In this sermon, the preacher expresses his concern about the lack of excitement and interest in the message of the Gospel in the current generation. He emphasizes the need for believers to dedicate themselves to a life of devotion and stick to the one message that can deeply impact people. The preacher believes that the nation has turned away from God and warns of impending judgment. He calls for a holy crusade to restore reverence, fear, and awe in the present hour and urges believers to fully commit their lives to the proposition that Jesus is the judgment of God.

Now, tonight, I would be happy if you could keep your Bibles open to the 2nd chapter of Acts, Acts chapter 2. Say just a word of appreciation to you, dear people, for your faithfulness in listening. It's not like it was in Grandpa's time, when we laid by the crops and all went to the meat in the last two weeks and over. I know how difficult it is to be up late at night, attend services, go to work early in the morning. I know these are times when we have to fight for our very own spiritual existence. I want to say thank you to all who are in this boat. God bless you. I don't see any church for the time being. Well, he wants me to preach on his church. He promised me to hang him up on that map back there some night, so to help me. I do not preach publicly on what you call the second coming of Christ, because the longer I study it, the more convinced I am that I don't know enough about it to preach on it. I didn't say you didn't when I was your age. I was an authority on it. In the 40th verse of the 2nd chapter of Acts is a text that I do not wish to be facetious, nor I certainly do not wish to be blasphemous. But I wish the Holy Spirit had seen fit to give us a picture, photograph of the man who did what this verse says, and give us a detailed recounting of what he said. All we have in the scripture is this, with many other words. Did he testify and exhort? And he testified and exhorted with many other words in addition to that part of the sermon that the Spirit of God recorded for us. And he just said one thing in all of his testifying, in all of his exhorting. He said to the people, save yourselves from this untoward generation. Save yourselves, everybody else comes under the soon coming judgment of God. Save yourselves from this untoward generation. The man was excited, and that is my deepest need. I wish I could get excited about the most important thing between eternity. I wish I could get excited enough to get a lot of folks excited about the fact that the very generation to which I preach and in which I live is assured to experience the judgment of a holy God in this life as the generation Peter was preaching to. Now my own conviction, this won't square with some of yours, but you'll forgive me, and I'll give it to you anyhow. I believe the Apostle Peter, as he stood there, screaming, terribly excited, testified, and rolling up his sleeves, lifting his voice, exhorting, pleading, admonishing, begging, storming at people to save themselves from this untoward generation. I think the Apostle Peter had in mind Daniel's warning, repeated by the Lord. When you see the abomination of desolation surrounding the city, you know the ballgame's over for that generation. And it isn't but about 30 years, or maybe 40, from the time Peter uttered these words that one of the comings of Jesus Christ, one of the comings, parousias, manifestations, presence of Jesus Christ occurred on this earth. And that's when Jesus Christ came in the form of the armies of Titus and laid siege to this holy city as Jesus had warned. And I believe Peter just believed Jesus knew what he was talking about. And I believe Peter knew that no generation of people could do what that generation of people had done and get by with it. And I believe that he screamed at them, you talk about putting on the rousements. I believe Peter knew for a certainty that the judgment of a thrice-holy God was just around the corner for the people to whom he preached. And knowing that, he violated our niceties and exhorted them, for God's sake I can hear him scream, for your sake, spit on your hands, get the lead out of your shoes, unstop your deaf ears, wipe the scales off your blind eyes, get up and start running for safety, all hell's going to pop and it did. We are told that in the neighborhood of three million people came to death in the most terrible way there in the city of Jerusalem. That mothers and fathers ate the flesh of their own children. Awful, awful suffering. That was the coming of Jesus Christ. Coming in judgment, coming in judgment. The generation that Peter's trying to get excited enough to where they'll do everything humanly possible to save themselves from the stroke of God's presence in judgment, that generation was guilty of laying hands on the eternal Son of God and doing him to a shameful death. And people can't get by with that. No generation can crucify the Son of God and escape the judgment of God. But God kept us, we're warned in the scripture about crucifying Christ the Fresh. And it is peculiarly symptomatic of this day that the one terrible wickedness of this hour is this joining hands and making friends with the enemy who would kill Jesus again if they could get their hands on him. There's no time for anything except emergency measures. Save yourselves from this untoward generation. I wish unto God that God Almighty could wipe the leer and the sneer off of my face and fill me with some of the awe and the dread and the awesomeness and the solemnity of claiming to be a Christian in a generation that's tearing itself to pieces and running right smack into the arms of a living God in awful judgment. Because I believe that the next few years America will experience judgments that will be as bad as when Titus starved those millions of people to death when they ran out of their own children's flesh to eat. I believe that this nation that has made a joke out of the gospel, I believe that this nation that has absolutely thumbed its nose at God Almighty, I believe that this nation that has made a joke out of the grace of God and turned it into an excuse for living lasciviously, that's a big word that means to be rotten as hell. I believe this generation that God Almighty is going to open the windows of His wrath and pour out such judgment as men cannot imagine. I believe it for two reasons. He couldn't save God and let this generation get by with what we're getting by with now. And I believe it for another reason. The heart of the premillennial interpretation of the return of Christ is the word crisis. And I believe that. I don't believe God can save a church without judgment. I don't believe God can save a nation without judgment. I don't believe God can save a sinner without judgment. And so I'm praying, O God, rain down fire and brimstone on this generation as an act of mercy. God's always been a divider and a separator. And I believe the whole outset of us is going to go to hell unless God