The Heart Is the Best Theologian

I leaped upon the mountain hills and touched just a few high spots. The first three verses yesterday. I'll do the same of the next verses in the chapter beginning with verse 4.

John to the seven churches which are in Asia.

Peace be unto you and peace from him which is and which was and which is to come seven spirits which are before his throne and from Jesus Christ who is the faithful witness the first begotten of the dead the prince of the kings of the earth unto him that loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood and has made us kings and priests unto God and his father unto him be glory and dominion forever and amen behold he cometh with clouds and every eye shall see him they also which pierced him all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him even so amen i'm alpha and omega standing saith the lord which is and which was and which is to come the almighty now i often say about easter that if a man can't preach at easter he's not called to preach and ought to immediately resign because

there's something about easter that puts preach in the man if there's if he has any remote trace of come out at easter for no other time when we hear them say the lord has risen indeed now this passage in your hearing here from the first chapter of the book of revelations is the chapter that also challenges and provides him with plenty of material to preach and if a man can't preach helpfully on these verses revelations then i venture to say you'll not be able to preach helpfully from any other passage of scripture anywhere not even the 23rd because i want you to note here how deeply rich all this is how completely and utterly there's gold of ophir here and silver from the mine and there is honey out of the rock by ease of hebluh and there's milk here and fat butter for the child of god

there's everything here somebody wrote a letter one time and i had quoted samuel rutherford and then i'd made some inane comments on what rutherford had said and thanked me for what i had commented he said that my mother used to say that you could make a pretty good meal if you had a good and he said you set up a good meal but you had a good piece of meat to start with and i would say to you that this is a good piece because here is the sweeping comprehensive view of christianity this is it my this is what we christians believe here that grace and peace come from god who is and one and from the sevenfold holy ghost which hovers before his throne and from jesus christ who first begotten of the dead and the prince of the kings of the earth and then he gives us that benediction and us and

washed us from our own sins in his own blood and made us kings and priests unto god and the father the glory and dominion forever and ever then he says behold he cometh with clouds and every eye shall see him then he ends by saying i am alpha and omega the beginning and the ending says the lord which is and was and is to come the all now there is a compendium of christianity there's what we're supposed to believe now i want to stand here now and warn about something i want to warn you about the slow erosion that's taking place in our christian days men who call themselves evangelicals are whittling away at how much we get we can believe and they're approaching it from the high olympian towers of the the ivory tower egghead ism and from up there they're making us ashamed of ourselves that

we're old simple-hearted believers and you know i think some of it's got here in carnegie hall you don't have the lung power five years ago have you all got pneumonia i remember there was a day when i couldn't have said as much as i've said now without the down rising very wonderfully but i've only heard one squeak and that was from mary and of course you can't keep her now my brother and sister let's watch out that we don't allow our faith to be eroded nobody will come to any of us in the christian and missionary alliance i don't believe the bible you're a fool to believe the bible nobody will come and look you in the eye you are an educated tadpole and you came up from the slimy ooze of the pro-local plastic mud for you're simply the best that nature's been able to do evolution-wise

nobody will say that to an alliance man he didn't walk away but what they've done is they've eroded our faith they've whittled it down as a boy whittles on a pencil and breaks the point and whittles it some more and by evening he's got nothing left but the rubber and out there in the great learned feeder and field you know we've got a new brand of evangelicalism now it's what i call evangelical rationalism neo neo you know neo is a greek word meaning new and if you have much education you say new that's anglo-sax farmer can say i'm going to get a new pair of shoes but if you've been to college you say i'm going to get a neo pair of shoes you know it shows your drink you know proves you've been to college and got cultivated and so from these making us ashamed of ourselves and by the use of

and about a high approach that they make i still believe that theologian and i still believe that god can bless a man greatly if he has a big heart even if he doesn't have much of a think that there is any necessary incompatibility between having a fine mind and having a pure heart but my choice between having a childlike heart set on the lord jesus christ forever and having a very learned incapable of analysis and synthesis and all the rest i'll take the childlike heart because any realm to where a child is but not everybody can get up to where the professor is so if you start down where the child is up he'll set jacob's ladder there and let you climb it but the chances are the lord wants you to stay down where you are right clock it's gone i guess that was over in the church wasn't it

