This is the Chapel Hour, coming to you from the campus of Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. Today's message was recorded May 24, 1977, by Dr. Bob Jones, Jr., who for many years before his homegoing, served as university chancellor. This recording, along with a number of mementos of the 50th anniversary of the founding of BJU, was included in a time capsule buried on the campus in 1977. In a special 75th anniversary service during the 2002 Bible Conference, the container was opened and the late Dr. Jones' message was heard for the first time. It's almost exactly 10 o'clock in the morning, Tuesday, May 24th, 1977. If the Lord will that this tape be heard, I wonder to how many of you who listen that will seem a very long time ago. Time is passing. One of the certainties of life is that we cannot last forever. And as we move on in time, it's well to recollect that we're in God's hands, that He's not only the God of today, He'll be the God of your day, too, when you hear this. Whether He has come back to reign on the earth, or whether we're still waiting His coming, He's still our God. How wonderfully faithful He's been through all the 50 years of Bob Jones University. I just heard a tape that my dad made twenty-five years ago, that is, twenty-five years before I'm speaking to you, to be left in the time capsule which was opened on the fiftieth anniversary by the senior class. And as I listened to that tape and heard that familiar voice, now silent on earth but singing in heaven, for he did want to sing here and never could, but up there he said he'd dip his tongue in the melody of the sky and join with angels in the praise of God. I heard that familiar voice and I said to myself, how faithful God has been. Here's a man who 50 years ago started an institution, and in the half century that's gone by, that institution has not moved one iota from the purpose of the founding. Do you know that's the most remarkable thing? There's another institution in America which began some few years before Bob Jones University began. they gave my father an honorary degree i remember when i was a young lad long before he'd ever thought of being president of an institution or founding one and in that institution at that time the founder was still the president a godly presbyterian man he went to be with the lord and his son succeeded him and during his son's administration things began to slip the faculty were not always spiritual people they made no effort to keep the faculty spiritual the rules began to slip and Things crept in that belonged to the world and not to God's people. And eventually he passed away. And now the grandson of the founder is the president of the institution. It's just like any other worldly school. Anything goes on the campus. No rules, no regulations, no moral standards. Above all, there's no spiritual life there. And I thought, what a contrast that institution has been in these three generations with Bob Jones University. The founder was with us for years, and when the Lord took him home, his son succeeded him. That's the man that speaks to you now. I suppose, aside from my wife who was with us in that first year, because I met her then, that's when we first became acquainted fifty years ago, my wife and I are the only two who are here who were students at the University the first year. Oh, there are some others around, I don't mean that, thank God there are still some living and serving the Lord at this date. But I mean we're the only two still connected with the university. And then God in his mercy spared my mother, who's well up in her eighties now, but whose mind is keen. And one of the greatest blessings God has given to my life has been the family that God's given me. A godly father. No man ever had a father more understanding, more kind, more considerate, more consistent, more spiritual. No man ever had a mother who was more faithful and more reasonable and God has preserved her mind in its keenness and her body in physical activity until this 88th year how remarkable that's been she and I often talk about those early days with my wife as we discuss together how God has blessed us through the years the thing I'm always impressed with by the way when I talk to my mother is how gracious she is and how grateful she is she's always saying nobody was ever so well treated as God has treated me Here I have a son that's serving the Lord in the ministry, and a grandson that God is blessing and doing a terrific job as president of the university, and I have my grandchildren and my great-grandchildren, and I have Christian friends and an opportunity to witness for the Lord and to try to help students. That's been her philosophy all her life, a life of great gratitude poured out in blessing. And that's the way I feel, too. God has been so terribly good to me, so wonderfully gracious, it's hard to realize, looking back, that I'm now 65 years old, and that this much of time is gone. Now when you hear this, I don't expect to be here. At 65, I don't expect another 25 years. That would make me 90 years old, wouldn't it? Yeah, 90 years old. Say, that's too old for anybody. Of course, if I could be active and keen in the blessing, I wouldn't mind staying around. But I have a horror of becoming a burden. to being old and senile and having people say well poor old fellow he doesn't know what he's doing anyway I think some people think that now but I know pretty well