Sunday Night Meditations 39 Message and Song - 1950's

This gospel program is designed to be more than mere entertainment. We want it to meet your spiritual need. It is quite possible that your spiritual need is your greatest problem.

Perhaps you would have no problems if the salvation of your soul was settled, if you could say, I know I am saved and on the way to heaven. I don't know of any greater possession, and if you don't have it, I ask you to listen prayerfully as we bring the claims of the Lord Jesus Christ to your attention. If you are saved and certain of it, I trust that your soul will be strengthened as we seek to exalt the Lord Jesus Christ.

This is Welcome Detweiler speaking. ...of God's precious chapter 21 verses 25 and 26. And there shall be signs in the sun and in the moon and in the stars, and upon the earth's distress of nations with perplexity, the seas and the waves roaring, men's hearts failing them for fear and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth.

For the powers of heaven shall be shaken. The second portion, 2 Timothy chapter 3. This know also that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, truth-makers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God, having no form of God, from such turn away.

Now the seventh verse, and this is the one that I want to call your attention to. Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. Learning is characteristic of the present age.

Some call it the age of mechanics, the age of machinery, the age of intellect or of philosophy, but nevertheless it is, in our opinion, the age of learning nonessentials and the age of ignorance of the truth. Men, women and children are learning various things, and God says that it will be this way in the latter end, even up to the time of the great tribulation. People will be running to and fro with great speed, hither and thither, and increasing in worldly knowledge, heaping useless knowledge upon useless knowledge.

The secret of our trouble is that we are learning the wrong things, and ignoring vital truths revealed by the Creator for the guidance and safety of His creatures. Now the Bible tells us what we should learn. In 1 Timothy 2 we read, This is the knowledge that there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all.

God says that is the truth that everyone should know. In God's sight no person knows anything of value until he knows, believes, and accepts this truth. A six-year-old boy could learn that truth in two minutes.

The baseball boy, the intellectual man, the professor, the poet, the linguist, and all the rest of them are wonderful in their knowledge of temporal things, but they don't know the vital truths, and in God's sight they know nothing. The world does not know God. God has all knowledge, and the world does not seem to want to deal with a God who knows the inner life of everybody.

How do you suppose we are going to stand before the judgment seat of God some day? We will not be able to say a word, because the judge knows everything. There will be no defense, and he will bring out things against sinners which lawyers and witnesses cannot possibly know. We are afraid to stand before a judge who knows us thoroughly, yet as sinners we must do just that.

A few years ago there was a scientist who brought out a so-called lie-detecting machine. If you made a statement, the machine would tell whether you were lying or not. Now, there are some of us who would not want to face that machine, not at all, for there's hardly a person who would be able to carry that lie detector day after day without having that bell ringing occasionally.

Wouldn't it be terrible to have a machine that could even tell our very thoughts, and immediately register whether we are telling the truth? Now, that is the situation before God. God knows when you make a statement that isn't so. You know there is a God having all knowledge and power, and you are under his supervision, so he pretends that there isn't any God or any punishment for sin or any heaven or hell.

I ask you very personally, do you know the Lord Jesus Christ is your Savior? Can you say, when I leave this scene, I know I'm going to be in heaven? I know that my sins are forgiven. My conscience is clear, because I read in God's word that God laid my sins on Christ, and as a substitute, he died for me. Therefore, there is no more condemnation for me.

Have you felt in your heart the power of God's salvation that has changed your life and made you a new person, and has given you a desire to reach out for a knowledge of God, to learn more of him, more of his precious word, to enjoy the fellowship of Christians? That's real living, and if you don't have it, my friend, you'll have to allow me to feel sorry for you, for you are the victim of a very unbalanced education. I wish I knew some of the things that you know in a certain field, but I wouldn't change shoes with you when it comes to the end of this life, when it comes into eternity, if you cannot say, I know the Lord Jesus Christ is Savior. This is very simple.

This is not too hard to understand. If you think it's a hard, involved subject, then it's because your mind is closed. You can believe this, that you are a sinner, God says it, and your own experience proves it, and you also can believe that the Lord Jesus was God's blessed son, came from heaven, the sinless one, and he died as a voluntary death, a substitutionary death for me and for you on Calvary's cross.

