hear much about, and that is
the privilege, and that's a very dull word to use for it, the
privilege of worship. I want to read part of the book
of the Revelation in the fifth chapter, Revelation 5, reading
from verse 1. And I saw in the right hand of
him that sat on the throne a book, written within and on the back,
sealed with seven seals. And I saw a strong angel proclaiming
with a loud voice, Who is worthy to open the book and to loose
the seals thereof? And no man in heaven or earth,
neither under the earth, was able to open the book, neither
to look thereon. And I wept much because no man
was found worthy to open and to read the book, neither to
look thereon. And one of the elders saith unto me, Weep not.
Behold, a lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, hath
prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof.
And I beheld, and lo, in the midst of the throne, and of the
four beasts, and in the midst of the elders, to the Lamb as
it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are
the seven spirits of God sent forth into all the earth. and
he came and took the book out of the right hand of him that
sat upon the throne and when he had taken the book the four
beasts and four and twenty elders fell down before the lamb having
every one of them hearts and golden vials full of odours which
are the prayers of the saints and they sang a new song saying
thou art worthy to take the book and to open the seal thereof
for thou was slain and hath redeemed us to God by thine own blood
out of thy every kindred and tongue and people and nation." Some years ago, as a matter of
fact about 200, so it's before my time, there was a biographer
in England, he was a kind of, well he was partly a biographer
and partly a historian, and he was a Christian. and he found
out that a businessman in London was going to Scotland not to
see the historic sites not to see where the covenanters were
persecuted and buried but he went to hear preachers and it
was a risk because he went by stagecoach and Edinburgh would
be about I suppose 250 maybe 300 miles from London and that
was a hazardous job They used to mug people in those days,
did you know that? Except the folk were nicer, they
wore velvet jackets and they had diamonds on their daggers,
so it was much more exciting. And yet John Wesley said that
though he travelled 240,000 miles, can you imagine that on horseback? And many times at night, never
once was he stopped by a highwayman. That's a pretty good record,
isn't it? Sounds as though God keeps his promise. He'll give
his angels charts concerning us. This man by the name of Woodrow
went to see the man who had been on his wonderful vacation in
London, in Scotland, and asked him what he thought about the
preaching there. And he said, I went to St. Andrew's Cathedral
and I heard a man by the name of Robert Blair, and he showed
me the majesty of God. Scotland did have, Scotland still
has some of the greatest preachers in the world. I forgot the name
of the man who for the moment was offered the chair as the
president of one of the most prestigious universities in the
world, Edinburgh University, and he turned it down at 40 years
of age to just take a pastorate up the road in the fields amongst
a few ordinary, ordinary people. They still have some great giants
in the pulpit. And he said, I went and I heard this marvelous man
Blair, he showed me the majesty of God. The next I saw a proper
old man. Well, old men are usually proper,
but this one was old and he said, well favored, I suppose he's
a little more weight than I have. And he said, I was thinking at
the time of the revelation I got from Blair of the majesty of
God, that David Dixon, I have one of his reprint books, said
he showed me all my heart. Now that's a big come down from
seeing the majesty of God. And then he said I stayed a little
longer and I went and heard a little fair man by the name of Samuel
Rutherford. Maybe some of you have read his
life story. If you haven't you should get
it. He he wasn't the author but out of his many writings a lady
called mrs cousins wrote that hymn the sands of time are sinking
the dawn of heaven breaks he has a lovely stanza in that hymn
in which he says i've never noticed if this is true i've checked
the bride eyes not her garments but her dear bridegroom's face
i will not gaze on glory but on the king of grace not at the
crown he gifts us but on his pierced hand when found where
glory dwelleth in Emmanuel's land. I listened, he said, almost
tremblingly to Blair as he showed me the awesome majesty of God.
I listened with fear as Dixon unveiled to me my own heart.
But I listened with my eyes just swollen and my face running with
tears as Samuel Rutherford showed me the loveliness of Christ. Now maybe when you've been to
church Sunday morning you'll be able to check up and see which
revelation you got from your preacher. Would it be the loveliness
of Christ? Would it be that he took you
by your fingers and took you down into the deep parts of your
being? That is one man-death to say. Searched all my heart, the secret
springs, the motives that control, the chambers where I polluted
things, hold empire all the soul. Search till thy fiery glance
hath cast its holy light through all, and I by grace am brought
at last before thy face to fall." I'm afraid very often we go out
of church as we went in, don't you think so? There's been no
deep impact on our spirit, we're not eternity conscious anymore,
we've not been bathing in the great revelation of the holiness
of God. You know, as we were singing tonight, crown me with...
I love that hymn, not because it's English, but Matthew Bridges
wrote it, crown me with many crowns. And you know, as I sang
that, I thought, one day God is going to take vengeance on
every sinner in the world. For everybody who's blasphemed
the name of Jesus today, for everyone who's cheated on his
name, who call themselves by his name, And we're not to take
the name of the Lord our God in vain. That doesn't mean on
your lips. It means if you profess to be a Christian, that you do
a substandard act, you've taken his name in vain. Because somebody
says, if that's Christianity, I don't want it anyhow. I still believe the most awesome
thing in the world, in this twisted rotten age in which we live,
is to profess to be a Christian. Now one day God is going to take
vengeance on this world. I can't wait. I've been waiting
over 70 years, nearly 76 now, and you know it gets more exciting
as I get nearer the goal. I used to have an assistant pastor,
and he would say at the end of the day, well brother Len, a
day's march nearer home. That's an old hymn you won't
remember that many of you. A day's march nearer home. Three things in the life of a
Christian. Number one, one exercise is prayer, which again is preoccupation
with our needs. Praise, which is preoccupation
with our blessings. And worship, which is preoccupation
with God. Remember Jesus met that woman
at the well and she was worshiping. He didn't argue about that. But
he said, you worship, you know not what. They commanded at least twice
in two great psalms to worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. In the 45th psalm the psalmist
says, all thy garments, in his speaking of Jesus Christ, all
thy garments smell of myrrh and of aloes and of kaffir. Now there's
a mixture for you. Tungent, aromatic, almost take
your breath away, indeed they would take your breath away,
but he's considering the beauty of Christ. You see, he appeals
on the level that we poor mortals live. We see things, we smell
things, we taste things, oh taste and see. He says that the Lord
is good. Now the Lord, as we've reminded
ourselves during these days, at least In the European concepts
of worship, usually we stand to sing all hymns. Visitors to
America can never understand why we sit down all the time.
