In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes that the world we live in is fallen and filled with darkness and ignorance. He criticizes the daily press, radio, and television for being earthly and blind to the truth. The preacher acknowledges that although people may have different heights and abilities, ultimately, everyone is on the same level in this fallen world. He concludes by stating that our only hope is to look to God for help and salvation, as humanity is trapped in a valley of decay and death.

Today we are being told two self-contradictory things. We are being reminded very often that our intellectual and educational equipment are very much superior to that of the New Testament Christians. And then, as though we had not heard that, they tell us a second thing. They tell us that we must furnish the people of the day, this day, a lighter diet, because they tell us we must make religion attractive and easy in order that it may be palatable for these intellectual giants that tread the earth today, tread our courts, and tramp up and down the streets. They tell us that the people of the day simply will not take heavy stuff, but that, strangely, they're also better educated than they were back there and have better intellectual equipment. And yet, do you know that the New Testament, deep and solemn and heavy as it is, the New Testament was written for plain and mostly uneducated believers? Our Lord Jesus Christ spoke his wonderful message to many thousands of people who could not read or write, and they had nothing else, those early Christians. They just had this Bible and nothing else. As it became written, they had that. They had the epistles of the various writers in that time, and they had the Old Testament. Some of them had the Old Testament, and they had nothing else. They had no painless method of getting religion. Nobody had fixed it so you didn't have to think. No simplified, streamlined messages or methods were being used to give it. And they were expected to understand and to relish such books as the Book of Romans. They were expected to read 1 John and understand and relish 1 John. They were expected to read the Book of Hebrews and understand the Book of Hebrews. They were expected to read the gospel according to John and understand the gospel according to John, love it, relish it, and live by it. And then we of our day are told that we cannot give the people any such heavy stuff as this, that we've got to come down to their level, and that we have to streamline it and denature it and put it in fiction form in order that the people of the day will get it. Well, my friends, the simple truth is that the modern revolt against serious truth, with its corresponding demand for a streamlined religion, is not the result of intellectual deficiency. It is the result of carnality and lack of spiritual appetite. The saintlets of the day are simply too kernel to enjoy anything very deep. So they say, well, we're living in another kind of age, a reader's digest age, and you've simply got to simplify it. You've got to make it short, and you have to illustrate it, and you have to, if possible, set it in a fictional setting. God's dear dumb sheep, I don't know whether we'll ever get any sense at all or not. I heard a discussion while I was resting today a bit, and they're talking about books. And the president of Random House, publishers in New York City, one of the greatest publishing houses in North America, Leonard Surf, the president of Random House, says that there was a time a little while ago when magazines and books were 30 percent non-fiction and 70 percent fiction. But, he says, there has been a complete shift, and the figures are now exactly reverse. That secular magazines now can carry 70 percent non-fiction and only have to lug in 30 percent fiction. And the books that are being published now are in the same proportion. Now, here comes God's poor, tired, lame lambs, and our publishing houses are turning out fiction, fiction, fiction. Forgetting that the world has long ago passed them up, and that even old whiskery Adam, an old fallen and unregenerate man, has actually gotten so serious-minded in the day in which we live, that he'd rather have 70 percent non-fiction and content himself with 70 percent bedtime stories. And publishing houses now are making big money on bedtime stories for saintlets. Now, that isn't in the sermon magazine. I just couldn't help but say that, brethren. I just wonder how long God's people are going to come limping along behind. And when they get on a coattail, they always get on the coattail of some fella who's petering out. They never get on the coattail of a fella who's on the upswing. They always get on the coattail that's coming down. So that now, we are the fictioneers, we Christian people. We have to have it put in story form. Children, once upon a time, Jesus said, and we have a little story all fixed up. But do you know, brother, that coattail's coming down. You better hunt around for another coattail because he's going down. And even out there in the world, they know it. Now, I have to say that because here I am preaching to you tonight on truth that is profound, that is elevated and deep. So deep that you can't get deeper, and so high you can't get higher, and so broad you can't get broader. And I'm not apologizing. I preach to smaller crowds, but I preach better stuff. Don't forget that. Not that I'm a better preacher, but that I insist upon turning my tiny talents loose on good stuff. Better preachers are wasting a lot of their time and effort and God-given energy on trash, and I refuse to preach trash. If I can't preach as well as they can, I can preach better stuff. Now, here's this man, John, and he said that he that is from above is above all, and he that is of the earth is earthly. Let's look at that a little bit. He that is of the earth is earthly. You know, when the human race awoke to find itself fallen, found that God was gone into invisibility. Not that God was gone, that's an impossibility, but that God was hiding himself and was gone into invisibility. And in his place were fears and sickness and decay and death. And men found themselves, as it were, fallen