You see, now the fashionable thing is to
have a good meeting and an altar call.
Tell me where there's an altar call in
the New Testament.
There isn't one.
John Baptist preached in the power of the
Holy Ghost.
What happened?
The soldiers who were pagans from another country,
they cried out, what must we do?
The people cried out.
The Pharisees and Sadducees cried out.
Now that's preaching.
In evangelism, we make the altar call.
In revival, people make the altar call.
I've been in meetings often when before you
were through preaching, fellows started walking down the
aisle on their hands and knees and weeping
at the altar.
Now we have to sing.
And we'll sing it just once more for
you.
We'll sing it once more, just once more,
just once more, six times over.
Let's face up to Him.
Who shall abide the day of His coming?
Oh, He doesn't come into a visible form
with a crown on His head, but suddenly
there's an invasion of God's holiness and righteousness
and purity and suddenly I find something like
a serpent in my bosom.
I'm a leper in the sight of God.
Come on, it's the old colored people used
to sing that lovely song.
It's not my brother, not my sister, but
it's me, oh God, standing in the need
of prayer.
Revival is drawing a circle on the ground
and standing in the middle and saying, Lord,
start revival in this circle.
I think one of the shocks in heaven
will be to see how long we stuttered
and stammered about revival.
How long we were content to be spiritually
immature, to have heads full of theology while
the world goes to hell fire.
Now, I am sure in my heart there's
going to be an awakening.
If not, I'd have wanted to go to
heaven a long while ago.
But I'm not going to hang my harp
on the willows.
I'm not going to look at all the
depressing circumstances and that the hierarchy of the
world financially is saying we cannot get through
two years whoever else is in government power
because the whole world now is bankrupt.
It's not only morally bankrupt, it's financially bankrupt,
it's spiritually bankrupt.
But God always comes in the darkest hour.
It got pretty dark, hadn't it, before God
delivered Israel.
And the only way they got out of
bondage, sorrow and night was what?
To put the blood over the lintels and
the doorposts.
It wasn't enough to kill the lamb and
keep the blood in the house and say,
a woman saying to her husband, Isaac, don't,
God's a gracious God.
He's a loving God.
He won't destroy us.
It's only for Israel.
It's only, not for Israel, it's for Egypt.
And we've got the blood here.
God has seen it.
It's our precious pet lamb.
The boys loved it so much.
And here it is.
God won't mind.
Well, you better watch it because partial obedience
is disobedience.
You know, I could almost get discouraged from
this standpoint.
It's true of you.
Now, I love you all, or I wouldn't
be here.
I stayed up till 2 o'clock this
morning, almost every morning this week, till 2
o'clock.
Praying, meditating, thinking of this meeting.
I'm not a hero to do that.
I do it.
Some of you younger guys should be doing
it anyhow.
I do not want you to stand, as
I've said so often.
I do not want to stand at the
judgment seat with everybody from Adam to the
last babe that's born before I go into
eternity.
I do not want God to call me
up whether I'm escorted with angels or not
to the judgment seat.
And I see the Lamb of God and
tonight I can receive the blood of the
Lamb or the wrath of the Lamb.
That's the option.
I do not want to stand there by
myself.
My darling wife won't be with me.
My four wonderful sons won't be with me.
I have to stand there by myself.
Here's John Wesson looking on and all the
prophets of all the ages.
Matthew, Mark and Luke and John and all
the saints in the Acts of the Apostles.
Isaiah will be there.
Jeremiah will be there.
Malachi will be there.
All the minor prophets, all the major prophets,
all the great preachers, all the evangelists, they're
all going to be there.
And Leonard Rambeau has to walk up there
nervously to the judgment seat with the blazing
light of Jesus whose eyes are a flame
of fire.
No longer kindling with mercy but kindling with
anger.
Not there as a savior but there as
a judge.
You can fall down and repent if you
like.
You won't get saved.
