Leonard Ravenhill emphasizes the profound significance of Jesus' declaration 'It is finished' from John 19:30, asserting that these words encapsulate the culmination of Old Testament prophecies and the foundation of New Testament truth. He reflects on the weight of these words, suggesting they signify the end of sin's power and the completion of redemption, contrasting the fleeting nature of modern words with the eternal impact of Christ's sacrifice. Ravenhill passionately argues that this moment terrified hell and marked the ultimate victory over sin and death, highlighting the necessity of recognizing the depth of Christ's suffering and the grace offered to humanity. He calls for believers to proclaim this truth boldly, reminding them that salvation cannot be earned but is a gift to be accepted in humility.

John 19 and the 30th verse. When Jesus, therefore, had received the vinegar, he said, it is finished. And he bowed his head and gave up the ghost. I said last week, at least I would attempt, I sure won't fathom it, but I would attempt to talk to you on the three most important words, I believe, in history. It is finished. This is one, as you guessed, you may know, and if not, let me tell you, it's one of the seven sayings, as we say, of the Lord Jesus on the cross. It is not the shortest of the seven, that is in the previous verse, or in the 28th verse, where it says, I first, that is the shortest of the sayings of the Lord Jesus. This is the next to the last of the seven sayings. It has, again, just three words, it is finished. The greatest words ever uttered by the greatest man that ever lived. Now those three words can only be superseded by three other words, he is risen, which again can only be superseded by four words, I will come again. In these three words, I see the consummation of all the Old Testament truth, and the germination of all New Testament truth. I guess it's right to say, at least it's in my thinking, that we have never lived in a day when words are more cheap than they are today. I don't believe words have ever been used as they used today. There's not much to this building, it didn't cost millions of dollars, but it's like the White House right now. There are about, maybe 300 nations speaking right into this room, and I could prove that easily obviously by putting down a powerful radio, and we could pick up Japan, we could pick up other nations, they're all speaking, they're all using like they used to use catapults, and they used to hold big rocks through the air, and now we use the radio and the TV, and we beam messages out. Millions and millions of words are spoken every day, millions and millions are printed, millions and millions are written in letters. We throw words across the courtroom, across the barroom, across the ballroom, across your living room. Some are kind words, some are cruel words, some are necessary, some are unnecessary. I discovered a thing from a survey that was published recently, I read it this week, that the average person, the ordinary woman in the home or anyone else, utters about two thousand words a day. But if you're in a social service, a doctor, a preacher, some other person, uses ten times that amount of words. And the survey said, we have taken this survey and discovered that the average person speaks two thousand words a day. So that if you speak two thousand words a day for 50 years, listen, you speak thirty six and a half million words. Now if you're in a position like a lawyer, a social worker, they discover that the average social worker or lawyer or somebody in a profession speaks ten times the amount of the other person, so they speak twenty thousand words a day. So they speak three hundred and sixty-five million words in the last 50 years of their lives. And the book says that we should give an account to God for every word we've spoken, whether you said it behind your hand or behind the door or over the phone or, you know, it's just between me and you this. I know it's a bit slanderous. Or whether it's kind of every idle word that a man speaks. And you think of the billions of people that have been here since Adam and every person is going to give an account for the words that they have spoken. But I don't believe ever in history, anywhere, at any time, by anybody, were three words more pregnant with meaning than these three words given by one man at the end of his life. It is finished. It is finished. Now supposing you were here and I was sitting there, how would you start to handle a text like this? I feel as I'm trying to catch the wind in my arms. I'm trying to pick the Atlantic Ocean up in a sieve. How do you deal with it? To me, it's magnitude staggers me. It's mystery staggers me. It's majesty staggers me. Well there's going to be at least one other saying of the Lord Jesus before he dies, but still I say this is the terminus. I remember when I was at Bethany Fellowship, one day opening a large map of the world. It was about four feet by three or something. But it so happened that all the roads in America were all drawn in thin red lines and up through the Alleghenies and the Appalachians and the other mountains, there were thin red lines and they all terminated in New York City. And then from New York City there were black lines showing you this boat goes down here to Montevideo, this one goes over here to London, this one goes over here to somewhere else. All the roads climax in New York. All the sea routes began in New York. It seems to me that here is a terminus in the life of the Lord Jesus where all the prophecies, all the law, all the prophets, they terminate in this saying of the Lord Jesus Christ. And everything from there blossoms out because this is absolutely the foundation stone of it all. Three simple words. It is finished. It is finished. I suggest to you in all reverence that these three words terrified hell. It is finished. You see, this English word of ours, this little sentence, it is finished is not in the Greek at all. And I don't know much about Greek but I did discover this, that in the Greek it is just one word, finished. And in Matthew 27, it says that when Jesus came to the end of the chapter here, he cried with a loud voice, finished. And I'm sure all hell shook. You see, this is an arena into which Jesus is moving. You could say the life of Jesus is a kind of a three-act play, though he wasn't playing, it's a three-act drama. You get the first years of his life, 30 