1968 Meeting Where E a Johnston is Saved

Eager, anxious throng, which moves with busy haste along, these wondrous gatherings day by day. What means this strange commotion, pray? An accent hushed, the throng replying, Jesus of Nazareth passeth by. Number 20.

Eager, anxious throng. 139. What can wash away my sins? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

What can make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. O precious is the flow that makes me white as snow. No other fount I know, nothing but the blood of Jesus.

The first and last verse is 139. The scripture I have before me tonight, first in the third of Romans, the third chapter of Romans. And I'd like to point out, dear friends, that as we read these verses, these words are true, absolutely true.

They're God's precious word, the Bible. Now in the third of Romans, let's read the end of the 23rd, the second verse, the end of the 22nd verse of Romans 3. For there is no difference, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Now the fifth chapter, in the twelfth verse.

Wherefore as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned. Now the sixth chapter in the 23rd verse. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

I'd like to read a few verses in the third of John, again to bring the gospel here. These wonderful verses. You know, any of these verses we read, if you're unsaved tonight, you can take hold of one of these verses and just claim it as your very own.

These are the very words. I'm going to read the very words that came out of the mouth of the Lord Jesus himself. John 3, 16.

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. He that believeth on him is not condemned, but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

In the 36th verse. He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life, and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him. Now, just one more before we turn over.

John 5, 24. Again, we have the very words of Jesus. Oh, dear friend, tonight.

May you hear these words, just as if Christ himself was saying them into your very ears and into your very heart and soul. Jesus said, Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death unto life. That big word, condemnation, means judgment.

Isn't that a wonderful thing? Shall not come into judgment. Just imagine to be able to go through this world on the way to eternity and say, thank God there's no judgment for me. These are the very words of Jesus.

He that believeth on me, him that sent me hath everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but is passed from death unto life. Now I'd like to read in the 10th of Mark. Just a few verses in the 10th chapter of Mark.

In the 46th verse, Mark chapter 10 verse 46. And they came to Jericho. And as he went out of Jericho with his disciples and a great number of people, blind Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, sat by the highway side begging.

And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out and say, Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me. And many charged him that he should hold his peace. But he cried the more a great deal, thou son of David, have mercy on me.

And Jesus stood still and commanded him to be called. And they called the blind man, saying unto him, be of good comfort, rise. He calleth thee.

And he cast in a way his garment rose, and came to Jesus. And Jesus answering him said unto him, what wilt thou that I should do unto thee? The blind man said unto him, Lord, that I might receive my sight. And Jesus said unto him, go thy way.

Thy faith hath made thee whole. And immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus in the way. My friends, what a wonderful little story this is.

How plainly, how clearly it brings the gospel before us. The glorious good news of God's gospel. Now I read those verses before because they plainly tell us, dear friends, that we've all sinned.

It's hardly necessary for me to say, to stand here and tell you that I certainly have sinned. I have. I admitted this.

I admit this to God. I admitted it to God. Thank God.

In 1930, I got down on my knees and ohmed before God I was a sinner. I wonder tonight if you realize you're a sinner. That you are a sinner.

You know, people, when they hear these words that they're sinners, they always say, well, there's worse than me. That doesn't matter. One sin, my friend, just one.

One sin will send you to hell. Just one. You haven't got to sin twice, just once.

You know, we've all sinned hundreds of times. We've all sinned. Every one of us in this room.

Even these boys and girls. Oh, they're young. They too have sinned.

The disobedience to parents is sin in the eyes of God. Telling lies is sin in the eyes of God. So we all have sinned.

We're all guilty. And we would all go to hell if God hadn't provided a savior for sinners. Now, let us look.

I'd just like to think of the other verses. It says this, the wages of sin is death. Now, you know that's true.

I want to ask anybody in this room, even the young boys, a hundred years from tonight, there won't be one of us in this room alive. Every one of us will be dead. We'll all be in eternity.

We who are Christians, of course, may, in the meantime, maybe tonight even, we'll hear the Lord Jesus' voice call us out of this world. We'll rise to meet the Savior. And we'll never see this world as it is again.

