Four Anchors

In the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 27, and again I'm reading from the Living Bible, King James Version. All those are dead. Acts 27, you know, I guess you know this story, it's where Paul is on a journey and they get caught in a terrible storm, something like they had, I guess, in Hawaii this week.

It has a big name, it's called Uroclidan. And it was seasonable, it didn't come anytime, it came in a certain season. And people usually avoided the sea.

And you remember that Paul told these smart alecks here not to go and they went. And it's very interesting that Paul started off as a passenger and he finished as the pilot. And they lost everything.

Lost all their goods, threw their baggage overboard. And finally all they did was land on the shore with a ship that was smashed up. But notice this, Paul says, there stood by me this night an angel of God, whose I am and whom I serve.

Therefore you better take notice of him if you don't take notice of me. And as I say, the disaster came and the prophecy, the word of God says if a man prophesies it doesn't come true, then he's not a prophet. But he prophesied the truth.

I think spirituality is at an all-time low across the world almost, but there are some people still telling the truth, but nobody heeds. They didn't heed nor he built an ark for a hundred and twenty years and then he sat inside of it for seven days. I think that must have been the toughest of all.

I think all his neighbors cursed him and laughed at him and said this thing is never going to move anyhow. Remember they'd never seen rain, to keep that out of the picture. Well he said, Ray, water's going to come down, water's going to come up.

They said, now he's nuts. You see God had watered the earth with dew and they'd never seen a rainstorm. And he sat in that place and I guess they laughed at him, scorned him and said, you old fool.

You know sometimes we think when we've obeyed God he ought to set all the machinery of heaven going just for me, you know, to prove I'm right. Why don't you answer my prayer today? Can't wait till tomorrow. He could have done it yesterday, would have been far better off.

Here I am, I'm hung up, what's happening? And it's the same with Moses, climbing the mountain again in the, what, twenty-fourth of Exodus. He didn't go up on a ski lift. I think when he got to the top his ankles were bruised and his clothes were torn.

And he was wrapped in darkness. God wrapped him in a cloud of darkness so they couldn't see him from the valley. And it says on the sixth or on the seventh day God spoke to him.

Again we would think that because we'd left, you see he left two million people in Israel, then he left the seventy, then he left the two and he's here by himself. And that's how God works. Maybe God will speak to you tonight, sure enough.

But we've got to work out our own salvation. It's not something just to be worked in, it has to be worked out. And so God keeps him waiting on the top of the mountain day after day after day after day.

We'd have got up and gone away, wouldn't we? I mean in an instant day like this, instant coffee, instant potatoes, instant what have you got? Well Lord I thought you'd be waiting here with Gabriel and a band from heaven to welcome me. And the Lord says sit down and cool down for a while. It's very difficult to be patient.

You know what they say, the man said, Lord I want patience and I want it now. Well that's about the way we want our prayers answering too, isn't it? But they took no heed of Paul. His counsel was thrown on one side.

It was totally rejected. What did they do? They landed shipwrecked. Lost everybody, lost their possessions, they lost the boat, they lost the cargo, they lost everything and arrived there just destitute.

You know I'm convinced this is a picture of the end time in which we're living. We're going to lose everything. I went to take a class in Waco this week on Tuesday night.

Very fine class, a lot of wonderful people there. And one lady said, you know I was just down the store, one of the largest stores in town, and one of the assistants said, you know we're closing. No, no, it's a big flourishing business.

No, no. All the staff were called together this morning and the manager said, I'm sorry but you all finish, you terminate your employment Sunday this week. Not much notice.

Well Montgomery Ward's in the same town of a tremendous spread and they've put the notice out, we're finishing by the end of December. I had a man came to talk with me today from Canada and he said it's incredible. A few weeks ago we were picking up newspapers, some little corner shop went out of business, somebody else, but now it's the big conglomerates.

One day after the other they can't pick the newspaper up but they're all collapsing, all these great industries. The nations, whether we believe it or not, we're in a storm period. And it isn't going to get any nicer.

I've been in storms in the middle of the Atlantic more than once and a friend of mine said, the ship was tossing, he said, I was scared to death that it would go down. He said when I've been there another half hour I was scared to death it wouldn't. See at one moment he thought to go, to die would be terrible, next moment he thought oh no, let it go, oh no, you know I've given up everything in more ways than one.

In other words he'd been sick. But anyhow, it gets like that. We're in a rough passage, it is not going to get any easier.

And don't let anybody fool you that the new man that's taken over from Brezhnev is a nicer man, he's the most wicked, diabolical man they've ever had apart from Stalin himself. There's nothing good coming out of Russia, they're trying to trick us and if you're not careful they'll do so. This is the storm, okay let's read it from verse 14, Acts 27 verse 14.

Not long after there arose against it a tempestuous wind called Eurotridon. Verse 17. When they had taken up they used helps, undergirding the ship and fearing lest they should fall in the quicksand, strake sail and so were driven.

And we being exceedingly tossed with the tempest, the next day they lightened the ship. The third day we cast out with our own hands the tackling of the ship. Verse 20.

And when neither sun nor stars in many days appeared, no small tempest ray on us hoping that we should be saved. But after long abstinence Paul stood forth in the midst of them and said, Sirs, ye should have hearkened unto me and not loose from Crete to have gained this harm. And now I exhort you be of good cheer, for there should be no loss of any man's life among you, but of the ship.

For there stood by me this night an angel of God, whose I am and whom I serve, saying, Fear not, Paul, thou must be brought before Caesar, and, lo, God, hath given thee all them that say with thee. Wherefore, be of good cheer, for I believe God, for it shall be even as it was told me. There's a lot of, well I'll use the word anyhow, there's a lot of humor in that, you see.

