It is a very great pleasure for me this evening to be with you at your annual church meeting to hear these reports and witness the progress of the work of God and the Lord's hand upon the people of God here. I continue to remember you in my personal prayers that God might pour out His Spirit upon you and that you will see in this town and in this district a great movement of the Spirit of God. I was asked the other day what was the answer to the present situation. The answer to the present situation is a great revival of true religion. That's what the country needs. That's what we all need, that we should be before God for a reviving of His work in the midst of the years, in wrath that our gracious God would remember mercy and visit His people. And I believe we're going to have revival. When I say that, nobody says amen, but I say 10,000 amens in my heart. because I believe the time has come that the enemy has come in like a flood. But then it tells me when the enemy comes in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him. And the standard will be raised and the unbelievers will be rebuked. God will visit His people and there will be the sound of abundance of rain. So let us continue to pray for God's blessing. Thank God for the seals on the ministry, the souls that have been saved, the backsliders restored and the people of God revived. May it continue And may God bless us indeed and in truth. There is a verse in 1 Samuel chapter 18. It is the exhortation of Saul to David. And he says in that verse 17 of the 18th chapter, of 1 Samuel, fight the Lord's battles. Fight the Lord's battles. Make no mistake about it, there is a great battle being waged at this hour right across the whole world. It is a battle of God's world versus the devil's world. The trumpet is sounding. God is enlisting his people and summonsing them to take part in this evil day, in this, the great conflict of the ages. When you see these things begin to come to pass, look up, for your redemption draweth nigh. The Lord Jesus Christ is coming back to this world visibly, personally, and gloriously. and we should have arrived towards his coming. These things begin to come to pass. Look out, for your redemption draweth nigh. Yes, this is one of the most momentous days in all of the world's history. The time is climaxing to its end. The whole Gospel dispensation is described in the Bible as the end time. And we are in the Gospel dispensation. And we are nearer to that great event, that great momentous event of the personal return of our Lord Jesus. This same Jesus who has gone into heaven shall so come as you have seen him go into heaven. But towards the end of that gospel dispensation, the great battle between God's world and the devil's world, the great battle between God's truth and the devil's lie. The great battle between God's great facts and the devil's counterfeits will come closer and closer to every one of us. And God is calling His Church to prepare themselves for the final great battle and great war of the ages. We are called today to fight the Lord's battles. I want to say something about this war to you tonight and I promise you that I will be brief. Of course, it's a ridiculous thing to get a man to preach and call him at half past nine. To preach And I want to say this to you, that some people will go out and say I was at the angel meeting. You know that Philip Paisley, he let us go home at half past ten. Well, you're at half past nine. I didn't keep you here till half past nine. I've got to you a business to do and you've done it. But I just want to put on the record some things that we would do well to meditate upon. I want to say a word about the soul of this war. What are the forces that are locked together in deadly combat and conflict? What are they? What are the energizers of evil and who are the motivators of good? What is this struggle really all about? And what are the great tactics of the devil against Christ's church today? Well, you could preach to Christmas on that. There's plenty of material there as you read the book. And after looking at the soul of the war, I want to look at the soldiers in the war. Who are these soldiers? How are they enlisted? Who trains them? Who directs them? And then I want to say a word about the strategy of this war. Who plans the strategy of the armies that are locked in deadly combat. And then I want to say a word about the signing up for this war. And then finally, you'll be glad when I come to that, I'm going to say a word about the sacrifice of the war, the soul of the war. The devil declared war against the thrice holy gods. He started the conflict, and he started it energized with the philosophy that he could usurp the throne of the most God. And the soul of the war, as energized by the devil, has created four great monsters across the whole world. The first monster is the mystery of iniquity. And that, of course, is the satanic evil, the mystery of iniquity. The second monster is the blasphemy of idolatry. And that, of course, is Satan's error. You have Satan's evil in the mystery of iniquity. You have the satanic error in the blasphemy of idolatry. And then thirdly, there is the darkness of infamy. This is erupting everywhere across our world today. This is the satanic eruption. The darkness of the devil is bubbling over the rim of hell and it's coming down upon a world that's torn with strife and torn with sin and destroyed by satanic hatred. The devil is spewing out his vent and his vomit of corruption against everything that is true everything that is God revealed and everything that pertains to the Lord Jesus Christ, the darkness of the night. There never was such darkness in the world before as is in the darkness of our day. This is a dark and damning age. And then the fourth great monster is the resurgence of infidelity. This is a satanic explosion of unbelief and all over the world we can hear