years in preparation for three years, the first chapter has been written, the second chapter now is coming to a climax on the cross, the third chapter is yet to come in all his resurrection splendor. There's nothing to equal it anywhere. I get indignant when I hear people say, you know, what we need to do is study comparative religion. Well, I say again with some heat and some feeling in my spirit, Christianity is not a comparative religion, it's a superlative religion. Because this one saying of Jesus Christ explodes every other religion on God's earth, they're all fakes. They're all useless. This momentous event, I can see demons peeping out of hell as they see Jesus, he's gone to the cross. I can see angels looking over the parapets of heaven, I can see the Jews and the Romans and the Greeks, they're all at the cross. We have a precious colored sister with who we love her very dearly. I'm colored too, only I faded. We're all colored. You know, I'll tell you one reason I love colored people amongst others, it was a colored man that picked up the cross when Jesus fell under it. When I see him in heaven, I'm going to give him a mighty big hug. The cross of Jesus, here it is. We sing the hymn often here, don't we? Beneath the cross of Jesus, I fain would take my stand, the shadow of a mighty rock within a weary land, a home within the wilderness, a rest upon the way. Look, if you put the cross on Palestine like that and let one of the arms reach down, you can scoop it around the whole world because geographically, the cross is almost the center of the world. It is the center of time. We change Cape Canaveral to Cape Kennedy, though they're wanting to change it back and I don't wonder. What did we shot a rocket? Did we change the calendar? When we invented the atom bomb, did we change the calendar? Isn't it amazing? A little baby came into the world and he divided time, he divided men, he divided nations. People say if we have revival, we'll all be one. If we have revival, we'll be more divided than ever. The first thing Jesus did before he could walk or talk, Herod was troubled and all Jerusalem with him. The last thing he did on the cross was divide men. In his lifetime he divided men. He went into the synagogue and there was a division because of him. And wherever Jesus goes, there's division. And those demons were looking down in terror. Come on, come on, you've forgotten. Think again of the majesty of this event. Do you know how great it was? Because you remember one of his other sayings is, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? In a tongue he knew so well how to make, he says, Eloi, Eloi, lama sebachthani, which you cannot be interpreted except, my God, I'm deserted. Everybody deserted him. You see there at that moment when Jesus says, it is finished, mercy and truth met together and righteousness and peace kissed each other and hell went into panic. How do I know? Because the earth was shattered by the whole earth rocked on its axis. So the earth trembled under the impact of his sin. But he bore for us. Heaven trembled. You see, I've been to art galleries around the world. You've been in many of them, I guess. If you're in Germany, maybe you saw some. They have some beautiful pictures. But you know, there never was a picture of the cross, it's all imagination. That event was so sacred that as it were, God took his coat off and hung it over the sun. And there was darkness for three hours. He wouldn't let anybody see his son become corruption. I don't know how God, again as Wesley says, God was contracted to a stand incomprehensibly made man. The heavens of heavens cannot contain him. How do you press him into the matrix of the Virgin Mary? The heaven of heavens cannot contain him. Oh, I got a letter this week. I was going to bring it. I got a letter from a boy 15 years of age. And he said, Mr. Ravenhill, I've been listening to some of your tapes in the bedroom and they've really got hold of me. And then I read a second one. And he said, and he's an artist, he's 15 years of age, he's already gone public, they're lithographing his pictures, they're selling for a lot of money. He's 15 years of age. He said, Mr. Ravenhill, I'm asking God, what does he want out of my life? The kid's already got his foot on the ladder at 15 to be one of the greatest artists and make more money than I'll ever see. But what is God wanting out of my life? He said, I was meditating there and I thought of the 53rd chapter of Isaiah. And then I went into the 52nd, the Lord said, not 53, 52. And he put in brackets, please read it, Mr. Ravenhill. And I read it. You know, it's a very wonderful chapter. I'll leave it to you to read. How beautiful are the feet of them that publish good tidings of peace. But he said, you know, as I think of his love for me, just a 15 year old kid. When I think of what his redemption means in my life. Kay was telling me the other day about a neighbor of hers that, who must be a neighbor of ours, but this man who had been camping last week and he went there, I suppose indifferent, and he camped with a few kids and two 12 year old boys ministered to a man. And it seems to have turned his life around. He's a different man. He said some things to Kay that were precious and encouraging to her. Well isn't that what the book says, out of the mouths of babes and sucklings he'll ordain. Very often children enter into simplicity, they enter into areas that we don't get into. Now I don't believe intellect is an obstruction to getting to know God. I believe pride is the main interest. I wish my brain was a thousand times more keen as I get older. John Wesley was nobody's fool. Mr. Finney had one of the sharpest minds America's ever had. Isaac Watts was nobody's idiot. You get some of the most profound books we have. God uses what he can use. If the vessel is clay, he blesses clay. If it's gold, he uses gold. If it's silver, he uses silver. I don't have to graduate to an intellectual standard. I wish I could, but I don't have to. I know there are more things come by revelation than education, but it still does not mean we're to despise the intellect or despise any part of our lives. Some people move emotionally and so they write great hymns and they're not even brainy. Some seem to have a combination of the whole lot. But I say remember at this moment when mercy and truth met together, when Jesus Christ, who in the mystery of God's divine grace, God was contracted to