Heaven and Hell

The text that you heard tonight preached very clearly, Luke 19 and 10, was the verse that God in his grace used to use to awaken me, a young man after a conference, and it was in the back of a track. There I was in darkness and in my sin, on my knees asking God to save me, and I read that verse, the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost. And it came so clear, the lost were not the boys down the road that did things I didn't do, just simply because I wasn't allowed to do them, but I felt so much better that I didn't do them.

And understand that's the only kind of people that ever get saved, are people that are lost. No one ever gets saved. You may not have been particularly thinking about that verse, but that is the absolute truth of the gospel.

Having said that, we're going to read Luke again, Luke's gospel in chapter 14, Gospel of Luke in chapter 14. And verse number 16, Luke 14, verse number 16, Then said he unto him, A certain man made a great supper, not just any supper, a great supper, and bade many. Sent his servants at suppertime to say to them that were bidden, Come, for all things are now ready.

And they all with one consent began to make excuse. The first said unto him, I have bought a piece of ground, I must these go and see it. I pray thee, have me excused.

And another said, I have bought five yoke of oxen, I go to prove them, I pray thee, have me excused. Another said, I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come. So that servant came, showed his lord these things.

And the master of the house, being angry, said to his servant, Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in hither the poor, the maimed, and the halt, and the blind. And the servant said, Lord, it is done as thou hast commanded. And I love these words, yet there is room.

Doesn't say how much, but he says, yet there is room. And the Lord said unto the servants, Go into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled. For I say unto you, that none of those men which were bidden shall taste of my supper.

Final reading back in the book of Isaiah, if you like, Isaiah chapter 14. Isaiah chapter 14 and verse number 9, very solemn passage here that I'm going to apply tonight in the gospel. Isaiah 14 and verse number 9. Hell from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming, and it stirreth up the dead for thee, even all the chief ones of the earth.

It hath raised up from their thrones all the kings of the nations, and they shall speak and say unto thee, art thou also become weak as we? Art thou become like unto us? Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, and the noise of thy vials, and the worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee, and so on. Whenever I read a passage like this, I'm reminded of a lady that was coming to gospel meetings we were having not too far from our little town. And we went to visit her, and she said, you know, I got to admit something to you.

When I go to my church, I come away feeling good. When I go to your services down there in the village hall, I come away feeling terrible. I said, why is that? She said, I find the preaching very extreme.

I said, well, it is. I said, it is because we're talking about extreme places. We're talking about heaven, and we're talking about hell.

That's what we're going to talk about at the close of this gospel meeting tonight, these two places that are very, very extreme. I would like to look at Luke chapter 14, that this is a place where room has been made. Isaiah chapter 14, again, is a place where room has to be made.

Has to be made. Let's make it clear. That hell was never prepared for you or anybody of mankind.

Heaven was, not hell. Bible makes it clear it was prepared for the devil and his angels. But people will go there, unfortunately, and in this passage we read, room has to be made.

Has to be made. And Luke chapter 14, room has been made. Isn't that a wonderful thing? I'm thankful tonight that I'm going to a place where room has been made.

How about you? How about you tonight? If you were to draw your last breath before the lights go out in this building, where would you be? That's what we're talking about. You'll be in one of these two places, in heaven or in hell. Coming back to Luke chapter 14, you know, it says, yet there is room, but it doesn't say for how many.

But I can tell you this much, there's room enough for you. There's room enough for you. We wouldn't be standing here on this platform tonight, preaching this message, if there wasn't room enough for you.

There's room enough for all. I love that passage, Luke chapter 19, one of my favorites, of course. For this day of salvation come unto thy house.

Get it clear. God's salvation comes to one member of the family. His desire is that everybody in that house will be saved.

Away with any type of thinking that the gospel divides and lies like this. I've heard it all. It doesn't.

It's said. Because when the gospel comes to a home, and I know all kinds of homes this way, and there are those that have rebelled against it, resisted the gospel, and they're not saved tonight, a number of them have died in their sins. So what did divide the home? Not the gospel.

