And when the missionaries came and they sang and you know the Lord he can decipher all of that None of that confuses him. He knows all of that. He knows all the languages in the world He knows the stars by name his understanding is infinite You would turn your Bible to the book of the gospel of Mark chapter 16 My life's verse is Psalm 119, 161, 162. Princes have persecuted me without a cause, but my heart standeth in awe of thy word. I rejoice that thy word is one that findeth great spoil. The Bible has had such an impactful influence upon my life, and I'm certainly grateful. I told you that I was from Kentucky the other night and you heard about the guy from Kentucky. He was walking down the road and he had one shoe on and one shoe off. And someone said, did you lose a shoe? He said, no, I found one. He went over to Hawaii and he got off the airplane and that lady came and she put a lei around his neck and smiled and said, aloha from Hawaii. He smiled and said, Roy Dean from Kentucky. Now I'll tell you what I did. Last night, I was having a little trouble reading that clock back there. It wasn't the clock's fault, it was my fault. So tonight, I put a timer on my phone. And when it goes off, if it does go off, you'll know it won't be much longer. And I have been preaching before when it went off and I said, I told you it won't be much longer. And it's almost like they, whew, that's good. There was an old boy. He used to live up in the mountains of Kentucky, and he'd go to revival meetings. And one year, God got a hold of his heart and turned him around. I mean, he got saved, S-A-V-E-D, saved from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet. He'd go around those mountains and he'd give his testimony. Well, actually, he did more preaching than he did testifying. And someone said, now look, if you're gonna preach, you gotta get ordained. He said, well, what's that? They said, well, we'll bring some of the brethren in that are preachers and they'll put you out front and have a little half moon circle of chairs and they'll ask you some questions. And if they think God has called you, they will lay their hands on you and ordain you and you'll be a preacher. He said, okay, let's do that. Well, they brought him in and they set him down in front of the pulpit area, had a little half moon circle of chairs. And they said, now we wanna ask you some questions. He said, all right, go ahead. He said, do you believe the Bible? He said, do I believe the Bible? I believe the Bible from lid to lid. I even believe the lid, it says Holy Bible. And one of the brethren said, well, what's your favorite book of the Bible? He sort of scratched his chin and he said, well, my favorite book of the Bible be the Gospel of Luke, because it contained the story of the Good Samaritan. And one of those men said, well, why don't you just tell us the story of the Good Samaritan? He said, all right, I will. Once upon a time there was a man that went from Jerusalem down to Jericho and that man fell among the thorns. And the thorns growed up and choked that man. And along come the angel of the Lord and he strove with that man and set him free. Here come the Queen of Sheba in her royal chariot and she give him five changes of raiment and a golden wedge. He went over into the big city. He bought himself a chariot. He got in that chariot and he drove furiously until his hair got caught in a tree limb and left him hanging there many days and many nights. And along come Delilah with her scissors, and she cut off his hair, and he fall on the stony ground. And he bring forth some thirty, some sixty, some a hundredfold. He look up into the sky, and he see a cloud about the size of a man's hand. It commence to rain. It rain forty days and forty nights. But the Lord done prepared a fish to swallow him up during the tribulation. And when the seven years was over, that fish spit him out on dry land. He walked down the road. He see that big man, Goliath, and he passed by on the other side. And this man come out and he say, I want you to come and take supper with me. He said, I cannot come. I've married a wife. But he compelled him to come. And he said, after supper, did not my heart burn within me? He walked down the road and he walked into that big city. He looked up on the ledge and he see that wicked woman Jezebel. And he said, who is on the Lord's side? And they said, we're on the Lord's side. He said, flang her down. They flanged her down. He said, flang her down again. They flanged her down again. He said, flang her down 70 times seven. And they flanged her down 70 times seven and the fragments that remained were 12 baskets full. Not counting women and children. And I'll leave you with this one last final question. Whose wife is she gonna be in the day of the judgment? How many of you believe that young man needs to go to the Bible college at Calvary Baptist Church in King, North Carolina? You have to admit, that old boy knew something about the Bible. Matter of fact, you knew something about the Bible. If you didn't know anything about the Bible, you wouldn't have laughed at that. You'd have thought that's silly, that's crazy. But since you know something about the Bible, and you took it in the spirit in which it was given, that it was just for a little humor. But the point is, someone said we know the Bible is true because of all the preaching that it's had to endure down through the centuries. And that is, I've done some of that kind of preaching. You know, there's some preacher there like Columbus. When he left Spain, he didn't know where he was going. When he got to America, he didn't know where he was. And when he went back home, he had no idea where he'd been. I've done preaching like that before. There are times I've said, Don, y'all just quit. Save everybody. What I want to speak to you tonight