what I'm doing I know why I'm doing it and I know what I'm trying to accomplish by doing it it's just that what I do doesn't please some people and my life's been made up of not pleasing people because I've tried to please the Lord and if you please the Lord you can't please some people and even if you didn't try to please the Lord you couldn't please some people The Bible says you live peaceably with all men as much as lies in you. God knows you can't get along with everybody. But you should do your best to be at peace with men, and I've tried to be that. But I have a strong emotional feeling against ungodliness and unrighteousness and that which hurts young lives and which destroys a great country. And frankly, as I talk today, I wonder if the country will hold together to the point where we can have religious freedom and where this record can be publicly broadcast. in 25 years from now. But let's look back for a moment and not forward through these 25 years, which will be looking back to you when you hear the recording. I was, within two months of my 16th birthday, when Bob Jones University opened down in Lynnhaven, Florida, out from Lynnhaven really, the place we called College Point. In those days we were already in the midst of a depression. Florida was in its great boom at that time, and my dad had made an arrangement with the Minor C. Keith Realty Company, one of the Florida developers, to have a piece of land on the bay there at St. Andrews Bay, a beautiful spot, to start a college. And the idea was that we would get commission on all the lots that were sold, so that money could go into the building of the university. And if times had been good, it would have been a very successful operation. But times were not good, and everything in Florida was bankrupt by the time we had opened. houses hadn't sold, the land hadn't sold, because Florida land wasn't selling. And here we were with the burden, we sold some bonds, and the university had begun. I say we, my dad did it. As I say, a 15-year-old boy in those days, I had very little touch with what was going on, but I shared my father's confidences and though I had no sense of the value of money and the cost of a campus, I knew that the Lord would provide. I never doubted that and I never doubted that my dad could do what he set out to do. I'd seen him do it over and over. So the college opened, and I remember those opening days. There were only 88 students. Why, we have now, oh, I guess more than five, six times that many people on the faculty, faculty and staff. But in those days, we thought we were going great guns. We had a little chapel room that was made up of two classrooms that you could throw together, had a little stage, and had a little gym kind of material for curtains. I remember when we started the Vespers, the idea was the lady that we had the Vespers was it had to be a candlelight service, and so she used to lay candles along the front of the stage, and these light cotton curtains would blow, and they'd blow into the candles and catch fire. And we always had to have a man seated on the front row to get up and put out the fire in the curtains. Well, that was a pretty primitive beginning, wasn't it? Don't think we didn't have electric lights now. Don't go back that far. We had electric lights, but she liked the atmosphere of the candles. I think in these days of OSHA and all these government agencies that interfere and take away our liberties, what it must have been like in those old days, when the government didn't care if you burned your house down, that was your business. Today, they tell you how many inches apart the rungs have to be on a stepladder. Well, we're coming into the closing days of the age, there's no doubt about that. But back in those days, the country was at peace. And aside from the Depression and the fact that nobody had any money, Well, everything went well. I graduated from high school that year, and three years later I graduate from college. By the way, at this time there's only one member of that graduating class who's gone to be with the Lord. The rest are still spanned on Earth, as far as I know. There weren't very many of us. There was Monk Parker, and there was Henry Gruby, who's now with the Lord, and there was Fannie Mae, my wife, and Ruth Mayhan, a girl I had known who worked with me in the ministry of the prisons in Alabama when I was just 14. She was a Montgomery girl. She's there. She married James Stewart, the Scots evangelist, and he's gone to be with the Lord, and now she's married to one of his Czech converts, I believe, living over in Czechoslovakia, serving the Lord there. We've had her children in the university since then. Well, Ruth was there, and I think two other girls, maybe, and I believe Clifford Lewis was in that class. Anyway, there were very few of us. But oh, what a good time we used to have in those days, and how God used to bless. That opening night revival, that first year my dad preached, and I suppose we saw 20 or 30 kids saved. We had a bigger proportion of unsaved people come in those days. Most of the support was from Methodists, a great deal of it. In those days, Southern Baptists were beginning to become very denominational. But the Southern Methodists in those days stood for the truth of the Word of God. And I suppose that year we must have had 10, 15 different denominations. We had a boy from Ohio and we thought he'd come a long ways. We called