Their sin. Their sin, my friend. That's what divides everything.

It's your sin, and it will forever divide and separate you from heaven. A place where room has been made. So people are good at making excuses, you know.

Just when I think that I haven't heard them all, I hear another one. And I could tell you all kinds of them. But I visited a home.

Her son is in the assembly in Alberta. And he came through Sussex here a month ago. Asked me to go visit his mother and that.

So I went and visited. Nice lady. Very nice.

Just something told me she seemed a little too nice. And she was there with her husband. And so I went back to visit them, to invite them out.

It was just last Thursday, I think, because I was speaking Sunday night in the gospel in Sussex. And he was a little while coming to the door. And he said, you know, Judy's not feeling good tonight.

She's not been good. And she was hiding. She's in the bedroom.

Now, maybe she wasn't. Maybe I'm... But I've seen enough of that. Something told me this woman is not being real.

Listen, the most real moment in your life will be the second before you get saved. You will be real with God. No reservations.

No hesitations. You'll just come out for what you are and admit you're just a guilty sinner. You know, really, when you think of it, if some people, some excuse makers, you know, they just do what the third servant did.

They just blame it, whatever. But if excuse making ever became an Olympic event, there's a lot of people who would win a gold medal. Boy, they can make excuses.

I talk to people just like these other men do. And just as you're talking, you see the things they're trying to think. OK, what's on Sunday? Got to be something on Sunday night.

And like they say to me at times, they'll say, you know, I don't know what's on Sunday night. I do. I says there's a gospel meeting expecting you to be there.

Come on. No more excuses. Some come and some don't.

However, I am so thankful, like I say, to tell you tonight that there's a place that's been prepared for me. Yes, sir. Absolutely.

Won't have to get to heaven and worry about a place being prepared. It's already been prepared. And they're spacious.

There's lots of room. When God brought Adam into this world, there was a place for him. It wasn't some little backyard garden and he had a home, went to work.

Not at all. It was a massive field. Remember? The whole land, said God to Abraham, the whole land is before you.

And he had plenty of room, plenty to do without disobeying God. Isn't it the opposite? When God comes to man, there's no room for them in the end. You'll never convince me there wasn't room for him, them in the end.

It's him they didn't want. Because of who was the traveler. They did not have cell phones in that day.

They didn't have instant communication. But somehow the line got down, the message got down the line that guess who's coming? You've got no room for them. And when they met him without any hesitation, there was no room for them in the end.

Period. That was it. So what was given to our blessed Lord but a manger which to be born.

Remember when the Lord Jesus went to meet with his disciples, he said, there'll be a large upper room, large upper room. In other words the point is this, that in heaven there's room for multitudes, multitudes. 1,500 square miles if I measure the cities right given to us in the book of the revelation.

And 1,500 high. Room for everybody. There's room for you tonight.

If you'll come to realize that somebody has made that. There'll never come a moment in heaven. I love this.

But because of the multitudes, you know, I'll walk up the Savior and, you know, be kind of that distant look and just try, you know, like you do at a conference. You're trying to think, no, hey, I should know her name. I should know his name.

Not at all. Not at all. When that shepherd picked me up, he swooped me up into his arms.

He's never let me down. And when I get to that place, he will, I'm applying this, okay. Maybe I'm working a bit on my imagination, but he'll give me to the Father.

Okay. And he'll well remember. He'll know more about me and my past than I'll know myself.

I might go back to that night when I got saved. That was all about it. How about you tonight? How about you? You know, nobody's going to be in heaven and wipe their brow and say, whew, didn't think I'd make it.

No. Everybody's going. They know they're going there, and they have the assurance of it and the authority of it from the word of God.

Because room has been made. Wonderful going there tonight. You're not saved.

You're going to a place. Understand clearly, friend. You're going to a place where room has to be made.

If you ever went, when Mr. Ramsey was living, you ever went to the Prince Edward Island Conference, there was a written law that you did not leave the conference early. Okay. Some violated it, and they would leave because they had to catch the ferry.