I don't see why Paul should have worried. I think I'd rather get drowned at sea than have my head chopped off. And he's going to have his head chopped off and he says, I've got a date up there in Rome with the big shot, and I'm going to make it, and you're going to come along with me.

I say, in my view it will be much easier to be drowned at sea than in the midst of a jeering, scorning, mocking crowd, and have your head chopped off. But he wasn't afraid of man, you see. You can't intimidate this man in any way at all.

He's heard from God. Remember, he didn't have a New Testament in his pocket. Again, I say, when I read Hebrews, Hebrews 11, where people subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions.

Mercy on us, not one of them ever had a Bible. Do you see how much they did without it, and how little we do with it? For many of us our Bible is a pep talk in the morning. Maybe you've got one of those abominable promise boxes, little bits of cardboard, and you stick a hat pin in it or something and get it out, and it's underneath an everlasting arm.

I don't know, just in promise boxes there are no curses, they're all blessings. There's nothing that would stimulate your faith. It's all, you know, sugar and spice and all that's nice.

And we've got a generation of people like that. It's all right for Jesus to take his cross, but don't lay any cross on me. Be of good cheer.

Well, I think Paul needed somebody to cheer him up. He says, no, I don't need to be good cheer. Doesn't he write later from a prison cell, and he says, rejoice in the Lord.

And in case they didn't hear he says, and again I say rejoice. That's a fellow in a stinking rotten prison, you can put a dog in it these days. And yet he is here, he's got that joy which is, as he himself said, it's unspeakable and full of glory.

And when the fourteenth night was come, there you are, two weeks, fourteen days, fourteen nights, no sun, no moon, no stars. Do you think they wondered if the end of the world had come? Fourteen days and nights without daylight, can't see the stars, no sun appears. What are we doing? Sailing into hell? But you see, God had a timetable for all this, as he always has.

Let's jump down to verse thirty-one. Paul said to the centurion and to the soldiers, except these abide in the ship, you cannot be saved. If they tried to escape, they'd all have been drowned.

The soldiers cut off the ropes and boats and let her fall. And while the day was coming on, Paul besought them all to take meat, saying, this day is the fourteenth day that ye have tarried and continued fasting and having nothing. Now don't you think that ship was loaded with screaming, crying children and terrified women and scared men? No food, no stars, no hope.

Didn't have any radio, you know, to see what's happening somewhere else. Just totally shut up there. Not shut up with God, as far as they were concerned.

Paul is riding it easily, he doesn't care at all. He knows he has an appointment, God made the appointment, he's going to get to that appointment. Whatever there is in the way, he's going to make it.

Okay, there's the background. Now, let's go to Paul's second letter to the Corinthians. And the fifth chapter.

I should have continued a little in that other chapter because I want to emphasize it. He says later, we cast out four anchors and wished for the day. So there were four anchors I want you to remember in this reading tonight.

Okay, 2 Corinthians chapter 5. For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God and house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. Now let me inject a thought of my own here. Remember Paul, this amazing man who was lifted up into the third heaven? Do you think he's talking, giving us a little peep through the door of the keyhole, when he says we have a home eternal in the heavens? He's got a preview of it.

He's caught up into the third heaven, he sees the glory of God. And he says, listen, this is no guessing game. We're not leaves blown by the wind that way, then this way.

We're not footballs for everybody to kick around. We know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a home eternal in the heavens. He has finished the chapter talking about the temporal things, notice.

We look not at the things that are seen. Now come on, how often are you judging what's going to happen by what you see round about, what you read on the news, CBS, or read in a magazine, read in a paper somewhere. He's very clear about it.

We look not at things which are seen, but the things which are not seen. Well how in the world can you see things that are not seen? Well surely we see them by the eye of faith. What is invisible to somebody else is a solid, we grasp it, faith is the substance.

It's not like grasping the air, we've got the assurance of God. How firm a foundation, didn't we sing that tonight? Ye Saints of the Lord. The things which are not seen.

For the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. And then, you see, there's no division there, this is an artificial division. That gap shouldn't be there between that last thirteenth verse and the first verse of the next chapter, that should be the fourteenth.

He's done the same thing. We're not thinking about the visible, the corruptible, but the incorruptible. Not about the things which are temporal, but the things which are eternal.

If the earthly house of our tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands eternal in the heavens. You know that always reminds me of a hymn, I don't know the man that wrote it, he wrote it in the eleventh century. His name was Bernard of Cluny.

If I can remember it, I can remember some of it. Okay, it begins like this. And he's talking about this very city that Paul says he's visualized.

He's singing, saying, Jerusalem the golden with milk and honey blessed. Beneath thy contemplation sing heart and voice oppressed. I know not, O I know not, what joys await us there, what radiancy of glory, what bliss beyond compare.

They stand those halls of Zion all beautiful with song and bright with men in angel and all the martyr thong. The prince is ever with them, the daylight is serene, the pastures of the blessed are decked in robes of green. Now, he says, there is the throne of David.

Well, wasn't Jerusalem the home of David and the kings? He says, there is the throne of David and there from care released the shout of them that triumph, the song of them that feast. And they who with their leader have conquered in the fight, forever and forever, are dressed in robes of white. I once gave out a hymn on a sheet here, a little thing like a tract, on Samuel Rutherford.

Samuel Rutherford, well he didn't write the hymn, but a lady extracted all these different pieces and put the hymn together. And it's a very wonderful hymn. Rutherford.