him Ojo. And we had a good time and God blessed through those years. And then finally we got to the place of depression where we couldn't continue. Now remember, we had paid our bond interest years after the state of Florida no longer paid their bond interest. Nobody had cash. I remember that when I graduated from university, I lived at home for two or three years and taught in the school. And I got $25 a month and my room and board, and I thought I was a rich man. Anybody that had $25 a month in those days was doing pretty well. Today, a fellow has to get more than that a day in working laying brick or sweeping sidewalks. The government won't let you do any less than that. And I tell you the truth, it doesn't go as far today as it went in my day. I can remember you could buy a suit for $15 so I could have one or two suits a year and still have a little money left over to buy gas and a borrowed car, take my girlfriend out courting. Those were great days. But how God blessed and the school continued to grow and finally we had to seek a new location and we moved to Cleveland, Tennessee. There's an interesting story about that. Years before my dad had been up there in the town of Cleveland holding a meeting And old Dr. George Stewart, who was one of the founders and most interested men in the old Methodist school there called Centenary College, a girl's school, had said to my dad, now this was before I was born, you know, Bob, I have a feeling that someday you're going to live here in Cleveland, Tennessee. Well, my dad just laughed at him, but we did. There we were. We took over this old plant, run down. I think we only paid $50,000 as I remember. I'm a little hazy on the figures now after all these years. I still was not interested in figures even 40 years ago. Well, God blessed us, we built new buildings, we prospered, we grew, and we were shut in there in the middle of a little town. Two main roads ran through the campus. We didn't know how we could grow, but we tried to buy land, and there were some old skinflint people that tried to stick us, you see. There are always some folks that will take advantage of your troubles. They were asking $40,000 for a lot that wasn't worth five. And we said, we're just not going to be held up. This is the Lord's money. This is the Lord's work. And about that time, one of the Pentecostal groups, the Church of God that had its headquarters there in Cleveland, asked us if we'd sell them the campus. Now, between you and me, I think they were just bluffing. I don't think they thought we would. I think they were getting a little expanded, a little prosperous, and maybe they wanted to make a good impression. But we said, sure, we'll sell it to you. and we sold it and we began to look around for places to move and finally God seemed to lead us all here so we moved across the Smoky Mountains from Tennessee into South Carolina and these great years that God has given us here we've been here longer than we were both in Florida and Tennessee put together we've been here now thirty years and how God has blessed us we've grown I suppose today the plant by current values would be worth thirty five or forty million dollars maybe more because We're living in times when the money is overrated. In fact, we're having such high prices for such little things. I'll just throw this in to give you an example. I wonder what you'll be paying for coffee in 25 years. Well, it was up over $4 a pound, almost $5 a pound some places. Now, when I was a boy, we used to get coffee for 40 cents a pound and think that was too high. Well, that's the way we're living today. in a time of high prices with everything blown up. Money's not worth much so everybody gets a lot of money for doing nothing and then their money won't buy them anything. Well, during this time the campus has grown. I'm speaking to you today from the studio on the ground floor, deep down underground, deep enough to be a bombshell I tell these fellas, under the amphitheater. which was opened a few years ago, a memorial to my father, building with seats 7,000. And I imagine if the Lord tarries and things continue to be blessed here as they have been, you'll have more students than that. But let me tell you something, if you don't have the right kind of students, if you don't have the same standards, if you don't have the same rules and regulations in effect, if you don't have the same spiritual zeal on the part of the faculty and the same loyalty on the part of the student body, I hope you'll cease to exist. My dad used to say, this school ever went wrong after he'd gone to heaven. He'd ask the Lord to let him throw a few bricks off the battlements of heaven and crush these buildings. He'd ask God to send a tornado to blow them down. That's exactly the way I feel, and that's exactly the way my son Bob III feels, the president today. Well, this institution has now gone through into its third administration. I was president for twenty-four years, I thought it was time for a younger man to take over, so I resigned. Now I'm chancellor. That's a nice word. You know, nobody knows what a chancellor's supposed to do. Therefore, I meddle. If I want to stick my nose in something, I do it. If I don't want to bother about it, I say, well, that's the president's business. Go and see the president. It's a nice job. I recommend it's a job you apply for when you go out from life if you don't know what the Lord's called you