You go right to hell anyhow from there
if that's the only repenting we do.
I say I don't want to stand there
by myself in splendid isolation with billions of
eyes looking on me and the Lord Jesus
with tears in His eyes looks down and
says, Son, while you were living in Texas
I had many things to tell you but
you couldn't bear them.
In other words, you were too immature.
My heart was bursting to reveal myself to
you.
I wanted to take my word and illuminate
it but it would have destroyed you.
It would have blown you to pieces.
You weren't secure enough even in the Word
of God.
That's going to be the most awesome day
in history.
Yes, I want to learn.
I mean this.
I think I said to a brother who
was here tonight.
The other day, I haven't said it to
my sweet wife.
I forget things, you know.
I remember some, I forget some.
But as I was praying, I heard the
word of the Lord say this, This
is my body which is broken for you.
If you can get it, there's a biography
of one of the greatest modern saints by
the name of John Sung.
S-U-N-G Came to America, Life
Magazine wrote him up, Time Magazine, World News
as the most brilliant student that ever came
to America.
When he came, he could hardly speak a
word of English.
In three and a half years, he mastered
English.
He did one of his main studies in
German, which he didn't know.
He learned English language in three and a
half years, German language in three and a
half years, got his B.A., his M
.A., and his Ph.D. and learned two
languages in three and a half years.
Then he went back to Japan.
To China, pardon me.
He had revival where even the great American
Jonathan Edwards did not have revival.
I can't give you the whole story.
If I could find the book, I'd like
to get a dozen of them.
Have you read it, brother?
Yes.
One of the most amazing biographies, because it's
a modern young man, anyhow.
I gave the illustration, there's a lady at
the organ, and she, tears were running down
her face, and I said to her afterwards,
oh, she said to me, oh, that Bible
study this morning was so refreshing.
Oh, you talked about John Sung.
I said, yes, I did.
I said, by the way, had you heard
that story before?
She said, I played the organ for him
in his revivals in China.
I said, is that book true?
She said, they couldn't write a book on
John Sung.
The last 15 years of his life, he
was near paralyzed every day with tuberculosis.
He would kneel on the edge of the
altar and welcome people come while the door
of mercy, people would stream to the altar.
And he had permanent revivals.
They say where the church of Jesus has
been most concrete, if I can use that
word, or consolidated in China through all the
years of trouble, two areas of China where
the church has flourished most, number one is
where Watchman Lee used to preach and the
other where John Sung used to preach.
But she said in his last 15 years,
he would crawl to the edge of the
altar, beckon people to the altar.
He never got dressed like so many guys
want, you know, a nice American suit and
a black tie and a white shirt.
He wore a little cotton shirt tied on
the corner of his shoulder with a string.
A rebellious lock of hair that wouldn't stay
up and there he would move it as
he was preaching.
But she said, my friend had the honor
of having him in her home.
He had his private room.
He would come in at night after the
meetings, throw himself over the bed, shirt sticking
to his back, body heaving with his advanced
tuberculosis.
She said, my friend said, I would go
to the corner of his bedroom and just
peep in each night.
It was holy ground.
I didn't walk in.
And every time I saw him, I only
thought of one scripture.
I have never heard this quoted in my
60 odd years of preaching.
70 odd years going to meetings.
I have never heard it quoted out of
context.
I looked at that little China man with
his almost skeleton body and his little cheap
shirt and his shirt stuck to his back,
groaning and traveling even now for revival.
The only scripture that came to my mind
was this.
This is my body which is broken for
you.
I am not sure I am there yet.
But I would like to be, not to
tempt God, but to be a living proof
that I don't care whether I live or
die.
Not because I am an old man.
I would say it if I was 28
instead of almost 78.
An experience of God that costs nothing, is
worth nothing and it does nothing.
Well, you can't buy anything from God.
Well, you better read a King James Version.
Get rid of that one you've got.
Why?
You mean we can buy from God?