And he says in that hymn, I can't get the first line, but he says this, going to heaven, going to eternity with Jesus, it would a well-spent journey though seven deaths lay between. Now, he knew what it meant because he'd been fastened. There's an old pillar stands off the coast of Scotland.

It looks like solid, it isn't solid, it's a prison house. You could almost touch the walls with your hands. They put him in there, fed him about once a day.

It was the most severe penalty they had. And yet it was there where he said, when I get in the king's cellar, I look for the king's wine. You get his point? In these big houses they have a wine cellar.

One of our neighbors in England, he had one. I remember I went with his son exploring and you know we found nothing. But anyhow, we were sure we'd find something in that old wine cellar.

Empty bottles, yes. Full ones, no. Good thing because I'm sure we'd have drunk it and gone crazy.

But he says, when I'm in the king's cellar, I look out for the king's wine. A visitor said to him, oh this place, look at the slime on the wall, oh there's a rat, oh look at these things. How would you stay in here? Well he said, friend when you're not here, those walls shine like rubies and diamonds and amethysts and sapphires.

They're radiant with his presence. Again the world and all the systems that are operating, they can come right in on us, you know, and they can take the very claws off our back. But that's where they quit.

From my skin inwards, I am the master of my fate and the captain of my soul, as Meyer said. You see this man is a puzzle to everybody. I made a guess of this, and I'm usually right, but I made a guess of this and I guess that the devil gave every demon in hell a day off duty when Paul died.

I think he said, we'll never see an idiot like this anymore. Never see a man with such colossal intellect, a man with such pedigree, a man who could have been, to put it in different words, the Pope, though he would never have been the Pope, but he could have been the boss of the universe as it were, and yet he's going to lay his life down. And there he is rotting in a jail, and you can't faze him, you can't move him.

He has a joy unspeakable, a faith unshakable, a power that's indestructible. What are you going to do with him? Because he says, we know that if the earthly house of our tabernacle be destroyed, we have a home, listen, eternal in the heavens. Well I don't know about you, but I'm not going to heaven for the weekend.

Are you? And those poor sinners outside, they're not going to hell for the weekend either. You see, I've repeated it, I'll continue to repeat it, because if you don't need it, I do. We so easily get off kilter, we're not eternity conscious as we should be.

We're position conscious, possession conscious, power conscious, personality conscious. If you tried it for a week, every morning you'd get out of bed and said, I'm going to live for eternity today. You'd have a different thing to say at night before you went to bed, before God.

There's a scripture that talks about those things which the Gentiles seek. Well of course they were over the wall, as regard the Jews. But isn't it amazing how much people grab and do all kinds of things for temporal things in this day in which we're living.

Oh you say, but Paul, you said, had a preview, I think he had. I'm sure John did, didn't he? Fourth chapter of Revelation, he says, I saw a door open in heaven, as I've said to you before. If I could open a door, which we're used to as children in England, mother would say, don't go into the front room now.

Well she thought that was a command, I thought it was a challenge. And so when she'd gone, I'd sneak round the passageway and open the door and call her, Annie, Annie, to my sister, come and see what's in the house here. There's going to be a party or something, look at all these things.

Well I say it again, I say it to myself often, if I could push the door of eternity open half an inch, you'd never backslide again. You'd never grumble again. You wouldn't say, Lord, don't put this load on me.

You'd say, Lord, give me ten times the load. Because you see, eternity is going to be the payday. The checkout counter is there, but the judgment seat of Christ.

And I'm quite sure this is one of the things that kept the Apostle Paul from being moved and pushed around and tossed around with every wind of doctrine. Supposing I said to somebody here, where's my good friend Dale, he's over there, Dale Brown. Dale, I've just, I'm back from Australia and while I was in the north just a little east of Port Moresby, a man asked me, do you know anybody called Dale Brown, he lives in Texas.

I say, yes, there's only one Dale Brown in Texas, as far as I know. But anyhow, well he lives down near a village called Van or something. Yeah, I know the man.

Well listen, I want to show you something. And he takes me around this mansion and it's loaded with a million dollars worth of antiques and it's just the most gorgeous thing and it has servants and the garden is beautiful and everything is gorgeous. And he said, you tell him to come and get it.

Well I've mentioned before I think that my wife went to Australia the year I went to college. She left Ireland and went to Australia and it took 30 days. No aircraft in those days, so they went down the English Channel, through the Bay of Biscay, down by the Mediterranean, through the Suez Canal, round to Ceylon, round to India, then across.

Thirty days at sea. I'd like to do that, you'd get no telephones and no mail and no visitors. But anyhow, it would be nice.

Now, supposing they were still in that day and I say to Dale and his wife, well Dale, Betty, I've seen the thing, it is the most amazing, spectacular. They've got some of the great old pictures, not modern junk, you know, like Picasso and all those idiots. Some real stuff, you know, like Rembrandt and some of the old seascapes.

Oh, Chinese vases this height and all the places. It beggars description. And there's lots of servants there.

And all you have to do is go in and take a reference and you'll immediately fall into that whole thing. But before you go, remember this, if you've got to cross, say, if to do, I don't know, must be about 15, 16,000 miles that way by sea. And you may be seasick a few days, you may be knocked out.

And then when you get into Australia, if you land at Port, where? Sydney. And if you've got through the land, oh my, that's rough territory. I drove up in it.

Comfort, I drove in the Rolls-Bentley. It wasn't mine, but I enjoyed it. And it was gorgeous.

Gorgeous to see the kangaroos, all the wildlife. And then you come to a place where there's aborigines, then you come to a place where there's no water for 600 miles, you better have something. No McDonald's, no place to get an ice cream.