We'll be there in the glory. And all those who are left behind will be lost for all eternity. What a solemn thing, to be lost for all eternity.

The wages of sin is death. And someday you will find payday comes. In the office, we used to go up to the desk of the boss, and we used to get our check.

It was payday. And the devil has a payday. The wages of sin is death.

You'll get your wages because you're a sinner. And if the Lord doesn't come, all the Christians in this world must pass through death. For the Christian to pass through death, it means at once, immediately, he's with Christ.

Immediately, the moment his heart stops beating, and that spirit leaves that body, that spirit is with Christ to await the resurrection morning, the unsaved who die. And dear friends, this is solemn. Just since the sun rose over this city this morning, around I suppose seven o'clock, how many people in the United States of America have gone into eternity unsaved, lost.

They're lost. They trusted religion. They trusted baptism.

They trusted penance. They trusted confirmation vows. But they never knew the Lord Jesus Christ atone.

The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Now we all know, just before I go to this chapter here, we all know what a gift is. Mothers here, you know what a gift is.

Your girl, your boy has given you a birthday gift, and you don't pay for the gift, do you? You don't say, well, I'll pay for the gift. That would be an insult to the giver. If your husband bought you a gift, and you offered to pay for it, you would insult your husband, or you would insult your wife, or you would insult your girlfriend, or your boyfriend.

You know enough. You have enough sense to know. You must accept the gift and say, thank you.

God has a gift. God has a gift for you tonight. You don't have to pay for it.

You don't have to work for it. Just take that gift, which is Christ, and thank God for the Savior. Just take that gift, and you'll have everlasting life.

You may walk down the streets of Oak Park, and some man may say, don't believe that. But I say that's what Christ said. That's what the Lord Jesus said.

That's what the Son of God said. Have everlasting life. May I tell you a little story.

What a girl I visited in a hospital in Montreal. And this little, this young girl, she came from Finland, and she couldn't understand the English language, and she couldn't, she certainly couldn't read it at all, so we didn't know what to do. We, she told me in the, in broken English, this is exactly what she said.

She said, me die, me die, and me, me afraid of God, me afraid of God. What could I do? I showed her the Bible. She couldn't read it.

She didn't understand the English language, but on her table was a copy of the Bible in the Finnish language. Wasn't that wonderful? The Word of God printed in all kinds of languages, and there was the Finnish Bible. And I turned to the different scriptures, and I showed it to her, and she'd read it.

And all she said was, me afraid, me afraid. And then I read that, I showed her that verse, John 5, 24. I just read it to you.

Where the Lord Jesus, friends, I ask you to listen to these life-giving words. Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but is passed from death unto life. And I showed her the verse, and she read the verse, and that girl put her head back in her pillow, and said, me not afraid.

What changed her? Five minutes before, she was afraid. Now she was no longer afraid. Why? She had believed the words of Jesus.

She believed the words of Jesus. My friends, tonight the United States is full of religion, all kinds of religions, but there's only one Savior. We don't preach religion.

We preach Christ. We don't preach what to do to get to heaven. We preach a Savior for sinners.

If you were in the lake out here swimming in the hot summer day, and you were seized with a cramp, and you were going to be drowned, and I went out to you and said, I'm going to give you a book on ten easy lessons to swim. You would say, I don't need swimming lessons. I need somebody to save me.

And my friend, tonight, if you're in your sins without Christ, you don't need ten easy lessons on how to live a good life. You need a Savior, and that Savior is Jesus, the Christ, the living Christ. God is not dead tonight.

He's a living God. He's the eternal God. He's a God who will never die.

He's the living God. Believe not these wicked men who say that the God of the Bible is dead. The God of the Bible is the living God, the eternal God.

How wonderful. Well, in this little story I read to you, in the tenth chapter of Mark, I want you to know this first of all about Bartimaeus. His name began with B. His name began with B, and he was blind.

So that was two Bs, Bartimaeus, and he was blind. And then third, he was a beggar, three Bs. He was Bartimaeus, he was blind, he was a beggar.

Now, my friend, I want to say, if you're not a Christian, if you've never received the Lord Jesus Christ, you too are just like Bartimaeus. You're blind. Well, you say, I'm not blind.