It was before the Confederation Bridge was in. And, you know, our children would come to their mother and say, Mom, you can't, you know, they named different Christians, leave it. No, she says, you know, your father, he's not leaving until it's done.

Okay. That's the way I was brought up. That's the way they were brought up.

So we had a little Plymouth Horizon. Okay. I don't know how we got six of us into it, but we did.

I think Sarah was a baby then. She was surely in the front. Joni is in the back, right behind me.

I remember that. And so we're coming down over the hill, and they're just loading the ferry, and we see the cars going on and on. Oh, she says, we might make it.

And just before we're past car four, the deckhand was standing there. He had a transmitter radio. He took that big orange pile on, plump, right down front of our car.

Oh, the groans. But our oldest girl, a little like her mother, I guess, cried the window down. She said, Sir, do you not have room for just a little car? He looked at her, looked back, put his back to us, picked up his radio, began to talk, speak with the people up on the ferry, and looked back at us.

By the way, he picked that pile on up, pile on on, and says, whew, slammed it down again. I'll tell you, that little Horizon was rocking. Oh, the cheers, that mechanical spirit that came out.

We made it. And of course, they got on the boat, and that wasn't enough. They had to run around to all the ones that cheated quite early and said, Hey, we made it too.

We stayed. Oh, wasn't that great. But room had to be made.

Understand? It did. I don't know if she had done that. We'd like to still be on the dock.

But it just shows you, my friend, what we're talking about tonight. When it comes to heaven, room does not have to. They're expecting you.

Are they expecting you in heaven tonight, sir? Listen, if you've got to get this settled, if this meeting is a distraction, go wherever you got to go. Get alone with God. Get it settled.

Whether I'm going to a place where room has been made or room has to be made. Happened at a wedding, of all places, in Iowa. And I'm not real, don't tell anybody this.

It goes on record. Everybody knows me. I'm not real big on weddings.

Dear Mr. McBain, he couldn't get enough of them. Somebody asked me, Who married you? I said, Mr. McBain. He asked for the jobs, I gave it to him.

Anyhow, I'm out here doing a wedding. And it was, I remember the girl's name, Hyannis. And she was from Hampton.

She had gotten saved in meetings that Scott McLeod and I had. And she married a tailor, I think, from out in the prairies. And wanted me to do the wedding.

So I had to fly out to Iowa to do the wedding. So this is wonderful. Why? She's a child of the faith, so why wouldn't you? So anyhow, it was in Charles City, a very nice place.

It was, I don't even know the name of the restaurant. And did the wedding ceremony. And then they were excused to do pictures, whatever, whatever.

And they said, Now, to your right, there's a large board with the seating arrangement. And your table number and your seat. And your name's there.

So I went, Oh. I looked up and down carefully. And I know my eyes could fail.

And my name's not there. I came to do the wedding. My name's not there.

That's real ego buster, isn't it, huh? So I called the emcee over. I said, Hey, my name's not on the board. Murray says, There.

You likely can't see it. I said, That could be. But you find it for me in three chairs.

He looked up and down twice. He said, I'm sorry. He said, Your name's not there.

But he says, You know what we're going to do? We're going to make room for you. I said, Great. So I got in, all right? Because they made room for me.

It was a joke, really. It's been a good illustration. That's the thing.

But nevertheless, room had to be made. Now, my friend, listen, at that great banquet hall in heaven, no room has to be made. Never, never.

Never come a moment when God will come out wringing his hands and say, That's it. It's all over. Lights are going out.

Not at all. Onward it will go. Listen, before I was saved as a young boy, I sit in a meeting.

I used to visualize heaven as some big conference like I'd be at in Toronto, where you sat in rows of seats and sung at the back of somebody's head. Not at all. My friend, it'll be a wonderful place.

Beyond human description. That's why the Bible speaks of it exactly that way. But when we come to the last part, I'm going to come back.

I'm not going to close in Isaiah 14. I refuse to. When I come back to Isaiah, when we come to Isaiah chapter 14, they're not expecting you.