Now, there's one thing that God asks you to do, and that is in simple faith acknowledge your sinnership, and then look to the Lord Jesus Christ, trust him as your sin-bearer, as your substitute. Put your complete confidence and faith in him, left from his complete and finished sacrifice, and nothing else for your salvation, and God in heaven, who cannot lie, says, he that hath the son hath everlasting life. Ever learning and never coming to the truth, is that you? Then I trust that that seventh verse of 2 Timothy 3 will speak to you, and you'll realize I don't want to go any farther with any other type of learning until I have learned the essential thing, and that is that my soul is saved and that I'm ready for heaven.

As long as you're young and as long as you're living in a healthy body, it may not be too important, but one of these days you're going to face death. It may be suddenly, and when you do, it'll be a horrifying experience if you're not prepared to go out into eternity, and you're not prepared if you don't know the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior. You will have to bear the wrath of God, the judgment of God, in a never-ending eternity if you fail to receive the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior before you pass out into eternity.

The wise man will do it not tomorrow, not next week, not next month, but he'll do it right now while the Spirit of God is pleading, while the voice of God is speaking to the trembling soul. That's the moment to open the heart's door and say, Lord Jesus, as best I know how, I will receive thee as my Lord and Savior. I want to thank thee for dying on the cross for my sins.

From this moment on, I'm going to rest on my completed sacrifice at Calvary as my means of salvation. If you will do that, my friend, and do it with your whole heart, God will save you right where you are, and you can rejoice in the guarantee, the promises of God's precious words, that you have passed from death unto life. God help you to do it.

This very moment is my prayer. There is someone who can meet your need, Jesus, Jesus Christ, one who loves you, he can clear you of Jesus Christ. Greetings to our radio friends.

It's a grand thing to be alive and to have a real purpose in life. Our happiness depends largely upon the objective or the goal that we have set up. In the main, we have to make our choice from three possible goals.

We can live for the devil. Quite a few have already made that choice. We can live for self, and that seems sensible, but it doesn't bring much satisfaction.

The only people who are happy are those who are living for the Lord Jesus Christ. It's our desire to help some of our unhappy listeners to find a better, a more satisfactory objective, so we ask you to lay aside your cares and listen as we seek to bring the claims of Jesus Christ to your attention. This is Welcome Deathwiler speaking.

Among the many unpleasant things that we are compelled to do at some time or another, is the occasion of committing the cold, lifeless form of a loved one to the earth. Our loved ones slip away as that cruel monster death makes his claim. On such occasions, it is quite natural that we should raise the question, will I see that loved one again? Or was Ingersoll, the so-called freethinker, right when he said, the dead lie forever in the dreamless dust? To whom can we turn for a good answer? We can't ask angels, for they have never experienced death.

We can't ask demons, for they would only deceive us. We can't ask men, for they don't return from the grave to tell us. There's only one whom we can ask and get the correct answer.

He is the who has passed through death. Christ said, I am he that liveth and was dead. And behold, I am alive forevermore and have the keys that is the symbol of authority of hell and of death.

The word of one who passed through death is worth more than all the guesses and opinions of those who have never been there. As I turn to John's Gospel, chapter 5 and verse 28, I hear the Lord Jesus saying, marvel not at this, for the hour is coming in which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice and shall come forth. They that have done good unto the resurrection of life, they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation.

There is no suggestion here that death ends all. It is true that their bodies are in the grave, but Christ says that when he summons them, all will come out of the grave. In 2 Corinthians 4, 16, we read about the outward man which may perish, but the inward man is renewed day by day.

The outward man speaks of the body and is subject to decay, but I am not my body. Man is distinctly said to be spirit and soul and body. Since the body is the outward man and the spirit and the soul together constitute the inward man, the spirit is the seat of intellectual being, the soul is the seat of man's emotional nature.

These two, spirit and soul, are never separated. All men, as created by God, consist of spirit, soul and body, but the child of God has that which the natural man does not possess. Being born again, he has received a new nature, which is also called spirit.

