Carest Thou Not That We Perish?

Rescue the perishing, care for the dying, snatch them in pity from sin and the grave. Weep o'er the erring one, lift up the fallen, tell them of Jesus the mighty to save. Rescue the perishing, care for the dying, Jesus is merciful, Jesus will save.

I am missionary Richard Yerby in Japan, daily calling on Japanese Buddhists to come to God's Savior to be eternally saved. You Christian friends, please intercede in prayer for many of them to repent and to trust in Christ. This sermon is titled, Carest Thou Not That We Perish? My previous sermon ended with me telling of worldly Japanese people crowding around the entrance of Karuizawa church, making a big nuisance of themselves and damaging church property.

You Christ rejecters who are hearing me preach this, some of you hate your creator God just as much as those Buddhist Japanese ice cream lickers do. Well, I've got some good news for you. You do not have to be so foolish and so stupid as to send your own self to an eternal hell of fire and brimstone to weep and wail and gnash your teeth forever.

You could get down on your knees right now and cry out to God to give you a repentant heart and to convert you from your sins and enable you to receive Jesus Christ and his forgiveness, cleansing and eternal life. Why don't you wise up and do yourself that greatest favor right now? I pray that you will do that. Pray thus wise, Almighty God, please help me not to be so foolish as to destroy my own self eternally.

Please draw me to thee, break down my stony heart, grant me true repentance over my sins and give me faith to trust in thy Savior Jesus Christ. Have mercy on me and help me, I pray. Amen.

I pray that God will help me to faithfully continue preaching out in public. God bless you Christian friends who support me financially. Thank you so much for this great help you give to me.

I so desire to be a missionary that is worthy to receive it. Please pray for me that I will always be that. Neither was I quiet, perfect and upright Job declared.

Though they are sliding him, still he is waiting, waiting the penitent child to receive. Plead with them earnestly, plead with them gently, he will forgive if they only believe. Rescue the perishing, care for the dying, Jesus is merciful, Jesus will save.

Think seriously on these next words of mine. Down through the years I have sadly observed many preachers quit, quit preaching because few or no people would listen to their preaching. My fellow preacher, don't you quit because of that.

Think on Noah's example of preaching righteousness 100 years with no converts except his own family of seven other souls. Think on God commanding Ezekiel to let the people know there has been a prophet among them, even if none of them heeds that prophet. Think on the many other such examples in the Bible and if you get absolutely no positive response from your preaching, that is absolutely no valid reason to quit preaching and likely God would be most displeased with you quitting for that reason.

I have observed somewhat bland pastors in the U.S. who quit preaching because they cannot find a church that will let them pastor it. I have observed independent pastors try their best to start a church or at least get together in their home and such, then after some time they become so discouraged that they completely quit because few or none attend. Somewhat bland evangelists quit preaching because few or no churches invite them to come and preach.

Here in Japan, I watch Japanese pastors quit for those same reasons and I watch missionaries, especially independent missionaries, quit because few or none will listen to their preaching and few or no churches or Christian groups invite them to come as a guest preacher. What a tragedy that they quit. Don't quit because you can't get a pulpit.

Make the whole world into your pulpit. Preach the word out in public, standing in the face of the human race around you, and see Almighty God steadily remove the blandness from your anemic preaching, replacing it with Holy Ghost power from on high. It is somewhat rare for a church, Christian group, or anyone here in Japan to invite me to come preach to them.

When I can conduct my own services, many times no one attends, but for not one split second, I believe that gives me any reason to quit preaching. I am still duty-bound to my Creator to be faithful to His calling to me. So you please pray for me that I always will be.

You Christian believers are often around preachers who are discouraged and are considering quitting because few or no people listen to their preaching. Please invite them to listen to this sermon and pray that they will be faithful to their calling. These about-to-quit preachers often come to you, successful preachers, for advice and encouragement.

Please invite them to listen to this sermon as I pray that it will be encouraging to them. These audio sermons are on my website, www.christisall.us. Separate those three words with two dashes, christ-is-all.us. If no one gives you any tithes and offerings for preaching, then work a paying job to make your living. Many preachers throughout the world do that.

You can do it also. After working enough hours to pay for your family's necessary food, clothing, and shelter, there are still plenty of hours remaining each week to get out and preach. If God has called you to preach and you have obeyed Him by putting your hand to the plow, preaching His word, then don't dare to look back.

Don't dare quit because so few people smile at you, pat you on the back, and compliment you for preaching. Don't dare quit because many scorn and ridicule your preaching. Don't dare quit because few or none give you money for preaching.

You be faithful to God's calling. Preach His word no matter what. For all eternity, you will be most glad that you did so.

For all eternity, may that which is forever said of Job also be forever said of you and of me. Neither was I quiet. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, please give me the fortitude to do that, to preach Thy word faithfully as long as I am in this life. Make me to fully understand what a terrible thing it is to turn my back on Thy calling and to quit preaching no matter what the reason. Help me to faithfully hold forth the words of life to the many lost souls around me who so desperately need those words.