I can read. I don't mean you're blind with these eyes. You're spiritually blind.

You're spiritually blind. There's something else. You're a beggar.

Every unsaved man and every unsaved woman's a beggar. They're begging from this world something to make them happy. They're just begging, give me something to make me happy.

I want to be happy. What can you give me? You know, somebody has said that if you were to stand on the street corner and ask every man and woman that passed by, what would you like best in life? The first thing they would probably say is health. And the second thing is happiness.

Health, they're losing their health. Because of sin, our bodies become old and sick. Our hair turns gray.

Our eyes get bad. We get rheumatism and arthritis and all kinds of things. We're marching on to eternity.

And we're sinners and that's why we get sick. That's why we have flu epidemics, because we're sinners. That's why we get headaches and sore throats.

That's why we find people bent over from old age, because we're sinners. We're sinners. We get a photograph album.

We look in this album and we say, look at this girl here. Well, how old is she here? The mother says that was taken when she was 18. Then you look on the mantelpiece and there's a picture of when she's 65.

Why? She's changed. She's all lined. Her hair is white, white.

And the man, likewise, his teeth are falling out. He's getting old. He walks along slowly.

He can't hurry any longer. Why is this? The man of the world says he's getting old, but the word of God says it's because of sin. Sin, my friend, sin is killing us.

We're dying of the sin disease. You know that's true. And there's not a man in this room.

There's not a woman. And by the grace of God, the speaker included, I wouldn't dare stand here and tell you that tomorrow night at this time, I will still be alive. We have no right to say.

You can't say that. There's not a man in this room who can say you'll be alive tomorrow night. There's not a woman here who can say I will be alive tomorrow night.

You can't say that because you may die tonight. You may leave this world by death tonight. What a solemn thing.

Are you ready to meet God? For God you must meet. You have to stand in the presence of God. Everybody, there's no exceptions.

Everybody must meet God. Every one of our eyes, everybody is going to see someday the face of Jesus. Every one of us.

Either as our savior or as our judge, we all must meet him. Either as our savior or our judge. The Christian's hearts rejoice to think of meeting Jesus, the unsaved man.

He dreads the very thought of standing before Jesus. You dread it, don't you? You're afraid to die. You're afraid to die.

I just read the other day, I won't mention any names. One of the great leaders of this world, he's dead now, they say on his deathbed, in spite of all his religion, very devout religious man, on his deathbed he feared, he feared death. Why did he fear death? Because he wasn't resting on Christ.

He was resting on religion, but he wasn't resting on Christ and his finished work on the cross of Calvary. May we just stop for a moment and go back. Let us turn back the clock and see the cross and see Jesus hanging on the cross.

Why was he there? Why did Christ die? Why was he there as the bearer of sin? If my sins were not on Jesus laid, why did he die for sinners? Because he loved us. Isn't that wonderful? He died for you. Isn't it wonderful? Christ died for the ungodly.

Oh, I love that verse. That's one of my favorite verses in the Bible. Christ died for the ungodly, because that means me.

It means you too. It means every man in this world. Everybody's ungodly.

And so we come to the Lord Jesus Christ. Every single man of Adam's race is ungodly, ungodly. And Christ died for the ungodly.

Isn't that wonderful tonight? Oh friend, do you believe this? Have you received the Lord Jesus as your Savior? Bartimaeus was a beggar. He was there at the side of the road. He was just like you tonight, my friends.

He heard a wonderful message. Wonderful news reached Bartimaeus' ears. That news was this.

Jesus of Nazareth passeth by. That was a wonderful message. Just a message, a very short sermon.

Jesus of Nazareth passeth by. And you know, he had heard about Jesus. You've heard about him.

Sad to say that our transportation methods and streetcars and buses and trains, we hear that name of Jesus, blasphemed and cursed. We hear that name of Jesus on the streets. Men using that name with their foul lips.

We hear that blessed name, blasphemed, used in blasphemy, that precious name. Little do they realize that every time they use it, someday they'll give an account to God for that. They must meet God.

You must. And the Bible says, prepare to meet thy God. And so here we have this man, Bartimaeus.