to do otherwise, because you do pretty much as you please. But you know, after 65 years of discipline and Christian training, i try to please the lord and after all the discipline i've lived under in my college days in the military school before i came to bob jones in all these years i've learned discipline so it's safe now to let a fellow go on his own because he's pretty well established in the nurture and admonition of the lord and desire to please god but here we are this godly faculty has invested their time and their effort in the lives of these students over the years i know god's gonna preserve them many of them are young for succeeding generations some who are graduating this year will have their children here long before this twenty-fifth anniversary that you are looking forward to and when you're hearing this tape i thank god for the faculty he's given us faithful deans godly men intelligent men scholarly men but spiritual man that's the most important thing faithful faculty dean edwards who's been with us for so many years mrs edwards he's quite ill now i I don't know how much longer the Lord's going to spare him with us, but I pray for him every day, his faithful wife, others that have been here for 20, 30, 40 years, how God has raised up the right people. He always does. He has the right man for the right job, the prepared person for the prepared job. I pray for these students. I wish they could know how I love them. I tease them and I fuss at them and I pray for them and I nag them a bit, but I couldn't imagine how anybody could love anybody more than I love these students. How we thank God for parents that entrust them to us. And I think as the years go on, more and more people who love the Lord are going to have to send their children to Bob Jones University, because there are going to be fewer and fewer places left. Many new schools have started up in these recent years, but they're not like Bob Jones University. They say they want to be, but they want to leave out something. Either they leave out the discipline and the regulations, or they leave out the cultural atmosphere of the university, put in cheap sorry music that's so characteristic of this day, ballads and Baxter, that's what I call it, all this foolish music, stamps Baxter kind of music, and then this cheap modern rock, religious rock, my friend, it's not religious, it may be rock, but it's certainly not spiritual. I see these young people, and how I thank God for them, look into their faces, I wonder which ones are going to be martyrs for Christ's sake, Thy wonder which may fall by the wayside, I pray that none of them will. Then I thank God, too, for his great blessing on my family. He's raised up Bob to carry on this ministry. I don't know a more talented and gifted and spirit-filled young man. If he's there when I say this, he's going to be embarrassed by it. But his old man has thanked God every day that Bob Jones III was raised up. I remember before he was born, my grandmother said to me, You know, Bob, you always talk about this baby that's coming as if you were going to be a boy. Might be a girl. You know, girls are mighty nice. About half the population's girls. And I said, Grandma, I know that. But the Lord has given me perfect assurance that this is going to be a boy and that he's going to be raised up to carry on the ministry of Bob Jones University. There's only twice in my life I've talked like that. About that and about one other thing that I know God's given me an assurance in advance. I'm not one of these kind of people that always talks about how the Lord led me when the Lord didn't have anything to do with it. And I'm not the kind to blame my failures on God either. I take the responsibility for those, though I give God the glory for any blessing and success that may have attended. But I knew, and I never talked to him about it, my dad never did, but I knew what he was going to do, and I prayed for him every day. And one day when he was about to graduate from college, I said, Bob, what are you going to do now that you get out? He said, well, I think the Lord wants me to carry on the work of Bob Jones University if the board will have me. He was always a modest kind of fella. Well, I said, I've known you were going to do that, but I didn't want to push you into it. I wanted to be sure it was of the Lord. He's been faithful. And then, God's been good to me, the wonderful wife he's given me, how faithful she's been over these years. People don't realize how much share she's had in the ministry of Bob Jones University. I'm gone a lot of the time, and she stays alone. Of course, now that she has the grandchildren next door, that isn't so much of a hardship as it used to be, She's prayed at night for the students and the faculty and seen me over heart attacks and stood with me in battles. It's harder on a woman than it is on a man, you know, to fight the Lord's battles. And I thank God for the faithfulness of these Christian children God's given me. They'll never know how that sustained me in this ministry of Bob Jones University. I'd be so sad and brokenhearted if my children didn't love the Lord, too. I don't take any credit for it. My wife raised them. I was gone all the time. Now I wonder what lies ahead. All this great blessing is of great value. I remember 25 years ago when my dad made his recording for this year, this 50th anniversary, we had a number of students out. We had