the voice of people denying the truth, denying the faith, denying the gospel and denying Christ. This is a Christ-denying age. What a picture! The mystery of iniquity. the satanic evil, the blasphemy of idolatry, the satanic error, the darkness of infamy, the satanic eruption, and the resurgence of infidelity, the satanic explosion. And that's the age in which we live. I suggest you take your Bible and start reading your Bible looking for what the Bible says about the mystery of iniquity, what the Bible says about the blasphemy of idolatry, what the Bible says about the darkness of infamy, and what the Bible says about the resurgence of infidelity. What an age! What a battle! What a dark sea! What terrible fruit and what terrible harvest comes from these four monsters let loose from the world by all the powers of the devil. They said that the Reformers reeled against the papacy. Not many people reel against the papacy today. sort of byword. When a man says anything about the Pope, the people look at him. And the worst thing they can call him is a Paisleyite. And all I can say to you, it's time that we got our eyes open to the mystery of iniquity as seen in the awful blasphemy of idolatry. I was reading of one of C. H. Spurgeon's sermons. By the way, I commend them to you. And you young preachers, if you want to get some fire in your belly, you read the sermons of Spurgeon, especially his early ones. And he has this to say, O children of God, fight the Lord's battles for the Lord's truth. I am astonished and yet more astonished when I come to turn it over at the want of earnestness that there is in the Protestantism of the present age. Now he was writing this well over a hundred years ago. And you look at the state of Protestantism today. Look at the advances of Protestantism today. During the last ten days we had strange happenings at the Vatican. The first was the knock on the door of a special emissary from President Bush requesting the Pope to give us blessing to war against Iraq. Think about it. President Bush, a professing believer in Christ, goes to the Pope to ask the Pope to bless him and what he's going to do. And then after him came the Prime Minister of this United Kingdom and he came to knock on the door to ask the same. I tell you, if the Pope blesses them, the Lord have mercy. on our nation, for the Pope's blessing is the curse of the Antichrist and the curse of Satan himself. Protestants today, take heed lest ye partake in the plagues of Rome. To touch her not lest ye be defiled. Give nothing to her Not a grain of incense ever lay on her altar. Every time you pass the house of potpourri, let a curse light upon her head. A strong language. Who was this? Some bigot? This was the greatest of all English preachers. A man who did more for Christianity. in his term in the pulpit in the Metropolitan Tabernacle than any other preacher before or after or ever will do. This was a man with God's anointing on him, but he was fighting the Lord's battles. Never have a common cause with Rome. Spurn her. She is not the Church of Christ. She is the Church of the Antichrist. Beware of her. Oh, that God would give us tonight a vision of the terrible battle that we have got to fight against Rome and all her errors. Keep in mind the four monsters. Let me say a word about the soldiers of this war. There are three things about them. They are especially chosen. They're especially cleansed. And they're especially consecrated. These men that fight the Lord. Now you don't choose yourself. You have to be chosen by God. And of course people today don't like that. Man thinks that he can make his choices. Man is not captain of a soul or master of his faith. God is the sovereign God of all. And if God doesn't separate us to fight, we'll never fight. If God does not choose us to be in the battle, we may buy the uniform When we do our sword practice, we may do everything, but we'll be weaklings, and like the men of Ephraim, we'll turn our backs in the day of battle. God makes a choice. He makes a choice of the soldiers. No one's in the army of the Lord, but he has been chosen by the Lord. And what a privilege it is when the battle's against you, when all hell is let loose upon you, when the minions of the pit seem to compass you about, and like the bees that the psalmist spoke about buzz around your head, to know that God has chosen you, it puts such a thrill into your soul. Nought can harm the Father's child. Chosen with God to be a soldier. Secondly, the soldier is specially cleansed. He's not going to heaven with a decision card in his pocket. He's not going to heaven because Billy Graham has written him a little letter and told him he's alright for eternity. Billy Graham of course kissed the Pope's cheek and said, you're my brother. I want to say to you that the man that's in this army is cleansed by the sovereign application of the precious blood of Christ to his heart. And when that comes unto his heart, every other garment, every other apparel, is pulled from that heart and torn and rent asunder and destroyed. You cannot have one bit of self-righteousness in your heart when God cleanses you in the blood of the Lamb. It is a complete atonement made by Christ upon the cross when He paid the price of our sin and by one offering made full atonement for His people. And when He applies that to our hearts, every sin has to go, everyone on one leg. No self-righteousness here. No religious austerity here. No churchianity here. No faith in baptism or the sacraments here. No trust in anything or everything. No trust in them all, they're all gone. This man is cleansed by a divine cleansing and he's made whiter than the snow and the precious blood of the Lamb. Spurgeon walked home in Colchester from the little primitive Methodist church. It was a snowstorm. And as he walked home, he said to the snowflakes, I could preach you a good sermon. because my heart is