a span. What the theologians call the incarnation. How does God clothe himself? He just clothed himself in flesh and blood. He crept into the womb of a woman. And how God became man, I don't know. But less, less, less do I know. How did he become sin? You know the answer? No you don't. Neither does any living person. Every man who's honest, you can take Spurgeon or anybody, the more honest the man is, the more he says I'm baffled. As I get older, I've told you before, I see more and more great is the mystery of godliness. I think I said to brother Duane today, Duane I feel that in spiritual matters, I after 55 years walking with God, I don't think I've got my feet wet. The soles underneath never mind waters to the ankles or the knees or the loins. God has opened his treasure house to us. As I've used the phrase so often before, do we really explore the possibilities of God? What's the most exciting thing in your life? Don't answer me, answer up straight up there to God. Tell him what's the most exciting thing. That you become more knowledgeable or make more money or become more famous. What is the most exciting thing to you? Is it that day by day you slip into him and worship and adore him? I was thinking of this great hymn of Wesley's today. He's talking about the cross and he says this, would Jesus have the sinner die? Why hangs he then on yonder tree? What means that strange expiring cry? Sinner he prays for you and me. Forgive them father, oh forgive they know not, that by me they live. Thou loving all atoning lamb, thee by thy painful agony, thy blood, thy sweat, thy grief, thy pain, thy cross, thy passion on the tree. Thy precious death and life I pray, take all, take all my sins away. And then in the rapture of that he says this and it's so wonderful. I can see that woman crouching at the feet of Jesus and I can see Wesley scholarly dignified. Trailing his academic gown behind him in Oxford University. This is Charles of course, not John. And yet Charles says, oh let me kiss thy bleeding feet and bathe and wash them with my tears. The story of thy love repeat in every drooping sinner's ears, that all mankind with me may prove thy sovereign everlasting love. Oh let thy love my heart constrain. You see he loves it, if he works it inward it's going to work outward somewhere. God only puts up with words so long. A brother said to me this during this week, he said you know brother, I think we die in areas of our lives. We don't die totally to God's spirit, we die in areas. God gives up on us on certain areas. He doesn't tolerate anymore. We've said so much, we've made our vows, we won't do it. God bypasses us in that area. As I've said so often, it says in the book of the revelation, remember that hold fast to that which thou hast, that no man take thy crown. Not demons, men take thy crown. So Charles finishes his hymn by saying this, oh let thy love my heart constrain. Thy love for every sinner free, that every fallen soul of man may taste the grace that found out me. That all mankind with me may prove thy sovereign everlasting love. Isaac Watts used the other language which you know well enough, he said when I survey the wondrous cross, this I say was the most momentous moment in history. Hell had feared this for centuries, for millenniums. Why do you think the devil greased the path of Jesus and tried to make him take a shortcut to conquer the world? Why do you think he stirred up enmity amongst the religious people? You see there's one rotten canker that 's in so many churches as well as it was before. What does it say about Joseph? His brethren sold him for what? For envy. What does it say about the Lord Jesus? The priests sold him for envy. That festering thing in the hearts of men and women, they sold him because of envy. They sold him because they hated him. Why bless you, I've missed something vital out there, did you pick it up? He was only a little baby, less than two years of age when they had what the history calls the massacre of the innocents. I said to you before, I'll say it again whether you love me or hate me for it, if you've got children you ought to be up an hour before they go to school and cover those children every day with the blood of Jesus and really laying hold of the promises for they live in a hell of a world in the day in which we live. If you don't do it, I'll do it for you. Remember when Satan thinks there's something going to happen, he's going to dog that child. Now I prayed, you know and I still do, whether you know or not, I pray some of our kids, if I'm here or I'm not, it doesn't make any art. If Jesus tarries, they'll become some of the leaders half a generation, a decade from now. God will make them missionaries and evangelists and teachers and prophets and apostles. In the last great awakening which men are trying to work right up now and you can't do it. But he's going to get youngsters and fill them with the spirit and teenagers and in their early years. And you remember Moses was there. You know people say if you're good you do as the government tells you. If you're good you tell the government to go to hell if you want to tell it to go and you obey God. And the father and mother of Moses did not obey the government, they hid their baby when the government said he should be destroyed. He's going to be the lawgiver, he's going to be one of the greatest men in history and Satan says no. The same thing happened in the life of Jesus. First slaughter of the innocents in the days of Moses. Jesus is not two years of old and Herod was troubled and all Jerusalem with him and they said destroy him. You know I often think about those kings they got more faith than the disciples. Because somebody said this man's going to be a king and he believed it. I mean the little thing there nursing on his mother's breast isn't going to get up and slug the king is he? He isn't going to go to a club at night and raise an insurrection against the nation. But somehow, somehow Satan said you better believe it. That little fellow is going to be the son of God with power and authority. He's going to dethrone you and wreck your empire. And so just as they tried to destroy Moses at two years of age or under they tried to destroy Jesus. From the moment he was born to the last thing on the cross. As I've said so often I still say to myself I need to. That even if you've gone to the cross, even if you've got on the cross. The subtle old devil says listen, listen. He