into a great deep pit. For that is what the Bible teaches about the fall of man. It teaches that we are fallen into a great deep valley. And there we are in that valley, and all above us there are clouds, and all around us miasmic mists and the shadow of death over everything. And the tears and groans of the fallen human race are to be seen and heard everywhere. And that decay and old age and sickness and pain and death are everywhere in that valley. The human race fell down, and all around us are the sheer cliffs on every side and smooth, and we can't get up. And that's the human race, and we're down in that valley. That's the fall of man, that's where we find ourselves, that's where we are. And no man has a ladder to get out, and no man could climb out if he had a ladder. And no one can help another because we're all down in here together. How to get up and get out and get back into the sunshine and get back where there is life and get back where there is light, that nobody knows, for we're all fallen down here together. And so whether we stand or fall or lie or crawl over the muddy bottom of this valley where we find ourselves, in this fallen world, we nevertheless are here together on the same level. And our help must be from above. Now down in this valley where we find ourselves, some are taller than others, and they stand up and they make others look short by comparison. But you know when two men are reaching for the stars, if one of them is a little taller than the other, there's no advantage to him. One man is six foot four, another man is four foot six. And when they stand up on a hill someplace and reach for the stars, the heaven above smiles because neither one of them will reach the stars. So in this world in which we live, we're not all on one flat level in the sense that we're all exactly alike. We're not. Some are very tall. There have been some tall men that lived in the world. Abraham Lincoln was a tall old man. And you can name them, you have your heroes in history, men who were tall men. And then there have been little Benedict Arnolds and little forgotten men that were the little short men of the world. But we're all down standing on the same muddy bottom, all down here where we fell to. And the tall noble figures whose busts are in the libraries and whose statues are on the green lawn in front of the courthouse, there weren't any higher up in the long run than the rest of us little shorties that walk around and are never heard of and our name will never be remembered except as it's cut into a tombstone. So everything is on a horizontal plane. Everything is horizontal, I mean, plane. Everything is on a level. We're all down here together, big ones and little ones and short ones and tall ones and great ones and small ones. We're all down in this fallen world together. He that is of the earth is earthly. And every time the earthly man opens his mouth, he talks like a man of earth. He's earthly. And if he's one of the tall characters, he opens his mouth, he's full of the dust of the earth anyway, and those who know God can detect the smell of the burnt earth upon them. And if a man rises to help another, he comes to that other one on a horizontal plane. He comes from where he is over to the man and tries to help him there. But inasmuch as he can't get up, he can't help the other one up. All help comes from a level, you see, a horizontal level. It's all on an even plane and it's all resting down on the muddy bottom of the valley into which we plunge in that tragic and dramatic moment when our forefathers ate of the forbidden tree and stretched out their hand and received that which was sin and death and darkness and alienation and night settled upon them. Here we are all down together. And the worst of it all is that the great masses of mankind have even forgotten the world from which they fell. Or if it is there at all, it is there only as a relic, a trace, a dim racial memory, lying yet in their hearts, half forgotten, they're dimly remembered. Most people are satisfied with the clay and the soil and the bog and the shadows. Here we are, he that is of the earth is earthy. That is why you don't dare trust people when it comes to your soul. That is why you don't follow around after Cain and say, Cain, will you please show me the right flowers that I am to take to God? That is why you cannot go to Mr. Worldly Wise Man and inquire the way to heaven, because he doesn't know either. He's down below and all the help he can give you will come from him to you on the same level that you're on. He has no ladder either. He has no rope. He has no spiral staircase that will lead him to the skies. He that is of the earth is earthy. We find earthly men everywhere around about us. Newspapers are filled with earthly-minded men's writings. Magazines vie with each other to entertain us, earthly people entertaining earthly people. He that is of the earth is his magazine, his life, his time, his harpers, his Atlantic, his American, his whatever it may be. And we vie with each other trying to entertain people and make it a radio broadcast out to comment on this or that. Earthly men talking to earthly men about earthly things. And the light above is out, and the mud beneath our feet gives away the fact that we are fallen men. But the sunshine and the silver clouds are not ours, that we're doomed to walk in the valley, that this pit into which we have fallen is a pit of sin. The human race is struggling there, living and dying and procreating and living and dying in this fallen earth. He that is of the earth is earthly and speaketh of the earth. And because he speaks of the earth, everybody understands it. That's why, by the grace of God, I would urge you never to take your religion from the newspapers. Never take your religious convictions from some fellow that's writing a series for any newspaper. Never take your religion from the current magazines, Sunday Supplement or what have you. Never, never listen to the man who talks to you with the dust on his breath, whose feet have the tell-tale marks of the clay. He that is of the earth is earthly, and he speaketh of the earth. And men receive what he says because he's of the earth. And