all right thank you now if i could tell time on the thing which side's up all right thank you but um where was i i was saying that if we don't want them to have we're going to get a secularized mentality i think we've got it pretty much in the alliance now we have mentality that is old adam and his brood of civilized brainwashers have worked until we think like the world thinks i just went through a copy of time magazine i go through them in a hurry and was in a hurry and i went through the thing and i had to shake my head to get the bugs out of it because after you've read you've seen a reader's digest or almost any other of the kind you begin to think the way they think you place your values values let's watch that let's pray that we might have the mind of christ and think like christ

and count that god places great value on and was dismissed with a snap of earth finger that which god counts to be trash the world is calling that wonderful which god calls abominable and vice versa so let's say to this thing here now my brethren is what christians are supposed to believe this is christianity all about the eternal father of his eternal son and the blessed holy ghost the comforter all about the washing in the blood and the coming again and the rainings and priests on the earth all this is here this is christianity and i am not going to be frightened out of it by any of these irrationalists who make the human mind to be the arbiter of all theological questions i don't accept that revelation is the arbiter and when god almighty has spoken i say like the old greeks used to

say it's a dick that he has and let every man be a liar but let god be true and if you look at a thing and it looks as if it wasn't true and god said it's true and god will make it true to you now this is the beating heart of christianity what do we have here well we have here in high concentration god the father who is and who was and who is to come and the spirit and for the christ of god who is jesus and it tells us what he is that he's prophet priest and king and what he's washed us from our sins in his own blood and what he has made us kings and priests under god the father a certain triumph that'll be ours and then he says grace be unto you and peace now here is sounding down from the churches found the churches from our lord jesus christ by the apostle john is this wonderful

benediction called who this one who calls himself your brother this john and companion in tribulation heard the voice of god and he was wise enough to be an echo and a voice speaking again the words of god to us words great be unto you and peace brothers and sisters i don't know any two things i need more than grace and peace and god knows i don't think the man who wrote amazing grace how sweet the sound loved it any better than i do i don't sing to a mouth when these fine singers i keep just as mute as a mud turtle because i don't want to show off what a bad voice i have so boy you ought to hear me you know i have the remotest idea what key it is but who who discovered keys anyhow my old day when one of the children would be eating with his fingers and mother rebuker i should say let him

alone fingers were made before forks and even that our worshiping hearts were made before keys were discovered so bach and beethoven can turn over and rest a while on my knees singing amazing grace i believe the angels fold their wings because i for one know what i'm talking about if i got what i deserve being in hell right now with adolf hitler and kelly gillan nero the murderer i'd be down there but here i am bouncing all to my feet trying to preach to a few sleepy people in north side pittsburgh on a monday afternoon about the great old instead of roasting in hell i'm preaching in pittsburgh i don't mean any pun either by that but anyhow here that this is the great grace of god and the peace of god now if i need the grace of god i also need the peace these are days that don't

contribute to your peace that's all they just don't do it these are times that contribute to nervous broma ulcers i never had an ulcer i thought i had and the doctor photographed my insides and told me i was as clean as a pin and didn't have a crack in the wall i guess i get rid of my nervous tension but jittering around and they tell me i do so it's all right but peace i need peace for the nervous breakdown this is the hour this is the hour of the heart attack and this is the hour when there's no peace grace and peace he says now it's coming from the glorified head of the church but this mighty declaration all inclusive it's also all exclusive you know what i believe and i'll throw this in because i won't get to say it well i'll throw it in here though it isn't in the notes at all but i

believe we're going to die one of these days of too much tolerance i don't believe god is tolerant as we are it's a very odd thing that right at the hour when everybody's tolerating everybody else and you never any subject at all that you're not sure to have agreement on before you start lest you find yourself being intolerant and sisters the most intolerant man that ever walked this earth of ours was none other than jesus christ our lord he ate the devil he would not tolerate sin he would not tolerate unbelief he would not tolerate the fees with their hypocrisy he would not tolerate the sadducees and the scribes with their learned pride he tolerated haiti's and publicans and sinners and bums and beatniks and scrubs off the street corner but he wouldn't tolerate just chrissies and

