We'll begin reading with verse seven.
We'll read the remainder of Philippians chapter three.
Beginning with verse seven, the Apostle writes, But
what things were gained to me, those I
counted lost for Christ?
Yea, doubtless, and I count all things but
lost for the excellency of the knowledge of
Christ Jesus my Lord.
For whom I have suffered the loss of
all things, and do count them but done,
that I may win Christ, and be found
in him, not having my own righteousness which
is of the law, but that which is
through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which
is of God by faith, that I may
know him, and the power of his resurrection,
and the fellowship of his sufferings being made
conformable unto his death, if by any means
I might attain unto the resurrection of the
dead.
Not as though I had already attained, either
were already perfect, but I follow after, if
that I may apprehend that for which also
I am apprehended of Christ Jesus.
Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended,
but this one thing I do, for getting
those things which are behind, and reaching forth
unto those things which are before, I press
toward the mark for the prize of the
high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
Let us, therefore, as many as be perfect,
be thus minded, and if in anything ye
be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this
unto you.
Nevertheless, whereto we have already attained, let us
walk by the same rule, let us mind
the same thing.
Brethren, be followers together of me, and mark
them which walk, so as ye have us
for an example.
For many walk, of whom I have told
you often, and now tell you even weeping,
that they are the enemies of the cross
of Christ, whose end is destruction, whose God
is their belly, and whose glory is in
their shame, who mind earthly things.
For our conversation, our manner of living, is
in heaven.
From whence also we look for the Savior,
the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our
vile body, or who shall change our body
of humiliation, that it may be fashioned like
unto his glorious body, according to the working,
whereby he is able even to subdue all
things unto himself."
I'm going to talk about a few things
that Brother Willie should be telling you about
instead of me, because they relate to the
Greek language, in this case to New Testament
Greek, or the current Greek language of that
day, rather than of today.
But I don't know Greek.
I can't read or translate Greek, and what
few words I have picked up I've just
gotten by reading the writings of men who
were Greek scholars.
And from them I learned that the Greeks
had a word that means beauty and goodness,
all in one word.
So we often say the Greeks had a
word for it.
Here the Greeks had a word for them,
a word for them.
And it comes from the Greek word kalos,
which means beautiful, and the word kai, which
means and, and the word agathos, which means
good.
And agathos is good, and agathai is goodness.
So kalokagathai means beauty and goodness, and this
word stood for the Greek ideal.
They thought that the pursuit of life should
be the pursuit of beauty and goodness.
And of course, you can't argue with that
in a way.
The only thing is they didn't really know
how to go about it, because beauty and
goodness is found in the person of the
Son of God, and they knew nothing about
him until the revelation through Paul and the
other preachers who came along with him.
And so the Greeks were seeking beauty and
goodness, and one of the ways, one of
the very widespread ways of seeking it was
through a life of sport.
They were great sportsmen, as we well know,
and our Olympic games today were named after
this great institution which was in vogue in
the days of the Apostle Paul and of
New Testament Christianity.
In fact, sport was a state institution, and
many Greek men and women, practiced it every
day from the time they were seven years
old right up into manhood.
And the gymnasium as such was a Greek
institution also.
They were airy, shady places.
I don't know if they smelled as much
like stale sweat and sneakers as some gymnasiums
do today.
These were outdoor gymnasiums with arrangements for games
and races and for wrestling.
The palaestra was particularly a place for wrestling,
and then they had the stadion which was
a race course, and along with all of
these things for physical sport, they also had
the excedra which were rooms for philosophical discussion
and for teaching.
And of course, one of the most celebrated
of those places was the Akademos of Plato,
and then there was Aristotle's Lycaeton.
Mr. Willie is probably shuddering at my pronunciation.
I don't know how to say these Greek
words, but that's roughly the way they're spelled
in English.
And then there were, besides the Olympian games,
there were also the Isthmian games.
And you see, the Apostle Paul was well
acquainted with all of this.
He had observed all this.
He'd been brought up in the Greek knowledge
and wisdom of the day, as well as
the Jewish.
He was a well educated man, a very
highly educated man, and been exposed to all
of this knowledge and idealism of the Greeks.