whiter than you? I've been washed in the blood of the Lamb. Whiter than the snow? Wash me in the blood of the Lamb, and I shall be whiter than snow. Why are Christians weak? Because some of them are still holding on to their self-righteousness. Why are Christians weak? Because they have not made a fool an absolute surrender of everything and throw themselves, sink or swim, on Christ and Christ alone. And if you haven't that power in your soul, you'll never stand up to the battle. But when you have Christ, our righteousness imputed to you, and received by faith alone, nothing will stop you. No power in hell can stop the man that is clothed in the righteousness of Christ. And then he is specially consecrated. He is not fighting a war outside. He has already fought the war with God and God's grace inside. He has seen sin and old habits and evil in the flesh and the world and the devil dealt with by the soul of God in his own heart. He's a different attitude to things. For a man being Christ, he's a new creature. He's a new man. Old things have passed away. All the old pleasures that a man had. running here and running there and talking the language of the devil's crowd and trying to be as like the devil's crowd as you can be. It all has to go when you are really regenerated and get into the Lord's army. You have no time for those things. They are gone. Clean gone. Bye bye forever to the sins of the world. Bye bye forever to the pleasures of the world. Bye-bye forever for all the things that used to charm my soul. Give me Jesus, Jesus only. I possess a cluster rare. He's the fairest of ten thousand and the rose of Sharon Fair. That's the man that will fight the Lord's battles. He'll not be fighting for himself. He's fallen in love with the Son of God and he will fight the Lord's battles. Oh God help us to be specially chosen, specially cleansed and specially consecrated to this task. But let us look just for a moment at the strategy of this war. You're not called to wear regimentals and stand up in your best military attire and walk around the parade ground. That's not what God has called you to do. God has called you to put on the war kit, to put on the battle dress, to take to yourself the whole armour of God, to be clothed by the power of God to fight a battle. In the church today we have many spectators and they take their chair and they tell poor creatures like myself who are trying to fight the battle of the Lord how it should be done. But they don't do anything themselves. God never calls a man to be a spectator. He calls him to be a soldier. Paul said to Timothy, endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. Are you a spectator? Are you saying about the poor fellows that made their reports that, I could have done better than that. Why did they not choose me for that job? Are you a spectator? And then there are the armchair generals. I met a fellow the other day and he had everything an Ulster saw. He told me, he said, I want to give you a presentation of how it all could be solved. You know what I said to him? Baloney. Just one word, baloney. And he fell like a lead balloon. Let me tell you this, friend. There's only one person who can solve our troubles, and that's the great God of heaven. And in all this confusion, He's solving them. God's working them out. God's putting every piece into position of the great jigsaw. And when you get a glimpse of how He's working, you'll rejoice that all things work together for good to them that love the Lord. All things. All things. No limitation here. All things God's work, you know, God is a sovereign God. It was the sovereignty of God, it was that truth that made the martyrs die in the flame with smiles on their faces and joy in their souls that a sovereign God had planned it all. I was listening to a tape the other day. Usually when I'm shaving, I put on a scripture tape. And I was listening to Daniel, those three men. And those three men, they said, we may not be delivered. We may burn. But even if we do burn, we're not going to worship your God. Why, they had great faith in them. Even we burn, we'll burn with joy. This is the strategy that God wants to teach us. I have discovered in going through my own church records that there's only one person out of every five church members that is really active in the church. The rest of them come. Some of them have the degree of SMO, Sunday morning only. Some of them have the degree of SEO, Sunday evening only. And some of them have the degree of PMN, prayer meeting never. And they're all supposed to be Christian and have glowing testimony. God has a strategy and God's strategy is to get men and women to be active for Himself. What active thing did you do this week about the Kingdom of God? Did you lift a phone? Did you ring up a man that's on the road to hell? Did you tell him he needed Christ? Did you weep over him and say, I would love to see you see him? I'd love to see God's peace in your heart. Did you? Did you talk to your neighbor? Did you talk to your friends? Or did you just go about like anybody else? And when you sat down with people, you talked about everything but the Lord. Then you wonder why there's not great scenes of rejoicing. There'll never be scenes of rejoicing until we adopt the Lord's strategy. And then there are some people in there like poor old Elijah, they think they only are left. There's none but me. Here I am, I'm only left. And God said, you fool Elijah, there's 7,000 that haven't bowed the knee to me. God has his people everywhere. Here, there, and yonder. Faithful souls, unknowed, unheralded, unbroadcast, but they're working. They're members of the Lord's army. And God's strategy will succeed. And God's name shall be glorified. and the devil will be defeated. And someday Antichrist and the false prophet and the devil will be put into the lake of fire and they will burn in judgment. from God's fierce wrath