on the subject of, last night it was on money and missions. And tonight it's on the Bible and missions. Now, the gospel is how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that he was buried, and he rose again the third day according to the scriptures. That's what the gospel is, death, burial, and resurrection. If I said to you, could you give me a Bible reason or a Bible verse on how many people God once saved? Would you think, well, God would have all men to be saved. Have you not read that in 1 Timothy? He would have all men to be saved and to come into the knowledge of the truth because he has given his soul a ransom for our lives. If I were to ask you, could you tell me how many, with a Bible reason, how many people does God want to perish? Well, the Bible says in 2 Peter 3 that God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. So how do we get the idea that it's not really for us to go out and tell people about the Savior? Because I had you to turn to Mark's Gospel, chapter 16, and the Great Commission is mentioned five times in the Bible, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and Acts. And this one is from Mark 16, and Jesus simply said, and he said unto them, go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. Every creature means every creature. It is everybody. Sometimes the Bible talks about the world, sometimes the Bible talks about all nations. God wants everybody to have an opportunity to be saved. When the Lord Jesus Christ was dying, he came into the world, and his own world has received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God. And the Lord Jesus inaugurated his earthly ministry at the baptism of John the Baptist, and then he went preaching. He made enemies right off. The religious crowd mainly didn't care for him, but common people loved him and heard him gladly, and he picked this guy and this guy and this guy, and he had 12. He chose these men to be with him, and he poured his life into those men, and they followed him around. And then he started talking about, I'm gonna go to Jerusalem, And I'm going to be delivered into the hands of the Gentiles, and they're going to scourge me, and they're going to crucify me. But I'm going to raise again the third day, for somehow they didn't catch that part. And one day Jesus was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane. He was given a mockery of a trial. He stood before Pilate who said three times, I find no fault in this man. But the crowd said, crucify him, crucify him. And Pilate tried to wash his hands and he said, I'm through with this, you do what you wanna do. And they took him out and they crucified him. Now Jesus Christ is dying on the cross. And when he's dying on the cross, God gives us four exclamation points that emphasizes Jesus dying on the cross. And this is just part of the gospel, how the Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures. While Jesus was on the cross, around noontime, it's like the Lord reached up and turned the sun off. Blackness, darkness, darkness that could be felt on that skull of a hill called Golgotha Calvary. The son who had risen a number of days, years over the life of Jesus, while he's dying on the cross, it went black. It was not an eclipse. An eclipse lasts no longer than seven minutes. This was for three hours. It's like, you know when God was gonna create the world in Genesis 1, the first thing he made was light. And God wanted somebody to see the creation. And later Moses wrote about it. But now, when Jesus is going to die for our sins, he's going to become sin for us. It's like if you took all the sin that I've done, you've done, all of us in this room have done, all of us in the world, it's like there's this one gigantic sewer of sin. And it's like this funnel and all of our sin was poured in at the sewer and it comes way down and it's poured out on Jesus. I have no idea when he became sin what he looked like. And neither does anybody else because God turned the light out. The second thing that was an exclamation point when Jesus was dying, in the temple there was a veil that separated the holy place from the holy of holies. Now this temple veil was so wide, so tall, and so thick. And they said that a team of oxen pulling in both directions could not rip this veil. And that veil for years, whether the tabernacle or the temple, it said, stay out. Only one man could go beyond that veil, and that was just once a year. John the Baptist never went in there. Jesus never went in that one. And only certain people were able to go in, into that veil. It said, stay out. But when Jesus was dying on the cross, it's like the exclamation point from the top to the bottom. It's like God took an invisible hand and split that veil. And now because of what Christ has done, it's just like an old rag laying over there on the side. And it's now God saying, come on in. Everybody's invited. You're invited. You're invited. Come on in. Don't be in a hurry to leave. Sit down and talk a little bit. Come on. Everybody, come on in. Can you imagine those priests that have been in the temple doing their duty on that day? What they thought when that thing split? The third was that there was a great earthquake and the graves of many people were opened. And the Bible says, all this is in Matthew, in Matthew's gospel chapter 27, that when Jesus was raised from the dead, the graves opened up and a lot of people got up out of the graves and went into the city. That was an exclamation point. And there was a man, a centurion. He was raised probably in Italy. He was a Roman. And one day he got sent over as soldiers do get transferred from place to place. He got the military post in Jerusalem. That was not a plum for those guys. They didn't want to go to Jerusalem. With all of its religion, that could spell trouble for those