Help me never to give up and quit for any reason at all. Amen. Down in the human heart, crushed by the tempter, feelings lie buried that faith can restore.

Touched by a loving heart, wakened by kindness, cords that are broken will vibrate once more. Rescue the perishing, care for the dying. Jesus is merciful, Jesus will save.

One day as I was selling and preaching on the streets in Karuizawa, battling and building, as we read of in Nehemiah chapter four, a more senior missionary came by and chatted with me. He talked about street preaching and remarked that I was one of the three people he knew in Japan who had this gift. He had been in Japan 50 years at that time and he knew a lot more missionaries than I did, but I knew over a dozen who preach on the streets.

Anyway, his remark about so few people having that gift struck me as ridiculous. That's because essentially all I am doing when I preach in public is talking, and the vast majority of people have the ability to talk. He himself was a most talkative person, and most people use their talking ability much, and when they do so, they tend to talk about that which they love.

That is simply what I am doing when I preach out in public, just talking about that which I love, which is my creator God and his holy Bible and the mass of lost hell-bound souls around me. And likely you also talk much about that which you love. Now, I want you to think on that.

Think on it long and hard. You regularly and habitually talk much, don't you? And come judgment day, you will give an account to your creator for each and every word you have uttered during your lifetime. Therefore, it would behoove us all to make much of our talking about God.

May God help us to do that. Let's pray that now. Heavenly Father, please help me to do that.

Please help me to love thee with all my heart. Please help me to love talking about God, my savior, more than I love talking about anything else. Help me to tell all the lost souls I can about salvation in Christ.

Help me to be like Job and not be quiet. I pray this for all other Christians also. Amen.

Rescue the perishing, duty demands it. Strength for the labor the Lord will provide. Back to the narrow way, patiently win them.

Tell the perwonderer a savior has died. Rescue the perishing, care for the dying. Jesus is merciful, Jesus will save.

I have before me on my desk here two booklets, each a true written story in Japanese that is also illustrated in picture form like a comic book. Each is a heartbreaking story of great misery and destruction that spiritual darkness wrought upon some precious Japanese souls. Each is also a marvelous story of the wonderful change wrought in some of those lives when God's marvelous light shined into them.

Please listen as I share one of them with you now. This first booklet is the life story of Miss Yoniko, a Japanese lady born into an affluent Tokyo family in 1937. While growing up, Yoniko was closely attached to her mother, by far her number one love.

Therefore, she was most devastated upon her mother's death when Yoniko was in senior high school. At that time, Yoniko did not know about Christ and in her deep grief, she fervently worshiped her deceased mother as the family's religion taught her to do. Finding no solace there, she more or less cursed the vanity of religion and then she turned to worldly, clean pleasures and amusement, looking for help there.

With friends, she madly pursued many thrills, trying to overcome the pain in her heart, but to no avail, of course. She asked one of her school teachers the meaning of life and got a worthless answer from him. Still searching for the true meaning of life, she went to the library and read books by godless philosophers who taught that life was vain and that death was to be welcome.

Folks, what a heartbreaking tragedy that as she desperately sought for the true meaning of life, she found no one who had the words of life to hold forth to her. Daily, she never walked past a street preacher holding forth the word of life because there were none in her path. Tragic.

Therefore, she chose suicide as her best option. And on Valentine's Day in 1955, as a high school senior, she stepped in front of a train to end her life, hoping to then be reunited with her beloved mother. But God spared her life.

Then he soon saved her and raised up Yoniko to be a bright and shining light throughout this dark nation of Japan and in several other nations also. Those heavy iron wheels of that train cut off both of Yoniko's legs just above the knees. The wheels also cut off her left arm above the elbow and cut off two fingers, little finger and ring finger from her right hand.

She was rushed to a nearby hospital where the doctors and medical staff put forth every effort to save her life. And with God's help, they did that. But when Yoniko regained her senses on a hospital bed and came to realize her maimed and crippled condition, she was more despondent than ever and more desirous to die.

Daily, she received pills for pain and to aid sleeping, but would not take the medicine in the presence of the nurse who brought it. Then, when alone, she hid the pills in a candy bag under the bedsheets, planning to save up enough for an overdose and kill herself with it. Meanwhile, that schoolteacher of hers now felt mighty guilty about being so worthless to her when she had asked him the meaning of life.

He recalled that there was a small group of Christian students at that high school. So that heathen teacher asked him to go visit Yoniko in the hospital, thinking a Christian might have some help for her. Amen.

You finally got it right, teach. When three or so of them with a young missionary visited Yoniko in the hospital, she was rude and cold to them, most bitter and despondent. She resented their smiling, cheerful faces, somewhat regarding their joyful dispositions as fake.

How could anyone find anything to be truly happy about in life? She did her best to give them a cold shoulder, wanting them to completely leave her alone. But they kept coming regularly, singing hymns, reading the Bible, and such each time. So, with the Holy Spirit working in her heart, she soon faced the reality of their joy being genuine, and that also it might just be possible for even her to have such joy in her messed up life.