comes with subtle and he says get down from the cross and save yourself. Nobody's living like you. They live it up. You can't tell the difference except they go to church on Sundays with us for prayer and fasting and seeking God and travel. So why do you do it? Man why don't you get an easier job? Get ten times as much as you get going around here or go to some fancy church or some other thing. He comes to you in some way. You decided that you're going to live according to the standard of the Lord Jesus and he says well why don't you pinch it a little bit here and reduce your convictions there and not be so stiff right there and do just a little compromise. Well everybody gets away with it. And so from his infancy to the cross the last thing they did. I've read that word of Matthew's. My I'm anticipating myself here a little bit but remember when he'd gone to the cross they passed by. The scum of the earth passed by and they wagged their heads and reviled him. I've told you before there was nothing unusual to see a man going down the street carrying a cross. It's as common as a boy carrying a baseball bat. Come as a bullfight in Spain. Hey look who's going. You know who that is? So what? They put many a false prophet to death. Only he's a bit more brazen than the others you know. He preached a sermon they said would shake the world called the Sermon on the Mount. Well he did a bit more power but do you know why he does it? Do you know why he pushes devils around? Because he's the prince of devils they have to obey him. Here is the holiest, purest, most spotless man that ever lived. What does the world do? Blister him, blast him, bruise him. They watched a man going down the street. Well when the high priest went into the holy place did he go in wags like this stained with his own blood? Had he been up for hours? Had he been pushed around by a vassal king by the name of Pilate who said oh you get over to Herod he's in your domain and Herod says you get him I don't want this responsibility. Do you think the high priest could have got into the holy place with a faded gown that once belonged to a king? And a crown on his head made of thorns and spit on his jaw and hair pulled from his face? Staggering under the Lord hardly as though he were drunk. The priest went into the holy place in garments of glory and beauty the most marvellous garments in the world all hand sewn, meticulous and marvellous. He went with a crown on his head, he went with a breastplate, beautiful stones. How did Jesus go? Jesus went there staggering to the cross. Did he have a stone, a red stone on his breast? No, just his own blood that's all. Did he have an immaculate garment threaded? No, a peasant's garment. Did he have a golden crown with holiness unto the Lord? No, he had a crown of thorns with holiness in his spirit. Did people stand in awe and say the priest has gone in, will he come out? This is what he said as the holiest man that ever lived trudged up that road that they called the Via Dolorosa. Staggering under a cross and they say and he's the man that talked about being strong and he gave strength to the weak and eyes to the blind and he did a lot of things and look he can't keep up the load. He wasn't sinking under the load of the cross. Those poor dumb blind wizards that stood there, the gamblers and the thieves and the lawyers and the doctors and the and the soldiers, they had no eyes to see. The priest went into a holy place with gorgeous garments and priceless stones on his breast once a year for one nation. And before next year he might be dead and they had to re-elect another one. Here is a man staggering up this road who is going to take the consummate sin and grief not of one nation, the whole world. There's not a computer of computers that can give you the staggering amount of human guilt. It was more than the sands by the seashore or the stars in heaven. And he isn't going to go every year. He's going once into the holy place. He isn't burdened under a cross of wood. He's carrying the sin of the world. But Samson with all his strength could not carry. He's solving a problem that Solomon in all his wisdom could not solve. Those blind idiots looking out of their chariots. Those Romans with their proud garments. Those priests who thought they had an investment from God. Those merchants who stare on this poverty. God pity them. He's going to a cross. He hasn't got a dime in his pocket and he put every vein of silver in the world and every nugget of gold that's in it. Nobody stood by him, not even his disciples. You say they didn't understand. I think they did. I think they did. Because you see, they not only failed him there, they failed him on the resurrection morning. If they really believed him, they'd have been crowding. They'd have been lined up at the resurrection. There was not one of them there. And this is him that says the pain in his heart was the hardest to bear. The heart that was broken for me. Again I say he's not, he's not going to repeat the act. He's doing it once and for all. That's what he's doing. Their high priest offered the blood of another. You see, Jesus is a consummation of everything. Every type that's in the Old Testament. You can take the sacrificial types. He's the red heifer. He's the perfect lamb. He's the devil's breast was put in blood and thrown away. Sent out into the air. But the priest has no sacrifice. It doesn't cost him a thing. He, he's using the blood of beasts. This man is going to enter the holiest place of all in his own blood. Not every year, but once forever. The priest that walks into the holy place to the pod, it's an amazement of all the people. He's going to go once and then he's going to die. But our high priest is going to live forever. He is the perfect offering. He is the perfect priest. He is the perfect prophet. He is the perfect king. Moses was the greatest prophet. A greater than Moses is here. You take the perfection of every one of those characters in the Old Testament and he is the ultimate in perfection. He has the wisdom of Solomon. He has the patience of Job. He has the self-reliance of Nehemiah. He has the statesmanship of Moses. He has the courage of Joshua. He has the broken heart of Jeremiah. All rolled into one personality. Do you remember that Satan says, if he can get that man out of God's will, if he can push him out of the main track, we can hold the world captive for millions and millions of