There's a blight.
And it was wished, in many cases, that
it was willing to pay the fare back
to the home city of any young person
in America free of charge.
They reckoned there was at least a hundred
thousand runaway kids in the New York metropolitan
area alone.
I'm reading a little booklet that came into
my hands.
I haven't read it thoroughly yet, just a
couple of chapters, but what I've read almost
appalls me.
I should have known where I have lived
in the shadow of the Empire State Building
in New York City for most of my
adult life.
And so I ought not to be at
all overtaken or overwhelmed by what happens in
that great metropolitan city.
But this little booklet is the story, the
case histories, of a Roman Catholic priest who
deliberately asked his bishop if he would transfer
him to Harlem, where he wanted to work
with young people who are in need, of
course, from his point of view, religion and
reformation.
And the title of the book is an
arresting one.
It's entitled, God Sometimes Has a Kid's Face.
And what he's trying to say is that
God is speaking to the hearts of people
through the faces, the distorted faces of these
ravaged young people.
Somebody's son slept in a garbage can for
three months.
Another one slept in an automobile for 12
months, an old broken-down car.
And they come to him wretched and broken.
I think one of the most arresting statistics
is the fact that now the number two
cause of death among young people under 21
is suicide.
This year alone, 55,000 young people from
about the age of 10, yes, 11, 12,
up to 18, 19, 55,000 kids will
attempt to commit suicide.
They think that number seems to be the
lowest that they can compile.
And the tragedy is that out of those
55,000, 5,000 at least will be
successful.
They'll hang themselves.
They'll overdose.
They'll shoot their brains out.
They'll stab themselves to death.
They'll jump from buildings.
I ask you, I can understand, I think,
an adult man whose life crumbles, whose business
falls apart, whose marital experience is shattered by
infidelity and unfaithfulness, or who says it's not
worth staying alive for those few months the
doctors promised me.
I think I can understand a person, an
adult man who faces all of those things,
who says there's no way out but to
take my life.
I don't condone it, but I can sympathize
with it.
But I ask you in the name of
all that's sensible and decent and logical, what
makes a kid 10, 11, and 12 years
old want to commit suicide?
There must be basic underlying reasons.
And I'm not here tonight to explore those
reasons, for I think I have something a
little more, I hope, positive to say along
these lines.
But I'm speaking on this subject because as
I look out on this audience, I see
a lot of snow on the roof and
quite a few shingles missing, too, here and
there.
And the chances are pretty good that most
of you have survived raising your families.
Most of you have.
And maybe your problem is not your own
children, although it's a fact that I meet
everywhere around the country.
There are folks who say, my son, my
daughter is now up in their 50s and
60s and they're still outside of Christ.
They're still resisting the Savior.
We have a burdened heart and a broken
heart because they have resisted every effort to
lead them to Christ.
But then it extends beyond our own children
to our grandchildren.
I suppose, if I should ask here tonight,
how many of you have grandchildren who are
wandering away from the Lord?
They haven't come to Christ.
They're rebellious, or they're not interested in spiritual
things.
I wouldn't be surprised that we would have
an overwhelming number of people who would raise
your hands and say, that's true in my
case.
I share my son's burden for his children,
or my daughter's burden for hers, who are
outside of the Lord Jesus Christ.
So I don't think that I'm speaking on
a subject that is totally foreign to your
special needs tonight.
I know that if I were giving a
missionary message and appealing for volunteers to go
to the mission field, that would certainly be
a little inappropriate to this audience, wouldn't it?
You say, that's past me, brother.
Should have come down the pipe 50 years
ago.
I could have listened and maybe done something.
No, I do feel that this is an
appropriate subject for us to consider tonight.
Now, what do you do with these kinds
of children?
I don't have any magic formula, but it
seems to me that there are two very
simple things that all of us can do.
As far as our rebellious children or grandchildren
are concerned, who stubbornly refuse to yield to
the Savior's commands and overtures of love.
The first is that we must somehow, someway
convey to them that we still love them,
that basically our love has not diminished.
I heard an interview a little while back
between Barbara Walters and Kurt Douglas, and it
was a very interesting interview.