Just barren wilderness. Just terrible. And I say, now you've got to go all that way, you've got to go by water, then if you arrived up through the country, and oh, if the wind isn't blowing, sand in your eyes, the heat is unbearable.

The conditions are about the worst you could have. But you're going to have to do it if you're going to get that house. Well that's a very mild picture of the same thing here.

Jerusalem is there, the city of God is there. And to use Rutherford's word again, it were a well-spent journey, though seven deaths lay between. If I had to be tortured and put to death, and rise up again and tortured and put to death, so what? We've got a home, eternal in the heavens.

Well I ought to, if I can use the word, I don't like to use the word excited, it ought to stir us. What did Abraham say, Cluny, Bernard of Cluny says, there is the throne of David. Well that should send us into a, what do you say, a tizzy or a spin for about 10,000 years.

See the throne of David, and there from Keralese, the songs of them that triumph, and the shout of them that feast. Now you may be very staid, and maybe you go to a church where it's illegal to raise your hands, or you get a five dollar fine if you shout hallelujah. But you know, when we get up there, it's going to be, it's already reserved the first 5,000 years with Paul to explain Romans 7 to me.

So if you see me talking to him, you ought to keep your nose out of it, and you can have him after I've heard that. And I want to see some of the other great saints in the scriptures, out of the scriptures. This keeps a man on course.

What's worth bartering eternity for? What will a man give in exchange for his faith, his peace, his joy in God? Do you gripe that somebody else in business is making more money than us, and we're not half as honest as we are? So what? What's that got to do with it? I don't think God's interested in my business, I'm not sure that he is. He made you able, you've enough brains to run it, so run it. I remember Litono, I had dinner with him a few times, and old Litono used to say, well I gave 90% of my income last year to God.

You know, gave away 10 million at a time, 5 million, 7 million, so what? You know, I thought of this, and I may be wrong, I'm sure I'm right, that when you make a gift to anybody in the things of God, I don't think God looks at that gift. He looks at what you have left. Some of you students can give ten dollars away.

Somebody else could give it, not miss it at all. Wouldn't make a bit of difference. Here's my angel coming.

Thank you. I hope it's tea. No, it's water.

Oh dear, thank you. Very good. That's Adam's ale.

There's nothing, there's nothing worth bartering. And now suddenly some people lose all that they've gained, maybe for ten years or twenty years, they can lose it in ten seconds. I've only climbed mountains once, and it was in Scotland, they're not very high for sure.

But I noticed this, the higher we got it got lonelier. You've got a place where you couldn't stay at the side of somebody, you went all by yourself. But the higher you got it was more lonely, but looking back the view was so good.

Now, you could slip off that mountain, or say you're in the Alps or somewhere. You could climb for a whole week and not get to the top. And then the next day suddenly you're a bit careless and the rope breaks and you're going down 15,000 feet.

Won't take you long. May take you seven days to get up the mountain, you can get down in as many seconds nearly. And how often men, we talked, I talked today with a man from Canada.

Tell me about a disaster in their city. A man who had been preaching for so long and suddenly they had a marvelous ministry in a big church, suddenly got infatuated with somebody in the church, some young woman or what and then bang! Lost his ministry, is scorned by saints and sinners alike. How easily we can forfeit.

Lose our reward, lose our joy. Whether he loses his soul or not isn't my point right here. But I'll tell you what, there'll be lots of men who get there at the judgment seat and they'll have 40 years and God won't give them a dime for it.

Because a lot they did in the energy of the flesh. A lot they did as in the case where Jesus says, depart from me I never knew you. He doesn't say I never knew your works.

He says I never knew you. You and I never had a living relationship. I don't remember the day I got married to you.

You're part of the bride. Or you said you were and you got married to Jesus. And then you fouled the whole thing up and you can do miracles and signs and wonders afterwards.

I think David Wilkerson, he wasn't sitting, he was standing here the other week when we had a kind of a private meeting with the last day's ministry. I think he said almost the very same thing. There's so many disasters around that look when Satan comes and he will come.

People say faith can do anything. All right bring him here. If you know a guy like that bring him to the meeting next Friday night.

And I'll ask him by faith to strangle the devil. Clear a lot of mess up wouldn't it? Faith can't kill the devil. Faith can't cancel all history.

A lot of things that faith can't do. And yet it's a necessary ingredient if we're going to be built up in our most holy faith. Why didn't they enter into the land? Because of unbelief.

Why didn't some others? Because what they had was not mixed with faith in them that heard it. You see reading the Bible won't make you a saint. But if you get the word of God in you and let it work out it will.

We've never had more Bible knowledge than we have now. Heavens, heavens, heavens. I keep getting catalogs.

Get this set of tapes. Only $65. Get these.

Only something. Only something. Well you could pave this floor with cassettes and then line the walls with them.

It doesn't necessarily. Knowledge, knowledge in itself is not experiencing God. And you know what? Again one of our greatest dangers in the Christian life is to let our achievements become the ground of our confidence.

Oh I know I've been doing this for 50 years. I've preached in so many countries. I've done this.

I've done that. And their confidence is in their works, what they've done. You know if such people were cast onto the Isle of Patmos or put into prison like the Apostle Paul they'd die.

They'd die within a week. Because they've no publicity. Because they're not projecting themselves.

Because there's no hail around their head. Now if you don't get fascinated with those things you won't lose them. But he says we have a home eternal in the heavens.

That's number one. Let's see how my watch is going. It's still going unfortunately.

The second thing is in verse 10. We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ that everyone may receive the things done in his body according to that he hath done whether it be good or bad. Now that gives you confidence.