That which is born of the flesh is flesh, that's the natural unsaved man. That which is born of the spirit, that's the saved person, is spirit. He has received divine life by trusting in Christ and his finished work on the behalf of guilty sinners.

When a Christian dies, does the inward man go to sleep in the body, or does the inward man leave the body and ascend to another place? The Bible gives to us some clear statements to answer this question. In 2 Corinthians 5 we read, For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven.

For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened, not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life. In verse 6 he continues, Therefore we are always confident, knowing that whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord. We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord.

From this portion we learn that the body is but the tabernacle in which the inward man dwells. When the tabernacle is broken down, the inward man moves out, and in the case of a true believer, goes to be with the Lord. The Bible knows nothing of an intermediate state or soul sleep.

At death the spirit and soul does not go out to wander in space. It is absent from the body and immediately present with the Lord. At the resurrection of the just, the inward man will inhabit a new body, a body suited for heaven, a body that is not subject to infirmities.

If you have loved ones who were saved and have left the body, you need not mourn for them, for they are at home with the Lord. They are not in an unconscious condition. They are waiting the day when the dust of the old earthy body will be raised and changed and made suitable for service above.

Because of these divine certainties, the saved person need not dread death, for the sting of death has been removed. When Paul was facing the prospect of imminent death at the hands of Nero, he did not shrink from death. He actually looked forward to it.

He speaks of having a desire to depart just like a ship setting sail on a voyage. But where is Paul going? He answers, to be with Christ, which is far, far better. The things that I have just mentioned are true of the saved person only.

I turn now to tell you the sad story of what happens when an unsafe person dies. In the verses that I read in John chapter five, we learn that those who are raised come forth in two distinct orders, some unto the resurrection of life and some unto the resurrection of judgment. The Bible recognizes only two classes.

There are those who die in their sins, and there are those who die in the Lord. Those who die in their sins take their sins with them to face them at the resurrection of judgment. Those who die in the Lord are those who have acknowledged their sinnership and have taken refuge in the precious shed blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.

No question of nationality or church connection or personal mirth is an issue at all. It is entirely a matter of each man's personal attitude toward the Lord Jesus Christ. To those who die in their sins, Christ said, Whither I go, ye cannot come.

If they are not with Christ, then where have they gone? The Bible answers this question. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God. And the books were opened, and another book was opened, which is the book of life.

And the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it. And death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them.

And they were judged every man according to their works. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.

And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire. These verses bring before us a very sobering picture of the destiny of all who remain unsaved. It may be hard for some of you to understand why God will punish some people and banish them from His presence.

But if you will read your Bible carefully, you will find that all who will be punished are those who refuse to be saved. God would rather save than punish. That's why He pleads with men and women to be saved.

When men deliberately choose to be lost, God must put them away as rebels. If you, my unsaved listener, have heard the gospel and refused to let the Lord Jesus Christ save you, you are asking for punishment, and God will see to it that you will get exactly what you are asking. It will give you no relief to say that you don't believe in punishment, for that will not change what God has spoken.

When you die, you will open your eyes in hell, and you will remain there until the judgment of the great white throne. At that judgment seat, only unsaved people will appear, and they will appear to determine the degree of their punishment, and after the books have been examined and the proper just sentence has been pronounced, everyone will be sent to the lake of fire. No one who appears at the judgment of the great white throne will ever be in heaven.

They have sealed their doom on earth by turning down God's offer of salvation. I'm glad that God has given to us the choice of our eternal destiny. I'm so glad that no one needs to be lost.

God has provided a Savior who can save every man who is listening to this gospel program, but if you as an individual will not receive Him as Lord and Savior, He will leave you in your sins, and you will have to suffer and be lost for all eternity. What happens to our loved ones who leave us? Those who are saved leave the body and are immediately in heaven beyond the reach of pain and sorrow. Those who are not saved leave the body and immediately open their eyes in hell.

In the light of these scriptures, I trust God will sober you and make you to realize that you ought to choose your eternal destiny right now. Jesus loves you. He died for you.

He will receive you if in simple faith you will accept Him as your Lord and Savior. God help you to do it this very hour.