And there was one touching moment when Barbara
Walters said to Kurt Douglas, and he had
referred to his father, who must have been
a very severe disciplinarian and who was probably
pretty tough on Kurt and the rest of
the family.
And Barbara Walters said, if you could speak
to your father now, father is apparently dead,
if you could speak to your father now,
what would you ask of him?
And this rather hard-bitten, at least he
comes across that way on films and so
on, Kurt Douglas, tough guy.
He hesitated, and it was apparent that he
was emotionally touched.
And he stopped for a moment or two,
thought, and then he said, I guess I
would ask him to just pat me on
the back.
Pat me on the back.
Here's a man who apparently was revealing the
fact that he longed for the touch of
love in his life, and missed it.
Maybe, maybe basically, this is one of the
problems with our young people.
Maybe they don't truly understand that we love
them, but we must convey that.
The second thing, very simple, it may seem
too simple, is to pray for them.
Now you may say, but I do and
I have for such a long time.
Why, I have prayed for my children for
lo, these many 35, 40 or more years,
and my son still is outside the family
of God.
I pray for them.
Well, maybe, maybe I can inject one more
thought.
I think it calls for the prayer of
faith.
The injection of an additional element in our
praying, not merely, oh God, save my son
Bill.
I've said that for year after year.
It's almost sometimes like spinning a prayer wheel.
But do we dare to step out and
claim God's promises by faith?
You see, we can prove, I think, from
the scriptures that it is the will of
God that all of our family should be
saved.
I believe in household salvation.
I believe that Acts 16.31 means exactly
what it says, and they said, Believe on
the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be
saved, and thy house.
That God's will, God's plan, God's purpose is
for all of our family to be included
in the great salvation that he provides in
the Lord Jesus Christ.
You may remember that when Peter went down
to preach the gospel in the house of
Cornelius, it is written in Acts 11.14,
he says, I came down to say that
I'll give you the words whereby thou and
all thy house shall be saved.
Yes, I think it's God's plan that all
of our children should be saved, that they
all should be included in salvation.
And we must not rest.
We must give God no rest until we
have the assurance that he is going to
answer that prayer of faith.
Do you remember Rahab the harlot?
When she spoke to the spies, she said,
When you come here, and I know you're
going to do it, your God is powerful.
When you take this city, I want you
to promise me that you will spare my
household.
And then she specifically mentioned them, father, mother,
sisters, brothers, all of them.
And they did.
They were saved.
Now, there is a very interesting incident in
the Old Testament to which I now refer
you that has always intrigued me.
I'm going to ask you to turn to
the book of 2 Chronicles, please, in your
Bible.
2 Chronicles, and chapter 20, well, I was
going to say 29, but I'll look at
chapter 28 with you if you'll bear with
me.
Chapter 28, I think, of 2 Chronicles, ought
to be rimmed in black.
It ought to have a black border around
it.
It is one of the blackest chapters in
the Old Testament.
It's the record of a very wicked king's
deeds, Ahaz.
Look what it says about him.
Ahaz was 20 years old when he began
to reign.
He reigned 16 years in Jerusalem, but he
did not that which was right in the
sight of the Lord like David his father.
For he walked in the ways of the
kings of Israel, and he made also molten
images for Balaam.
Moreover, he burnt incense in the valley of
the son of Enam, and burnt his children
in the fire after the abominations of the
heathen whom the Lord had cast out before
the children of Israel.
He sacrificed also and burnt incense in the
high places and on the hills and under
every green tree, wherefore the Lord his God
delivered him into the hand of the king
of Syria, and they smote him and carried
away a great multitude of them captives and
brought them to Damascus.
He was also delivered into the hand of
the king of Israel who smote him with
a great slaughter, for Pekah the son of
Ramaliah slew in Judah a hundred and twenty
thousand in one day."
Imagine what that looked like in the headlines
of the newspaper.
A hundred and twenty thousand casualties in one
day.
"...which were all valiant men because they had
forsaken the Lord God of their fathers."
And then verse 8, "...and the children of
Israel carried away captive of their brethren two
hundred thousand women, sons, daughters, took also much
spoil from them and brought the spoil to
Samaria."
Wouldn't you think that a fellow would come
to his senses when these blows were struck
one after another?
Tens of thousands of these people taken captive,
the land stripped by the enemies.