We're always sitting in our cars, we sit at home, so why not sit
in church? But I'll tell you an advantage of standing. If
you're sitting, you can be looking around like this, but if you're
standing, somehow you concentrate more. So we stand to sing, and
we kneel to pray, and we prostrate ourselves to worship. At least
we should. In one of my many private interviews
with Dr. Tozer, he said to me one day,
Len, let others do as they like. You and I will worship God face
downward. Not far from where I lived in
England, there's a little place called Bristol. There's a room
there. It didn't look much longer than
this back door. Maybe it was ten by ten by ten
by ten. It hadn't got a window in it.
And it was used by an associate of John Wesley, a man by the
name of John Nelson. And he would not have any windows
in his study because they'd distract, he said. He might look at the
birds or the flowers or something else. So he shut himself up in
that little room. He had a chair a bit higher than
this with a hard back and he'd have a shelf at the back. That
wasn't to serve his meal on either. He carried that to the village
and he turned the chair around and he preached and put his Bible
on the back of it. and he said one day some men knocked him
out of the chair and they had clogs they have a brass cap on
the toe and they have ribs of iron underneath and he said they
jumped on me and jumped on my chest and said we'll kick the
Holy Ghost out of you and he said I was very sore but I just
got up and prayed father forgive them they don't know what they're
doing most of us would expect somebody to write a book about
us but anyhow that was the way of life But he did not want any
distraction or subtraction. Now we mentioned, was it last
time we were here, we mentioned about the woman who brought an
alabaster box of ointment which was very precious and she came,
in my judgment, just for one thing. She came to worship the
Lord. How do you get to that conclusion?
Because, number one, she never said a word. Number two, she
brought the most costly thing that she had. And worship is
costly. And true worship means it's a
combination, as far as I'm concerned, it's a combination of concentration
and adoration and contemplation and meditation and fascination. Adoration is excessive praise,
delirious joy. Now come on, let me put you under
some pressure here. When last were you deliriously
joy with the reality of the risen Son of God? Oh, it's easy to
say we have a home eternal in the heavens not made with hands.
So what? Supposing you had a mansion somewhere in this great state
of Dallas, I was going to say, this great state of Texas. and
you were going to inherit everything you wanted to run it, and you
were going to be able to live there for a hundred years with servants
and every adequate thing that you needed, I think you might
get a little excited about it. We have a home eternal in the
heavens prepared, according to John 14, again prepared by none
other than the Lord Jesus Christ. Now I said we fall down, we fall
down to worship. Right, so the book of Revelation,
if you want to take these down you can do it, or you can get
a tape on this. You get this again, I'm not going
to give you the quotes, just the scriptures. Revelation 1.17,
Revelation 5.8, Revelation 5.14, Revelation 7.11, Revelation 11.16,
Revelation 19.4, and Revelation 22.8. And you remember perhaps in Genesis
17 there came a servant, there came somebody rather, in dazzling
splendor to the tent that Abraham was in, and Abraham fell down
at his feet. Jesus went into the upper room
at his resurrection and again they fell down at his feet. There's an experience in grace,
which I guess most of us have had, I hope so, called justification. Thus God, in his infinite mercy,
when we've repented of our sins and asked his forgiveness, he
eradicates all the record of our sin, and to play on the word
as we do to children sometimes, justification is just as if I'd
never done it. He's wiped the record clean.
But here is justification, and sanctification is as high above
justification as justification is above the sinner's state.
By the same token, there's an experience in God, an experience
of prayer. And prayer is on this level,
but intercession is as high above prayer as adoration is above praise. I don't think many people ever
enter into this experience, to tell you the truth. Worship is my conscience quickened by the holiness of God. Worship is my response to the
activation of the Spirit in my heart. Therefore, if I'm dull
of comprehension about the things of God, he's not going to provoke
me. He can't provoke me because I don't have the spiritual susceptibility
to respond to the things that God is saying in his word. Now
I don't know how you get on with the book of the revelation, it
still mystifies me. To me it's a book of mystery,
it's a book of majesty, and it's a book of misery. Because it
shows me the ultimate doom of the wicked. You know somebody
has said, I've said this before maybe, that in this day in which
we live there are just three kinds of people in the world.
Those who are afraid, those who don't know enough to be afraid
and those who know their bibles how in the world of people get
through a world like this unless they have a foundation that cannot
be shaken Remember at the end of Hebrews 11, everything that
can be shaken will be shaken, that the kingdom that cannot
be shaken may remain. God is going to break up this universe,
he's going to break up all world systems in order that he may
glorify his son. Everybody has owed their life
to Jesus Christ, whether they're living or they've been dead a
thousand years, they owe that life to God. And at the end of
the journey he's going to make everybody pay for their deficiencies,
for their sin, for their selfishness, for everything else that just
jammed up their lives instead of yielding that life to God. Now I think this is one of the
most awesome chapters in the book of Revelation. Revelation
5, I saw in the right hand of him that sat upon the throne
a book written within and on the back side sealed with seven
seals. Notice the angel, I noticed a
strong angel crying with a loud voice 13 times in the book of
the revelation it mentions crying with a loud voice. There's nothing
secretive about it. This is everything as we sing
in an old hymn or we used to sing in an old hymn. When the
trumpet of the Lord shall sound and time shall be no more. It's
going to be someday when God blows out the sun. When God brings
every army, every government, every system to a standstill
that finally we may stand there before his eternal throne. It's breathtaking to see this
because I think of all the things in eternity, this is one of the
most awesome things. An angel proclaimed with a loud
voice and says, Who is worthy to look on the book, to open
the book, and to lose the seals thereof? Now, no man in heaven
or earth, neither under the earth, was able to open the book. Now
what is the book? In my judgment, the book is the
type of deeds of the universe. They were forfeited by Adam when
he sinned. And the scripture is very clear
that this world is in the lap of the evil one. The scripture
calls him the prince of this world. The scripture calls him
the god of this world. And it says there was no man who was
found worthy to open the book. You know, men have tried to put
this world back together again so many times. If I said to you
before, that nursery rhyme You know, you called it so easily
to children, Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall and Humpty Dumpty had
a great fall. That's theology. You wonder,
this child didn't understand it, you don't, so how could he
understand it? And as I told you, of course,
you've been illuminated, that Humpty Dumpty is actually, is
mankind for, it's a picture of an egg, of course, and Humpty
Dumpty falls off the wall and as we say so often, anybody can
scramble eggs who can unscramble them. Once there was a fall,
the fall of man. Humpty Dumpty fell off and broke
to pieces. We've been trying to put him
back together again. The Babylonians said they'd do
it. Remember that great city of Babylon was built by permission
of Alexander the Great? The king at that time, the king
of Babylon, had a wife who was used to living in mountains.
And it was very flat. So you may remember anyhow, not
the fact, but you remember the historic fact that he had a mountain
built in the middle of the city for her. And one of the seven
wonders of the world, at least the old world, I don't know about
today, but one of the seven wonders of the world was the hanging
gardens that were the hanging gardens of Babylon. And Babylon
thought it could put mankind together again. And it ended
up in all its devilry. It's a slur now to say a city
is like Babylon. They couldn't do it. The Greeks
thought they could do it with their intellectual splendor.