religious hypocrites he stood right up to an old and sent word that look out they said harrod's after you he turned around calm as a jew go tell that old fox i'll be here until i'm finished then walked away i like that kind of downrightness told harrod that no doubt harrod turned red and his face flushed his neck got thick he wasn't used to that kind of talk but the one who called him he was talking about and i believe that if the children of god didn't want to please so many people and wanted to please god might be a little harder to live with but we'd have a little more edge on our sword we have all our swords wrapped in cotton batting here we'll chip and raise and draw a little blood to fear some dear fellow who believes something else and has a purpose under the constitution but here

he'll get a little bit mad let him get mad he'll get over it if he doesn't have a heart attack it's all right the people of god then people aren't mad at us anymore in the church of christ nobody's been mad at me for years except a few people loyal and write me and tell me that i'm a bum and ought to be burnt to steak you know a nice language but they tell them that's what it adds up to and i don't have many enemies i don't have enough enemy the man is known by his friends and he's known by his enemies and works that gets accepted by the society around it and when north side pittsburgh avenue road toronto or south when we get accepted by the carnal unregenerate society around us brother we've had it and we need to go along another half a generation or another whole generation like the

irishman the head of a mud turtle and the turtle crawled away the irishman said he's dead and hadn't found it out and they're at church and don't know it and they take the fact that they're accepted by the carnal world to be a proof that they're having great success oh it's a proof that they're having no success but that the holy ghost has withdrawn in hurt silence and left them to the now here's the declaration all inclusive it includes only those who qualify this grace and be unto you in peace you can't say that to a sinner you can't say that to a hypocrite you can't say that to a liberal preacher be unto you in peace you can't say that to the man who believes the bible is a book of myths and jesus was the son of mary and a german soldier you can't say that to the world out there either

that's all inclusive and it's all exclusive wish god knows and my heart's desire is that this benediction could mean the whole world's total population and if it could total population of the world believed on jesus christ savingly you don't have to all be in the alliance of course but if they believe savingly on jesus christ mr k wouldn't be throwing rocks at mr k anymore wouldn't be any more summit conferences you know i'm going to a summit conference one of these times i don't know exactly what i'll represent here when you elect a man they call it the district but up there they call it a riding up in canada i don't know what riding i'll represent when i conference but i'm on my way there and every day whittles a little bit off the time that i've got to spend here before i go there

conference i i wish that all of the people of god may have it said about them properly grace and peace be under you bounce grace on a rebel you can't say peace to a man who has no peace but his crusade this now this is objectively true but it's got to be made subjectively true you know the difference i'll explain it for the chair the rest of us all know what the difference between objective and subjective objective is the thing is out there standing alone unsupported and it makes no difference whether i believe it or not there it is that's an eternal truth objective truth that's the creed that's the fourfold gospel that's the bible that's the scriptures that's the that's what that's objective truth but it'll do you no good till it becomes subjective truth that is until it gets inside the

object has got to become the subject and the two got to unite that which is spoken about me has got to become part of me to assimilate and receive into myself the great truths of god one of the great difficulties i find it true in these and full gospel and deeper life meetings everywhere i find the great difficulty is to get people the belief that if it's true in the bible it's true in them you know david said the lord is my shepherd i shall not want that thing sit and think it's true of him too well it could be but it's not necessarily so and paul said i'm crucified the less i live and we quote that and we think because paul said it it's true it is true objectively but it's not necessarily unless i die with paul then i can't say i am dead with christ unless i ride with paul i cannot say

i am risen again you've got to make these things real by faith and love and obedience hard you know that's what's hard to get anybody to take the thing into themselves you can get people to admire the low that that's quite another matter now notice the authority of this declaration here the eternal father was and is to come and somebody will say well then how about this didn't you say somewhere that god dwells in all and has no yesterday and no tomorrow that god lives in an everlasting now yes sir i said it and i'll stick to it i still believe has no past and god has no future past and future and present are three tenses of time and time the bosom of god and god contains in himself all that was and all that will be and all it is when we say god was and is and is to come we we are talking