Not salvation.
Let me wind it up with this.
What does God say to one of the
churches in Revelation?
I counsel thee to what?
To what?
To buy.
I can buy from God.
How?
Two things.
Faith and obedience.
That verse in scripture where Paul says redeeming
the time.
You know, you young people get fooled over
that more than anything else.
You live as though you have 20 more
years to live.
This may be your last day on earth.
We have some lovely cemeteries around here.
Take a trip around.
You will find somebody died at your age.
Whether you're 8 or 18 or 58 or
88.
I counsel thee to buy of me.
The word redeeming the time because the days
are evil is literally translated from the Greek
buying up the opportunity.
A young fellow in this group told me
just a few weeks ago.
He said, I'm not running down to a
van every night now to play tennis or
racquetball.
It doesn't do anything for me.
I feel a bit happy if I beat
the other guy.
But I've got nothing out of it.
Exactly.
What the devil wants you to do is
waste your life gathering nothing.
And at the judgment seat we'll get nothing.
You know that little ditty that you used
to see on the paper?
Only one life will soon be passed.
Only what's done for God will last.
Well, that isn't what the poet wrote.
What he wrote was only one life will
soon be passed.
Only what's done for God will last.
And when I am dying how glad I
shall be if the lamp of my life
has been burned out for thee.
Somebody said you don't have to rust out
you have to last out.
You know you have to burn out.
But sometimes we burn out in the wrong
place.
The thing is not to rust out not
just to burn out but to last out
for God.
We're starting Tuesday night over.
Oh no, we'll be here Tuesday night.
I was going to say we'll be over
in the other place.
We'll be here Tuesday night and we're going
to get into it.
The epistle to the Hebrews the 11th chapter
if you want to read it.
We're going to go right through all the
heroes in Hebrews 11.
And then digressing for a moment as I
thought this much today.
It says there's a number of people what
they were stoned and they were sawn asunder.
What about the heroes in Hebrews 11 that
are not mentioned?
What about the people who all their latter
days lived in dens and caves of the
earth and they wandered around in sheepskins and
goats being destitute and afflicted and tormented and
refused to bow to Caesar.
Refused to take any state aid.
Oh God, when we get to eternity what
a marvellous thing.
When the saints come out.
Oh, I've read about Abel and all those
people in Hebrews 11 till I feel they
were my neighbours almost.
But I thought today what about this multitude
that no man can number and nobody knows
and nobody has their names except the book
of God.
Stoned, sawn asunder.
Tradition, which is a very uncertain thing anyhow.
Tradition says that Isaiah was strapped with his
feet up here and he was sawn right
through the middle with a wooden saw.
Not even the pleasure of getting it done
quickly.
A wooden saw.
Can you think of the agony?
Tradition says when they wanted to crucify Peter
he said no, no, no.
Don't crucify.
You don't be crucified.
He said not like my Lord.
I'm not worthy of that.
Crucify me, but crucify me upside down.
Think of the agony of being held in
that position till you're almost mad.
But he was willing to do it.
I'm not talking about unnecessary suffering.
I'm trying to show you how pampered we
are in this day in which we live.
So you young fellows don't need to blame
the devil.
Blame the bed.
Don't tell me what weight you can lift.
You go pumping.
I don't care how much you can pump.
Can you throw the bedclothes off and get
up at two in the morning to pray?
Can you say to your buddies well you
can go if you like but friend I
don't have that much long to live.
A hundred years is too short to live.
I'm not going to waste my time.
I'm not going to waste my money.
I'm not going to waste my conversation.
I'm not going to waste my reading.
I have only one ambition and that's to
get nearer to God.
I thank God for all the way He's
led me since I was a boy 14
years of age in England.
I've been through rough times, stormy times, difficult
times, good times, bad times, other times.
But oh, there is a place of quiet
rest near to the heart of God.
Isn't that true?
Just before we go to pray, let's sing
that.