They kicked him around like a football. Okay. They tie him to a tree and whip his back 195 times.

Three times he suffered shipwreck. Once he was stoned. I'm sure he limped.

I'm sure one of his eyes was down here. I'm sure his face was all torn. Because you can't get baptized with stones you know and keep your pretty complexion.

And he'd been beaten up and roughed it and everything. But he says listen I don't have to retaliate. The Lord's going to do the retaliating at the end of the line.

All he asked me to do is be obedient. Not to look around and say well they're not carrying as much load are they? Forget it forget it. You know what? And they won't get the same reward when they get to eternity anyhow.

Neither. I used to wonder how in the world is that scripture this jiggery pokery you know the first should be last and the last should be first. I got no problems with it now.

No problems. I've told a class here let me tell you again. Many times about a man that Dave Wilkerson brought him to my office and we talked with a man who does has a minimum of five hours a day.

I nearly said a week. A minimum of five hours a day in prayer a maximum of ten hours. He had been praying a minimum of seven and a maximum of eighteen hours a day.

He prays at the back of a church in a little room. He prays he told me till the sweat he can't get his shirt off. He prays until he's lost his voice.

He likes to pray audibly because if you don't you may fall asleep. But you don't fall asleep if you're really talking and doing that. Now nobody writes that man up.

You see this country isn't held together by the army nor England or anywhere else. We're not held together by the army. We're not being held together.

It's not the army that's holding us together. It's not the Air Force holding us together. It's the Saints of God.

If there were no Saints God would breathe fire from heaven and roast us right now. The people that scorn us don't realize we are their insurance policy. We're the salt of the earth.

Well if the Saints are the salt of the earth surely praying people must be the salt of the church. Now what keeps Paul, what makes him tick? Well this is what makes him tick. Number one he says it's a bit rough now but you know what I've got a mansion on Main Street in eternity.

I'm going to be there forever and ever. I'm going to see the king in his beauty. I'm going to a place where there's no discord, there's no rivalry, there's no bloodshed, there's nothing unmerciful.

Everything is, it's every utopia you ever dream of all put together. And then it surpasses all of them. You can take all the utopias you like from Moore to everybody else.

God will never be second best in anything. All he does is par excellence. I've got a home in the heaven.

I don't understand the ups and downs. I don't understand the tricks of politics. He says but I'll tell you what there's only one road.

I remember saying that in my office one day to Keith Green. And I said I said Keith they used to say that all roads lead to Rome. He said well then it's changed.

I said what is it? He said all roads lead to the judgment seat of Christ. They do. Whether you go out to the Waldorf Astoria or you go from some old bum flea house on Second Avenue, Third Avenue in New York, all roads lead.

See if somebody tells you they don't believe in God say all right how old are you? Oh I'm 60 years of age, I'm smart and wise. Say hey come and tell me when you're a hundred and twenty years of age. What? I said you call me when you're a hundred and twenty years of age.

Well nobody makes up, why don't they? When men say I want to obey God's laws, I say well look there's a funeral going down the street. He obeyed it and you obeyed before long. I read an article where in Russia they're they're angry always because they can't find life in perpetuity.

A man got a plastic heart yesterday wasn't it? It was in the newspaper. The whole world of science is amazed at it. So what? I know thousands of people who have hearts of stone.

What is it about a plastic heart? And the suggestion that it will wear out but before it wears out you can put a new one in. No no no no. We don't live by this old ticker in here.

We've got a spirit within us. A spirit eternal. God is a spirit.

I'm a spirit. And he speaks spirit to spirit. All right.

He says you know I can see him there just saying well I don't care about this. Doesn't worry me at all. Have you heard the news that Caesar's going to do? No I don't care about Caesar.

Not Agrippa? I don't care about Agrippa. Are you not the chief rabbi? I don't care about it. Do you know how many men have taken a vow to kill you? No and I don't care about it.

Why? Well number one I have a desire to depart. Now come on be honest about it. Did you really wish today you could die? Hmm? No? Well one or two nodding this way.

Nobody nodding that way. Paul did. He says I'm craving to see him.

There's nothing in the whole universe more wonderful that I'm going to see Jesus Christ face to face. And that keeps me on course when temptation comes and trial comes. And you know what else? Well he wrote in the middle of Romans 8 didn't he? It is God that justifier.

You don't need to vindicate yourself. People are talking about me. Well praise the Lord while they're talking about you they're leaving everybody else alone so why worry about that.

What about my reputation? You should have got rid of it by now. If you hadn't take it to the cross and nail it there. As I said before reputation is what men think we are.

Character is what God knows we are. God won't take any bit of notice of anybody gossiping about you except to judge them. You don't go up and down on his list as you know the top ten in eternity and then drop to ten million nine hundred and sixty-five thousand we're down here.

No no no no no. I'm in control as to what God thinks about me. Some of you know Joy Dawson you've read about her anyhow.

And I was preaching in New Zealand about fourteen years ago and it was a youth meeting and Joy came in. She wasn't too youthful even then but anyhow. She came through the door and just as she came I pointed like that and I said you are just as spiritual as you want to be.

And it stuck on her like a leech. Lauren Cunningham says you know she's told that. Len Ravenhill pointed his fingers I came in a meeting late and said you're as spiritual as you want to be.

She took it all around the world. Well it's true. Not true because I said it.

It's a simple fact. If you've nibbled on one little text today well no wonder you're spiritually hungry and if you took a slice out of it and you feel strong well hallelujah there you are. It all depends on you.

The resources are here in God. Finney didn't have a bigger Bible than you have or John Wesley but they just use it they just applied the truth. And Paul says number one I keep on course because I've got a home eternally in the heavens.