millenniums. Again I tell you that going down that road, the people mocked him. That's what he says. They that passed by reviled him, wagging their heads. What a bunch of smart alecks. The dumb, blind, senseless people thought this man in these rags, if he'd gone down with a helmet on his head of gold and some other thing. Or if Caesar comes down the road, they barbarney and say, Hail Caesar! Caesar! If the priest comes, they stand in awe. But you see, he not only was, he is. He is in this mad insane world in which we live. He is still despised and rejected of men. As you know, I'm not very fond of translations of the New Testament. I like the good old King James. But I think this one of Phillips is as smart as anything. And I love this verse. I'm going to get it printed on a little piece of paper. Because his translation of Ephesians 1 10 is this, For God has allowed us to know, the believers, to know the secret of his plan. He purposes in his sovereign will that all human history shall be consummated in Christ. Well, three cheers for Jesus. I don't care how drunk the nations are with their iniquity today. I don't care that politicians are as hypocritical now as they were in in Nixon's day, or anybody else's. Whether it's British politics or yours or ours. I say ours because I'm in America. Live here, pay the taxes, love the country. Otherwise, I'd leave it. I don't care how intoxicated men are with iniquity. I don't care if people say we're new in the Middle East at this moment than ever we've been for years. The Jews are getting entrenched and they're going to stay there. And the Arabs are arrogant. And the Shah's looking over the fence. If you listen to the news, the other night when they finished the news, the newscaster actually said, well that's the end of the bad news for the day. They're not often so honest. But listen, God has allowed us to know, come on, lift your chin up, however rough it's going. God has allowed us, we're initiated, we're the believers, we know him. And he has allowed us to know the secret of his plan, and it's this. He purposes in his sovereign will that all human history shall be consummated in his Christ. Joe, could you say hallelujah? Well thank you, I had to prime you, but it's just good that some of us can say hallelujah with a push. Isn't that amazing? It looks as though the world's in chaos. Could you try and imagine what Jesus was thinking on that road to the cross? I saw the earth shook beneath his feet. I say God draped the sun, he wouldn't let anybody see his son dead of sin, it became sin for us. Remember please will you, but when Jesus utters these three words it is finished, it is after the three hours of darkness. And there was a historian in Egypt at the time, and I've forgotten his name for the moment, there were two, there was one a Greek, but this was the Egyptian, I can't get his name for the moment. But remember there was darkness over the whole earth for three hours. And that pagan philosopher wrote this, listen, in this awful midday that has become midnight, either God is suffering or somebody he loves is suffering. That was a pagan's testimony. The whole world should have done the impact. He's not bearing millions or billions or trillions or quadrillions, he's bearing the sum total of human sin, not only committed sin but total depravity. If men will avail himself of the work he's doing there. They reviled him, they wagged their heads. Verse 41 of that 27th chapter, Matthew said likewise, the chief priests, these are the men who know the law and the prophets. These are the men who've read Isaiah 35 so many times, when he comes the eyes of the blind shall be opened. And he did it before them and they still spit in his face, because that's what it says a bit later on. Oh you have it rough, I have it rough at times. Anybody boot you behind and almost break your spine? Everybody get a nice mouthful of phlegm and spit in your eye? Anybody take your beard and pull the flesh out with it? Anybody say, well I know you of course, you're devil-possessed anyhow. They mocked him, they scorned him, they reviled him. Well you can understand the people you say passing by, they reviled him and they wagged their heads. And then their priests, they mocked him. But wait a minute, there are two men on either side of him crucified, do you know what they did? The thieves which were with him, they cast the same in his teeth. Isn't it amazing that to the very doorstep of hell itself, they scorned him and blasphemed him. And they were a heartbeat away from eternity. Well the good books, one of the hymns says about this Lord Jesus of ours, it is the way the master went, should not the servant tread it still? It is finished, what is finished? Well hallelujah, from one angle it's this is finished, that men aren't going to abuse him anymore. A hymn writer says, the head that once was crowned with thorns is crowned with glory now. A royal diadem adorns the mighty victor's brow. He's out of the reach of men, they're not going to push him around, they're not going to crucify him, they're not going to nail him to a tree. How do you know that those thieves that were hailing him and cursing him on the tree were not part of the crowd? He fed the five thousand and he didn't discriminate. He didn't say give it to Jews but not to those colored people and not to those Greeks and he said, feed them. Well he throws his mercy over the air over a hundred nations, a thousand nations this afternoon. Sure they can't all hear but that lovely hymn says, give the winds a mighty voice. Oh my God, my God. To me it's insufferable that the church has lived for two thousand years and there's still a person in the world that doesn't hear the gospel. There are still a thousand tribes that do not have a gospel of the grace of God. Partly our fault. I'm not crowing here at all but I say I'm glad I left the house. We never had sports literature. I lived in a home where it all was talk about God and missions. I prayed for missionaries when I didn't know the missionaries were footballers. But I prayed for them. I tried to instill into my boys' minds, boys look you better get hold of the right end of the stick. You don't need to be brainy to be a doctor. In one sense you do, I know. But listen, the choices, the choices are so temporal. They're perishing things of clay. You see, as somebody said, God only had one son and he was a missionary. I wonder why there are some tribes up the Amazon