And yet, you know, most of those leading Greeks, those scholars
that we are always talking about, were homosexuals. And Greece couldn't put it back
together again. And then Rome came with its strong arm. My
dear sweetheart and I used to live in the city of Bath in England.
It was founded in 55 BC. There's a bath there, the only
hot spring in England. Around it you have the statues
of Tiberius Caesar and Julius Caesar and Caligula and all the
other famous guys. But they couldn't put it right
again. You know in 1912 there was a
class of people in England called the Fabian Socialists. And I
remember every time we picked up newspapers, or my folk did,
and I heard people talking, they were talking about H.G. Wells,
a red-bearded rebel by the name of George Bernard Shaw, Julian
Huxley, the Reds, just an elite group of super-intellectuals,
who in 1912 said, we can put the world right, we don't need
the church, or the Bible, or Christ, We can pull down the
hills of wealth, fill in the valleys of poverty, make the
crooked faces sick. We can change the world by intellectual
and biological processes. That was two years before World
War I. At the end of the World War I,
1919, they weren't very sure. 1919 to 1939, 20 years in which
the Church, I believe, had the greatest opportunity she's had
since Penny Carson. She'd muffed the whole thing.
1939, up came Hitler. Remember Nostradamus
had said that in 1939, he said in the 1500s there'll be a war
in Europe led by a man by the name of Hister. Well, he wasn't
far out, I'd give him an A- for that. Not Hister, he said, it
would be Hister, but it was Hitler. And we had a war till 1945, and
at the end of the war in 1945, the man was going to put the
world right by intellectual and biological processes. And changing
the educational system, by 1945 he wrote his last book. Mined at the end of its tether,
he said. And he said, there's no hope
for humanity. What a dismal thing. He'd written
his outline of the world history, he'd written crux ansata that
got him into trouble with the Roman church. But you see, these
men have all felt that somehow. You remember Swinburne? Glory
to man in the highest, for man is the master of things. And
there are some people still foolish enough to think that somehow
we're going to pull, to say again, a rabbit out of a bag. Human
nature is totally incurable. We were down in an area, I won't
say where it is, I might get into more trouble, but it's where
all the millionaires came in the yachts. The Christian brother
came in his yacht, one and a quarter million dollars. Heaven help
him at the judgment seat. He ripped a sail. The sails cost
half a million dollars on that soupy yacht. Had a crew of twenty-three. You know, I looked around those
folk, I didn't envy them one thing. Not one thing. They rush
to the taverns at night, they run to the dance halls at night.
They could not find comfort. They're just, just nationalized
like so many Christians are with materialism. You know, when I
sing a hymn like, Crown Him With Many Crowns, I never sing it
through. I always sing to my good friend John there, he likes
that hymn. Crown Him With Many Crowns. Calling the Lord of Peace. People say today, we've lived
so long through so many wars, is there no answer? Sure there's
an answer. The answer is in the Prince of Peace. The answer is
in the greatest remedy that was ever given to man in the Sermon
on the Mount. The most majestic thing ever
uttered by the most majestic man who ever lived. Have you ever wondered how it
is that the world can accept you so easily when it couldn't
accept him? The holiest man that ever lived
never did one wrong thing all his life, and yet they were booting
him, kicking him around, spitting on him, cast him out of his home,
cast him out of the synagogue, and yet you and I somehow expect
to be treated so nice, so comfortable. There's an old hymn that says,
Is this vile lord a friend to grace to help me unto God? You see the scripture is very
explicit and I can't preach it all obviously, but it says if
we suffer we shall also reign with him. Now all of life is over. Here in this first chapter. Here's somebody on the throne,
he has the title deeds of the universe, and no man, listen
to it, no man Don't you think Alexander the
Great could do that? He conquered the world by the time he was
27. What about some of these great men down here? What about
Hezekiah and Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel? What about the Apostle
Paul? Surely here's a he-man, here's
a strong man in the Spirit. Can't he walk up? Can't he volunteer
and bow the knee and say, Jesus, I'll take the book out of your
hand, or the one on the throne? And he said no man was found
worthy. And then he says, I wet much. You know that word is only used
twice? The Greek word there, wet. It isn't somebody who's
just feeling a little hurt. It's somebody weeping with anguish.
It's the same word that's used of Jesus when he looked at a
city called Jerusalem and he's saying in his heart, you mad,
insane people. Almighty God has given you the
greatest men that ever lived. You've had Isaiah, you've had
Jeremiah, you've had major prophets, you've had minor prophets, and
you've destroyed every one of them. All Jerusalem now that
killeth the prophets. And he wets over its stupidity. You tell your preacher from me
that a wet-eyed preacher will never preach dry sermons. The trouble people come to the
altar without being broken is the preachers are not broken. And they've no right to demand
brokenness unless they're broken in God's name. Is there anything
more exciting? Is there anything greater in
the world to preach from the gospel of the grace of God? Oh, I had
a couple of fellas came to see me this week. They rubbed my
nose in the dust. They didn't know they were doing
it. One was going to come back tonight, he hasn't come, but
he's living in Thailand now. He's a young man from India,
God told him to come here and link up, and I hope we can link
up with him. God gave him a vision, there
in poor India, that the 24th of April next year, better put
it down there, Betty and the other Betty and all the rest
of you, 24th of April next year is to be a day of prayer and
fasting for worldwide revival. Great. He said, look, I've got
a letter here from Dr. Cho. Dr. Cho is preaching, I
think, this week actually in Dallas. He's the man who has
a nice little church there in Korea, in Seoul. It has 250,000 members. I don't think that's a church,
that's a denomination. 250,000 people. And he showed me the lesson in
which he said, Brother John, I cannot be in the prayer meeting
myself, but we shall pray with you because every night in our
church, every night of every day in the year, pardon me, every
night in the year is a whole night of prayer in our church. Dear God, do you know a church
in America where they pray all night once a week? When I was a boy we used to pray
for career in all its heat and darkness and superstition and
all that. And now they have prayer meetings every night in the week.
And then they have a prayer mountain with about 4,000 people on the
prayer mountain every night in the week. Oh, I felt like saying, could
you shut up for a minute? We build our churches. Why in
God's name do we build them so big? A lady wrote me this week, we're
going to build an auditorium, a new auditorium, seating 9,000
people. For what? To use it an hour Sunday morning?
Because you can be sure of your life. If they have 9,000 Sunday
morning, they won't have 1,000 Sunday night. If you want to know how popular
the church is, you go Sunday morning. If you want to know
how popular the preacher is, you go Sunday night. If you want to
know how popular God is, you go to the prayer meeting. and
he loses every time. Well, that was part of my misery.