Since they stir up the dead, things move as it has to take you. Everything that God has prepared for a man is spacious and commodious. And this place which people will find themselves in, they have to kind of shuffle over and make room for them.

Terrible to think of it. Terrible to think of it. And they look as, you know what? They're surprised.

What are you doing here? What are you doing here? Listen, if you die in your sins and end up in hell, maybe there'll be neighbors that'll say, what are you doing here? What's this about? What happened? How'd you ever miss it? Didn't you hear it? The man back in Luke 14, he is, one thing's on his mind, okay? I didn't take time to go over the different excuses. They're hardly worth talking about. But one thing's on his mind, it is this, that my house may be filled.

He's emphatic about it. My house may be filled. Why? Why is he so insistent on that? Heaven would cease to be heaven for me.

And I speak personally tonight. If I had to look at a seat that my boy could have been in, he never made it. So if you don't come, someone else will.

Someone else will. His house is going to be filled. There'll be nothing there.

We had a big concert back in Frederickton a few years ago. And because there were not enough people going, they canceled it. Just canceled it, just like that.

Refunded people the tickets that had bought. They just canceled it. Not so with heaven, Fred.

But boy, when we come to Luke chapter 14. My, that's a sad, sad scene there when we read what is happening. What's it say in Proverbs 27 and verse 20? It says this, hell and destruction are never full.

Never full. Hell's not expecting you, Fred. It doesn't even want you.

Heaven does. Heaven does. Because there's a Savior that died on Calvary's cross so you could be saved.

So you could be there. He purchased a place for you. Talk to a young man.

It's just coming to my mind. I was telling him, I think at the table. He works at a new gas station we have.

It's a kind of a market and that sort of thing. And I go there and buy. They're very friendly people.

And he's always calling me brother. I said, wait a minute now. Brock, I said, not brother.

I says, not until you're born in the same family can we be brothers. Oh, well, you know what I mean? No, no. I said, I want you to know what I mean.

I'm talking about being saved, being born again. So, oh, okay. Okay.

I won't call you brother. Okay. So, yeah, that way.

Said to me last week, well, gonna have a great weekend. I said, oh, what are you doing? He said, I'm going to a concert up in Toronto. I said, oh, that's a 1,200, 1,400 hour drive up to the big Rogers Centre in Toronto.

The Oasis, whoever they are, were playing. And so off he went, spent money and he came back. I saw him on Tuesday.

I said, so how was the concert? He said, oh, he's asked me how my weekend is. I don't think I've had too many bad ones, really. If I did, I wouldn't tell him about it.

And anyhow, oh, he said, well, I don't think it was worth $800. What? $800. He said to sit at the back of a packed stadium.

He said, I sat there and I thought, where is my head? Well, he said, I was in Toronto. I saw the city and saw a lot of other things. I said, listen, I'd give him one before I give him a track.

I says, this will start you on the way to becoming my brother. You come Sunday night and hear the gospel. Some night when I'm speaking, I says, and it won't cost you $800.

Well, he says, I think I'll come. So I hope he does come some night. But listen, friend, it's interesting what the world could do, what they want to.

And even in their places, they're packed out and they're not in this room. They're elbow to elbow. This is a terrible place in Isaiah chapter 14.

Terrible beyond expression. No wonder no preachers wants to preach on it or speak about it. Because who wants to go to a place where they have to make room for you? Where they got to push things aside and push things out? Because you have to come when you didn't.

Don't miss it. Don't miss heaven, friend. We have a good brother.

I hope he can come over here sometime. His name is Joe Potter. You've likely heard about him.

He's a very capable gospel preacher or minister of the word. He spoke at our conference because he's asked to. Throughout the Maritime Provinces.

So I did his wedding, him and Selena. So I noticed them. It wasn't a big wedding, maybe 60 of us there.

I noticed them kind of talking between themselves. I noticed a couple seats missing. So I said to Joe, I said, somebody that, you know, just didn't make it? Yeah, he said, big family friends, Rick and Nancy Hazleton.

Because I don't know what happened. He told me two weeks later, he said, you know what happened? It was just a day late. The wedding was on, on Friday.