quite a few who'd gone out in the world. I could still see students if I'd visit a mission field somewhere, but not like it is today. Imagine all the thousands of people that are out serving the Lord around the world. I can hardly go to any continent, to any city, but there's somebody there from Bob Jones University. We can have a little alumni get-together and a student fellowship any place in the world almost outside the Iron Curtain and in some countries behind the Iron Curtain. I spoke of Czechoslovakia a while ago where one of our classmates from the first four-year graduating class of Bob Jones University is serving. They're everywhere. I just got a call last night from a dear friend down in Singapore. He's a Singaporean but he's in Sydney now preaching in evangelistic work I said, be sure to give the graduates of Bob Jones University my greetings down there in the continent of Australia. I talked to a friend from London yesterday morning on long distance, and I thought of the graduates of Bob Jones University serving the Lord as missionaries to Great Britain. That sounds incongruous to me. When I was a boy, Great Britain was still sending out good missionaries around the world, and now Britain is so dead spiritually, we are sending missionaries to Britain. By the way, I thank God for the revival that's taking place in Northern Ireland. People of God are being persecuted there in this Free Presbyterian Church, of which Dr. Paisley is the head. He's being maligned and slandered. He's one of the godliest men I know, a man who's been a blessing to my life for many years, and possibly my closest friend who isn't directly associated with Bob Jones University or hasn't been through years. He and I just got back from revival services and missionary conferences in the Far East a few months ago, and oh, we saw God work there, souls saved, 50, 60 forward out of an audience of 1,000 or 1,800 in Seoul, Korea and down in Singapore and other places. How God-blessed. And God's still at work. But we stand almost alone, people like Dr. Paisley and the administration of Bob Jones University and the true graduates we send out, because the issue today is the attack upon obedience to the Word of God. I wonder how many Bible translations you'll have in 50 years. or even 25 from now. We've got so many now, at least they're not translations, they're perversions. Good news for modern man, the New English Bible, this one and that one and the other one. Some to please Catholics and Protestants and everybody else, and some to please nobody but the writer. Foolish interjections of man's opinion instead of simply a translation of the authoritative manuscripts of God's Word. What a mess the world is in. And it's being aided and abetted by men like Billy Graham, who go anywhere under any sponsorship. He's just closed a big meeting up in the stadium at Notre Dame, the Catholic school up in South Bend, Indiana. He complimented the president up there, called him such a great man, a godly man, a fine leader, while the man's a rascal. He's done everything he could to destroy Bob Jones University when he was the head of the Civil Rights Commission, while still being president of that university. He's a bigoted Jesuit. A man who has no sense of spiritual values whatsoever. Billy Graham praises him and he talks about us fundamentalists as if we're the offscouring of the earth. I just saw the interview he gave in the newspaper, a friend sent it to me. Well, we're living in bad days today. There's almost no place left where there hasn't been some compromise. Now wait a minute. Don't you say there's old Dr. Bob now. He's thinking about the time that he's the only man and his school's the only school that's doing the will of God. No, I'm not like the old prophet. I thank God there are thousands that haven't bowed the knee to Baal. There are thousands across the country. But I thank God also that many of them got their inspiration or their training or their standards from Bob Jones University. You know, people look all over the world toward this institution. You should see the letters we get. Dr. Bob, I'm facing an issue. What do you think I ought to do about it? I want to do the spiritual thing. Some of them go so far as to say this, look, you don't even have to tell me why you take the stand you take, just tell me what stand you take on this issue and I'll take it with you because I know you're trying to be biblical and do what the Lord tells you to do. I appreciate that kind of confidence but it scares me too. I don't think I'd go that far with anybody. I wouldn't let somebody else set his standards and then I'd take them just because he took them. No, I want to know why the Bible gives those standards. I want to know where they are in the scripture and I want to know the verses on which they're based. Then I'll take them because I believe in a biblical stand and that's been the position of Bob Jones University. Whatever the Bible says is so. We have a creed that takes in the fundamentals of the faith. Any man who believes the Bible can agree with our creed. But on matters of interpretation we say we're not going to get involved in those things. You know I have to fight all the time as I was president and the president now, Bob III, has to fight all the time. to keep somebody from trying to inject hyper-Calvinism here and make everybody doubt his salvation and wonder if he's elected and hold out no hope to