The other misery was a man came in from Africa. He'd been in
Nigeria. I said, how are things there? Oh, Brother Raymond, you'd
love to go to Nigeria. He said, if the service starts
at seven o'clock, the congregation comes at five. Two hours, they come in their
hundreds, and they pray, and they worship, and they have their
adoration, and man, you Oh mercy, anybody could preach
there. An atmosphere prepared for two hours with prayer and
intercession and supplication and expectation. Do you know why so often nothing
happens when we go to church? Because we have no expectations.
It's going to be like last Sunday, pretty dry and your face rewarded. Does it have to be that way?
Are we going to have to take shiploads of our pastors to Nigeria,
where people walk 10 miles to the meeting? And he said, Brother
Rainier, they pray. Oh, you should let them pray.
You should let them pray for two hours. and then the meeting
starts at 7 and then it finishes between 9 and 10 and then they
slip home and there's a curfew on the city because they've had
some trouble and he said they slip home and leave the wife
and children or leave the husband and the children and then they
slip back to church and you can't go out till 6 the next morning
so they go back to church at 11 o'clock and they pray till
6 in the morning oh lord We kind of want God to
bless us because we give him a dollar in the Sunday morning
offering. Huh? Lord, you die for me, but I'm
not dying for you. We say, Lord, help me to live
for you. He doesn't want you to live for him, he wants you
to die for him. If we can get you to die for him, he'll see
about the living part. Won't be any problem about that.
Now come on, here is John. John's in this awesome situation. Oh, look, look, look. Again,
when did you last go to the sanctuary? And again, somebody like Mr. Blair showed you the majesty
of God. We very, very, very seldom have
an unveiling of God. As I said before, when did you
last tiptoe out of the church Sunday morning, breathless, because
you'd had a confrontation with God? Or as I said before, and
I say every meeting I go to, did you even come to this meeting
tonight? Did you come here to meet God, or did you come to
hear a sermon about him? Do you go to church actually
to have a confrontation with deity, with holiness? Hmm? Or do you go because you're in
the choir? or your daddy's a pastor or a deacon. I mean, is yours
really a love relationship? We borrow crutches in our worship. Charles Wesley's wonderful hymn,
Jésus, lover of my soul. Thou, O Christ, art all I want.
Dear God, if he was, we'd turn the world upside down. He isn't
all we want. We want so many other periphery
things, perishing things of clay, as I think A. B. Simpson called
them. John has had a vision of the Lord Jesus Christ. What is
he like? Terrible, terrible. Oh, I think when I see him it'll
be wonderful. No, no, no. You sang tonight, Lo, the tokens
of his passion, though in glory still he bears. On the resurrection
they didn't know if it was him. He showed them his hands and
his feet. They were pierced. And I believe those are eternal,
eternal monuments. Every time we see him, Hail thou once despised Jesus,
hail thou Galilean King." They're going to see him in all
his glory. John laid his head on the bosom of Jesus and heard
that divine heartbeat, and he knew, you say, God doesn't ask
favourites. Sure he has favourites. Always
did and always will. When he went to the death chamber
of Jairus' daughter, he took with him who? Peter, James and John. When he
went on the Mount of Transfiguration, he took with him Peter, James
and John. And then it's John who declares
that out of Peter, James and John there was a special affinity
between him and the Saviour. That disciple whom Jesus loved, And yet that same man who had
leaned, he'd slept with Jesus, eaten with Jesus, fasted with
Jesus, cast out demons with Jesus, and every other thing he'd shared
in the majesty of Jesus. And when he sees him in resurrection
splendor, he says, I tell you, his feet is dead! Well, they ask you in God's name,
what do you think you and I are going to do? Oh, Dr. George used to say to
me, Len, if there's anything that irritates me, it's these
fellows who think they're going to buddy-buddy with Jesus when
they see him. I served you for 20 years. I won so many souls.
I gave out so many thousands of tracts. I did this, that and
the other. I believe that worship is adoration. I believe it's speechless adoration.
John Stephen, his hair is white as snow, his feet are like burnished
brass, his face is like the sun in its strength, his eyes are
like living coals, can you imagine that? I've heard people say,
I don't like to look so and so in the eye, his eyes go right
through me. Oh my, his eyes will go right through us in that day.
Hmm? Hail thou once despised of Jesus,
hail thou Galilean king. The head that once was crowned
with thorns is crowned with glory now. God is going to get every
bit of praise that he should have had out of every redeemed
person, even though they were not redeemed. He's going to say,
well, all that you missed in your lifetime, you're going to
have to pay it back in worship and adoration once before you
go to eternal hell. I work much. Isaiah's let me down, Jeremiah's
let me down, the Apostle Paul can't do it. Is there no man
can do it? No one was found worthy to open
the book. And one of the elders said unto me, Weep not, the Lamb
of the tribe of Judah hath prevailed to open the book, and loose the
seals thereof. And I beheld the six in the midst
of the throne, and of the four beasts in the midst of the elders,
to the Lamb as it had been slain. I think that Lamb is mentioned
27 times in this marvellous book of Revelation. But the book of
Revelation is not only the end book, at the end of the book,
but it's about things that happen after the end of the book, and
after the end of time. And I'm sure that this John was
there when John Baptist said, away there in the wilderness,
behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world. And
he's seen Christ as a sacrificial lamb, as the Passover lamb. Weep
not, as one who has prevailed. And he came, verse 7, and took
the book out of the right hand of him that sat on the throne.
That word there, lamb, is very interesting because it's used
again in Greek only twice in the New Testament. Lovest thou
me? Lord, you know I love thee. Feed
my sheep. Lovest thou me? Peter's a bit itchy about this,
he doesn't like the pressure. Feed my sheep. Peter, do you
really love me? Yes. Feed my lambs. Do you remember in the Old Testament
they used to have to keep a lamb for three or four days? They
could keep it in the house and then they shed its blood. The actually Greek, I guess here,
actually means my pet lamb. My pet lamb alone is able, because
it's not only the lamb, it's the lion. I'm told that there's nothing
that celebrates, if you want to call it that, celebrates its
anger more furiously with greater power than an infuriated ram. It's more fierce than the lion.
That is in its air, in its capacity. Jesus Christ is the pet lamb.
He is the Passover lamb. He's to take the burden. Think
of it. By one man's sin. By one man's disobedience. That
was it. No, he didn't commit adultery. Oh no, he didn't steal.
No, he didn't beat somebody up. One man's disobedience. You see,
we think people have to commit vulgar sins, horrible sins, sins
that you couldn't even mention the name. Well, maybe you could
these days on TV or something. They're just bloody and they're
horrible, sexual, perversion. Yuck! They almost make you want
to throw up. And yet the greatest sin in the
world isn't one of those. The greatest sin is to say, I'll
rule my life and not let God rule it. You see, this worship, their
adoration is so wonderful that one day there was a person in
heaven and he was the most glorious cherubim. Every precious stone
was his covering. I think he was not only head
of the angels, he was head of the cherubim and the seraphim.