He gets the message. Jesus of Nazareth passeth by. And tells us in Luke's gospel, it says those words.

Jesus of Nazareth passeth by. And tells us in the 47th verse. And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out and say, Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me.

And many charged him that he should hold his peace. Isn't that exactly what happens tonight? Maybe there's a lady here tonight, or a man, or a young man who says, what this gentleman says from the word of God is true. I am a sinner.

And I should think about this. And you go to work tomorrow and you meet the man in the office and say, you know, last night I heard that we were all sinners. Oh, they'll say, nonsense, we don't believe that rubbish.

And you say, I heard also that a man named Jesus Christ died on the cross of Calvary for sinners. They say, oh, keep quiet. Don't tell us.

We don't believe that kind of stuff. We're smart today. We're educated.

We don't need to hear that rubbish. That was all right for our grandfathers. It's no good for us.

In other words, they'll tell you to keep quiet. You know, the world doesn't want to hear about Christ. A band can come down the street and make all kinds of racket.

They can have big bugles and drums beating and nobody pays any attention. But if some Christian who loves the Lord Jesus stands on the corner and tells out the gospel and somebody rings up the police and says he's disturbing the peace, they don't want to hear about Christ. They say, keep the Christians down.

Don't let them talk about Christ. You know, in our great city of Montreal, some two million people, 80 percent of them Roman Catholics. Just imagine, 80 percent of them Roman Catholics.

We have the joy of standing on the open air. For the last 50 years, we've had this privilege of standing on the corner preaching the glorious gospel to those poor people. And there they stand, many of them, many of them, of all the places I've been on Lord's Day night where they street preach in Ottawa and Toronto and places in the United States, only a little handful stands.

But in Montreal, a crowd gathers around and they hear the melting story of the Savior's love. There's nothing to pay. There's nothing to do.

There's no penance, only to receive Christ. And those dear people, many of them come up to us and say, sir, tell us more about this. Tell us more about this.

We don't, we feel we're deceived. We want to hear more about this. Oh, isn't that a wonderful tribute to the grace of God that in that city, 80 percent Roman Catholics, God allows every year us to have a police permit to stand on the corner and proclaim the glorious gospel of the grace of God through Christ and his finished work and his precious blood that has power to cleanse from all sin.

The little girl was asked in her Sunday school class, is there anything that God can't do? And the little girl said, I know something that God can't do. And the teacher said, what is it that God can't do? And the little girl said, God cannot see sin through the blood of Jesus Christ. For the blood of Jesus Christ, God's son cleanses us from all sin.

There's none left. All my friends, Bartimaeus wasn't going to be, wasn't going to be hushed up by these people. It says he cried in the 48th verse, but he cried the more a great deal.

Thou son of David, have mercy on me. In the 49th verse, and Jesus stood still. Isn't that a wonderful statement? Just four words.

I love those words. And Jesus stood still. Here was the maker of the son, the son himself in the days of Joshua, you know, and I think it's the 10th chapter of Joshua.

Joshua said to his son, son, stand thou still. The mighty son in the heaven stood still. The son stood still.

But here, the maker of the son stood still at the cry of a poor blind beggar. A poor beggar on the side of the road. Would you stop for a poor beggar? I wonder what would happen tomorrow morning if some great president of some great company in Chicago was driving down in his great big Cadillac.

And at the side of the road, he saw a poor beggar. And the poor beggar cried out to that millionaire. Oh sir, have mercy on me.

Would he stop his car? Indeed he would not. He has no time for poor beggars. He must get to his office at nine o'clock.

But Jesus, isn't this wonderful? The son of God, the maker of heaven and earth, the Christ, God's beloved eternal son, he stops dead in his tracks at the cry of a poor blind beggar. Oh tonight my friend, if you just bow your head in that chair and say, Lord Jesus, save me. The son of God will stop as it were and listen to your cry.

And he'll save your precious soul. You haven't got to do anything to get saved. People think you have to go through a lot of emotions and cry and talk to the front and kneel down at the penance branch.

No, my friend, right in that chair, as you sit there in that seat, you can quietly bow your head and say, Lord Jesus, I'm a sinner. I believe you died for me. Save me.