men because they can't know for sure they're elected. The interesting thing about that is these guys never doubt they're elected. They just have doubts about the rest of us. And then on the other hand, we have people who inject a kind of charismatic movement here that would destroy us. I tell the students, if you want to go home on Tuesday, you just speak in tongues on this campus Monday and you'll be home on Tuesday. You see, we're in a time of warfare today as we go on toward the end of the age, and it's going to be worse when you listen to me 25 years from now, if the Lord tarries and you're allowed to hear it. But on the one hand, we have this cold, dead, hard, kind of rusty, mean, Dutch Calvinism. On the other hand, we have this extreme, silly, light, unscriptural, emotional Pentecostalism, and one's as bad as the other. one says it doesn't matter what you believe much as long as you shout and talk in an unknown tongue and can communicate with the Popes and the Catholics and the Seventh-day Adventists and all the cults and everybody else. Isn't it wonderful? My friend, the Spirit of God doesn't bring us together to fellowship with those who deny the Word of God. The Holy Spirit of God doesn't anoint Buddhists and Mohammedans and others. I see these same tongue movements all around the world among the pagan people and the Moslems. This is not of God. I don't hesitate to say it's not of God. This is of the devil, for it's confusion, and God's not the author of confusion. And it's bringing together the Church of Antichrist. In fact, I'm firmly convinced that this charismatic movement, this so-called tongues experience, is going to be the thing that knits together the Church of Antichrist when God has taken His true Church out of the world. In fact, I hope you won't get to hear this, because I hope you will have gone up to be with the Lord, and that He'll be back raining on the earth by twenty-five years from now. You know, I don't look forward to dying. I'm ready to die. I have no dread of death at all. In fact, I have about as many dear friends on the other side as I have on this side. Loved ones. My dad's over there. He and I were close, being an only child. And my sweet grandmother's over there. She died just the Christmas before Bob Jones University moved here to South Carolina. I was with her when she died. Wonderful, peaceful death. She just stopped breathing, and that's the way it's always been when I've seen Christians die. I don't dread death, but I sure would like to go up in the body. be a wonderful experience to be here one minute and up in heaven shouting hallelujahs than the next, won't it? Well, I hope that'll come to pass. But if it doesn't, and you are here, remember the Lord says, occupy until I come. We've done our best. We've tried to hand down to you an institution that's faithful, that hasn't moved, that emphasizes the Word of God, that lifts up the banner of Jesus Christ, that sends men out to win souls. I commission you this voice from the dead. I commission you not to be faint in what you're doing, not to betray the past, not to sell out the Lord. Stand firm. I wrote a hymn for this 50th anniversary. Dr. Gustafson, our talented dean, such a godly man, one of our graduates who stayed on here now, has his doctor's degree, and wonderful man of God. Dr. Gustafson wrote the words. One verse goes like this, Praise ye Jehovah, for heroes before us, battle-scarred dictors at rest from the fray, praying, contending, proclaiming, defending faith of our fathers, we will not betray. We can't afford to do that, young folks, old folks, old friends that have outlived me, and young friends that have been born since this recording was made. You are heirs of a great past. How blessed God has been through these years. The Lord says, I set before thee an open door which no man can shut. Government's done its best to close up Bob Jones University. They hate everything we stand for. Tell you the truth, I hate about everything they stand for, too, so it's mutual. I love righteousness. I hate injustice. I love freedom. I hate tyranny. And what a rascally, tyrannical administration we have today. You say, I don't think Christian ought to speak out against the government. Why not? The president works for us. This is not a monarchy. The government of this country is supposed to be of the people and by the people and for the people. Today it's of the tyrants and by the tyrants and for the tyrants. We're going to have to have a return to a real blessing of God in America or we'll never see a change. It'll be worse. You'll be slaves when you hear this. If we don't have something happen in America, the Lord doesn't come. It's where the Spirit of the Lord is there's liberty. And God's given great liberty to Bob Jones University because the Spirit of God has had his way in this place. And the Word of God has been our only law, and the light of the Gospel has been the message that we try to take out. Now, God says there's an open door before you. No man can shut it. Oh, people will try to shut it. Sure they will. But God says no man's going to shut that door. Listen, when God opens it, it stays open until God closes it. And God says, I'm going to shut some doors. Now, maybe God will close this door. People will say, well, the government finally closed Bob Jones University up. Well, when you hear that, you know the government didn't do it. God permitted it to be done but I believe