I can't get there too soon. If I depart I'll be with Christ. If I stay here I'm with Christ.

So you don't win. They wouldn't let anybody win you see. And now he says we've got a judgment seat and all are going to the judgment seat.

Now right here he's talking to believers. He says we. See some people wave that out on the basis of Romans 8 1. There is therefore now no condemnation.

Wait a minute wait a minute. That is true of course. There's no condemnation for past sins.

Many things God cannot do. If you backslide now he can't bring up the sins that you confessed and he put under the blood because he forgave them. If you start the whole moldy business over again that's your fault.

But he visualizes. Can you think of them marching? I look at my Encyclopedia Britannica sometime and I think you know one day I'm going to see every page of that history come alive. From Adam to the last person before the trumpet blast.

They're all going to come marching up to the judgment seat of Christ. Now verse 14 is the third anchor. We say he cast out four anchors.

Verse 14 the love of Christ constraineth us. Into verse 15 they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves. And then verse 16 wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh.

I like that. I've turned that over and over in my mind so many times. What does it mean? He knows no man after the flesh.

You put a tag on a man and say he's Caesar. You put a tag on another man and say he's the king of this domain. You say of this man he's a judge.

You say of that man he's wealthy. We fix people socially we put tags on them. And he says there's no man on God's earth can intimidate me.

Again he's got a joy unspeakable. He's got a faith unshakable. He's got a love that's indestructible what are you going to do with him? And he says I know no man after the flesh.

In other words because that man has authority to put me to death I'm not going to kneel down. Paul never knelt before anybody except God. I bow the knee to the Father.

Once you've done that you don't need to bow the knee to anyone else. And so he's at home wherever he is because he says Christ liveth in me. Well you can't intimidate Christ can you? Nobody could.

Well if that Christ is living in me nobody should intimidate me. Number one I've got a home eternal in the heavens. Number two there's going to be a day of reckoning.

Things are upside down right now. I think the only thing that keeps me sane. There are people who think I'm not sane but as far as I know I am.

And the one thing that keeps me sane I think is that that scripture right in the early chapters of the Bible. Where it says shall not the judge of all the earth do right. Wasn't that Abraham saying that? Shall not the judge of all the earth? Oh well when we get to that greater size court.

Again how long will it take? I don't know. A hundred million years as we count time. Well does it matter? We're not going anywhere anyhow.

We're in eternity. It's timeless, limitless. And Paul may have said I don't know how all these things get so mixed up.

I don't know why these wicked men are ruling. I don't know why the righteous are hiding in caves. It's a terrible thing isn't it? And it's worse in the spiritual life.

When we think you know I've just about got the hardest deal that there is. I mean no one else has it as rough as I have. And so Paul says to the Hebrews who are under pressure.

They were living under a foreign governor remember. And he's commissioned by God to strengthen the weak hands and confirm the feeble knees. And remind these people who are shaky and wobbly right now that there were some people like them way way back.

And they wandered round this earth in sheepskins and goatskins being destitute, afflicted and tormented. And God did nothing about it. How many hundreds of men are there in prison in Russia today? Does God send fire from heaven? No he doesn't.

What's going to happen? Well there's a checkout counter there called the judgment seat of Christ. And everything's going to be straightened out. Rewards or lack of rewards.

But here he says if you want to keep me going. No one keeps me going. Okay number one is I've got a home eternal in the heavens.

Number two God's going to straighten it all out. Number three the love of Christ constraineth me. Oh that's a gorgeous verse.

Dear Marysol, she was the oldest daughter of the founder of the Salvation Army and she used to come to a church I'd pastor. She was old and wrinkled, very autocratic. But she wrote some very wonderful poems and one of them has this in it.

There is a love constraining me to go and seek the lost. I yield, O Lord, my all to thee to save at any cost. There is a fire that falls on me as in the upper room, destroying all carnality, dispelling fear and gloom.

There's a love constraining me. I can't help myself. He talks about a man being a compulsive drinker or a compulsive drambler.

Oh listen, if you get this passionate love inside of you, you'll be an idiot to everybody just about. You get all the folk out teething some Baptists I was with. I said well you couldn't shout hallelujah in your church, they'd put a hosepipe on you.

But you were all at Baylor yesterday at the football match screaming your heads off. Come on Baylor Bears. You say excuse me, aren't you the deacon? Don't mention it to anybody will you.

I mean I never get excited in church. I'm one of the chosen and one of the frozen, and I don't want you to disturb me. Look you can't be, okay this is tough on you young folk, but I'm going to tell you anyhow.

You can't be in love and be, what was I going to say now? Well okay you can't be in love and be normal. When you're in love you do the most erratic senseless thing. That is in the eyes of other people.

Oh if we had some God intoxicated people, what do you think they did coming out of the upper room? Somebody says hey you've been drinking. Oh please don't say that. You know I'm a member of the first Baptist church in town.

Don't accuse me of that dirty rascal. They didn't care. Surely Peter ran away when a girl put a finger up.

After that he puts his finger up to the big shot in town and says you crucified the Lord of Glory. He couldn't have done that except he had a baptism of love. You know we all think that we got everything if you got saved, you got filled with the Spirit and you spoke in tongues and did some miracles.

That's the last one on the ladder. It's only the beginning. You see the more that love grows, the more erratically we become in the eyes of other people.

I remember just now going through Ireland. We'd been to a prayer meeting. It was about two o'clock in the morning.

We came down the hill and there's a steep cliff at the bottom and there's a fellow by a tree and this is what about thirty years back and the farmers used to like those big army great coats, you know, huge things. Boy if I got inside I couldn't even carry the thing. Made of thick heavy caulking, you put your collar up you know and you couldn't see his face.