today that have never heard. You have a look at the Amazon. If you've got a map of Europe and you put the mouth of the Amazon on London there, it would spread over the whole of Europe and the whole of Russia. It's so vast. The greatest river in the world. And if you go up in a boat and then can't get any further than in a commercial steamer, you get a smaller boat and go up the Orinoco. Just one branch. You could go up the Xingu, but go up the Orinoco River. And it's bigger than any river we have in the country. It's wider than the Mississippi and it's only a tributary. And then when you get up there, you take another branch and take another branch. Of course, we don't go too much, but I'll tell you who does go. Something like, what is it, Omaha, New York. They go up. They go up and explore and find out native people who have still got bones in the noses, like those men I saw up in Papua, New Guinea. They go to people that haven't heard the gospel. I remember a missionary telling me he made a penetration of South America and he said, I guess, my God, my God, it can't be. They told me nobody ever been here before. And there hanging from a tree as he came around the road in his jeep was a sign, Standard Oil. He said, I felt like weeping. You wonder me, you mean that men will push and push and push business and the gospel has to trail behind? Let me step back a minute. He said it is finished. What is finished? Well, thank God, he's not going to be pushed around anymore. What is finished? Man's power over him, what they had, was finished. What is finished? Satan's abuse of him, Satan's testing of him. He started with 40 days in the we don't say too much about 30. You see, again, he ministered how long? He ministered three years. How long did he live before the three years? 30 years. So he had 10 years training for each one year he was going to minister. That's pretty good training, isn't it? Tell me the story of Jesus, write on my heart every word. Fasting alone in the desert, think of the pain that he bore. 30 years of training. But again, he is going to do in this one act what all the blood of beasts on Jewish altars slain, could not give one guilty conscience, peace or wash away one stain. But Christ, the heavenly lamb, takes all our sins away. 10 million oxen have been slain, thousands of sheep, sacrifices have been made, new moons and sabbaths, people have done every kind of thing. And Jesus ties it all up in one redemptive act. Christ, the heavenly lamb. No, he's not going to be tempted anymore now. He's not going to be looking out of his eye corners as he carries that awesome cross and carries the sin of the world and says, I can't see Peter around anymore. All those disciples, oh when we had miracles, oh when we were having a good time, they all said, master you're the greatest person ever lived and we want you to know, the world will let you down, but we won't. And one of them stepped up and he says, well Lord, if they do, count on Peter. I made that kind of stuff, I never quit. I never deny you, I never say I'm getting a rough deal, I never say I expect anything better, I can take it. And Jesus stood and looked at him, and as he looked an old rooster outside can cock-a-doodle-doo. And it broke Peter's heart. He'd have thanked you for hitting me in the middle of two by four, but a rooster just said, there you are, didn't he tell you that before the cock crows a third time, you'll three times deny me. He suffered heartbreak because his disciples were unfaithful. He suffered heartbreak because the synagogue and the temple rejected him. I say they knew the law and the prophets, they'd heard Isaiah 35 so many times, they dreamed of it, a highway should be there and away, bondage is going to cease, the Romans will lose their power over us, there's going to be no cripple, no name, he's going to heal and cure and everybody's going to be sanctified. And when they met him in flesh and blood they didn't even know him. Do you know why? Because he didn't do it their way, that's why. Because he put new wine in the old wine skins and they burst. And in the last great outpouring, a lot of people say it's here, I don't believe that for a minute. I think we've got one or two trickles, but so not an outpouring. Well even George Augustus is getting sane now, he said recently, well if this is a visitation, if there are 50 million born again people, why is the nation in this condition, where the salt has lost its savour? I believe there'll be such a visitation that even the workings of God will become headlines, above the sports headlines, above political headlines, above economic headlines. There's going to be such manifestations of divine power, that God is going to get the glory for his son. That's going to shake the world too. It is finished. When he said it is finished, really he is saying, do you know it's finished? I don't need this body anymore, I don't need food anymore, I don't need sleep anymore. I'm not a human being anymore, in the sense you know humanity. It is finished. Men have no power over, Satan has no power over me. Right now this afternoon, there are still a few hot and tots left, they haven't heard the gospel. Right now there are still some people called fakers, f-a-k-i-r, some people call them fakers. You can see them in some areas of India, maybe Nepal, Afghanistan. You can attend them because they walk with their arm up and it's atrophied. And it's been so long, their fingernails have come down and gone into their flesh. But you see that's the way they make a sacrifice to God. And they live all their lives working with one hand and they just walk like this. So you can see them coming half a mile away. They've got their arms stuck up. Somebody said in India, did you go to Accra, the temple with them? No, I don't want to see heathenism, I see enough anywhere else I go, paganism anyhow. What about those men who saw themselves on beds of spikes? Well that's Hinduism. Why don't we go and tell them there's no virtue in doing that? Why don't we tell to the faker there, listen there's no redemption in that. Why don't we tell the people in monasteries who wear hair shirts and fast and why don't we go to the people who got somebody to build the entrance to a cave up except for about 10 inches and they push plates of food under like they do for dogs. And they live with their own excrement there and they lived in filth and they never saw daylight, they went blind. And the only