And so, taking a figure of speech from
the Greek races, he writes to us, to
all the saints, all the followers of Christ
in all the ages like this.
He says, "'Know ye not that they who
run in a race run all, but one
receiveth the prize?
Even so run, that ye may attain.
And every man that striveth in the games
is temperate in all things.'" And we know
how the athletes train today.
These young men who were out on the
University of Florida football field yesterday in Trounce,
North Carolina, I'm sure that they trained very
severely.
If they were not in training, they wouldn't
have been on the field, for the coach
would see to that.
So he says, "'Every man that striveth in
the games is temperate in all things.
Now they do it to receive a corruptible
wreath,' which, as you know, in those days
was a wreath of olive leaves, a crown.
They do it to receive a corruptible wreath
because, of course, those leaves plucked from the
tree wouldn't last very long, you know, and
they'd wither and fade away.
They do it to receive a corruptible wreath,
but we an incorruptible."
And so you see, he's saying to us
that you and I as Christians are in
a race.
We're in a competition in a sense, and
in order to succeed in this endeavor, we
must be temperate.
We must be careful.
We must devote ourselves to this and deny
ourselves some things that may appeal to the
flesh but which would interfere in our running
a good race for Christ.
And he says, if they're willing to do
that for a mere olive crown or for
the mere applause of the multitudes who hail
you as a hero today and forget your
name tomorrow, how much better for us who
do it for an incorruptible crown that fadeth
not away that we will receive in heaven
from our blessed Lord and Savior.
And is not his well-done, now good
and faithful servant much more to us than
any plaudits that man could give could possibly
be?
Every Roman province had games.
Besides the Greek International Olympic Games, there were
local games in every Roman province, and the
Olympian was the most important.
As a matter of fact, the Olympic Games
were a Greek national shrine.
They were held every four years, and so
important was this to the Greeks that they
called the four-year interval between Olympic Games
by a special name.
They called that period of four years an
Olympiad.
And then at the entrance to the sacred
circle in which the victor was crowned, at
that entrance was the holy wild olive tree
from which the victor's wreath was taken, and
adjacent to it was a vast temple to
the Olympian god Zeus.
A sculptor of gold and ivory of this
god by the celebrated Greek artist Phidias was
the feature of that temple.
So we see that the Greeks, seeking after
beauty and goodness, had nothing more than gold
and ivory as a representation of their god.
What a sad thing to realize that the
Greeks, seeking after beauty, found it only in
the works of man and not in the
mighty works of God who made all things
beautiful in his time.
They found a source of inspiration in what
human athletes could do.
They knew nothing about what God could do.
They knew nothing about his mighty power.
Paul spoke to them in Athens, and you
remember well what he said to them.
He said, You have, besides all these statues,
this beautiful statue to Zeus in gold and
ivory, and statues to the rest of the
hierarchy of Greek mythological gods, in addition to
all you have a statue to the unknown
god.
The reason the Greeks had this, I understand,
was because they were afraid that maybe they
overlooked one.
They didn't want to offend them, so they
put up a temple to the unknown god,
the one we might have forgotten about.
Paul says to them, This unknown god is
the one I have come to declare to
you, because they knew nothing about the God
and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
They knew nothing about the grace and the
love of God until this New Testament revelation
was brought to them through the preachers.
Now in Rome they had the Circus Maximus
and the Colosseum, and the Colosseum was said
to have possibly as many as 150,000
seats.
Now there were 62,000 some odd people
at Florida Field yesterday, and I'm glad I
wasn't there because that place must have been
overflowing clear out halfway to Ocala, I think,
yesterday.
But the Colosseum would have been only about
half full with that crowd, if it did
have as many seats as some think.
The floor of the Colosseum was sand, and
from this they get the word arena because
that's the Latin word for sand.
And then there was a place of honor,
the podium, the place where the Institutor of
the Games sat and watched them, and the
Vestals, and the Senators who ruled over Rome.
Vestals were from the temples of the gods
you know, and then the knights were above
them, and then the soldiers, and then all
around filling all the rest of the Colosseum
were the people, all the people.