about our tenses god's adapting himself to our will be and our is god there were never a time when god was not and there'll never be a time when god will not be certainly now dwelling in an everlasting now but you and i we dwelt in yesterday and we'll dwell in tomorrow today is simply a little bridge between yesterday and tomorrow so god adapts himself to us and god says to his poor time he says i am the eternal god who was i was in your yesterday and i'm in your today and i will be in your tomorrow one of the most uh i guess quoted passages ever quoted in the alliance is he did jesus christ the same yesterday today and forever now what does that mean does that mean there was a time when he was and that he is the slave of time and that he pays tribute to the passing of the days no it

means jesus christ the same today as he is in my today and as he will be in my tomorrow for the great eternal god who comprehends all himself comprehends me within himself and god has lived all my tomorrows god isn't waiting to see he knows the end from the beginning because he has already lived the end as he lived the beginning at the things god was and at the end of all things god will be but it's because god is god didn't say i was he said i am that i am and that is my name forever and that is my memorial unto all generations the eternal father you know i don't think we preach enough about god these days i go around preaching on the attributes of god me everywhere i've gone people come to me and shake their heads and grip my hand and they talk as if they've been listening to saints and

they're not they've been listening to a pennsylvania farmer with a nasal twang and bad grammar they haven't heard great sermons it's the great sermon in my life but they've simply heard somebody preaching about a great god and their hungry christian hearts react i don't think we preach enough about god these days i don't think we see god big enough i don't think we magnify churches i don't think so at all god the eternal god then there are the seven spirits now who wants to know about the seven spirits i suppose you know about it so i'll go back and read uh that that good old verse in isaiah the 11th chapter and the spark shall rest upon him and the spirit of wisdom and understanding the spirit of counsel and might the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the lord they are the spirit

but it's one holy ghost let's keep that in mind there's only one father there's only one son and there's also the old adamasian creed says that the god is the father is eternal and the son is eternal and the holy yet there are not three eternal but one eternal but father is incomprehensible the sum is incomprehensible and the holy ghost is incomprehensible yet they're apprehensible but one incomprehensible but the god the father is lord and the sum is lord and the holy ghost is lord yet there are one lord so the father is god and the sun is god and the holy ghost is god but there are not three gods but one god for all the attributes of deity there is only one holy ghost and that blessed holy ghost is the bond between some the old theologians used to say you know that god the eternal

father almighty maker of heaven and earth being absolute he had so much love that he wanted to pour out that in the eternal somewhere back there in the eternal generation the mysterious fact and out of the substance of the father the son was generated had always been and was collected but he came he came to be the father's son in that awful mysterious moment in what the theologians call the eternal generation so they said in order that god might pour out all of his infinite love he had to have a vessel that could contain all of it to the other so there was the son equal to the father but that the old mystic theologians there had to be at which he could pour his love the everlasting and infinite love of the father into the everlasting heart of the son so there was the holy ghost to come

and so through the equal holy ghost the co-equal father poured his love into the heart of the co-equal son oh brother what heaven will be like you know some of you won't want to go to heaven tell me you won't i remember my mother on approval they had a little trick in those days they'd say then i take this on approval take it home 30 days and if you don't like it you can give you you can send it back sure that some of us busy 20th century american rocket conscious christians we wouldn't want to go to heaven and stay there long did of course so we could come back and show pictures just that we'd want to visit the bahamas you know in florida but we wouldn't because the one who gets all the glory up there is the father and the son of the holy ghost and american people don't like that once

you get a little cut of the glory somewhere they're willing to give god 90 of the hosannas but they'd like to take three hosannas to put in their scrapbook so we want a little cut on the glory of god brother god won't let you have any cut and if you insist on any glory god god almighty will chase in you with scorpions until you repent and the blood washes you clean who's ready for heaven isn't somebody that's gulped twice and said i accept jesus the man who's ready for heaven is the man who has been jesus christ in faith and identification to a point where he thinks the way g father and about heaven that's why i believe god's people ought to be worshipers these sunday these morning sermons you're hearing from thomas williamson you all ought to be young and hear about how wonderful god is