reason you knew they were dead is that their stinking bodies were worse than the filth they lived in. And then they sealed it up and that was the best way to get to heaven. Or you deny yourself and live in a monastery or a nunnery or some other stupid thing. Oh there's a blessed wonderful word that says whom the sun sets free is free indeed. You know what, I remember somebody who'd been away from America and been round a few countries, they'd cry it before they went. Oh yes, you know what so-and-so coughed these days, you know what so-and-so is. Do you know you have to pay a toll going down the road? Do you know they actually got to the place where they wish they could pay a toll, there was no road there. They actually wish there was some gasoline at two dollars a gallon, there was no gasoline there. You get tired of hamburgers and chips and everything every day, sure be sure your wife can cook better than that. But you get to a place where even that would be a sin. You know the same thing is true in the spiritual realm. All right, Jesus said it is finished, no more temptation has no power over him, no more dependence on human agency. He's going to pass into a tunnel, he's going to do what no man in history ever did. This is an unprecedented act, it's an unrepeatable act. I say he's the perfection of the law, he's the perfection of prophets, take the most beautiful character in the world and mold them all into women, he's exactly that. And instead of angels hanging over him and coming down and slaying people and say bow down you rebels, this is the son of God. They kicked him, they reviled him, they spat on him, they mocked him. You remember that lovely song that said he could have called ten thousand angels. I like that song. I remind you again isn't it in second Kings where one angel trailed his wings through a city and destroyed a hundred and eighty thousand people. So if he called ten thousand army to wipe the earth out. We don't need an air force and bombers, all we need is a holy determination to do God's will each send angels around every house and every window if need be. I thought with a missionary that actually had that experience in Vietnam. That when the communists burned every city and they saw every town burn night after night and they were actually coming down the peninsula. There was no way to back out from the orphanage yet sent into the sea. We were having dinner with Dr. R. R. Brown that dear old saint and he said hey tell Brother Radner about when the angels came. And they watched the cities burning and villages burning night by night and then the terrified children said will it be us tonight? They said go to sleep don't worry, don't wake, the Lord will take care of us, the Lord will take care of us. Well you know they'd heard that often and sometimes the Lord was a bit late. You know the Lord's going to deliver us tomorrow and he didn't. The kids didn't understand it. If they said the Lord's going to deliver us fine but when you put a time wave on you're kind of telling God how to run his business and you know he's having an idea and he doesn't do it that way. And the Lord was late once or twice and the kids didn't understand it. So when they said the Lord will take care of us. And the communists came marching down that road and they were routed and they got destroyed. A lot of them got very seriously injured and maimed and lost limbs and this missionary went down with others and said well you know if your enemy hunger feed him. Let's go down to the hospital and minister to them and they went down. They bound up their wounds and they shared their rations with them. He said one of the men looked up and said are you one of those mission men? Mission you say mission men? Yes yes. Oh very sorry. He said but why didn't you march on us? Didn't you come to march? Didn't you send word ahead we're going to burn the mission station out? Yes. Why didn't you do it? Well he said how could we do it? I mean you know we couldn't do it. Those men all in shining armor all standing right around the mission compound. We didn't go near them. We were afraid. Some said come on we're good. And then when we saw them they never moved they just shone they shone. Well if you told some old liberal that is a hoax forget it forget it. And yet he quote in the morning reading of the scripture he shall give his angels charge concerning thee to keep thee not out of thy way. And then he blasphemed God and out after and say he doesn't do things like that anymore. Huh? He doesn't pay my bills. No he didn't he didn't contract your debts either. So don't ask him to pay bills that you contracted debts for. He's not in our business. He helps us in our needs. He pities our weakness or some things he doesn't do. He didn't know that but anyhow I told you. Now there's no more temptation of life. There's no more trial. There's no dependence on human agency. Jesus knew what was in the heart of men and until they had been to the cross for their sins forgiven and been to the upper room to get purified they were vacillating. But once after that Peter never turned around he never backslid. It is finished. What was finished? Well the tyranny of the devil. I don't think the church has wakened up to that yet but it is. It is so. I believe that when satan cried with a loud voice it echoed down every corridor in hell. It is finished. Like normal say demons say what is finished? He's broken our power. You mean that satan doesn't have that? No no no no no no. Satan is bound. When the believer stands in a position of authority. And not only that. Death has lost its sting. It has. Yeah the grave has no sting. And more than that. Oh no can't be more than that. You mean satan's bound? You mean that death has lost its sting? Yes. Do you know why? The vilest offender who truly believes that moment from Jesus of pardon received. It doesn't matter if he's going in the Waldorf Astoria this afternoon with somebody else's wife dripping with diamonds. Or he's a bum down the street or he's with the folk that still go naked on the beach there in San Diego every Sunday and defy the police to arrest them. Or whether it's a big ecclesiastical guy standing beneath the desk behind the desk with all his mind loaded with such modernistic ideas it makes no odds. If he comes to the cross. Well we sang about it this afternoon. That old rugged cross so despised by the world has a wondrous attraction. You see again I get indignant