Well, it didn't have much effect on him.
Look at verse 19 of the chapter, "...for
the Lord brought Judah low because of Ahaz,
king of Israel, for he made Judah naked
and transgressed sore against the Lord.
And Tiglath-Tonither, king of Assyria, came to
him and distressed him, but strengthened him not.
For Ahaz took away a portion out of
the house of Jehovah and out of the
house of the kingdom of the princes and
gave it to the king of Assyria, but
he helped him not.
And in the time of his distress did
he trespass yet more against the Lord.
This is that king Ahaz.
For he sacrificed unto the gods of Damascus,
which smote him."
He said, "...because the gods of the kings
of Syria helped them, therefore I'll sacrifice to
them that they may help me."
But they were the ruin of him and
of all Israel.
"...And Ahaz gathered together the vessels of the
house of God and cut in pieces the
vessels of the house of God and shut
up the doors of the house of the
Lord and made him altars in every corner
of Jerusalem.
And in every several city of Judah he
made high places to burn incense unto other
gods and provoke to anger the Lord God
of his fathers."
I guess you'd have to sum that all
up by saying he was a crooked, wicked
scamp.
And so the best news of the chapter
is the next couple of verses, particularly verse
27.
Good news.
Ahaz slept with his fathers and they buried
him in the city, even in Jerusalem.
They didn't even bring him into the sepulcher
of the kings of Israel.
And Hezekiah, his son, reigned in his stead.
There's a chapter break there, once again in
the King James Version, and it's most interesting
what follows in the next, in the opening
of the chapter.
What would you think, what would modern psychologists
say about what kind of a boy would
be the product of this kind of a
father today?
What do you think they would say?
Well, he's just, he's a chip off the
old block.
He can't help it.
He was raised in this rotten environment, so
he must, he's got to turn out bad.
It's his father's fault.
That's what he gets for having a father
like Ahaz.
You know, they're very quick to blame parents
these days.
When a mother pins the diaper on the
baby too tightly and pricks him with a
pin, that baby has a complex the rest
of his life.
He's ready to fight all of society.
It's mama's fault, you know.
Blame everything on everybody but the kid himself.
The big problem today is that people will
not face up to the fact they have
personal responsibility.
I am responsible for what I do myself.
You can't blame it on everybody and everything
else.
Well, here's what I read.
After that kind of a record, the deeds
of this man Ahaz, Hezekiah began to reign
when he was 25 years old and he
reigned nine and twenty years in Jerusalem.
And his mother's name was Abijah, the daughter
of Zechariah.
And he did that which was, now hold
it, I happen to have a Schofield reference
Bible Does that disturb some of you?
If you don't like it and you want
to criticize Schofield, you better smile when you
talk to me because I'm quick on the
draw.
I've never, I have recommended this Bible to
hundreds of young converts and I never have
learned of a single one of them led
astray doctrinally because of the Schofield reference Bible.
I staunchly defend it.
Now, you know enough about this Bible that
one of its characteristics is that it's printed,
no matter whether you pay, you used to
be able to pay four or five dollars
for a Bible or fifty-five dollars for
one.
Doesn't make any difference how much you pay.
They're all printed exactly alike.
Page 517 starts with the same words up
above and it ends with the same words
at the bottom of the page.
Now, that's the old Schofield.
I don't have any truck with a new
Schofield.
My wife carries one of them and I
tell her she's a modernist.
But the old Schofield.
When I was a pastor preaching, I taught
our folks to carry their Bibles to church.
I didn't want anybody getting any wrong ideas
where they were going on Sunday morning.
I wanted the neighbors to know they were
going to church.
So, put your Bible under your arm, hold
it out there where people can see it.
Don't hide it.
Don't stick it under your coat.
Let the neighbors know where you're going.
And then I didn't believe in putting Bibles
in the pews.
That makes lazy Christians.
I said bring your own Bible.
And then when I got to preaching, whenever
we turned to various verses, it was music
to my ears to hear the rustling of
the leaves.
When the leaves were turned, you know, it
meant the folks were right there with you.
Now, all of that is to say that
in the old Schofield Bible, it says, And
he did that which was...