Even the slaves came to the games because
they were free, you know, they were provided
by the emperor to amuse the people and
sort of keep them in subjection so that
they didn't object too much to some of
the policies of the government.
And these were great occasions, you know.
You know, this take me out to the
ball game bit that we have today is
a sort of a holiday occasion.
Well, they had that sort of thing back
in Roman days.
They had awnings, and brightly colored carpets, and
flags, and roses, and incense, and figs, and
nuts, and dates, and cakes, and even roasted
fowls and pheasants were passed around free among
the people in the stands by the Roman
emperor, by the government.
And they had lotteries.
They bet on the outcome of the various
games, and they laughed, and they joked, and
they ate, and they drank, and they bet
on the contests, and pleasure and happiness ruled.
Worldly pursuits were the order of the day.
In the Colosseum, in the arena, they had
foot racing, and wrestling, and boxing, and horses,
horse and chariot races.
And then they had bloody battles where gladiators
fought with animals, and they would have tremendous
big spectacles in which sometimes as many as
300 horsemen would face another 300 horsemen in
mock battle.
Mock battle in the sense that they were
not contending for anything except for the sake
of battle, but they killed each other, and
blood flowed in profusion on the sand of
the Colosseum arena.
Sometimes they would have 500 and opposing another
500 footmen in a tremendous battle, and sometimes
20 elephants would be opposed against 20 other
elephants.
They had sea fights in special basins that
were built for this particular occasion, and flotillas
of thousands of people would contend before these
vast crowds of people, killing and being killed,
drowning and being drowned.
In the midst of this arena, the emperor
often arranged for the execution of criminals in
very contrived fashions.
Sometimes they portrayed in their death some of
the great dramas of the literature of the
day.
They would have, for instance, Hercules burnt.
One of the condemned prisoners would play the
part of Hercules and give his life as
he was burnt, according to the story of
Hercules.
They would have Sion broken on a wheel.
One of the prisoners would portray this and
be broken on a wheel and killed in
that fashion.
According to literature, Marcius was killed by having
his skin stripped from him while he was
alive, and they portrayed this in the Circus
Maximus and in the Colosseum.
Or Dercy, who was killed by having her
hair tied to the tail of a bull
and being dragged around until she was bounced
to death.
Now, in the apostle Paul's time, these games
were being held, and I'm sure that the
apostle Paul was very familiar with the cry
of the gladiator as he came into the
arena, "'Ave Caesar, morituri te salutant!
Hail Caesar, we who are about to die
salute you!"
And the first blood was drawn, and after
that the thirst for blood cried for more
blood.
Bodies were dragged away, and always as these
games proceeded, the last contests were the bloodiest
of all in order to please this bloodthirsty
crowd.
And the apostle writes, knowing all of this,
he writes about himself and the others who
brought the message of Christ into Greece and
into Rome, and into all the civilized world
of that day.
And he says this, he says, "'For I
think that God has set forth us the
apostles last of all,' now remember that the
last battles were the bloodiest, "'I think that
God has set forth us the apostles last
of all as men doomed to death, for
we are made a spectacle, a theatron, a
performance unto the world and to angels and
men.' Into this world the apostles came with
a message of the gospel of Jesus Christ,
and they preached to the bloodthirsty multitudes, "'Jesus
is Savior.'" What a contrast!
Jesus is Savior.
He'll save you from sin through faith.
He'll bring you into a new life, a
life of victory, a life of hope, a
life of eternal glory.
They preached the power of God in the
resurrection of Jesus Christ.
They preached a living union with the God
and Father of Jesus Christ and the Creator
of all the world and all the universe.
You see, the apostle preached a message that
would link up with the Greek ideal, with
the thought of the beauty of holiness, with
the thought of the goodness of a godly
walk, and he brought before the Greeks an
answer to their ideal that they had never
discovered for themselves and which would fulfill their
ideal far better than any of the practices
which were current in that day.
He also brought before the Roman audience two
thoughts that appealed to them.
The Romans governed in strict righteousness.
A Roman citizen could not be condemned without
a proper trial according to the law of
Rome, a law upon which the English law
and, in turn, the law of the United
States of America is based, for Roman law
is basically right and just.
