The internationally known evangelist and founder of Bob Jones University, Dr. Bob Jones Sr., was one of God's great warriors for the faith. The message you will hear now, recorded during Dr. Jones' earthly ministry, illustrates his firm conviction that whatever the Bible says is so. This is the first of 52 messages which I'm bringing in a most practical sort of way on what does the Bible say. You know, I'm not going to bring this in theological terms. You know, we sometimes think people understand what they don't understand. You know, you might know the Bible pretty well and not know some theological words. And sometimes preachers forget that and they get up and they use big theological terms such as vicarious, and that's all right, or substitutional, that's all right, nothing wrong with those words, but a great many times we could put this down where the people could get it. Did you know when the Lord Jesus Christ preached the Sermon on the Mount, that marvelous sermon, with His disciples sitting at His feet, He went up there and sat down, and a crowd came down, and folk followed Him, the disciples, and sat down there with Him, and you know those were the most profound statements ever uttered, some things that He said. For instance, I've said many times of the statement, blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. They shall see God. What a profound statement that is. Every word of monosyllabic except one. And always in simplicity is truth most becoming God. Now what I'm eager to do, if I can, is to get a simple practical message to you, today and on through the future, till I give you 52 special simple messages. on what the Bible teaches. You know, as I've gone through, I have become so much interested in something that I didn't used to think much about, and that is that most of the Bible is written for this world. You know, we're thinking about heaven and hell, and we should. And we should get ready for heaven, and we should stay out of hell, and we should live like people who are going to live somewhere forever. But you know, most of the things said in the Bible have to do with this world, and we forget that. You know, somebody said one time, a man gets so heavenly minded, he's no earthly good. Well, if you have the right kind of a heavenly mind, you'll have a pretty good earthly mind. You know, if you know how to get to heaven and know you're on your way to heaven, you want to know how to travel, you want to know how to live, you want to know what to do. And I find that most of the questions I've been asked as an evangelist through a period of many years There have been questions about the hereafter and will we know each other in heaven, see? What do you think of this? What do you think of that? What do you think of the other? And some questions they ask, they just want to gratify maybe a curiosity. But what we ought to be interested in, we're passing through this world one time, we're not here forever, and we don't know how long we're going to be here. But we ought to know how to meet successfully the emergencies of life. I've often said wisdom is knowing how. to meet successfully the emergencies of life. And we certainly do have emergencies. You can't get through this world without it. Now the Bible tells you about how to go to heaven, it tells you how to stay out of hell, it tells you what kind of place heaven is, what kind of place hell is. It tells you how you are to, what we're going to have in heaven, what we're going to miss if we don't go to hell, and all that kind of business. But most of the instructions of the Bible have to do with this world. And these messages I'm bringing, I hope and pray God will use to help us to see how to get along. What ought I to do about this? What should I do about that? And the Word of God should be our guide, not the wisdom of men. The Bible is our guide. I've traveled a number of times in foreign countries, and we used to have a guidebook, a sort of a handbook, to tell us what to do, and how to handle money, and what American money, changes of that money, would be worth, and so forth and so on, and we'd always look up the handbook, you see. Well, now, the Bible is God's handbook, given to all of the people, especially the Christian people, the saved people, to guide them through this world. Now, it's important that we listen to what God says. You're not in heaven yet. You're now in the endless world. Somebody said we talk about the sweet by and by, and we forget that we're in the nasty now and now. It's all right to be prepared for heaven. The wise man prepares for the inevitable, and eternity is inevitable, and death is inevitable, and we can't stay here forever. That's all clear in the Bible. We ought to be ready. But I'm going to show you, before we get through these messages, that you can get ready to go to heaven in one minute's time. It's a very simple thing. Oh, it's profound and deep and wonderful. But you know, you can make preparation for heaven when you want to in just a second, almost. It's a very simple thing. Because when I get to that subject, I'm going to show you that you yourself can make this preparation by the grace of God. For God tells you how in the Bible. You don't have to go to hell. If you go, you're nobody to blame but you. Because you don't have to go. God told you how not to go to hell, told you how to get to heaven. But sometimes we have our mind on heaven and hell, be ready to meet God, which we should. We should be prepared to meet Him anytime, don't misunderstand me. Because life is very uncertain. Time is short and eternity is long, and we ought to get ready for it. We ought to get ready for eternity. But as we go along, we ought to face the problem of how to meet the daily things of life. This world's a world filled with problems. You know, I hate to say it, but it's a pretty tough world we live in. It's not easy. I've said so many times when a baby's born, the first thing the baby does is to cry. Strange way to start life off, isn't it? But that's what a baby does. I don't know whether the little fella has a premonition he's going to be up against it. But you're in a world. It's not easy. It's pretty tough. It's pretty hard. A lot of battles to fight there. A lot of rough places along the road. And you fall down and get hurt. And you get sick. And you take germs into your mouth. Well, it's not easy. That's all. You just have to admit it. If you have money, it's not easy to keep it. If you have money, it's not easy to invest it. If you don't have any money, it's not easy to make money, to make a living. So it's a tough world. But God Almighty's handbook, the Bible, tells you just how to get along, what to do about everything that comes up, how to face every issue of life. Isn't it strange that we don't read it more? And isn't it strange that