And when he saw that the angels veiled their faces, the cherubim
couldn't look on God. How in the world will you and
I look on him? When the sun gets too bright,
you put your shades on and say, oh well, that's more comfortable.
Well angels don't have shades and so they look through their
wings to gauge upon the Holy One in Isaiah 6. And then with
two wings they cover themselves because they couldn't bear the
blazing light of God's eyes upon them like his eyes are the flame
of fire. The Lamb glory, glory dwelleth in Emmanuel's
land." And it says here that the lamb came and he took the
book. What is the book? Well, a sealed
book was a standing sign of an alienated or a lost territory,
let's put it as simple as that. And unless there's somebody who
can come forward and take the type of deeds out of the one
that sits on the throne, and I believe this is the last great
thing in eternity, I may be wrong, then we can't enter into our
final inheritance. There are two things we've got
to get yet. And I'm looking forward to mine, you he-men may not,
but we're going to have a body like unto his glorious body.
My, that will be wonderful, eh? Nobody will check your blood
pressure. No angels running around heaven taking your blood pressure,
you know. No headaches. Gabriel doesn't come and say,
do you want an aspirin this morning? They're going to have a body
like unto his glorious body. Won't have any blood in him.
Because he left his blood at the cross and he said, a body,
my body doesn't have blood, it has flesh and bones. He didn't
mention blood, he'd left his blood. Am I going to have a body like
unto his glorious body? It's a good job we have because
you know heaven is so wonderful if we didn't we'd burst at the
seams or we'd burst at the veins or something. He came and took the book out
of the hand of him that sat upon the throne. Oh won't it be awesome to see
that? He doesn't say we'll fall at
his feet, but you remember Daniel when he saw the one that appeared
to him, he says, oh my strength left me, I passed out. I'm sure we're going to have
a reinforced and glorious body. John fell at his feet as dead. A woman brought alabaster box
of ointment, do you wonder? You know, I wonder, I can't prove
this, you can't disprove it, but I think maybe that when the
Apostle Paul was caught up into the third heaven that he had
a vision of all this. I think Moses at the banquet
there in Egypt when all the lust and lying and women went topless
in those days watching you under the sun and they spent days and
days at a feast and they had a vomitarium when they got full
they tickled their throats and threw each other and came back
and ate like the Romans did. Um, I don't know how long that marriage
supper of the lamb is going to take, but it's going to be a
very, very awesome thing to sit down with Abraham and Isaac and
all the saints of all the ages. Just because one day we repented
of our sins, and what did we give him? We gave him nothing
but corruption, we gave him nothing but failure. We were doomed for a lost eternity.
Our names were already reserved in hell and he crossed our names
out and he put them in the book of life that nobody can touch. He came and took the book out
of the right hand of him that sat on the throne and when he
had taken the book, the four beasts and four and twenty elders
fell down. Here you are, they fall down.
Notice in verse 10 of the previous chapter, the four and twenty
elders all fall down before him that sat on the throne, and they
worship him. They worship him. Again, worship is something that
we do face downward. I'm not quite sure that we can
worship God in a crowd, to tell you the truth. Have you noticed
when they show pictures of the Ayatollah Khomeini and others
there in Iraq and other countries, they show you a mosque with hundreds
and hundreds of what? Men, no women. And they leave
their shoes outside because they won't bring the filth of the
world into the holy place. And God says to Moses, take off
thy shoes from off thy feet, that's contamination. You've
been walking this way, now forget all that, and you come and stand
in my holy presence. I believe that when that bush
was on fire, it was a shekinah glory of God that was there. God invaded it. Do you think
that Moses ever forgot that vision when he was languishing on that
bed with all those heathens? and he renounced what? Because
you see there's a fundamental thing in worship and it is sacrifice
and the Hebrews 11 says he chose rather to suffer affliction with
the children of God rather than enjoy the pleasures of sin for
a season choosing the reproach of Christ. Who told him about
Christ? Well I'm convinced the Holy Spirit did. The Spirit that
brooded over the face of the waters and out of chaos he brought
cosmos. After total darkness, he brought
light. That vision that Moses had, it
was easy to surrender after that. Sure, I'm going to preach on
it Sunday night. Do you want to come and hit me? I'm going to Oylton,
just outside Oral Roberts' place. Oral doesn't know I'm going there.
Anyhow, I'm going up there and I think I'm going to preach on
Moses. Coming out of that great kingdom and then 40, 40 weeks? No, no, no. You ever try 40 hours
by yourself, shut the door, let nobody in, take the phone off? 40 hours? You'll think it's 40
years by the time you're through. Put the cat out, put the dog
out, stay by yourself. But not for 40 hours, not for
40 days, not for 40 weeks, for 40 years! Ah yes, he'd gone down Main Street
and the band played and everybody saluted and said, His Excellency
Moses, he's the son of Pharaoh's daughter, he's going to be Rameses
III, he's a marvellous genius, read the 7th chapter of Acts
of the Apostles, he was mighty in word, he wasn't an orator
because he stammered, but he was a statesman, he was mighty
indeed, he ruled other people. And that man suddenly is transferred
from all the excellency in a silken couch, somebody using ostrich
feathers to keep him cool at night, they had no cooling system,
and now he's at the back of the desert with some stinking sheep. Boy, that's a come down, isn't
it? Oh yes, come on now, you stand
up and sing almost without a tear or an emotion, will the whole
realm of nature mine that were a present far too small? Love
so amazing, so divine, shall have my soul, my life, my all.