And when you turn the page, I was
fully, and we're justified, in expecting that the
next phrase will say, He did that which
was not right in the sight of the
Lord.
He did not follow in the ways of
David his father.
Because that was the theme song all through
this historical portion of the Scriptures.
King after king after king, it is written
that he did not that which was right.
But no, in this instance, you read, He
did that which was right in the sight
of the Lord according to all that David
his father had done.
Now, how do you account for a king,
a young fellow, acting like this with a
father like he had, they had, with his
record?
Well, I guess the only answer is because
of the mother he had.
It's very interesting that the Holy Spirit includes
his mother's name.
This is a bit foreign to Jewish custom.
Women's names are seldom mentioned.
Occasionally they are, but seldom mentioned in genealogies
or in identification of a person.
The father's name is mentioned, but seldom the
mother's.
But he had a mother whose name was
Abijah.
In the Hebrew that means Jehovah is my
father or my father is Jehovah.
So that whenever her name was mentioned there
was a constant reminder of her relationship to
Jehovah God, the true and living God.
And this boy grew up with that from
the earliest moment of his memory.
His mother's name was Jehovah is my father.
He was reminded of that.
And then he had a grandfather who had
an interesting name, Zachariah.
And Zachariah means Jehovah remembers who's your grandfather.
Jehovah remembers who's your mother.
Jehovah is her father.
So Hezekiah was influenced, the impact of a
godly grandfather and a godly mother made their
mark upon this man Hezekiah.
Now, it would be interesting if we had
the time, and I don't want to take
too much time to show you how this
man got started and what he did.
And the record is here for us to
read.
It's very interesting reading.
Very interesting.
One has to admit that there are some
times in the historical records when the reading
is a little dull and maybe a little
bit disinteresting, uninteresting, because we don't get all
the connections and so on.
But that's not true of this area.
It's a very fascinating and interesting portion.
You'll notice what he did right at the
very beginning.
Verse 3.
He, in the first year of his reign,
in the first month, opened the doors of
the house of the Lord and repaired them.
I don't know particularly what month it was
on the calendar, but it was the same
as if it were January 1st, New Year's
Day, first day.
He made it clear to his people and
to his nation that God was going to
have priority in this nation from here on
out.
He opens the doors of the house of
the Lord and then he begins to prepare
it.
Now, the thing I want to establish about
Hezekiah is this.
And obviously we remember just a few things
about this man.
I guess if I were to ask, what
do you remember about Hezekiah, you'd right away
say, oh, he's the one whom God gave
an extra lease on life, 15 years, more.
And you would be right, absolutely right.
But I notice there's one feature about Hezekiah
that doesn't often pop up to the surface.
Hezekiah was a man of prayer.
He was a king who knew how to
get things from God.
And I want to show you the evidence
for that.
Notice the 18th verse, I think it is.
The 18th is what I want, of chapter
30.
It says, A multitude of the people, even
many of Ephraim and Manasseh, Issachar and Zebedeen,
had not cleansed themselves, yet did they eat
the Passover otherwise than it was written.
Horror.
That's terrible.
They were eating the Passover without observing the
laws of cleanliness and holiness.
What do you do in a case like
that?
Get angry and mad and pass some laws?
Uh-huh.
Hezekiah knew better.
It says, But Hezekiah prayed for them, saying,
The good Lord pardon everyone that prepares his
heart to seek God, the Lord God of
his fathers, though he be not cleansed according
to the purification of the sanctuary.
And the Lord hearkened to Hezekiah and healed
the people.
Here's a man who faces the unspiritual condition
of his people, and how does he handle
it?
He lays it all out before God.
Lord, you can move.
You can cleanse these people.
Lord, you can bring them around.
Lord, you can straighten them out.
Do it until they become a godly people.
He prays for this ungodly group of people.
Now in chapter 32, he'll turn over, you
come to verse 20, and when you get
to this point, he's got a totally different
situation.
Old King Sennacherib is coming up against Hezekiah.
If you back up to the 17th verse
of this 32nd chapter, it reads, He wrote
letters to rail on the Lord God of
Israel and to speak against him, saying, As
the gods of the nations of other lands
have not delivered their people out of my
hand, so shall not the God of Hezekiah
deliver his people out of my hand.