i was thinking i was the only one who was doing that i think he's at it god won't be raising up a lot more men around over the country who spend all of their ministry telling about how wonderful god is well spirit and the eternal son and says about the eternal son that he is the faithful witness that is he's the prophet and he is the dead that is he's a priest and he is the prince of the kings of the earth that he's the king remember we used to say he's the prophet priest and king that you know he's still the prophet he's still the priest and he's still the king and they close with the benediction now the benediction here are words that i kind of like doxology and benediction now you know one comes from the greek and means the word of praise and one means the word of blessing and if a

service is five minutes long and you've got a doxology and a benediction you've had a meeting brother just as we ought to begin every service with a doxology that is with a word of praise and we ought to close every service with with a preacher can't pronounce the benediction that's the odd part we stand up you know i do it all the time too but i keep my fingers crossed between and i'm just conforming to the situation but uh we say the lord bless you and keep you and you say that brother only god can say that and if the preacher says it if he's just an echo of god's voice he's got to be i can't bless any of them we're going to an old folks home one time and i got to praying with a dear little old lady god bless her i suppose she's somewhere long ago she was a roman catholic and i asked to

pray for her and she warmed up to me i was a young preacher and she said pray for me today and i'd pray for that day and then the next time i'd go would you pray for me and i'd pray for again so finally i saw that i wasn't satisfied to make woman and finally she said to me she said would you put your hands on my head and bless me so i put my hands ahead and prayed for god to bless her but i couldn't bless her i never you know we read in the old testament about a man who blessed himself brother if you blessed your i'm stuck before nightfall just as sure as you live it won't last because you're not the source of blessing the blessed one of the blessed he can only pour out benediction only he can do that so if you if you hear him if you hear him say from the text uh or is it here yes grace

may you and then he turns around and say glory and dominion be unto him there you have your service and after all what is the service but i'm all together and saying glory be unto god and god saying grace be unto you there you've had your service no matter whether you have vance havner jimson ray w tozer you have a company of people get together and they say praise be to god and god hears it and says grace be to you let him go home now you'll have the meeting that's a good meeting benediction and doxology grace and peace be unto you glory unto him now this puts things in their right position you know grace for our wretched sinfulness and peace for our uprooted alien lives then he says unto him that loved us this was the reason for all else unto him that love i'm a great lover of hymns and

i'm not a hymnologist precisely but i'm bordering on it and i'm a great lover of hymns but there has me sick to my stomach i want to go off somewhere you know and be sick after i read them because they put god in such an awful one fella one fella writes a song like this he says he says deeper into the heart of jesus deeper seeking to learn the reason why he should love me so i get a feeling when i sing that song or hear it sung as if i'd been hit by their pillow a kind of a swashy squishy feeling you know full of wind and confusion sister why should we be so silly do you suppose you'll ever know why god loves you if to know why god loves you you'd have god never loved anybody because they deserved it god loves somebody because he's god that's all that god is the real if i had to look

inside of myself i had to take two pieces of paper and put my good qualities on one and my bad on the postage stamp for one and a whole ream of paper for the other for the bad qualities a big piece of paper and a few little things may be that told me they're only half true i might put on the back of the postage stamp but do you suppose my little list of virtues brought god's love out god loved a dirty tongue the high-tempered filthy minded mousy little guy he loved him and he just loved him because he loved him and he's never given me any reason to know why i wouldn't spend one split kick of this watch trying to tell why god loved me i never know no he's god and god can't help himself it's just like a butterfly out here in a couple of months wandering around saying if creation deeper and

deeper i go trying to find the reason why the sun should shine on me so well the sun shines on a butterfly arm and that same sun shines on a toad frog and a caterpillar because the sun that's all and god just loves that's all so he loved us but he loved this and love is an active thing love isn't a passive the disease of the stomach nowadays in hollywood you know we we go to the barnyard and we say we're a young girl a young lady you know at at the plane and he'll say are you in love now and she'd say love at the moment brother having her down on the farm they call that by another name that being in love i'm too much of a gentleman every farmer knows what they mean when they said you blush rub your face you'll get to know something we ought to know that love is not an emotion love is not

a tickling sensation love is something that gives to the object of its love and so he loved me and washed me from my stained blood that's what well we brought up seven children you know dragged them up and tried to keep them from that and tried to teach them to say yes no and thank you and succeeded reasonably well and here they are scattered now but uh i know that in in my my wife never wished one in order that she might love she wished it because she loved it and there's all the difference in the world a little boy comes in out and he's got an inch and a quarter crop of sheer downright good old-fashioned wonderful dirt based on him and he was as clean as a painter to go and you don't understand how it ever could happen but you figure he's a boy made up of noise dirt and appetite so you