about this. There's so much faith going on. This morning somebody lifted a cup up and pretended to offer a mass and it's blasphemy. The epistle to the Hebrews shatters Roman Catholic theology and you make no mistake about it. That would be our biggest headache before long. Not communism as much as Romanism. It can't stand up to the New Testament. You see that word when Jesus says it is finished is altogether different from the English and the Greek. It's altogether different. You see you may say of a man well those men yeah they're building a building up there for say for her they're building it. I just came past in the form and said we finished it. Oh they have yeah yeah finished it uh-huh. I don't see any windows in it. I don't see any doors in it. I don't see any electric fixtures in it. Oh well it's finished but but it's not complete. But the Greek word doesn't really say it is finished. The implication of the Greek word is it is complete. This is redemption complete. You can't add to it. You can't subtract from it. It doesn't need something the rotten priest says needs adding to it. It doesn't need the blessing of the Vatican. Jesus made a perfect redemption for men. His blood was shed. It's more than all the blood of beasts. Because again it says in Hebrews 10 and 9 doesn't it. If the blood of bulls and goats from the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean sanctifies to the purifying of the flesh. How much more shall the blood of Christ who through the eternal spirit offered himself without stop to God purge your conscience from dead works. He not only takes the sum total of human sin and he nails it to the tree. You see those stupid people thought they'd nailed the son of God to the tree. I knew what they were doing. They were helping him nail sin to the tree. Because that's what he did. Again it wasn't the Greeks that took him there. It wasn't the Romans that took him there. They were all there. I thank God for that. The Greeks were there. Their day was over. They were coming out of their glory. They were fading out. They were the past generation. The Romans were there. They were the ruling generation at that time. They were even ruling in England 55 years before Jesus died. And who else were there? Well the colored folk were there. A future generation. So you see the past, the present, the future, all at the cross. When you write a letter you write to the cross. If you're in another country you start at the top and write downward to the cross. If you lay the cross on the floor it points north, south, east and west. If you stand the cross up it embraces its arms as Wesley says. The arms of love that compass me would all mankind embrace. If you stand it up it points to a topless heaven and a bottomless hell and the arms are outstretched to save. We're mutilating all the hymns and we've mutilated that gorgeous hymn we sing so often beneath the cross of Jesus. The last stanza of it says this. Beneath the cross of Jesus mine eye at times can see the very dying form of one who suffered there for me. No that's, that's not the same. I'm thinking of another stanza of it. Beneath the cross of Jesus but on the farther side, listen, the darkness of an awful grave that gapes both deep and wide. That there between us stands the cross, two arms outstretched to save like a watchman set to guard the way from that eternal grave. The other side of that cross there is an eternal grave. Oh I'm going to say more about this another time but you see it's finished. The law and the prophets they've no, at least the old testament economy of grace as we say has no power. Sin if we obey God has no dominion over us. Death has no dominion over us. The power of Satan has been broken. Heaven has received him. The next thing is to say not only he said it is finished but he, he has risen which will be superseded with I will come again four words. We shouldn't put our tongue in our cheek and say this in a whisper. We ought to shout this from the housetop. We ought to say to a world that's groping in darkness and Mr Carter and the others are saying things they said 50 years ago when I was a youngster. If we do this we'll adjust that. If we'll do this we'll adjust that. You know that's like going to manure heap and sprinkling it with Chanel 5 and saying you'll cure it. We ought to proclaim to the whole world with a trumpet voice it is finished. You can't buy salvation. You can't crawl on your knees through the holy city. You can't go to Mecca. You can't offer your righteousness. There's nothing you can do but bow in humility and confess and accept it. This is the language of earth. Why? Because in heaven they never say it is finished. Because it's never going to be finished for all eternity. All redemption is finished. All that I've said is finished. But you see this never finishes. We're going to live and reign with him forever and ever and ever. And Gabriel is going to blow the trumpet one day and say hey you've been living in this super millennium now for four billion trillion years and it's over. No sir. I like that part of the Messiah where it goes up and up and they sing and he shall reign forever and ever. King of kings. Nobody wants it to finish in eternity. We're going to be with the eternal bride group. But wait a minute. They never say it's in hell either. There between us stands the cross two arms outstretched to save like a watchman set to guard the way. Because behind it there's an eternal grave and the only obstruction to that eternal grave is the finished work of the Lord Jesus. And there will be people in hell today and people in hell a billion years from now who would love a messenger to come from another world and say it is finished. Your judgment is passed. You've no more suffering for your sins. The wrath of God doesn't abide in you anymore. No. We're going to escape that eternal judgment if we're going to enter that eternal rest. It must happen now. Isn't it amazing that with that love so amazing and so divine that he bore our sins in his body. That he took the curse of God the wrath of God upon him. That he took our sins. His heart was broken that ours might be healed. He was an outcast that we might be brought in. He suffered without the gate that you and I might enter into heaven. Isn't it amazing that people withhold their petty little lives from him. That they love their sin enough to get the anger and wrath of God rather than repent and believe and be saved.