Well he shouldn't put that measure in it, but he didn't say that
originally. Demand my soul, my life, my all. Does Christ have to give all
and I give him only a measurement of what I have? Am I in control
of what I have? I like this great American hymn,
My Faith Looks Up To Thee. I preached in that church on
Boston Common and asked that we had it, because it was written
there. My Faith Looks Up To Thee. As thou hast died for me, it
says, O may my love to thee, pure, warm and changeless, be
a living fire. There's only one way he can be
a constant living fire, and that is to gaze on his holiness, gaze
on his majesty, gaze on his beauty, to worship him. If we really worshipped God,
we'd never backslide. If you worshipped God, if you
saw through into eternity, you'd never, never, never let anything
or anybody get you down. You'd never expect to get good
treatment in a war like this, not even from believers very
often. If you haven't discovered it,
you will discover it. It's easy to stand the criticism of... what was it saying, Psalm 1,
about the sinners? the criticism of sinners, contradiction
of sinners. That's not too bad, you don't
expect much else. You get contradiction of sinners, it's criticism of
saints that gets you down. Particularly when they're trying
to choke the way that you're treading with God, when you're
treading on a higher elevation, when you made a decision that
makes them look a bit shabby because you've made a deeper
commitment, if you want to put it that way. Let's go back a minute here into
this fourth chapter. And verse six. Before the throne
there was a sea of glass like unto crystal in the midst of
the throne, and round about the throne were four beasts full
of eyes. Actually that's a bad translation. The real translation
is four living ones. They weren't beasts in the sense
that we think of animals. four living ones full of eyes
before and behind them. The first living one was like
a lion, the second like a calf, the third had the face of man,
the fourth was like an eagle. And the four living ones had
each of them six wings and they were full of eyes within and
they rest not day or night singing what? Holy, holy, holy is which
was and is and is to come And when those beasts gave, or those
living ones gave, glory and honor and thanks to him that sat on
the throne, who liveth forever and ever, the four and twenty
elders fell down before him that sat on the throne, and they worshipped
him that liveth forever, crowning with many crowns the Lamb upon
his sword. The four and twenty elders, their
eyes are suddenly opened to the majesty of Jesus, and they take
their crowns and they cast them down. There's one hymn writer
says, till we cast our crowns before thee, lost in wonder and
love and praise. And they cast their crowns before
him and they worship him that liveth forever and ever. Now,
here's an interesting thing. Notice there's a doxology here.
If you want to go through these, I'll tell you what they are.
In Revelation 5 and verse 6 you'll find a two-fold doxology. I'm
not going to refer to it except to tell you. Revelation 1 and verse 6. Revelation
4 and verse 11, a three-fold doxology. Revelation 5 and verse
13, a four-fold doxology. And Revelation 7 and verse 12, there's a seven-fold doxology.
Let me read that to you. Notice again, all the angels
stood round about the throne, and the elders, and the four
beasts, and what did they do? Same old thing, they fell down
before the throne. How in the world do we keep standing?
Come on, let me ask you this, I feel a bit of anger almost,
didn't I? How in the world can church be
so dead, and preaching be so boring, with a god like this
to glorify? Why in God's name do we go into
eternity every Sabbath day and forget the stinking world around
us and come out with a perfume of eternity upon us? Within the
veil, Friedrich Ambré Allen said, within the veil, for only as
thou gazest upon the matchless beauty of his face, canst thou
become a living revelation of his great heart of love, his
untold grace. Within the veil, his fragrance
poured upon thee. The woman took the alabaster
box of ointment, she washed his feet with tears, not water, dried
the feet with the hair of a head, not a towel, poured the ointment
upon him that was worth a king's ransom, and then she dried his
feet with the hair of a head. What happened? The fragrance
she poured out on him came back on her. Doesn't that sound a
bit like the folk in the Acts of the Apostles? They took knowledge
of being with Jesus. Do you think anybody ever gasps
when we leave church and say, those people have a look of eternity,
they have a radiance in their faces. I say, what happened to
those folk? An English critic said he went
outside of an English church and he said he watched people
go in, they looked as though they were going to the dentist. He said, I waited an hour and
they came out, I thought they'd been. I tell you again that if the
Holy One, the Living One, the Christ of Glory came into our
assembly, if He walked in our midst like He walked in the midst
of the seven golden candlesticks, we'd either go out so radiant,
so on top of the world, with the world of flesh and the devil
beneath our feet and nothing would move us, or on the other
hand we'd go out eyes swollen with tears that there are millions
of people who could have this and they're going to eternal
hell. Because there's no middle ground. Back to verse 8 in chapter 5.
And when he had taken the book, the four beasts and fallen twenty
elders fell down before the Lamb, having every one of them hearts,
notice that, and golden vows full of orders which are the
prayers of the saints. Ah, the good book says that prayers
never die. What are these under the altar,
the prayers of saints? Keep this in mind, you younger
folk, particularly God's delays are not denials. The schedule is his, not mine. No, the schedule is his. It's his. I'm not here to give
him advice. He graciously, mercilessly says,
come unto me and lay your burden at my feet, but the timetable
is his. They fell down before the Lamb,
having every one of them hearts and vials, which are the prayers
of the saints, and they sang a new song. saying thou art worthy
to take the book and to open the seals thou hast redeemed
us to God by thy blood out of every kindred and tongue and
people and nation so to hell with communism the world isn't going to end
up in a communist state I still believe there's going
to be a super revival, a revival of Pentecost, but without Pentecost
or Pentecost. But I'm quite sure of this, that
the final word is with Jesus Christ. And people are coming
out of every kindred and nation and people and kind. Red, yellow,
black, white, bondsmen, freemen, people living today, people that
lived ten centuries back. There's only ever been one church
in the history of the world. Even with Israel, there was a
church in the wilderness. And they sang a new song, because
thou hast redeemed us to God by thy blood, about thy kindred,
and nation, and people, and tongue. And as may this, kings and priests,
notice now, you that want to live on cloud nine with a guitar,
and we shall reign on the earth." Uh-huh. There's going to be a new heaven
and a new? Oh. So we're going to live on this
earth? Yeah, I believe we are. I believe God is going to return
this world to a state of a perpetual, eternal garden of Eden. God never
designed sin to come in this world. Never designed that you
should prick your finger on a rose, there were no forms originally.
You could catch the bees and they wouldn't sting you, you
could stroke a lion, it wouldn't hurt you. And we're going to
rain on the earth. Oh, maybe we'll take excursions
for the weekend if you want to go up to heaven or somewhere.
I mean, you know, because there's a new heaven as well as a new
earth. Maybe there'll be a conference up there. You want to come and
hear me preach? Well, that's okay. I quite enjoy that. But you see,
God never wastes anything. There's going to be a new heaven.
There's going to be a new earth. We're going to be staggering
one day. You see a profession going along and saying, is that
a Gabriel the Archangel? No, that's a little fella that
wasted his life, people thought, up jungle tracks in there. Amazon, Central Africa, got fevers
and bitten with bugs and he was half crippled with rheumatism
and like old feet he stood. And what's he doing now? He's
ruling over five cities. Oh, he is, yeah. What's that
big TV guy doing, that big TV preacher? He's driving that preacher
around. That's what it says, it says
the first shall be last and the last shall be first. Some are
going to rule over five cities, some are going to rule over ten
cities. Sure, the dying thief rejoiced to see that fountain
in his day. Do you think he's going to have
the same reward as John Wesley? John Wesley was saved at 35 years
of age. Turn it round, it makes 53. Because
he served God 53 years. 53 and 35 make 88, in case you
didn't know. And he died at 88, and all he
left was six pound notes, six silver spoons, a small collection
of books, a Geneva gown he preached in, Something else, let's see, what
was it? Oh, the Methodist Church. Knew there was something. I was suggesting the dying thief
will have the same reward as John Wesley. Disciplined his
life, he fasted always. You're a Methodist preacher here,
aren't you, Methodist preacher? Good bless you. I used to be,
but I grew up. But anyhow, I remember talking
in London, the big Methodist cathedral right up Kitticorma
to Westminster Abbey. Dear Dr. Sanger, precious, one
of the holiest men I've ever met. I had the privilege of talking
with him, praying with him, and I discovered by accident he followed
John Wesley to Maxfield. He fasted all day Wednesday and
all day Friday, all his life, from the day he was saved. John Wesley did that. John Wesley
disciplined himself. He rode through the forest and
read with a book up to his eyes in the moonlight, riding on the
back of a horse. That's how he did it. Studied,
prayed, fasted, made money, lots of it. What did he do with it?