does something to get our attention. Save yourselves from this untoward generation. I thought much of a man like Noah by faith. Noah, being warned of God, of things not yet seen, moved with fear, moved with fear. Poor old Noah actually believed judgment was coming. I wish you and I could. It's a little easy going stuff of trusting a little old two-bit experience that you have to go back and warm over about twice a day to have any assurance you're a child of God. Know nothing about reverence of God, this familiarity with things that are high and holy, this touching of the art and seemingly getting by with it, this stuff we call faith, that day that's a sin, a tadpole that's starved to death if he's in a barrel full of it. All of this little bellyaching and running to mom and pop and keeping the pastor's phone ringing with your little toenail aches, all of these excuses about how we're saved but we're still little babies. If we could take God's word just like Noah did and just believe what God said, it'd scare the living daylights out of us. It'd move us with fear and we'd tread softly. Our churches might once again have some Christians in them, men and women with a holy fear of God. What made the difference with Noah? Why did he move with fear? Why did he give his life to just one thing, after all, the only thing that's really worthwhile between the eternity? Why did he give his life to just one thing, pointing men and women to the only place to hide from the coming judgment of God? Is anything else worthwhile? Excited because he actually believed that judgment was coming. Peter was excited, he actually believed that Jerusalem was going to be laid bare and compassed by the enemy, wiped off the face of the earth and it was. So tonight, join your preacher in a holy crusade to recover some of the excitement and reverence and fear and awesomeness of the hour in which we live. Well, let's quit claiming to believe the Bible. Let's be done with this little vainness we call Christianity and quit ourselves like men. And with no uncertain blowing of the trumpet, let's quit apologizing for giving our lives in just one thing. Not civil rights, that may be all right. Not electing a president, not strengthening our civilization, but give our lives to the proposition that Jesus isn't a convenience, he's an utter necessity, and that men have no option if Christ is the judgment of God. I don't think this world is going to get excited, Brother Rogers, unless you and I can. Oh, my soul, how willing we are to let this generation go on until judgment falls. How little we believe there's only one place to hide. Oh, God, for a deepening of faith, faith in believing something, faith acting on what you believe. I in old North believe what God said. He got him a hammer and some nails, and with his nails he built an ark, and he preached righteousness for 120 years. That's all he did. In many other words, he testified and exhorted, saying, Save yourself from this untoward generation. Some people got excited, not many, but the record is at least 3,000. I want to look tonight briefly, and I won't call mourners with myself. Here is the biggest fight of my life today. I want you to enter into it with me. I asked somebody today, will we ever get another crack at this generation? What could we preach that anybody would be interested in now? Well, I'll tell you what we've got to do. We've got to lash ourselves to the altar of devotion to just one fact, to just one fact that really amounts to a hill of beans. Despite the fact that nobody is excited about it now, we've got to stick to this one message that just has two points in it. It's the point that got 3,000 people deeply excited, so excited that they screamed out, Men and brethren, what must we do? I know they're old now, and I know that you could get you some signs and go down through the streets of Pasadena and Houston now, and the only excitement if you were advertising Jesus or hell, Jesus or judgment. Judgment coming! Hurry up, folks, and get in the yard. About all the excitement you cause, somebody might slow their automobile up long enough to say, Who let that fool out? I know that if this ever gets deep down inside of you, that this world is excited about everything except the one thing that God Almighty says counts, I believe we'd be driven to real prayer. I believe some of us might yet be shut up to the fact that we can't go on any longer until, O God Almighty, comes one time and confirms his gospel. What is it? How come these folks got excited? Listen to this preacher screaming and exhorting and testifying for just two facts. They found out that they killed Jesus. The book of Acts puts the emphasis on man. Oh, ladies and gentlemen, here are some people who heard the preacher look them in the face and say, You killed the Prince of Peace. That's what you did. You killed the Prince of Peace. Look at it there. Look at it. Verse 23, him being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God. Ye taketh. Ye taketh. My old friend, Fess, said, Do you want me to reconcile this for you? I didn't write the verse. God did. How can you reconcile the fact that this verse says Jesus Christ died on the cross because God put him there, and the further fact that Jesus Christ died on that old ugly tree because men with wicked hands took him and threw him? I ain't going to try to reconcile it. I ain't got sense enough. There it is. But the emphasis in the book of Acts is that men and women, when they got their hands on the gift of heaven, they said, We're going to have to change our ways to get rid of him from the top of the nation down. And they took a secret ballot and decided not to repent. So they had to kill the Son of God. Now, we write down the beans and cornbread and salivary. We just will face it now. We've been chasing every tadpole that crossed the road, and we wind up now where ain't nobody under no kind of conviction that they need any kind of forgiveness, because we've majored on everything except the one great soul-damning sin of the human race, and that is the murder of the Son of God. No wonder we're cracking up on every side, and lustful, fleshly immorality is about to put even our churches out of business. We have yet to know the depth of our deep need for a work of grace. You know what you need to be forgiven for? Your part in doing Jesus Christ a debt. You tell me you don't think it's so bad that you the backer go to pick your shoe, I wouldn't argue with you for five minutes. I'll tell you, that ain't the reason you fixed the spithead wide open. You fixed the spithead wide open because of the fact you're a member of the human race, and as that human race then and then a member, what one man does, you do, and you can't get out of that. And Charlotte Jackson, your blessed pastor, had as much to do with putting those nails in the hands and feet of Jesus Christ as those fellows did around the clock. So here is the sin men and women are guilty of, and to live a flowery life in rebellion is a sin.