forevermore. But I know where I'll be that day. I'll be among the angels of God and the saints of God. And I'll be with Jesus forever, singing unto Him who has loved us and loosed us from our sins in His blood. To Him be the glory. Emmanuel is going to reign. Jesus is the King. Jesus is the King. You know, I've heard people in this dispensational doctrine that's so frequently preached today as God's truth telling people that he's not king yet. My friend, when I read the Bible, I find that when he died, he entered into his glory. The Lord Jesus is king now, and he's reigning now, and every enemy shall lick the dust at His feet. Jesus is King. He's not only prophet. He's not only priest. But He's King! And He's not coming to be King. He's coming as the King, my friend. Get a vision of this great Christ that has saved your soul. And you're called to be in this strategy. What a strategy it is. What about signing up for this war? Have you signed up in this great war for the Lord? I was reading a fellow the other day and he took a wee note of it, what he said, when you join the Lord's army, you sign up to no communication nor union with the enemy. That's where you stand. What communication have you with the enemy? What union have you with the other? If you're going to be the Lord's soldier, you have to cut every bond. You've got to make a clean cut separation. I've heard people talk about one, two, three or four degrees separation. There's no such thing. There's only one separation. No degrees of separation. You're either separated or you're not. You're either an adulterer or a chaste person. You can't be both. And I want to tell you, we are the chaste bride of the blessed Savior. Our union is with Him. So you have to sign up tonight to be the Lord's only. No truck with the devil's drive. No quarter to be given or even asked for. There's no such thing as dialogue. in the Bible. I hate that word. It's like dead wood anyway. Dialogue. I want to tell you this, my friend. There's no such thing. When the devil rebelled, the Heavenly Father didn't call up and say, Belzebub, come and sit down at the table and we'll have a little talk. We're here today that you have to talk. If they would only get together. If they would only talk. You know what the Lord did? He threw Satan from heaven. They got light. Threw him out of heaven. No doubt. And you should not be dialoguing with the devil's crowd. You should not be asking for quarter. No weapons or ammunition taken from the enemy are to be used for the Lord's work. Your sword is not the sword of Saul. It is the sword of the Holy Ghost. And we have the church borrowing the weapons of the devil and trying to ape the devil in their battle. What fools they are. The man that signs up for God wouldn't put his fingertip on the weapons of hell. No fear, no trembling, and no cowardice. The Lord is not looking for a bunch of cowards. The Lord's looking for a bunch of people courageous. Look at the many times He said to Joshua, be courageous. Be courageous. He's looking for a man with courage. And there's to be no slumbering, no rest, no ease, no surrender. That's the way you fight the battle. Are you prepared for that? Are you? Is that the sort of Christian you are? Or as you look at yourself tonight, in the mirror of the Word, you say, I'm far from a preacher. I have to be honest, I'm not a soldier at all. I've been playing at this matter. Well, friend, you can start tonight. The enlistment book is open. The rules of the war are before you. Sign up for Jesus. Dear child of God, you'll never enjoy Christ until you're fighting His battles. and he'll be fighting alongside you. Though he may send some affliction, it will make me long for home. For in love and not in anger, all his chastenings are known. He will hide me, safely hide me. Where no harm shall e'er betide me, he shall hide me in the shadow of his hand. Last of all, I've come to the last. the sacrifice of the Lord. You have to make sacrifices. I wish tonight God's people would sign up for sacrifices. I wish there would be people here who would say, Preacher, if I live to tomorrow, I'll make that call. I'll ring that man I've been praying for for years and I'll talk to him. How many people have you on your hearts and you wish to see them saved? And you're working in prayer that they should be saved. Well, if you are, then you need to witness to them. I had a remarkable happening. There's a man I'm praying for that God would see him. And every time I meet him, I don't meet him too often, Quite regularly, I never let the occasion go without warning him about death and judgment and eternity. And one day, he was on the phone about a bit of business, and he was transacting for the church, and he got off the phone, and a pain went through my heart. He never witnessed to that man. So I took down the phone and I got him back on the phone. You know what he said to me? You'll believe this. He says, I know why you're ringing me. You feel to talk to me today about eternity. And when I sat down my phone, I said, has he given up on me? Has he given up on me? Oh, let me tell you, friend, men and women need our witnessing power. Ye shall be witnesses unto me at home, in Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth. God's looking for a bunch of spirit-filled witnesses from this congregation tonight. Oh, for the floods on a thirsty land! Oh, for a mighty revival! Oh, may God give us an old-fashioned, fearless band ready to heal its arrival. Go out, my friend, and fight the Lord's battles. And that sermon was 30 minutes, not 29, just 30 minutes. I trust God will write it on your heart. Let's bow our heads in prayer. We thank You, Lord, for speaking to us tonight from Your Word. We thank Thee for its divine truth. Make me a soldier. Make me a battler. Make me honoured shamedly in the sight of Christ. And Lord, bring great victory to the church for Jesus' sake. Amen.