Built orphanages, built schools, printed Bibles, printed hymn
books. Oh, you see, we get away with
so much. Well, the Lord loves me. Did not happen the other
day. Do you know what somebody gave
me, somebody sent me? So what? I don't care what you've got.
I don't have one streak of envy in my body. I covet no man's
silver or gold or apparel. We were down a few weeks ago
there with lots and lots of millionaires. I don't covet a thing they've
got. Some have got their own planes, their own yachts, their
this, that, this. So what? Let me ask you a simple thing.
Maybe you have an answer to this. Did you ever see a funeral hearse
drawing a U-Haul? He didn't get that. Did you ever see a hearse drawing
a U-Haul? Can't take it with you, doesn't
matter how much it is, how big, how small, the value makes no
difference. So a smart American, this isn't quite Shakespeare,
but he says about your money, do your giving while you're living,
then you're knowing where it's going. Not too smart, but it's
pretty good anyhow. Hmm? They sang a new song, thou
hast redeemed us unto God by thy blood. My God, we've got
a song nobody else can sing. Doesn't matter about the tune
very much. I'm sure the Lord would rather
hear you if you sing like a crow than hear Gally Gertie or Pavarotti
or somebody else sing faultlessly, singing their nonsense. Where
do we get verse 10? And thou hast made us kings and
priests, and we shall reign on the earth. Now, and I beheld
and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne
of the beast and the elders, a number of them was ten thousand
to thousands, and thousands of thousands. Now notice what it
says, verse 11, saying, do you know a place in Any angel that lost its first
estate was never redeemed. It never got back into favour
with God. They are banished forever. They have no song to sing. They
are going to sing the song of Moses and of the Lamb. They were saying with a loud
voice, worthy is the Lamb that was slain
to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honour
and glory. And every creature, notice, that is in heaven, or
on the earth, or under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and
all that are in them, heard I saying, Blessing and honour and glory
and power be unto him that sitteth on the throne and unto the Lamb
for ever and ever." Now, without looking, how does the last psalm
finish, the 150th psalm? Huh? Yeah, but what's the exact
word? Right, let everything, give you
a mark for that. Let everything that hath breath. Oh, right,
that's just poetic license, you know. It's, what we call it,
well, it's extravagance, or it's, again, poetic license. No. Everything that hath breath,
says the psalmist, praise the Lord. What has breath? Every creature in heaven on the
earth, and such as are in the sea. Won't that be wonderful? I wonder
what kind of tune a shark sings. In a few weeks, maybe a few months,
we'll have the things I detest buzzing around your ear. These
horrible mosquitoes. And down here, the Texas side,
you know, the bigger than anywhere else. and they buzz and they
buzz and oh, when they bite me, man, I put weight on, I go up
like this, eh? I get in a terrible nest. I literally
believe with all my heart that one day those things, every time
they buzz in my ear, they'll be saying hallelujah. And they won't be able to sting
me. Everything that hath breath, can you imagine, the whole of
creation, every living bird, everything in the sea, if a fish
comes up it shouts hallelujah, praise the Lord or something.
Everything that has breath, every kindred, every people, every
nation, every tongue, are all going to join in the greatest
hallelujah chorus the world's ever heard. And what are they
going to say? They're going to say blessing
and honor and glory and power be unto him that sitteth on the
throne. and the four beasts said Amen, and again the four and
twenty elders fell down. That's three times. They must
get tired of standing up and falling down. Three times over
in this, the end of the last chapter and this chapter, they
fall down and they worship him. And then all the angels stood
round about the throne, verse 11 of chapter 7, and about the
elders, and they fell down before the throne on their faces, and
they worshiped God, saying, Amen, blessing and glory and wisdom
and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be unto God forever
and ever. Verse 14, I said, sir, pardon
me, let's take verse 13. One of the elders said unto me,
What are these which are arrayed in white robes? And whence came
they? And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest. And he said to
me, These are they which came out of great tribulation and
washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
Therefore are they before the throne of God." Now this must
be a special honor to these who are martyred for Christ's sake.
Therefore they are before the throne of God and they serve
him day and night in his temple and he that sits on the throne
shall dwell among them. Won't that be wonderful? Won't
that be wonderful? This wholesome moment in eternity. Can you think of those 4 and
20 elders as I wind this up? I'll take more time to that because
I want to finish with it here. But to try and urge you to covet,
to learn, to exercise yourself in this particular devotion of
worship. Take different aspects of the
life, of the character of God. Gaze on his, naturally, you know,
come before him not asking anything, not just to praise him, but gaze
on his holiness, gaze on his faithfulness. Think how many
times he's been faithful, how many times you've let him down.
How many times he's been faithful to his church. How many times
he's brought out of tribulation. Think of what the church is going
through tonight in China or going through in Russia and elsewhere.
And yet he's standing by them then, he's getting saints out
of them. He's maybe got more worship out of them today than
he's got out of us. With too many diversions, with too many
sight-tracking things. It's easy to sing it, isn't it? How firm a foundation, ye saints
of the Lord, is laid to your faith in his excellent work.
What more can he say than to you, he hath said? God has no
afterthoughts, he has no corrections to make to his book. Men try
and make it, but there's no way to improve it. Distill and know that I'm God.
Gaze on his faithfulness. Gaze on his holiness. Gaze on
his love. Gaze on his purity. Think of
some aspect of his character and dwell on it and let your
soul get expanded and let's get into the business of knowing
how to worship him here, because for sure we're going to worship
him hereafter. I've told the story before, let's wind up with
it. When Fanny Crosby was receiving
some sympathy from somebody who said to her, well, you've been
blind all your 84 years and it's a great pity and I don't know
why the Lord let this happen. You've missed so much. Such a
disadvantage to be blind. And dear little Fanny said, it's
a great advantage to be blind. Her friend said, what's the advantage?