Oh it was monstrous. We're coming down the hill and we had a little English car, it had no heater and the grass was as white as snow, there was a severe frost on it. We came round the bend, the headlights hit this, well it looked like a man and then I saw there was a girl inside the coat as well and here he's holding this girl tight like this, you know.

I could see him talking away, then he'd peck at her a little bit and then he'd talk a bit more and peck at her a bit more and my friend says, isn't that ridiculous? I said what? He said two o'clock in the morning, frosty morning, two o'clock in the morning and there he is cuddling a girl or something. I said it isn't two o'clock in the morning. He said it sure is.

I said it isn't to him, it's middle of June. He must be frozen, he doesn't know he's got any feet. I mean if he wanted to be comfortable, he'd be home in bed at two o'clock in the morning, but he's got a girl.

Half a dozen guys wanted her and he happened to win the girl. Oh how beautiful and he sees everything in her. You know, okay, maybe put it in the form of a question.

Have you made love to Jesus this week? Prayer is preoccupation with our needs. Praise is preoccupation with our blessings. Worship is preoccupation with God himself.

There's an old poem, it starts, my goal is God himself. Not joy, not peace, not even blessing. Some guy up the Amazon today got bitten by a snake or somebody.

There's no telephone, there's no medication. I try and remember all the forgotten missionaries every day of my life to pray for them. Somebody up in the denizens of New Guinea, I've been up there in some country.

Go down to Mexico, they talk about the American weekend missionaries. They go down in droves over the weekend, give out clothes and a few apples and oranges and a few pens. They had a great time, had a great time.

A man in my office a while ago said, well I've forgotten the name, Joe Foss knows it, I know the city. And he says that's about as far as Americans come in and they come with their loads of stuff and it's all right. He said they've spoiled it for a lot of us.

People come in our mission hall and say, but what are you giving away tonight? We don't have anything. Oh, and off they go to another mission where they are giving things. This man said, you know about 60 miles from this town we went down a gorge.

There was no road in, we went in and we found a tribe of people that couldn't speak a word of English, they couldn't speak a word of Spanish. And they just about had loincloths on them. The men's hair was down, nobody's ever touched them before.

Well it's supposed to be a civilized country, but then we're supposed to be civilized, but we aren't very civil. What about up the Amazon? What about parts of Africa and elsewhere? And the city stood, I remember I saw him once and I remember one of his sayings was, I'll fling the world away to go crusading. Let me go loose, you can have the world, you can have wealth, you can have everything you want, let me go.

After all it cost Jesus, he had to come into the world and he had to bear a cross. Well, what does the hymn say, must Jesus bear a cross alone and all the world go free? Yes, there's a cross for everyone. And there'll be a crown too.

The love of Christ. Isn't it amazing that this, this is a man that went down the Damascus road breathing out threatenings, you could see the fire coming out of his nostrils almost. I'm going to devour the church, slaughter the church.

And he admits that he tore families up, read the 26th Acts when you go home. He says, I tore families up, I drove them into strange cities, I did every devilish thing I could. And here is a man who seems to be devil possessed and before long he's cleansed and filled with the Spirit and he wrote the greatest hymn of love that's ever been written.

Just 13 verses in 1 Corinthians 13. Nobody will ever equal it because God inspired it. There is a love constraining me.

Love asks no questions. Another hymn says, let me love thee, Savior, take my heart forever. Nothing but thy favor my soul can satisfy.

Oh yes, it's easy to sing in a nice atmosphere like this where the whole realm of nature mine but it's when you have to make a choice. And then you have to tell the in-laws and the outlaws and your cousins and your uncle, we're giving up business, we're going to do this, we're going to do that. I'm not saying everybody has to go, mercy on us.

Almost every front street is a mission field now. You can go into parts of New York that are far more terrifying than going to some mission field. Somebody asks a missionary a lot and you go, how long have you been home? So long.

Is it nice on the mission? No, no, it's tough. Well, I suppose there are a lot of dangers. Oh yeah, pull knives on you, shoot you, knock your brains out, do a lot of other things.

Well, what do you do when that happens? You go back to the mission field. You can get all that in New York City. Somebody with the agape force was stabbed recently.

You take your life in your hands. Dave Wilkerson told me he sat on a fire hydrant in Times Square, New York, Broadway, about somewhere up Broadway and West 42nd, West 44th Street. He was sitting there at half past one in the morning, nearly two o'clock, and he was approached by homosexuals a number of times.

Girls there selling their bodies, talking filth. Openly they were putting packets out, selling drugs on the street. The cop turns the other way.

Now we'll close down schools, if the government's closing down schools that are doing good. It doesn't close down these other places which are much better than hellhole. And you need some courage and you need an awful lot of love to go to somebody who stinks, and maybe they've got fleas on them, and you know that they could pull a dagger on you, you could do some other thing.

Only love will take you there. Theology, you can't love theology. You can only love what can love you back.

You can love your dog, it gives you another kind of love. But the real love, people say, I love to play golf. No you don't, you like to play golf.

I love to go sailing. No you don't, you like to go sailing. You can only love where there's the other person or that other situation.

Love can come back to you. And God so loved the world. I wonder how often we give God the second best.

I wonder how often we give God the leftovers. Do we sometimes get so lifted up in a meeting, you feel you'd like to step right out of here and go to Timbuktu or three or somewhere, and you feel, boy, and then tomorrow, whoops, down you go. Well you do if you live on feelings.