Then they cry with a loud voice in
the Jews' speech unto the people of Jerusalem
that were on the walls to scare them,
to frighten them, and to trouble them, that
they might take the city.
And they speak against the God of Jerusalem
as against the gods of the people of
the earth, which were the work of the
hands of man.
And for this cause Hezekiah the king and
the prophet Isaiah the son of Ammon prayed
and cried to heaven.
When he faced an unspiritual congregation, he is
driven to his knees in prayer.
When he faces a time of military and
political peril, this man is found praying.
One of the nice things you've got to
say about it, he chose the right kind
of company, too.
Did you notice who one of his companions
was?
One of his best friends?
Isaiah.
I wouldn't mind having Isaiah as my pal,
would you?
Isaiah was his good friend.
And they're found praying that God would deliver
them from the hand of this defiant people.
So Hezekiah at this turn is found in
prayer.
Now in the same chapter, in verse 24,
in those days Hezekiah was sick to the
death, and he prayed unto the Lord, and
he spake unto him, and he gave him
a sign.
So in times of personal distress, this man
is found praying.
Why have I tried to establish that fact?
Because of this reason.
When God gave him a lease on life
of 15 years, during that time a son
was born to him, a son who was
to be the heir of the kingdom.
And Hezekiah knew that he would not be
alive when that boy became an adult.
He knew he would be dead before the
lad maybe was even a teenager.
Every father hopes and prays that he'll be
alive long enough to see his children grow
up and become mature.
And he must have longed for this, did
Hezekiah.
Am I out of order?
Do you think I'm using my imagination when
I say in the light of the fact
that this man is found praying at every
crisis in his life that he must have
prayed for his son Manasseh too?
He must have asked God to make this
boy a good ruler.
He'd had an experience with his father, what
his father had done to Judah.
Now God bless this boy.
Bring this boy to yourself.
Make him righteous.
And yet he knew all along that he
wasn't going to be alive to see the
answer to his prayer.
Well, how did it work out?
Look at chapter 33.
Manasseh was 12 years old when he began
to reign.
Hezekiah, of course, is now dead.
He was 12 years old when he began
to reign, and he reigned 55 years in
Jerusalem.
But did that which was evil in the
sight of the Lord, like unto the abominations
of the heathen whom the Lord had cast
out before the children of Israel.
For he built again the high places which
Hezekiah his father had broken down.
He reared up altars for Balaam and made
groves and worshiped all the hosts of heaven
and served them.
Also he built altars in the house of
the Lord, whereupon the Lord had said, In
Jerusalem shall my name be forever.
He built altars for all the hosts of
heaven in the two courts of the house
of the Lord, and he caused his children
to pass through the fire in the valley
of the son of Hinnom.
He observed times, he used enchantments, and he
used witchcraft, and he dealt with a familiar
spirit and with wizards.
He wrought much evil in the sight of
the Lord to provoke him to anger, and
he set a carved image, the idol which
he had made, in the house of God,
of which God had said to David and
Solomon, his son, in this house.
And in Jerusalem have I chosen before all
the tribes of Israel will I put my
name for.
Why do you think the Holy Spirit gives
us a detailed description of this man's wickedness?
Maybe it's because Manasseh was such a rebel
that he decided that he was going to
undo everything his father had done before him.
He was rebelling against the godliness and the
goodness of his father.
We used to have a radio broadcast in
our church late on Sunday night when it
was kind of novel.
Eleven to twelve on Sunday evenings, a live
broadcast on the church auditorium.
Lots of young people came from other surrounding
churches and we had a great time.
Well, we had musical groups.
We had a male quartet.
We had a brass, I think it was,
a quartet.
It was made up of a couple of
girls and a couple of fellas.
We had this quartet.
And one of these girls, the youngest of
the crowd, played an instrument in the quartet.
But after a little while, I noticed that
we had to put up with a trio
instead of a quartet.
She wasn't there.
Her sister was in the group.
And this went on two or three times
and I felt it needed some correction, so
I said to her sister, Your sister, Oldeen,
what's going on?
She isn't here to play.
Now, she's got to make up her mind
whether she's going to stay in the brass
aggregation or get out.
Oh, she said, Pastor, if you only knew
what's happened.