And my friend, you will be saved on the spot. You haven't got to wait till the meeting ends. You can be saved now.

Just a simple little faith, just a look at Christ, will save your precious soul. And so Bartimaeus heard this message again. The second message he heard now in the 49th verse.

And Jesus stood still and commanded him to be called. And they called the blind man saying unto him, be of good comfort. Rise, he called.

This was the second message of good news. First of all, he heard that Jesus of Nazareth passeth by. Now he heard another message.

Be of good comfort. What a wonderful message to this poor blind man. Be of good comfort.

Rise, he calleth thee. A message direct from Christ to the blind man. Could anything be clearer? Tonight, my friends, God is speaking to you as an individual, as a lady, as a man.

God is calling you out of the crowd, out of this poor world with steaming millions. God is calling you out of this world, calling you. And I say to you tonight, be of good comfort.

Rise, he calleth thee. Now what does Bartimaeus do when he gets this message? Verse 50. And he, casting away his garment, rose and came to Jesus.

Now I believe, I like to think of this raiment, this garment he wore. I understand that the blind beggars were provided by the government with a certain garment they wore. This garment marked them out as beggars.

Bartimaeus, as much as said, I'm not going to be a beggar any longer. And so he took off that garment and he threw it aside. He was through it.

He was no longer going to be a blind beggar. He was going to Jesus. He had faith.

He believed that Christ was going to open his eyes. In the second place, I believe was the long eastern garment. And this blind man got up and hurried to Jesus.

He might stumble over. You know, the Lord was passing by here for the last time. This was the last time Jesus ever passed here.

He was going to the cross. He was going on to Calvary. And tonight, my friends, this might be your last chance, the last chance you'll ever get to come to Jesus, to receive him as your Savior.

This might be your last night. There was a man who went to a gospel meeting such as this. And he heard the gospel.

And that night, he was a miner, this man. He worked in the mines. And that night, he received the Lord Jesus as a Savior.

The next morning, Monday, he went down into the mine. There was an explosion. Part of the mine fell down.

He was buried underneath. And they dug him out. And there he was, his body broken.

He was dying. And as they gathered around him, some of the men waiting for the doctor to come, somebody saw his lips moving. And they knelt down beside him.

And they put their ear against his mouth. And this is what he was saying. Thank God I settled the question last night.

Thank God I settled the question last night. My friend, I want to ask you a question. I ask you to listen to this question.

I ask you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ to answer this question to your soul. If at five o'clock this afternoon, your heart had stopped beating, and tonight you were a corpse, and your loved ones were waiting in the undertaking parlor for you to be wheeled in, in your casket, to be on display in that little room, and already the flowers were being brought in, in deep of sympathy, I ask you in God's name, where would you spend eternity? Oh, dear sinner, I ask you to please wake up. I ask you to please not say, this is this man's religion.

God forbid. God forbid. This is not my religion.

I don't believe in religion. I believe in Christ. I believe in a person.

I believe in a Savior. My soul's salvation is staked on the finished work, on the precious blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. There's no other way to heaven, my friends.

There's no other way to heaven. You'll pardon me saying this, but people say, what are you, a Protestant or a Catholic? My friends, it matters not. The thing is this, are you Christ? Do you belong to Christ? Are you on the side of Christ? Are you on the side of the devil? There's only two masters, you know.

Only two. Jesus said you cannot serve two masters. He didn't say you cannot serve three masters, but there's not three.

There's only two. One of them is Christ. The other is the devil.

Either we're on the side of the Lord Jesus on the way to heaven, or we're on the side of the devil on the way to hell. We may be respectable. We may be kind.

We may be gracious. We may be well-dressed. We may have a beautiful home and a lovely car, but my friends, tonight our eternal destiny depends on our attitude and our thoughts about the Lord Jesus Christ.

He's the only savior that God has for sinners. There's only one savior. A man told me when I was working, he was an infidel.

He worked near me, my death. He said to me one day, what about all the other leaders of religion in the world? There's many. He started naming all these, Buddha, Muhammad, and so on.