with all my heart as long as we are true to the word of God as long as we are faithful in our commission and continue to exalt Jesus Christ and keep the emphasis where it belongs God's going to keep this door open because he's going to need a witness until the Lord comes and as other schools fall by the wayside this one's going to stand and we're going to be an example and an encouragement we say, my dad used to say Bob Jones University is more than an educational institution it's a face of a Christian testimony, and God's blessing's been on that testimony. We're like a flagpole flying the banner. We're like a lighthouse sending out the light. And our purpose isn't only to be a blessing to our students. Our purpose isn't only to just give a good Christian education, send out people. Our purpose through these years has been to make God's Word known to everybody, and to love those that love the Lord, and oppose those who oppose the Lord. Now, God's blessed that stand. How God's blessed it. Now, God says to us, you know, there's going to be a time when men will turn away. They'll heap to themselves teachers having itching ears. They'll be turned from truth to fables. That's all you can be if you turn your back on the truth of God's words. You're going to be turned to fables. God says, if a man, yea, an angel from heaven preach any other doctrine, let him be damned. Say, that's pretty strong language. Cast out, accursed, translate it like you please. But God says that if any man come to you, no matter how nice he looks and how nice he talks, if he doesn't tell you the Word of God and tells you something contrary to the Word of God, God says let him be accursed. We are seeing the building up of the big church of Antichrist. All Rome's gonna be there. Pope Paul's the present pope. Poor Paul, the pope in his purple, in his crimson and scarlet and white, I bet that his wine makes him burple when he tosses and tumbles at night. He's facing some problems, but he's an old rascal. They're all rascals, these popes. They're antichrists. And you'll find that Protestants are running off, so-called Protestants and Baptists, seeking allowances. I saw not so long ago where the pastor of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas, a man named Criswell, a real phony, that fellow, published his greeting from the pope in his church paper. He'd taken 400 people there a year or two ago to see the Pope. Imagine that, a Southern Baptist. Well, they didn't strike you strange at all 25 years from now. That may be so commonplace. You won't be surprised. But it still surprises me. But we're coming on toward the end of the age, and God says, Occupy till I come. Thus far hath the Lord led us. And thank God he's the same yesterday, today, and forever. Moses said, Whom shall I tell that people, God down in Egypt, whom will I say sent me? And God says, thus shalt thou say unto them, I am hath sent me. Let me tell you, young people, the great God I am has sent Bob Jones University to this land and to this world for this hour. And all he demands is faithfulness. Oh, we don't turn out a lot of great men. We've turned out some unusual men. Most people are ordinary people. And I don't expect we'll turn out a lot of great men. But we're interested in turning out faithful men. God says, that which I have committed unto you, you are to commit to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. Faithfulness is the great essential. It's the greatest of gifts. It's the greatest mark of character. The faithful man. And my prayer for you in the days that lie ahead, some of you yet unborn, unconceived. Some of you whose parents have not yet married. You're not, as somebody said, even a glint in your father's eye. You will hear this, if the Lord wills. And I'm thinking of you. We want this institution to be a blessing to preserve men from the apostasy, and to give a light in the midst of the darkness of this closing age. Don't betray us. But I believe God's preparing us for the future, whatever it may be. And whatever it may be, we want it to be to His glory. And we want Bob Jones University to stand where it's always stood, winning souls, Getting converts, snatching brands from the burning. Young folks, that's big business. But you have to do it in the Lord's way as the Lord commands you in the Bible. You can't win souls and disabenish the Word of God and get a reward for those souls. So I pray that God will make you rich in fruit, but that God will make your lives redound to the praise of His glory. And that if the Lord tarries, this institution 25 years from now, 50 years from now on its 100th anniversary, This institution will be what it has been from the beginning, God's institution, standing on the Word of God, lifting up the banner of the Lord Jesus Christ, giving Him preeminence in all things, for we love Him, and He's all and in all and above all, and I pray that He may be in you all. May God bless you. You've heard a message by Dr. Bob Jones, Jr., who during the latter part of his life served as Chancellor of Bob Jones University. This message was recorded May 24, 1977, and heard for the first time in a special 75th anniversary service during the 2002 Bible Conference. You can order a cassette copy from the campus store, Bob Jones University, Greenville, South Carolina, 29614. Please enclose a check for $5.13. Listen each weekday at this time for The Chapel Hour, sponsored by Bob Jones University.