The Romans also believed in power, the power
of their armies was what subdued all the
lands round about them and made the Roman
Empire the greatest in its day.
And so the apostle Paul preached to the
Romans the righteousness of God and the power
of the resurrection like righteousness found only in
God and power found also in him.
Now, if you were to visit the Flavian
Amphitheater in Rome today, I understand that you
would find a dead and crumbling structure, and
I suppose we've all seen photographs of this.
If you were to walk in there, according
to some who have described it in the
present day, you would still see the imperial
box, you would still see the chambers which
could hold two thousand wild beasts, you could
still see the great arch of the door
of the living through which the gladiators came,
stood before Caesar and cried, Hail to thee,
O Caesar!
Those who are about to die greet thee."
Thousands of times this statement was made as
they walked through the door of the living
to emerge from the amphitheater as dead bodies.
You see also the door of the libertines
through which the corpses were dragged.
How helpless, how feeble, how small the band
of Christians in Rome must have looked to
these tremendous crowds that filled that amphitheater back
in those days.
How small you and I would feel standing
in that spot today and remembering the heroes
of the Christian faith who laid down their
lives in defense of the treasure of the
gospel of Christ, and thus, in a sense,
laid down their lives for you and for
me by defending the gospel that's so precious
to us today, lest it be destroyed.
For you know, the Apostle Paul in his
latter days in Rome lived in a day
of persecution of the Christians and of the
Christian faith.
The great persecutions didn't start until after his
death, but according to tradition, the Apostle Paul
was beheaded in the year 68 A.D.
And it was in 64 A.D. that
the Emperor, during the reign of the Emperor
Nero, that the city of Rome burned.
Now, there were some who cast suspicion on
the Emperor that he himself set the fire
just for his pleasure, a sort of a
pyromaniacal act.
Whether this is true or not, we don't
know, but because of this suspicion, Nero started
a persecution of the Christians and tried to
blame it all on them in order to
allay suspicion.
And so, from 65 to 68 A.D.,
there was a great persecution of the Christians.
In the year 67, according to tradition, the
Apostle Peter was crucified, and in 68 Paul
was beheaded.
And so, you see, the Apostle Paul possibly
writes out of considerable experience with persecution of
the Christians in the arena in Rome.
But what do we see as we stand
by imagination in the arena, as we look
directly in front of the ruins of the
royal box?
Why, we see there a cross, a cross
that was not there in the Apostle Paul's
day, but was erected in 1300 A.D.
in memory of the martyrs.
This cross was destroyed, but again erected in
1927 by the Italian government, and on the
base of this cross it says, Ave Crux,
space Unica.
Hail to thee, O cross, the only hope.
And thus, history testifies of that which endures.
Neither the athletic games nor the intellectual exercises
of the Greeks nor the bread and the
games of the Romans are eternal, but Christ,
Christ the crucified and risen one, is in
his temple, the church, the royal house of
the Eternal One, and that fact cannot be
denied.
And the cross, our only hope, stands there
in the midst of this arena as the
sign of victory, the sign of duty, the
sign of promise, because Christ has triumphed over
death and over hell and over all the
forces of mankind and all the forces of
Satan that would, if they could, destroy the
truth of the gospel of Christ.
Now, I suppose that a good Jew, and
I'm sure the Apostle Paul was a good
Jew, it's very evident from the writings that
he was one, and I suppose a good
Jew would participate or attend these games, would
not have participated at all in these games,
and would attend them only casually.
He wouldn't become involved in the worldliness of
Greece or the worldliness of Rome, and a
separated Jew such as John the Baptist would
never go into one of these amphitheaters.
Nevertheless, the Apostle Paul uses the language of
the Greek and Roman games in order to
get his point across to the people who
were familiar with them, and you may remember
that Paul wrote that he would become all
things to all men, that by any means
he might win some.
Now, the message of Philippians 3, which we
read, is the message of the race.
It's based on the race, and in verses
10 through 12 of that chapter where he
writes that, "...I may know him, the power
of his resurrection, the fellowship of his sufferings
being made conformable unto his death, if by
any means I might attain."