And when he got finished, it was my joy, my joy, thrilled my soul to say this. Those men are all dead. They were all buried, and all their bodies are rotted away to dust.

They're eaten by worms. Poor sinners they were. But Jesus Christ firsts the bonds of death, and Jesus Christ lives at the right hand of God as a man.

It thrilled my soul, my friends. Christianity is the only religion in the world with hope. All other religions have no hope.

They only end in the grave, and death, and hell, and judgment. But Jesus is the savior of sinners. And so Bartimaeus came to Jesus, and the Lord said to him, what wilt thou that I do unto thee? The blind man said unto him, notice now, he didn't say thou son of David.

He said, Lord, that I might receive my sight. Isn't that a beautiful picture? Let's try to picture this scene. There's that poor blind beggar.

He couldn't see Jesus. He couldn't see him. Jesus could see him, but he couldn't see Jesus.

How did he know he was there? He believed. And that's the way you've got to believe. You can't see Jesus.

Bartimaeus couldn't see him, but he was in the presence of Jesus. There he was, and the Lord was speaking to him. What wilt thou that I do unto thee? And he said to Jesus, notice, Lord.

Oh, have you ever owned that blessed man as your Lord? This world cast him out. This world crucified him. You know that? People say to me, why is there war in this world? Why does God allow these wars? My friends, this world murdered the Prince of Peace.

This world nailed the Prince of Peace to Calvary's cross, and they can't find peace. Great men have tried to make peace. They formed leagues of nations.

They formed all kinds of societies trying to rid the world of war, and they can't do it. They absolutely cannot. They never will until the Lord Jesus comes and makes peace.

Do not believe, my friends, the modernist preachers who tell us that everything looks nice and rosy in the future. There's a grand, they say, a grand future for this world. Believe it not.

This world is sinking. Just as a great steamer, when the war was on, a great steamer, maybe a huge steamer of 40,000 tons, crossing the ocean, received a torpedo in the side of it. It was sinking.

Maybe that ship cost 30 million dollars to build, but it wasn't worth anything now. It was sinking. It was going down.

The beautiful cabins, the lovely furniture on that boat meant nothing. It was sinking. And my friends, this world has been torpedoed by sin.

It's going down to hell, going down to judgment. It's going down. It's sinking.

It's going down quickly. And I want to say this, and I say this reverently. Apart from the Bible, gentlemen, tonight in this room, you who read the press, you know what you read in the front pages of the paper.

I remember in the Montreal paper one night, I was looking through it, and the front page was nothing but sorrow. Earthquakes, wars, bombings, diseases, train wrecks, accidents, plane crashes. Every single column was bad news.

And tomorrow morning's press will be the same way. Bad news. Sorrow and sorrow.

Accidents, planes crashing, automobiles smashing up. All kinds of sorrow. They'll say 250 killed over the weekend.

The world is full of sorrow. We're not living in this world. We're dying in this world.

We're dying. You're dying. Tonight you're dying.

Death is eaten into your body. Death has a claim on you. Death, death, death.

The only way to get life, eternal life, is to receive the Christ of God. And so there was Bartimaeus. He said, Lord, that I might receive my sight.

And the Bible says that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth, Jesus is Lord, and believe in thy heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. I was speaking to a man in Montreal before we came away. And I said to him, are you a Christian? And he said, I'm not.

And I said, would you like to be a Christian? He said, I sure would. Then I said, I want to ask you a question. Are you a sinner? And this is what he said, I would to God you say it too.

He said, I know I am. Isn't that wonderful? I know I am. Then I said, there's hope for you.

For Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Then I asked him this question. Do you believe that on the cross of Calvary, the Lord Jesus Christ died for sinners? He said, I do.

Then I said to him, do you believe that the Lord Jesus Christ died for your sins? And he thought a while, and he said, I do. Do you believe that the Lord Jesus Christ was raised from the dead as a man? And he said, after a minute of thinking, I do. Then I read him this verse.

If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in thy heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. And I said to him, sir, you just told me you believe that God raised his son from the dead. Did you ever confess that Jesus was Lord? Of course he hadn't.

He hadn't. He bowed his head, and he thought for a while, and I said to him, listen to the verse again now. That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in thy heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.