She said, my dear, don't you realize the first face I ever
see will be his face. Isn't that a lovely way to look
at it? You can't lose, you know, when you have a philosophy like
that. You're missing everything. I'm missing nothing. I had a friend, he couldn't hear
any more than a stone could hear. Tremendous preacher. Somebody
said, why don't you ask God for healing? He said, because I don't
want to be healed. You don't want to be healed? He said, no.
I remember before I was deaf all the silly things Christians
talk about. He said, I don't want to go back to that. One way of looking at it, shut
in with God, gazing on his boundless mercy,
gazing on his love, realizing again we've got something that
this world needs supremely. We need the risen Christ of God
who's exalted. He has all power. He has all
authority. He has all dominion. Everything's
under his feet. And he's going to come in splendor
and he's going to come in glory. We do have some time for prayer.
I want you to pray for, many of you know, Bob Roberts. He's
been here as a Baptist preacher. He's down in Belize right now
and he's in a park. He's not in the city. I was asking
Joe Frost about the city. He said, It's a pity, though
the sewers run out of the house, down the sidewalks, the sewage
comes down the street. But Bob is working in a part
up in the wilds, up in the woods, where there's still a lot of
terrible superstition and witchcraft and darkness and heathenism.
And we do need to pray for him. Last week I mentioned that the
Calvary Commission is going in a few, I don't know, a couple
of months. going up to New Jersey to help right down in uh I know
it's Elizabeth or one of the cities there which is a it's
a hellhole let me put it that way and the pastor says you can
come and help me and again there'll be no love offerings he's only
got seven people coming to the church so they're going up there
haven't got anywhere for them to sleep I mentioned that last
week and talked with brother Joe on the phone he said you
mentioned uh about our group going up to New Jersey in a couple
of months. I said, yes, somebody left an
envelope at last day's ministry. They just said on for New Jersey
Calvary Commission and they left three $100 bills in it to help
pay their expenses. So I've got a special scripture
for you tonight. Go and do thou likewise. So you can get tax exemption
if you want to. They really do need a bus. so
they can crowd all the fellas in and take all the gear with
them. It costs a few thousand dollars. And maybe the Lord will
tell you to do something about that. You could help them in
that way. Let's pray. I was, I guess it's
while we were down in the Bahamas. Somebody mentioned again Haiti.
I'm not a bit against churches going and taking old clothes
and food and whatnot. That's good. But Lord help us,
we've been doing that for 25 years. You know what? 97% of
Haiti is Roman Catholic and 95% of those Roman Catholics practice
Roman Catholicism and Voodooism as well. That's double darkness as far
as I'm concerned. Do you think we'll ever have
a gang of young men that dare go down there and say we're staying
here, we're going to pray and fast and believe until we drive
the devil off this island? takes some doing. But the Lord said greater works
than these shall ye do. Think again of the church in
Korea. My goodness when I go to bed
at night now I wonder why I'm in bed. Thousands of people and
they're praying that ten million Japanese will be converted. Isn't
that something? They've come out of darkness.
I don't know any church around here that prays for 10,000. Do
you know any church, any Methodist do that? Any Pentecostals? Any of our ministries around
there? Anybody praying for, pardon me, 10 million? 10 million Japanese
will be converted? That's going. Oh, there are some vast areas
of the earth that's still a total darkness. And we can help them
and thank God for the help that goes, but it doesn't mean much
really. It's a drop in the bucket. Maybe God's going to send a national
awakening and provoke us. Just like old Jonah didn't want
to go to Nineveh. Lord, you're not going to bless the Gentiles
and send them revival when we need it most of all. Huh? Say,
if you're a Baptist, could you pray for revival in the Pentecostal
church down the street? And if you're a Pentecostal,
could you pray for the Baptist to have it? I mean, now you're
so big that you don't care as long as it comes who God uses. I don't care who uses it. I want God to kind of, as we
would say, wring the neck of the devil. I want God to so tramp
him on the foot just once more before God comes in judgment,
to come in mercy, to pour out his spirit, a revival that stops
the traffic, a revival when the computers won't be used. Revival that will spread till
every time you're going to see somebody singing, you know, when
all my labors of trials are o'er, or Blessed Assurance, you go
in another shop and they're singing Victory in Jesus or something.
That's happened in revivals. But it's so far removed from
what we do. And a lot of us really, we want
things done decently and in order. Oh no, come on. We're moving up to Easter, isn't
it wonderful? The stone was rolled away. Well, in case you don't know,
the stone wasn't rolled away to let Jesus out. He was out
a long while before that. The stone was opened to let them
go in and see it was empty. Up from the grave he arose. It's amazing how dead churches
can be with a living Christ, isn't it? I'm convinced again, and I mean
this, I mean even the very physical atmosphere could vibrate. It
did in the early church, it did after the day of Pentecost. They
went, the whole place was shaken and they didn't run out scared
and say, is this an earthquake? We're going to get hurt. And
that has happened in revivals over and over again. I don't
care a hill of beavers without any denomination. If they're
pure, if they're preaching the word of God, well just let God
open the windows of heaven upon them. There's not much time left. Nobody's talking about abolishing
nuclear war except a few fanatics in the eyes of other people.
We're all suggesting about toning it down and not getting roasted
too much, you know. You roast one about your citizens
and we roast one about yours and let's have a fair deal in
this roasting business. Idiotic, isn't it? I've heard Christians say, I
wish God had sent something and split Russia in two and killed
the whole lot. In other words, what they're
saying, I wish God would send them all to hell. Because whether
they're communists or anybody else, they're going to eternal
darkness or eternal light. If you haven't taken the stars
and stripes to the cross, you better bury it tonight. I took
the onion jack there about 60 years ago and I've never been
back for it. I'm not an Englishman first and then a Christian. I'm
a Christian first. I'd like God to do a lot for this country,
otherwise I wouldn't have stayed here so long. I'd like God to
do it for England, I'd like him to do it for other countries.
Yet once more, even Isaiah says, I will shake the heavens and
the earth. Now there's not a lot of time left, I'll take more
time because, and I intended to, to finish this message, but
I wanted to pray tonight. Maybe you need to pray for yourself,
that you have no passion, that you have no vision. just concerned
to go to church and be nice. Maybe you see again what people
that not long ago were heathens are now meeting all night, every
night, praying every night for ten million people to be saved
in a country not far away from them. And there are other areas
of the world that need the same thing. So forget the one next
to you tonight, don't worry about them. Let me say this in case
I do forget, next week the meeting will begin at 7.30 because it
gives more time for the folk here to get things straightened
up. So will you remember that please? 7.30 next week. And by
the grace of God we'll be here. So now let's go to prayer and
please, please, just say God what you want me to pray. I may
want you to pray ten words, you may want me to pray ten minutes,
but pray. Let's plead the blood, let's believe, resist the devil
and see victory come in this day in which we live.