They came Saturday. Nancy with her hair all done up and her dress and her everything. They come up and they swing it up to the connoisseur and said, we're here for the, the Murray wedding.

Her, Selena's last name was Murray. The girl said, I'm sorry. That was yesterday.

She said, you gotta be kidding. No, she was on the invitation. It's on the board.

It was, it was yesterday. Missed it by one day. My friend, there's people that miss it less than that.

Miss it less than that. But it can be that day. That's why the Bible says, behold, now is the accepted time.

Behold, now is what? The day of salvation. The day of salvation. Whatever you do, don't miss that day.

The very fact that you're in this gospel meeting tonight is proof positive that God has given you in his grace and kindness, another day in which you can be saved. Another day in which you'll rejoice that your name is written in the Lamb's book of life, where you will know your sins forgiven and Christ is your savior and heaven is your home. What are you going to do about it? Yes, it lies with you.

Making the place, the preparation was all on God's part. Now he says the spirit and the bride say come. God's favorite word is come.

The Bible opens with it, closes with it. Come now in all my house into the ark, said God to Noah, closes with it. The spirit and the bride say come.

Let him that heareth and him that is a thirst come and drink of the water of life freely. So bookending your Bible is the word come. The great question in this gospel meeting at this moment is, will you come? Can you tell me tonight that you're not hearing it for the last time? I have a time to tell you.

All the people have sat in gospel meetings I've had, some very small gospel meetings, some very large. They didn't know it was their last meeting. They would say, see you tomorrow night Mr. McCandless.

I said, yeah, yeah, thanks for coming. She was in eternity. Thank God she was saved.

Just a young mother left two, two young girls behind. I can tell you right, take you right to the point where the accident happened. Others too that weren't saved, there they are.

That was their day of salvation. They didn't realize it. Don't miss it friend, don't miss it.

You see that's, the devil works in the same time frame as God does. He doesn't say don't get saved today, don't get saved tonight. He just says don't get saved now, not now.

The man that said when I have a more convenient season I'll call, he just had it. He just had it. I'm sure I'm speaking to some here in the meeting tonight.

You've had opportunities when you could have been saved. You let them slip by, slip by. If you ever come to Sussex, and I hope you do.

If you're coming to Sussex, you come just down over to what we call Berwick, Laura Berwick. Big sign out there, Walker's Strawberry Farm. And he was a phys ed teacher, fit man.

I mean he taught our kids phys ed, Brian did. And very successful with his strawberry farm. Self-pick and then they picked strawberries and so on, whatever.

I used to speak to Brian, and it would be about a year ago. I saw him one day, I spoke to him. He put his finger right to my face, which I've had done before.

He says, you know I don't like you speaking to me about this. I said, I know that. I says, Brian, now I put my finger to him.

I said, Brian, I'll never speak to you again about it, never. But I says, with this I want you to remember. I could be gone before you, but we both have to meet God in the conversation.

I think that was in late spring. It was in November. He died on the operating table of the St. John Hospital.

With two surgeons standing right there. When they opened him up, he was full of blood clots. And he just died right on the table.

Gone out into eternity. Every time I come through there. My wife has dementia, but every time we come through there, coming home from Fredericton's Bible reading or going the other way.

She said, poor Brian. Doesn't say it about the strawberry farm. Doesn't say about how well he did teaching phys ed in high school.

She says, poor Brian, poor Brian. How about you tonight? Not saved, it's poverty. You're poverty stricken.

You have nothing. All the riches to be had that are worth having that are eternal are in Christ Jesus. So you say, well, how can I go to a place where room has been made? On the invitation.

This is the invitation, friend. From cover to cover, this book, with all that it says, is inviting men to come. And invites you tonight.

There's not a more personal book of the universe than the Bible. And God extends that invitation to you tonight, personally, as I close. Let me just give it one more time.

Make it clear. Remember, as you leave this meeting, you are going either to a place where room has been made. Or going to down to a place where room has to be made.

God bless his word. Shall we pray?