He looked at me and said, Jesus is Lord. Jesus is Lord. Isn't that wonderful? All my friends, the man that brought him to the meeting said, you know, I really believe that he did believe before, but he had never confessed that Jesus was Lord.

You boys tonight, you girls, did you ever go home to mother and say, you know, I believe that Jesus is Lord? That's confessing Christ, to confess that Jesus is Lord. That's what the blind man said, Lord, that I might receive my sight. Now the last verse, and Jesus said unto him, go thy way, thy faith hath made thee whole.

And immediately he received his sight. What a wonderful picture. There's the blind man in the presence of Jesus.

He can't see him. And all of a sudden, his eyes are opened. Wasn't that wonderful? This blessed person, he didn't, I speak with reverence, he didn't have to send people to the drugstore.

He didn't have to have any medication. He just spoke. He just spoke.

He was God. God was on earth in the person of Christ. The creator himself, the maker of the eyes was here.

And he just gave that man sight. And what do you think he saw when his eyes were opened? He saw Jesus. That's what he saw.

And you know, every sinner that's saved by the grace of God, when they get saved, we see Jesus. Isn't it wonderful? We see him with the eye of faith. We see him as our Lord.

We see him as our Savior. And we know that soon, we're going to see him with our eyes in the glory land above. We're going to see Jesus.

Well, the Lord gave this man some words here. He said, go thy way. Go thy way.

But the end of the chapter says, he followed Jesus in the way. Wasn't that wonderful? Go thy way. The Lord set him free, perfectly free.

Bartimaeus was a free man. He was a man with his eyes open. A man who had eyesight.

And he was given liberty by the Lord Jesus. Go thy way. But you know, the Lord not only opened his eyes, but he won his heart.

Isn't that nice? He not only opened his eyes, but he won his heart. And you know, we who are Christians in this room tonight, Jesus didn't only save our soul. That's a marvelous thing, that he saved my soul.

But Jesus has won our hearts. And he followed Jesus in the way. He followed Christ.

I like to think of Bartimaeus running across the road, probably down the street to his wife, and saying to his wife, I can see you. I can see you. I've got my eyesight.

I've met Jesus. And he told me to go my way. But my way is his way.

Now I must follow Jesus. And Bartimaeus was won by Christ. Oh, wouldn't it be wonderful if somebody in this room tonight was won by the Lord Jesus Christ.

My friends, you must think about that someday. It was a great man. I won't mention his name.

He's well known in this world. And I read this story about him. Somebody said to him, do you ever think about death? And this great man, he said these words, never.

And then he thought for a moment and he said, pardon me, I do. I often think about death. And so do you.

You think about death. How can you escape it? We have driven, my wife and I, through some of the most beautiful country in the eastern Canada in the fall when the leaves were beautiful. All colors you could think of.

As I rode, we traveled along the road and saw them. We thought, what a picture. What an artist God is.

What a wonderful artist. But you know, all of a sudden, you pass a graveyard. Spoil the whole thing.

Death is here. We can't get away from the death. When we sit down at our dinner tomorrow, we chop the roast beef.

It's death. A cow died. We feed on death all the time.

We live through death. The cow dies. The pig dies.

Our bacon in the morning. A pig is given his life. It's death.

We're feeding on death. We're dying ourselves. And we must go into eternity.

We have to meet God. My friends, tonight there's a pardon for you. Jesus loves you.

God loves you. God loved this world. He did something about it.

He sent his son into this world. The Lord Jesus loved sinners. He did something about it.

He died for sinners. You know, there's nothing more to do. Nothing more to do.

Only to believe. To take the Lord Jesus as your Savior. To own your sinner.

It's not hard, is it? To own your sinner and to confess his precious and blessed name. And you will have salvation. And should you die tonight, you will go to heaven.

Isn't that wonderful? You will be as ready for heaven as the Apostle Paul. How wonderful. You will be as fit for glory as the Apostle Peter.

How glorious. No leaving this world and having to do penance in the next. No.

Immediate death. Immediate glory. Absent from the body, said the Apostle Paul.

Present with the Lord. He said, I have a desire to...