guys. But there he was. Here's a man who is over a hundred other soldiers. He's a man's man. He has been taught to fight and not to be afraid. And while Jesus is dying, that man, that centurion said, truly, this was the son of God. That was an exclamation point. on Calvary. And Jesus was taken down. Joseph and Nicodemus took him and put him in Joseph's tomb. They rolled the stone over. He sealed it. And on the third day, up from the grave, he arose with a mighty triumph for his foes. He arose a victor from the dark domain. He's alive. Now, this is the gospel. And Jesus said, I want you to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. But wait a minute. What about all those other people? We're in the New Testament here. What about those people that were Old Testament people? Could they be saved? Could they have an opportunity? You know, just let your mind wander a little bit, and if you would, walk with me a little bit through the Old Testament. When God reached down in the era of the Chaldeans, and he called a man by the name of Abram, who later became Abraham. And he said, I will make of thee a great nation. And I will bless them that bless thee and curse them that curse thee. And in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed. And when you come to Genesis 18, he said to him, in thee shall all the nations of the earth be blessed. Now what does all families mean if it doesn't mean all families? And what does all nations mean if it doesn't mean all nations? God wants them to be saved. When you come to the end of the book of Genesis, Joseph, it was an interesting story how he got to be the number two man in all the world, but he was. And he had interpreted in a dream that there's gonna be seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine. And Pharaoh put him in charge. And so in those seven years, he collected and gathered and they had storehouses, barns full of corn. And then the famine started. And the Bible teaches us that that famine was around the world and they came to Joseph. Don't you think Joseph, who he didn't know who Jesus was, by the way, Joseph is a great type of Jesus. There are a number of things that happened in the life of Joseph that's like it happened in Jesus. And he would say, God's been good to us. God has been gracious to us. And he acknowledged God. When you come to somebody like David, David's gone down into the valley of Elon, he's gonna fight the giant, because nobody else will. And he's not gonna let that uncircumcised Philistine defy the army of God and the God of the army and so forth. And so he said, I'll go fight him. He picked up five smooth stones. He only needed one, but the giant cursed him, laughed at him. And David said, I come to thee in the name of the Lord. I want all the world to know there's a God in Israel. You can imagine where the stories went from that event. All they had to hear about was just God. And then Solomon comes along. Solomon was given great wisdom from God. He was wiser than all the people in the world. And the Bible says that they came from everywhere. They came from all these nations to hear his wisdom. I'm convinced that guys like Plato and Socrates and Aristotle got a lot of their stuff from Solomon. It was just a distilled wisdom. They came, took notes, took it back, put it in their language and in their culture and taught that, not everything. But he was the wisest man who ever lived. A woman by the name of the Queen of Sheba heard about him. And she goes up to check it out. She has some hard questions. And she admits that the half wasn't even told. And the nations, the nations came to Solomon. God has not left himself without a witness. The Bible tells us in the book of Galatians, or other Acts chapter 14 and 15 through 17, that God has come, Paul said, he has come to preach and to turn us from these vanities to the true and living God. And he said, nevertheless, he left not himself without witness, in that he did good and gave us rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness. God has not left himself without witness. There's one person in the Old Testament that I have just been intrigued by, by her story. And it's the woman called Rahab the harlot. She was an Amorite. She was a woman in a culture that was destined for death. And they knew that death was coming. And the Bible tells us in the book of Joshua chapter two, when they get to that place, They send two men out. Now these two men have two names, not their names like Don or Brother Roehl, but they have two names. They are called spies. And do you know the other thing they were called? Messengers. They were spies and they were messengers. A messenger is somebody who has a message. And the Bible says in Joshua 2, 9, and she said unto the men, I know. that the Lord hath given you the land, and that your tares fallen upon us, and that all the inhabitants of the land faint because of you. For we have heard how the Lord dried up the waters of the Red Sea for you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did unto the two kings of the Amorites that were on the other side, Jordan, Sion, and Og, whom he utterly destroyed. And as soon as we had heard these things, Our hearts didn't melt, neither did there remain any more courage in any man because of you. For the Lord your God, he is God in heaven above and in earth beneath. Where did she learn that? It's mainly because she heard what God was doing. Question, what has the people in King, North Carolina heard about God because of you and your testimony and your church? If God is doing something in our lives, it'll get out. Pastor read last night a note that someone said thank you for the fight against the liquor crowd, that kind of thing, and sent a note that was anonymous. I heard about a guy who was sitting on a program And some guy came in, he didn't like