He's speaking of the race.
He's speaking of the out-resurrection from among
the dead, specifically.
He's not speaking of himself as complete or
perfect, but he speaks of Christ as his
goal, as the goal of his life.
In verse 13, he speaks about the necessity
for single-mindedness of striving, for getting those
things which are behind and reaching forth unto
those things which are before, "...I press with
a unity of purpose toward the mark, for
the prize of the high calling, the calling
on high."
More literally, the calling of heaven.
This is what was before the apostles' minds.
The present life might be likened to a
race, a contest.
It's striving.
It's effort.
It's running out of breath.
It's using your strength to the utmost and
giving it all for the sake of winning
the prize.
Not an earthly prize, but the prize of
the calling of heaven, that which lay before
him, that which he would receive when the
race on earth was over, and the judge
of all would call him before the bema,
the judgment seat of 1 Corinthians 3.
Not to judge in the sense of condemnation,
but to judge in the sense of reward
that he'd receive.
The crown of righteousness calls for the utmost
effort to win the prize, and he applies
these truths to the Christian life.
This is what we learn from the figures
of speech that the apostle Paul uses in
respect to the race.
First of all, he would remind us that
all can reach the goal.
Every one of us can reach the goal.
This is not like a game of football
where two teams are contending against each other
and only one team ever gets to the
goal.
At least in yesterday's game it was mighty
close to that.
No, everyone can reach the goal in a
race.
And you may say, well, I'm not a
racer, I'm not a runner, my strength is
feeble, I'm unequal to the contest.
But in chapter 4 and verse 19, Paul
says, My God shall supply all your need
according to his riches in glory by Christ
Jesus, and that which you lack you need
only ask for.
We were talking about that just before the
meeting began, weren't we, a few of us.
We received not because we asked not.
What we need, all we need to do
is ask for it.
And the Lord Jesus says, Ask and you
shall receive.
And someone has likened this verse 19 of
chapter 4 to writing a check on a
bank.
That's all we have to do.
We've got a blank check in our hands.
All we need to do is fill in
the amount.
The banker is God.
My God shall supply all of your need.
And you know on a check it says,
Pay to the order.
The order here is, He shall supply.
And then on a bank check you have
the amount.
What's the amount?
All your need.
What are the resources of this bank?
His riches.
That's more than you and I need.
And the bank itself is the bank of
glory.
My God shall supply all your need according
to his riches in glory.
And then the check is already signed.
The signature on the sign, on the check,
is Christ Jesus.
You think that signature would be honored if
you pass in a check on the bank
of heaven to supply your needs?
All your needs?
Not just your material needs, but your spiritual
needs.
What you need in order to run this
race and win to the glory of Christ,
our God will supply if you'll ask.
And everyone can reach the goal.
You can reach the goal, and I can
reach the goal.
All we need to do is run, and
we'll get there.
But we must run, and we must hasten,
and we must concentrate on the goal, and
we must allow no distractions.
These are the conditions of the race.
Now the apostle Paul says, All run in
the race, but not all receive the prize,
because some do not run lawfully.
You've got to follow the rules.
You know, it's no good entering the race
track halfway down the course.
You've got to start at the beginning, and
you've got to run the course.
Some people try to get to heaven by
a shortcut.
It won't work.
There's only one way into the race, and
that is through the cross of Christ, through
the blood-sprinkled way, through the way that
he made and provided for us.
You can't run this race until, first of
all, you are a Christian.
First of all, you must know Christ as
your Savior, and then you may enter this
race.
But you must persevere.
That's one of the rules of the game,
too.
You must not yield to fatigue or to
discouragement.
And try not to stumble, because you lose
time in the race.
And you say, Well, how can I avoid
stumbling?
Well, Christ can preserve us.
We need to look to him for our
strength.
We need to look to him for our
skill in this race.
We need to look to him for our
inspiration.
He's the goal.
He's the one that is set before us.
Christ is everything to us, and then we
must be determined.
And if we follow these rules and run
this race, we'll get the victor's prize when
we get to heaven, along with the Apostle
Paul.