Time and again, they told Yoniko how much the Lord Jesus loved her, what Christ had already done for her, and what he now desired to do for her. So one night, alone on her hospital bed, she opened up her heart to God and poured it all out to him in a screaming prayer, God help me. If Jesus is truly the only begotten Son of God, then please show me that.

But if that is a lie, I want to die in this condition. I have no hope in life and no desire to live. If I'm going to be nothing more than a big burden to other people in my maimed, crippled condition, then it would be much better for me to die.

But God, if you're telling me to keep living, then please help me, God. That night, Yoniko truly prayed to the true God for the first time in her life. Then she soon fell into a deep and restful sleep like she had not known since her mother's death, and especially since her own suicide attempt.

On awakening the next morning, she noticed a bird outside her window, and beholding its beauty with joy, bubbling up in her own bosom, she pondered, I wonder if this joy is because I prayed last night. Could God really have heard and answered my prayer? With her one remaining hand that had only a thumb and two fingers, she picked up the Bible those Christians had left for her, opened it up at random, and her eyes fell on 2 Corinthians 5, 17. Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature.

Old things are passed away. Behold, all things are become new. This is the answer to my prayer last night, her heart echoed.

The old person of me existed until last night. Starting today, all of me has completely become a new person. Look, I've got three fingers.

Nurse, bring me a pencil. Look, I can hold a pencil and write. I can do anything because I have three fingers.

It's not like I only have three fingers. Thanks be to God that I have three fingers. Amen and amen.

Suddenly, Yonico's heart was flooded to overflowing with a desire to live, to learn all she could about God, and to tell everyone she could tell about the marvelous things God wants to do for them. One of those Japanese Christian high school guys, Mr. Tahada, soon proposed marriage to Yonico. Because of her physical condition, that marriage tore at her heart.

No, she cried to him. I'm just part of a human being. You don't want me for a wife.

But he pleaded with Yonico to pray about it. And as she did, God led her to say yes. So they married, and God blessed them with two daughters, born from Yonico's maimed and crippled body.

What a most splendid love story, and ever so true. And Yonico certainly hasn't been quiet about what a marvelous change the Lord Jesus Christ brought into her life, giving her so much to live for. She has won a multitude of lost souls to Japan and has been a tremendous blessing to many Christians, including me.

I have had the meeting Yonico and her family in person, once hearing her testimony in a church service here in Japan. She told of going from house to house to witness the people about her wonderful Savior walking on artificial legs to do that. So much of Japan is hilly with steep inclines on many streets.

Yonico told how she was not able to walk forward on much of an incline as she would soon tip over, either forward or backward. So when walking uphill or downhill, she would have to turn sideways and take short, jolting sidesteps to maintain her balance. Doing that, there were times when she jolted the stumps of her legs against those artificial limbs until the stumps bled.

Why? Because she refused to be quiet about the miraculous help and the perfect change that Christ has for any troubled soul. Now as for me, I have two strong legs and feet, plus all my arms, hands, and fingers. Therefore, God forbid that I should constantly go quickly and tell, as Matthew 28 7 commands us, go and tell, constantly go and tell everyone about the eternal hope in Christ.

Neither was I quiet. My fellow Christian believer, just look at the healthy, sound, whole body with which God has blessed you, and seriously consider that it is you who decides whether to expend your body's energies on your own sinful, selfish pleasures, or whether to expend those energies going and telling doomed, sin-darkened, miserable desires to die souls what marvelous hope awaits them in Jesus Christ. Let's pray.

Lord Jesus, help me to seriously ponder that choice right now as for all eternity. Break my heart all to pieces over the miserable plight of lost mankind, and please set me on fire with a burning passion to go and tell everyone I can about the help that Christ offers to them. Please help me not to be quiet.

I pray this prayer for all other Christians also. Amen. Yonico's maimed and much-used body played out on her at age 63 or 64, sending her on to heaven, joining that great cloud of witnesses that compass us about, observing our Christian service down here now.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, let's give those deceased and gone-ahead souls a good show, and all the huge heavenly hosts now looking on, and especially our Savior who gave his life's blood to purchase our redemption, and is not willing that any should perish. Night is soon coming when no man can work. Harvest time will soon be past.

Let us wisely redeem the time, faithfully occupying until Christ soon comes. Even so, come Lord Jesus. Fellow Christian, listen now.

Void of all joy of life and in the lowest pit of grief and sadness over her mother's death, high school student Yonico did not cross paths with any street preacher along the road of life as she tried the pathway leading to suicide. Thus, just about every day here in central Japan, I stand out in public in the pathway of such Japanese Buddhists holding forth the word of life and the word of hope. You who support me for doing so, I heartily thank you.

May each of you and each of us do God's will for us regarding fishing for man. Yonico is looking down upon us. Many others are looking down upon us fellow Christians.