I don't know what's happened to my sister.
She's turned away from God completely and totally.
They had a mother who was a widow.
She said she has gotten in with a
crowd that runs off to New York City
and carouses around.
And she said she has gotten to the
place where when we open the Bible in
the house to read it, she swears at
the Word of God.
The other day, she grabbed the Bible.
She ripped pages out of the Bible, tossed
them on the floor, threw the book in
another direction, and with profanity said to my
mother, I don't want to see that book
at all.
I want to have nothing to do with
prayer, and so on.
It seemed like she was doing her level
best to say to her mother, Every good
thing you stand for, I'm against.
I want you to know that.
And I'm not going to turn back either.
Her end was a sad, sad end, I
assure you.
This man, Manasseh, everything that his father had
done that was decent and good to bring
God's people around to righteousness and righteous living,
he tried his best to undo.
When you turn the page, you will read
that it says, verse 9, And so Manasseh
made Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to
err, and to do worse than the heathen
whom the Lord had destroyed before the children
of Israel.
And the Lord spake to Manasseh and to
his people, but they would not hearken.
They wouldn't listen.
God spake to them.
I don't know what means God used, but
God was speaking to Manasseh and his people
to turn them around.
And they turned a deaf ear.
Sometimes God does that with our offspring.
He speaks, you know, in strange ways.
You have a son, he's a sports maniac,
and he turns to sports on the TV.
Now, you've been witnessing to him for a
long time, praying for him, and then one
Sunday afternoon as he turns on the TV,
searching for his favorite sports game, there's a
voice that comes out and a finger that
points to him.
Happens to be Billy Graham reminding him that
he's a sinner on his way to hell,
and unless he turns away from his sin
and repentance, he'll be lost forever.
How quickly is the dial flicked?
But nonetheless, there's a registration of God's word
and God's reminder.
See?
And that's what God must have done with
Manasseh.
And so you read in the next verse,
Wherefore, the Lord brought upon them the captains
of the host of the king of Assyria,
which took Manasseh among the thorns and bound
him with fetters and carried him to Babylon.
Wherefore, beware of God's wherefore.
When God begins to work, sometimes he will
shatter life Before some people come to himself,
he leads them along hard, rough roads.
We had a family in our church.
The mother was a godly woman.
The father was a professing Christian, but he
was secretly an alcoholic.
His wife kept it secret for years.
He was somehow able to survive.
They had four or five children, and this
one boy was a rebel.
So bad that despite the fact that his
brothers and his sister went into Christian work,
and he felt that he wanted to go
into Christian work, I remember I allowed him
to come as a student to our Bible
college.
And we had to get rid of him.
He had been kicked out of practically every
Christian school, and it was only by the
grace of God, and what little grace I
could muster, that we let him in our
school.
And then later on, he kicked over the
traces, and what are you going to do
with a guy that beats up the business
manager?
You can't let him stay in school, can
you?
So I had to say, You're out.
And then he told me something that I
could hardly believe.
He said, You know, I've taken to drinking,
and I go to New York, and I
get pretty soused.
And he said, When I come home late
at night, two, three, four o'clock in
the morning, I see a light in my
mother's bedroom, and I know the old lady,
already, the old lady, I know what she's
doing.
She's praying for me.
And he said, I stand at the door,
and I laugh at her.
I love to see my old lady cry.
You know what I said to him?
I said, If God in heaven would give
me about twenty seconds' dispensation, I'd like to
put all these knuckles right down your throat.
Any man that talks that way about his
mother, I'm sure God would forgive me if
I buried you right in the mouth, right
now.
So I said, Get out.
He did.
You know something?
A little while later, they found his father
dead in the gutter of a town nearby.
And that was a shocker, this boy.
But it didn't turn him around.
God was speaking to him, like Manasseh.
He defied God.
And then one night, he and another fellow
driving along the highway in an almost brand
-new Thunderbird.
The other fellow was drunk.
This boy was pretty well liquored up.
And they were driving, and the boy who
was with him sat on the floor so
he could get close to the speedometer, and
he kept calling out the speed, 70, 75,
80, 85, 90, and the last thing either
one of them heard was 90 miles an
hour when they struck a concrete abutment head
-on.
And you know that twisted ball of steel?