the preacher, so he just sent him a little note, and they handed it to the preacher, and he looked at it, and he just held onto it when he got up to speak. He said, you know, sir, I've gotten anonymous letters before, but this is the first time I ever got one where the guy signed his name and forgot to say anything. He just said fool. So he didn't say anything, he was signing his name. It was going to be, Where did she hear about all this? Have they heard anything about our God? Now, your town is not a large town, but it's a nice town. I like King, North Carolina. I think the thing that I like best about North Carolina is Calvary Baptist Church. And I like your music, and I like your pastor, and you folks here. And you just keep it up, whatever it is that you're doing, and keep doing something so that people out there, not just in King, but in these other little places around, that they would hear what God is doing over in King, North Carolina. She said, we've heard about this. Now when they said, I want you to take this cord and hang it from your window. And everybody that you can get under this cord, and the cord happened to be a red cord, a scarlet cord. It was a cord of the Lord. It was a rope of hope. They told her, because she said, we know what happened when you crossed over the sea after you were delivered out of Egypt. And she probably said to those guys, what's that? Well, we killed a lamb, and we took the blood, and we put it on the doorpost and the lintels. And God said, everybody that's in that house under the blood, when the destroyer passes through, he will pass over. That's where they got the word Passover from. And she was given this red cord. She said, what about my mama, my daddy, and my brothers, and my sisters? And it was almost like a gospel invitation, whosoever. Whosoever comes in under that scarlet cord, they're gonna be saved. And so when the walls came down, Joshua said, you go get Rahab and all that she has. And they set her over here, and she became a part of that family. What's amazing about this, somebody who didn't have what you and I have. She didn't have Old Testament and New Testament. She didn't have church every Sunday like we have. She had none of that. But she married a guy by the name of Salmon. And Salmon and Rahab had a boy. whose name was Boaz. You probably heard about Boaz, the most eligible bachelor in all of Israel. And she was a Moabite, and Moabites couldn't come into the place of God for 10 generations. How did she get in? Well, her husband, his mama was a harlot. So it didn't bother him to marry a Moabite. And did you know that Rahab and Boaz became the great-great-grandfather and mother of King David? That's not even all. When you come to Matthew chapter 1, in the lineage of Jesus Christ, here is Salmon and begetting Obed of Rahab. Right in that chapter. Now, this is exciting. Now we're talking about people, this is the mission of God in the Old Testament as well. In the book of Hebrews chapter 11, you know it's the chapter of faith, there is Abel, there's Enoch, and there's Noah, and there's Abraham, and there is Sarah, and there is Isaac, these are mentioned by name, and there is Jacob, and then there is Moses, And then there is the walls come tumbling down. And who do you think is next? It's not Joshua. The next name is Rahab. By faith, Rahab. Perish not with them that believe not. She believed. Why did they perish? I want you to understand that God didn't reject those people, they rejected him. And when they rejected him because they didn't believe, she believed it. She turned from the vanities of false religion to the true and living God. And what it did for her, I mean, she's up there with the guy who built the ark and saved the world. She's up there with Abraham, the guy who was the friend of God. She's up there with Moses who led the people of God out of bondage. Rahab, two women were mentioned in that chapter, Sarah and Rahab. How in the world did she get there? It is amazing what God can do. We told you the other night that sin will take you further than you want to go, make you stay longer than you want to stay, and make you pay more than you want to pay. I'm telling you, God can take you further than you want to go, further than you thought you could go, make you stay a whole lot longer. And how would you like to be in the lineage of Christ and have your name in the Hall of Faith? And in James chapter 2, when God wants to illustrate something about being justified by works because your works prove your faith, James said, you show me your faith without your works, and I'll show you my faith by my works. He uses Abraham and Rahab. Imagine, imagine. This is the woman who heard something. God has been on a mission. God is a God of people. God will have all men to be saved. and to come unto the knowledge of the truth, because the gospel is the death of Christ according to the scriptures, and it was buried and rose again the third day according to the scriptures. That's the gospel. And God wants people to come unto the preaching of the gospel. So he said, I want you to go preach the gospel to every creature. It's in the book. I told you I'm preaching tonight on the Bible. If you're familiar with the Bible, and the old guy in the little story a while ago, he was somewhat familiar with his Bible, but he didn't cut it straight. He didn't rightly divide the word of truth. But you have a Bible, and you can study to show yourself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed. You ought to hear the Bible at every chance you get. You ought to read the Bible every chance you get. You ought to study the Bible every chance you get. You ought to memorize the Bible. You ought to meditate on the Bible. There's something about the Bible. The Bible will tell you how to go to heaven. And the Bible will tell you how you