But you see, this man is guided by the word of God. Look, number one, I've got a home eternal in the heavens, you can't shake me. Number two, I know God is faithful and there's going to be a judgment seat.

Number three, I have this love of Christ constraining me. And then finish in verse twenty. We then are ambassadors for Christ.

As though God did beseech you by us, we pray you in Christ's stead. That's something, isn't it? He says, I'm here in place of Christ. In another place he says, Christ liveth in me.

And he knows that every ambassador, okay, say the American ambassador has to go for some reason into the Kremlin. He doesn't go shaking at the knees because of the Communists. He goes and he lays down something as stiff, he's absolutely sure, he's a hundred percent sure they reject what he's saying.

Why doesn't he tremble? For the simple reason that while he's standing there he knows that he has behind him, he has the American government, the American Air Force, the American Navy, everything else that belongs to America is behind him. He's an ambassador. He doesn't offer terms, he does as he's told.

He's an errand boy for the president. He can't say, well Mr. President, I'll deliver this message except this is a better not, or he'd get rubbed out. He says, we're ambassadors, we've come for a king, we're working for a kingdom that cannot be shaken.

We work for a king that cannot abdicate. He wrote there in Hebrews 1, Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever a scepter of righteousness, is a scepter of thy kingdom. What's the biggest hang-up with people today? The biggest hang-up is there's no justice.

People are walking the streets who are murderers. They pass the new, oh what is it now, this fella told me from Canada, they've just passed a new law. Some civil right they have.

And if you, if you're in prison even, you can now plead this. And so two guys tried it a few weeks ago. Number one, the prison wasn't comfortable.

Number two, they didn't have a TV. Number three was some, just five trivial things and they asked for an appeal to the court and the court says, well that's right, it's the Constitution of America, you have all those things, you don't have them, you're free. And the lawyer said, now you've given, every criminal in the country is going to say my bed isn't soft enough or I don't get the right meals or something else and we're introducing lawlessness.

Now we're not going to stop the rot. I'm more convinced than ever I've been in my life, there's only one answer to the whole situation and that is a real Holy Ghost revival. And I believe like a brother said to me today, he said, well Brother Rabinell, that's not going to halt the whole thing.

I said, maybe it's not. I don't think we're going to escape judgment in the nation for a minute. But I don't think it's either or, it's either revival or revolution.

I think it's revival and revolution. The two are going to work together. Unless there's some drastic change, there's going to be an awful lot of riots this winter.

It's bad enough to walk the streets hungry in the summer, but when you get snow up like this and folk are shivering in the house and they can't pay for their oil and various other things, you're just irritating a sore that's already sore and you're rubbing it and rubbing salt into it. And that's the natural level of things. But you see, Paul sees right through that, that's what I'm trying to get at.

Don't see persons because of their social standing, don't see them because of their intellectual standing or their religious standing or their political standing or their royal standing. Paul sees everybody. He says, I'm a debtor to the Greek and the barbarian.

He says, there's neither Jew nor Greek, which is race distinction. There's neither bond nor free class distinction. There's neither male nor female, sex distinction.

I don't look at them as that personality. I see a lost soul. I see a person who's going to get out of God's presence.

They're going to stay there forever and ever. There's no way out. And those things kept him on course.

His great love for his Lord. But for the grace of God, he'd have gone down like Pharaoh in the Old Testament. We'd list him with Hitler.

We'd list him with the worst men that have ever lived. He was going to slaughter every Christian, and he'd done some of it. And God made a divine appointment with him, intercepted him.

And you wouldn't have thought when he was rolling in a ball of dust on the floor, and he gets up, all the men around him staggered and saying, we heard a voice. Well, there's nobody here. He says, well, I heard the voice.

You wouldn't have guessed when he stood up, knocking the dust off him, that he had fourteen epistles in him, and a dozen churches that he founded. And it's good to look the other way. What sort of view has God inside of you tonight? I don't know.

Did God educate you just to stand behind a counter? Maybe he did, I don't know. Maybe he called you to be a translator with Wycliffe. Maybe he called you to go and work in a hospital in India where you could shed light.

I don't know. And I want to tell you something else. Gabriel doesn't know either, so that's true of us that are ignorant.

Only God knows. But if God can set that thing in motion, if you get that fiery love, and that's what the Bible talks about, fire. Love is a fire.

Love is stronger than death, the word of God says. And that love so amazing, so divine. Well, there'll be a lot of silly talk about Jesus at Christmas, a lot of nonsense.

But we know why he came into the world. And I finish with this. Barakluff was a great American songwriter.

I met him once. I was a little boy and he came to our church. And I remember him playing the piano and singing.

And I think he wrote the hymn, Out of the ivory palaces into a world of woe, only his great eternal love made my Savior go. Or the Marashal's son, I think, wrote the hymn, Down from his glory, ever-living story. From heaven to earth he came, and Jesus was his name.

Born in a manger to his owner's stranger, a man of sorrows, tears and agony. Oh, how I love him, how I adore him, my breath, my sunshine, my all in all. The great Creator became my Savior.

Turn that over in your mind one day. Forget about praying. Just say, Lord, I'm going to worship you for the next hour.

As I tell you, Dr. Tozer told me he could worship three, four, five hours at a time without saying a word of prayer or a word of praise. He was just consumed, gazing one day on the holiness of God, another day on the mercy of God, another day on the power of God. Well, I guess you'll go to church Sunday and you'll hear John 316 for the 500th time you've heard it.

Some little text that doesn't cause us to preach anything, he doesn't have to worry over it, or say a few shibboleths around it, and that's it. We need to learn to worship him. We need to learn to adore him.

We need to learn to give him thanks continually.