Now, in verses 4 through 7 of Philippians
3, we have the calling and the strength
of the racer given to us by the
Lord Jesus Christ.
And in verses 8 to 14, we have
the ideal and the objective living only for
Christ.
And in verses 20 through 21, we have
the blessed hope to be forever in the
glory with Christ.
These are the things that are set before
us.
Now, the big point that the Apostle Paul
makes is to keep your eye upon the
goal, to keep your eye upon Christ.
Not to be looking at what the other
fellow is doing or not doing, not to
be guided by that as to what you
will do, but to have your heart set
only on Christ, your mind centered upon Him,
your eye single and filled with Him, and
so to run the race.
Now, at breakfast this morning, Mrs. Willie was
telling us about the choice gleanings for yesterday,
and I asked her after supper if she
could bring to my memory the details, because
this is exactly the point of the Apostle
Paul's message.
And here's the story from choice gleanings for
yesterday.
It says, Roger Bannister was the first man
to run a mile in four minutes.
He was an Englishman, I understand, and this
was the first four-minute mile.
Three months later, a man named John Landy
topped Bannister's record by running the race 1
.4 seconds shorter than four minutes.
1.4 seconds shorter.
Not in competition with Bannister, but on a
separate occasion where his run of a mile
was timed.
But three months later, Bannister and Landy were
both entered in the same race, were running
against each other, and as they moved into
the last lap, these two runners were way
out ahead of all the rest of the
contestants, and Landy was just slightly ahead of
Bannister.
But as the crowd looked sure that Landy
was going to win, they saw that Landy
looked around.
He was haunted by the question, where is
Bannister?
And he didn't know, and he took just
an instant to look around, and in that
instant he lost the race.
And Bannister came up and passed him, and
as Landy reviewed the races for a London
Times reporter, Landy said, If I hadn't looked
back, I would have run the race.
I guess it doesn't pay to look back.
I guess we'd better be looking ahead.
I think we'd better have our eyes focused
upon Christ, not just for the first half
of the race, not just for all except
the last lap, but right up to the
very last moment.
Now, we had a man at Kodak who
retired.
He worked in our division, was the head
of our FBI division, our microscopy laboratory that
traced down problems by the use of microscope
techniques, and his wife was the head of
the Child Placement Bureau in the county in
which the city of Rochester is located.
She was the executive secretary of that organization,
and she retired just a few months ahead
of her husband, and the two of them
moved down to Jamaica.
We have seen the location of their home
in Jamaica on the North Shore, a beautiful
spot.
Bob talked with me before he retired, and
he told me how much they were looking
forward to going down to Jamaica and sitting
there on the beach and soaking up the
sunshine and resting and just having a glorious
time after their retirement.
Well, in a few months, Bob was back
in Rochester.
He'd been down in Jamaica, and he still
has his home there, but he'd gotten tired
of just sitting in the sun, and he'd
had an offer from the Pearl Buck Foundation,
he and his wife both, to join their
work in Philadelphia of placing Korean orphan children,
I think it is, in the United States
in homes, something of that sort, and Bob
found a new life in that.
Now, as far as I know, neither of
these people are born-again Christians.
They're people who are interested in social work
as a good work.
This man couldn't sit out on the beach
and soak up the sun when there was
work to be done that would benefit humanity.
Much more to the point, perhaps.
Some of you may know our sister Nora
Patterson.
Some of you may have known Bill Patterson,
who was a missionary in the West Indies,
a very, very capable man and a fine
preacher and a lovely brother.
The Lord called Brother Bill home a few
years ago.
We heard him preach in Padgett Chapel in
Bermuda before he set out on his last
missionary trip into the West Indies.
The next time we got to Bermuda, our
sister Nora was in the audience on the
Lord's Day morning, and the brethren asked me
to speak.
As I stepped down from the platform, Mrs.
Patterson, now a widow, came up to me
and my wife, and she said, You must
be the clerks who have been in St.
Thomas, down in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
I said, Yes, we've been there two or
three times.
How did you know?
She says, Well, I've been corresponding with Mrs.
June Miller down there, and she's told me
about your visits there.
She said, I wonder if you could spend
a little time today to talk with me
about St. Thomas.