take him and wash him and you love him before you see what color he is but you love him anyhow because he's you got him cleaned up and you set him down he looks like a little gentleman you wouldn't think he was a beatnik he'd been five minutes before but uh clean or dirty didn't affect your love you love him anyhow so he loved us because he was god and then he cleansed us in order to love us without embarrassment he cleansed us so he could love us fully and completely and he did it so he washed us in his own blood a little girlfriend by the name of lady julie and i quote her she's uh 600 years dead so it's safe but uh she's my girl little book around called revelations of divine love and she was a little nun in norwich england and she'd never heard of luther you wasn't born there and of

course there was no reformation so she did the best she could with what she had to work with hymns of the christian life hadn't been published in days days of headprints at the time so she just had to get on the best she could but somehow brother she rose to meet god in a marvelous lady julie and she helps me i carry her around in my suitcase that is her book a lot then she figured things out you know god she'd figure them out and put them down she said this she said god has already done the great things for me first he created and then he redeemed me and now he's keeping me she said those are the three great things she said i can believe him for anything else if he'll do the great i believe she's right all right i like that kind of logic if god would create me when he had no no

obligation then when i sinned he redeemed me when he had no obligation to do it and then he keeps me saved love me and redeem me he'll do anything else that i want him to do because when you do the big thing you'll do the little one that's so reasonable that i think any professor ought to take it now it says here that he made his kings and priests unto god i i'll be finished in a minute brother fraser but uh he made his kings and priests unto god you know i believe in two doctrines i believe in the doctrine of the dominion of the saint in the doctrine of the priesthood and believers i believe that god's people ought to have dominion i think if we were more like god within tom hair has a little talk he gives he's not a good talker he's just a good prayer but he has a little talk he gives

about god making man in his dominion and he says we'll have dominion in prayer just as we have the image inside and he's right about it we have god image we have within our hearts the more dominion we can have in prayer over the devil and sickness and sin and the wall i believe in the dominion of the priesthood of the believers mouth says he's coming back again he comes with clouds and every eye shall taste him and all the kings of the earth shall will because notice he went away in a cloud and he'll come back in the cloud while they were standing at mount all they received him out of their sight and they were so awestruck their jaws fell down on their chest and their eyes were wide open and they stood looking at him suddenly a heavenly being stood there and said why are you wasting your

time staring up at the space this same who have you seen go into heaven shall so come in like manner as you've seen him go now turn that the professor and turn him loose on their greek and see what he'll do with that why this same jesus oh you're this same jesus professor this oh you you mean his spirit no this same jesus an angel no this same you know is you just have to beat some people over the head to get them to get anything and when the heavenly being said to us this same coming we go around saying death is the second coming and pentecost was the second coming and the end of the world the second coming no same jesus he shall so come in like manner somebody says oh i know he's going to come to a flower he's singing of a bird he's going to come with the light of love in the face of

two lovers as they stroll until he comes oh go on it says this same jesus shall so come how did he come but he went in the cloud he'll come back in one and he'll be the same jesus not a ghost not an exit not a photograph not a tape recording this same jesus will come and if they knew him then now when he comes i believe that don't you he shall so come in like manner we have some bible prophecy that very few people actually believe that christ is coming back we're a little bit shame faced because we carried too many charts and we and we're now undergoing a bit of a chastisement you know self-flagellation because we were too arrogant back oh everybody knew more than daniel stand aside john we've had a revelation too we know all about it and morseline this is like a huge bag of blubber and

the roman empire didn't gel and things didn't happen and everybody quit preaching about he's coming i heard a southern preacher say that and i'm finished i heard a southern preacher say during the first world war after everybody was talking about the second come afraid of i am afraid that the devil will excite us so about the coming of the lord because that when it doesn't happen we'll lose heart and retreat and cease to believe in his coming he was nothing that happened after the second world war but i still believe it this same jesus shall so come in like manner as you are you ready that's the big question i hope you can answer in the affirmation