can be happy going to heaven. And the Bible will say you go preach the gospel to every creature. And God said, I'll go with you. When he said, I want you to go preach the gospel to every creature, I'm gonna give you my protection. And if you drink any deadly thing, it won't kill you. And you can take up serpents. Now those people who handle snakes, there's a 50-50 chance, I guess, that a snake will or won't bite you. But if you drink poison, it's probably 100%. They never prove their faith by drinking poison. And that's being presumptuous on God. You don't wanna be presumptuous on God. And then when he said in the Gospel of Luke, he said, I got a promise for you. I'm gonna send you the Spirit of God. That's a promise. And then in John chapter 20, he comes and he's showing himself alive. And he says, peace be unto you. Three times he said it, peace, peace. As my father hath sent me, so send I you, and I'll give you my peace. And when you come to Acts chapter 1 and verse number 8, but ye shall receive power. After that, the Holy Ghost shall come upon you, and ye shall be witnesses unto me, both in Jerusalem and in Judea and in Samaria and unto the uttermost part of the earth. You see why the Bible is so important to missions? We are Bible-believing Baptists. Are we not? Is not this book our standard for faith and practice? Does not your pastor, when he stands in the pulpit to preach, open up the Bible and preach, thus saith the Lord? There's something about the Bible. And you need to be in the Bible and the Bible in you. And when you're in the Bible like that, it's amazing how somebody might hear what's going on in your life. And you put all that together and somebody might hear what God's doing over at Calvary Baptist Church in King, North Carolina. There's something about the Bible. I have a friend who when he was in Bible college, he got a job in a prison. He was a guard working his way through Bible college. And they told him, because they knew he was going to Bible college, you're a preacher, yes. You cannot take your Bible into the jail and preach them out of the Bible. However, they said to him, if they ask you a question, you can answer them. You just can't take your Bible. So what he did was, when they would ask him questions, if he didn't know the answer, he would say, I'll be back with you on that, and he'd go find a Bible verse. And he would find a Bible verse that would answer their question. Well, after a while, the questions all become the same. And he's heard probably all those questions. And one day, he was going through one of the, they called it a dormitory. It used to be a prison, now it's a dormitory. It's like you're going to college. And Miss Judy and I was out in California a few years ago, and we came by a prison that said, California Men's Colony. It was just a newfangled way of saying it was a prison. And he said, I was going through what he called the dormitory, checking out everything to make sure everything was good for the night so he could secure it down. And he walked into a room, and there was this gray-haired man sitting on the edge of his bed. And he had an open Thompson chain reference Bible in his lap. He was always thinking of new ways to approach somebody and ask a question, so he just walked up and he said, understandest thou what thou readest? See, that's from the Book of Acts. And the man sitting there with his Bible, he looked up, and they call this guy Preacher Man, Preacher Man. He looked up and he said, yes, Preacher Man, I'm afraid I do understand what I read, but sometimes I wish I didn't. And he told him, Preacher Man, I was an independent Baptist preacher. I had a church, had a wife, had children, had a ministry, and I lost it all. I lost my church, I lost my reputation, I lost my family, and here I am in jail. He said, you know, Preacher Man, The saddest part about it all is I remember how it all started. He said, how? It all started the day I put my Bible down. He said, Mr. Preacher Man, I understand that you get an opportunity to go speak to a lot of young people. Yeah, I do. He said, I'm gonna tell you my story, and then I want you to preach a sermon and give my testimony if God were to lead you to do that. And when he told him his story about putting his Bible down, what happened? God gave him a sermon. But then God gave him a poem. And the poem is, I put my Bible down. There was a man of God who sat in a prison cell. He had preached the word of God, everyone had known him well. Now he sits with his head bowed, he hardly makes a sound, because one day he decided to put his Bible down. His cellmates, they all wondered why the prison he did go. If he had done his best for Jesus, why is his head so low? They asked, why are you here, Christian? And they gathered round, the man then told the story. I put my Bible down. I thought that it was harmless to skip a day or two of reading my devotions. I had other things to do. Then my new nature grew weak, and the devil came to town. I could not win the battle because I had put my Bible down. I did not know how to fight him. I did not know what to say, for I had not read God's word or took the time to pray. Oh, I went on serving Jesus. How godly I did look, but I did not have the power that comes from God's dear book. So now I sit in prison, an inmate, just like you. My reputation all ruined, my preaching days are through. That is why I hang my head and my face wears a frown. Because I regret that day, I put my Bible down. O Christian, hear this message from this man's prison cell. There are children who need a leader, there are sinners going to hell. There are blessings to obtain, we must win the victor's crown. May you never have to say, I put my Bible down. Would you bow your heads and close your eyes and stand to your feet, please? The Bible and missions, we wouldn't know