I said, Well, surely we'll be glad to
come over this afternoon and visit you, and
we did so.
The reason she wanted to talk with us
was because dear Nora had an exercise about
going down to St. Thomas as a missionary
and taking up a whole new life without
her husband on her own.
She wasn't ready to sit in the sun
when there was work to be done for
Christ.
Nora is down in St. Thomas now.
She's been down there for several years quite
on her own without formal backing from such
places as the fields in New York because
she's a Bermudian.
She was born and raised in Bermuda, and
her family still lives there.
But Nora is down there looking to the
Lord for her support and doing the work.
She's doing a wonderful work among young people
down there in Bermuda as well as among
the Christians in the lovely little assembly there.
Well, I find that in business life today
that top management is not as eager to
retire people as they once thought they were
going to be.
Less than ten years ago there was a
good deal of sort of rumor, we thought
inspired rumor, that is inspired by management, that
retirement ages were going to be lowered a
few years hence from 65 to 60.
Instead of that today, we find that we
who are approaching 60 are being encouraged by
management to think about staying on until we
are 65 and not to retire early.
Now this encouragement is being given in many
subtle ways as well as by some direct
suggestion.
They're trying to make it pleasant for us
to stay.
They're providing us with prettier offices, better furniture.
They're providing us with better working conditions in
every way that they can think of that
might appeal to us.
It's easier to get company trips for the
older men now than it used to be
if you liked that sort of thing.
And in every way they can think of,
management is trying to appeal to us to
persuade us to stay on in our jobs.
And they're giving us a little more help
from younger men.
Well, you know, I don't believe that God
wants something less than what the businessmen want.
I think he wants more.
And I think of our brother Harold Harper.
I'm sure that some of you people knew
Harold Harper and his dear wife Margarita.
Harold is with the Lord now.
He started out his ministry in our city
of Rochester.
But when Harold was well up into his
seventies, sick with diabetes and pretty well worn
out from a strenuous life of more or
less pioneer work among the assemblies, Harold told
us in Rochester, not publicly, but in private
conversation, that it was his intention, his full
intention before God, to die with his boots
on, to die in the service of the
Lord.
He was never going to let up as
long as there was one ounce of strength
left in his body to preach Christ and
the word of God.
And that's exactly what Brother Harper did.
And now his wife is carrying on the
work as best she can, limited also by
poor health in Florence, North Carolina.
Dear Peg Harper, she's going to do what
her husband did.
She's going to die with her boots on.
She's going to die in the service of
the Lord that she loves.
Well, I suppose that those of us who
have been around for a few years can
say it's nice to have been young once.
And there are a few young people here
tonight, and of course I'm not speaking to
you at this particular moment, but to some
of the rest of us here.
Yes, we can say it's nice to have
been young once, but only once, because there
are many, many things that we can do
as older folks that we can't ask our
young people to do, because they have other
responsibilities of preparing for a career, of
raising young families, and of entering into life.
They have things to learn that you and
I have learned from experience.
We need the young people.
Without the young people, we'd likely get into
ruts.
But the young people need the older folks,
too.
They need the wisdom, the experience, the background,
the fuller knowledge of the scriptures that you
and I can bring, who have been studying
the scriptures for years, as against possibly a
few months or a year on the part
of some of the younger men and the
younger women as well.
We need them, and they need us, and
God needs us all, because God has not
left any of us here on earth for
no purpose.
Our sister, Mrs. Manns, was expressing this very
thought.
Having been delivered of God from a serious
illness, she made the remark which I will
pass on as my closing remark, God has
a work for me.
God has a work for you.
As long as he leaves us here upon
this earth, he has a purpose in so
doing, and that purpose is that we might
run the race until we reach the goal
to run it to the uttermost, that Christ
might be pleased with us, that we might
use every moment that he gives us here
upon this earth to proclaim the message that
Peter and Paul and thousands of others laid
down their lives for hundreds of years ago
so that that message might come down through
the generations to you and to me, and
it's in our hands, in our mouths right
now to take that message to others who
are dying because they do not have Christ.
Shall we sing just a couple of verses
of number 408?