people don't listen to it when they hear it, they don't stop to think as they should, but so it goes in this life? I'm talking to somebody today, you don't read your Bible. You don't read it every day at least. And when you have a problem, you don't go to the Bible and say, well, what does God say about it? You just go along and say, well, I'll do the best I can. I'll get advice. And there's nothing wrong in getting advice. It's all right. But most of the advice we get when it comes to real spiritual things isn't very dependable. I learned that long ago. I'll ask one man one question. I'll ask another man the same question. I'll get a different answer from different people. But you don't get a different answer from the Bible. When you go to the Bible you get an answer that's clear and defted. What must I do about this? What must I do to be saved? What must I do when I'm tempted? What must I do about sin? What must I do about my family? What does it do about making a living? The Bible's always clear. You know, God never, God never clothes His simple ideas, divine inspired ideas, with such big words you can't take them in. You just come right down to it. You know, simplicity is truth's most becoming garb. And in a way, profound as the Bible is, it's very simple. Trouble is, we just don't listen to it. And we get us all an idea, there's no way we can understand it. So we go along drifting from time to time. I wonder why you don't start here now and say, well, I'm going to read the Bible. I'm going to read through Genesis about five times. That's a good place to start. There's a lot of character in there. You beat the human little problems of life in Genesis. And while you read that through five times, you'll be reading Matthew through five times. And when you get through Genesis, then I'd start in and read through all the New Testament, I believe. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John. Just keep reading it. And ask God to lighten your mind and show you what you ought to know. And it's wonderful what God will do. I've been interested in this. I've gone up and down the country for years to find that some people that folks didn't think had very much sense, but they had pretty good sense about the Bible. I can mention some people I could name that I met along the road They wouldn't know much about the language of the bank. They wouldn't know much about politics and international problems and all that. But when it came to what the Bible said, they knew it. And they'd sit down and quote it to me. And sometimes they'd say, what does this verse mean? And sometimes I was able to tell them, and sometimes I wasn't. But you know, God will tell you whatever you need to know. If you are sincerely honest about the thing, and you want to know what to do, just read your Bible. That's all you have to do. I've said so many times, you're not to judge what you see by what you see. You judge what you see by what God says about what you see. You may have the wrong slant on something that comes up in your life. You may be looking at it from the wrong angle. Step over on God's side and get out on the Word of God, and look at it from the angle of the Bible, and you'll always get the right view. But very few people do that, you know. Say, well, I don't think that. I don't think this. You know, I don't see how that could be. Well, you don't have to know how it could be. You don't have to know. But what did God say about it? Now let's remember that, and let's get out of business in the Word of God, the study of the Word of God, and hide it in your heart so you won't sin against Him. And remember the Bible's magnified by Almighty God Himself. He magnified it above His own name. It's a wonderful thing. I remember when I was a boy in the country home, the old family Bible. Everybody believed it, you know. I was a boy nobody failed to believe the Bible in my country. You'd hear about Bob Ingersoll or somebody else that didn't believe it, you know. And some old fellow, he said, he's a fool, that's all. He's just crazy. And everybody believed the Bible. And the issue back in those days was it was not the Bible because everybody accepted it. The issue was what the Bible says. Now we've come to a point where so many people cast doubts upon it. Religious liberals have tried to reflect on it. They've said this isn't so and that isn't so too. The people are all bewildered and confused. Now you'll always find when there's confusion, there's not a God. The Bible makes it plain that God is not the author of confusion. You can be absolutely sure, absolutely certain. You can be definite, you can be clear, you can understand. You don't have to be all bewildered and all upset and all disturbed. Now if you come to a place that you don't exactly understand, ask God to teach you, to light up a place for you. And then if you go ahead with it and still don't understand, then come across some verses you do understand and follow that one. And if you follow the verses you do understand, you'll be all right. Some great writer, I can't think of his second, said that if people say what they don't understand, the Bible bothers them. He said, it's what I do understand that keeps me worried, not what I don't understand. If you don't understand and can't see and can't understand, God will be good to you. He's a good God. So you just take it, and just read it, and read it, and read it, and read it. And what you understand, all right. What you don't understand, all right. Just go ahead. Because, my friend, listen. Today, in our modern life, the Bible is the issue. Today, the Bible is the issue. Remember that now. The issue is the Word of God today. I'm going to show you that in a future message, that the problem today is the fact that the problem of having walked away from the Word of God, God's blessed, holy Word. Now get it down and dust it off and go to reading it. May the Spirit of God lead you very deftly in the study of His Word and try to find out what it says. and be listening to the message of the Father. Now, 51 more after this one on what does the Bible say. May God bless every one of you. Our Father, help us to read Thy Word and magnify Thy Word and love Thy Word and be true to Thy Word. For Jesus' sake, amen. You've heard Dr. Bob Jones, Sr., internationally known evangelist and founder of Bob Jones University, who during his earthly ministry was one of God's great warriors for the faith. If you are interested in an educational institution which stands without apology for the old-time religion, the absolute authority of the Bible, which emphasizes the fundamentals of the faith and has high cultural and academic standards, write to Bob Jones University, Greenville, South Carolina, 29614. Listen for another message from The Word of Truth, sponsored by Bob Jones University.