They had to extricate them with blowtorches.
And Manasseh, that wasn't his name, but he
was Manasseh.
He suffered God's wherefore.
His arm is forever twisted.
He's a preacher now.
God redeemed his life and used him.
He's a pastor of a church near Washington,
D.C., and a great soul winner, but
he says every time he looks at that
twisted arm, he remembers when he was a
rebel against God and when he was fighting
his mother's prayers and how God left him
with a twisted arm to remind him again
of the mercy and the grace of God.
Well, you know, Hezekiah's dead.
He must have prayed for this boy, but
he didn't live long enough to see this
boy come to the Lord.
Here's what the Bible says.
And when he, Manasseh, was in affliction, he
besought the Lord, his God, and humbled himself
greatly before the God of his fathers and
prayed unto him.
And he, God, was entreated of him and
heard his supplication and brought him again to
Jerusalem into his kingdom.
Then Manasseh knew that the Lord, he was
God.
That's Old Testament conversion, sure and simple.
He was converted and a dead father's prayer
will answer.
You know, some of us may go home
to heaven without seeing the answer to our
prayers for our loved ones.
That's all right.
God knows about that.
Doesn't make too much difference whether we see
the answer to our prayers or not, does
it?
It's the answer, and they come to know
Him.
And Manasseh was really converted to God, and
his life was transformed and changed.
Let me just mention one or two illustrations
of how this works out.
Catherine Booth of the Salvation Army is reported
to have prayed, Oh God, I will not
stand before thee without my children.
I don't want to stand before you without
my children.
And as far as we know, every one
of them was saved and even became preachers.
Jonathan Edwards claimed from God that not one
of his own seed would ever be lost.
Talk about faith, the prayer of faith.
He not only prayed for his own children,
but his children's children and his children's children's
children, and right on down the line he
says, I pray that not one of my
seeds will ever be lost.
And after three or four generations, those who
have made diligent investigation could not find one
descendant who was not a decided Christian.
I said that one morning, and a man
came up to the aisle, stood there in
the front and tears were running down his
cheeks.
He said, Pastor, I am a relative of
Jonathan Edwards, and it's true.
I know of nobody in our family, anywhere,
who is not a committed, dedicated child of
God.
God answered that prayer of faith, Jonathan Edwards.
Mrs. A.J. Gordon, the wife of Dr.
A.J. Gordon, founder of Gordon College, mother
of five children, claimed that she believed God
would never let the children of believing parents
be lost.
One by one, each of the five of
them were saved.
One night in the First Baptist Church in
New York City, I think it was a
New Year's Eve service, people were getting up
to give some testimonies, and a man arose
under the gallery, and he gave this testimony.
He said, among other things, five years ago,
a dying mother called her daughter to her
bedside.
Thank God that all of her family were
saved.
And the daughter said Mother, what about John?
John is down on the bowery.
John is a bump.
And that mother quoted Acts 16, 31, and
she said she dared to believe that it
meant that John would be in the family
of God.
And that man said, I am that son.
I was picked up from the gutter by
a God who answers prayer.
There are abundant illustrations to encourage us this
evening, ladies and gentlemen, to believe God on
behalf of our unsaved loved ones, whether they
be our own children or even our children's
children.
Let's dare to believe God.
Shall we pray?
Heavenly Father, we thank Thee for that rich
grace that found us when we were rebels,
rebelling against Thee by love, casting thy restraining
love aside, rejecting Thee, going on in our
blindness until one day overcome by the sweet
grace and the love of God we yielded
to Thee.
We thank Thee for that wonderful grace of
God.
And we pray this evening for our children
and for their children, too.
Many of them may be far away from
Thee, dear Lord, and sometimes it seems that
they're too hard.
They'll not turn back.
It's been too long.
They're set in their ways of sin.
But Thou hast Thine own way to curb
the rebellious spirit, to bend the stubborn will,
and to woo the heart that rejects Thee.
And so we pray that we may be
encouraged tonight, even as Hezekiah went to his
death, still believing that that boy of his
would turn out right.
And so we pray that we may, with
similar faith, trust Thee for our loved ones.
Hear our prayer, for we pray it in
the blessed name of the Lord Jesus.
Amen.