you can lie to him and betray him and violate him and spoil him and sell him downriver a thousand times in one generation, and you'll still come back with a sickly smile of hope, ready to be told a lie by the next fellow that comes along. And listen avidly to the voice of him that is of the earth, earthly, and speaketh of the earth. Cain and Esau and Saul were men of the earth, and they left a progeny after them that was like flies in the earth. He that is of the earth is earthly. Our Lord said that, or John said it, basing what he said upon what the Lord had said and being guided by the Holy Ghost to say the truth, that it's an earthly world we're living in. And people say, well, what's the matter with the daily press? What's the matter with the radio? What's the matter with television? Well, the best thing can be said about them all is they're of the earth, and they speak of the earth, and they are earthly. And they have upon them the same blindness, the same inward ignorance, same shadows, same mist. They have around them the same open graves. They have upon them the same doom. They have the marks of the valley, the deep pit into which we're fallen. And because they can't get out, they can't help anybody else out. And a man will write himself a book, and it'll be a bestseller on how to get peace with your nerves, and then he dies. Another man will write about how to have peace of mind, and he'll commit suicide. Funniest book I ever knew, without any doubt, was a book called A Slow Train Through Arkansas, written by a man named Thomas H. Jackson. When I was a kid, he used to sell it on trains, peanuts, popcorn, chewing gum, candy, and A Slow Train Through Arkansas. And I can still, if you get me in the right mood, if you buy the coffee, I can still tell you some of the screaming things that I remember out of A Slow Train Through Arkansas. The man who wrote it committed suicide. He just got so funny that he lived. He was of the earth earthly. He that is of the earth speaketh of the earth. And we have an earthly philosophy, and earthly everything round about us. Now, against that is this. He that cometh from above is above all. You see, my friends, we're down in this valley, this muddy, blood-stained valley. And the only way to get out is to get up. And nobody can help anybody else out, because we're all on a horizontal plane, all on the same level. And any help that comes, comes from, to, on the same level. And he that is from above is vertical. And help must come from above, vertical, not horizontal. Nobody that's on the same level with you can help you. No word that comes out of the mouth of a fallen man can help another fallen man. No hand stretched forth by a fallen man can lift another fallen man to heaven. Nothing built by a fallen man can help another fallen man out of the morass. He that cometh from above is above all. And the help comes from the world that has been forgotten. Now, he came from above, and he's above all. And John, verse 13, identifies him as the Son of Man. Let me sketch over briefly here tonight how he is above all. And I want to be fair, and I want to lean over backwards in being fair. And I want to point out to you that he that cometh from above, Jesus Christ, the eternal lobus, the eternal Son, he that cometh from above is above human reason. Now, human reason cannot save us for the simple reason that human reason is fallen too. That which is fallen cannot raise itself above its fallen level. And human reason is fallen as well as the human body is fallen and the human soul. So, human reason extends out from its fallen level to another man on a fallen level and entertains him with high ideals. But it cannot lift him out of the clay. It cannot fly him out of that low, cloud-covered valley. It cannot take him out of the shallows. Among the finest things left in this tragic wreck of things is human reason. And yet, it cannot help us. A man can sit down like a rodent spinker and think until his hair is gray. And when he gets up and shakes himself, he's still where he was before. He's not out of the valley. He's still behind the sheer walls. But he that cometh from above is above reason. And he never learned anything from it, nor gained anything from it, nor owes anything to it. Nor takes any advantage from it, nor has any need of it. He that cometh from above is unique. He that cometh from above is incarnated reason. The old theologians say that one of the attributes of God is reason. I believe it. And that little bit of reason that you and I have fallen and broken like a shattered vase, the little bit you and I can gather up and scrape the mud off of and polish and send to school, that's a bit of shattered reason which was given us of God, who is the fountain and source of all reason. And man talks about his reason, and yet human reason can't get him out. You cannot reason yourself up a sheer wall. You cannot reason yourself because your human reason itself is fallen and subject to error, and rated above, down in the same bloody mud where you found yourself when you started to think. But he that cometh from above is above all that. He comes down. He's the incarnation of it. He comes down like the owner of the vase, down where men have shattered bits of it. Now, he that cometh from above is above human science. And I want to point out that human science is nothing but the application of reason to matter and natural laws, that's all. We are terribly frightened in the day in which we live. We have a big H-bomb got out of control over there, and it was so big that they said they didn't know it was going to act the way it did. And they thought they had a pony, but they found they had a real horse on their hands, and it bucked them through them. And I don't know how far this science is going to take us, but all it is is human reason applied to matter and natural laws. So we have jet planes and all this stuff to kill bugs in you when you get pneumonia. It's all right, but it's limited because you can't rise any higher than it is. And to talk about science saving the world is as ridiculous as to throw a wash tub to a man in a well and tell him to get in it and lift. You know what I mean? Here's old Levi down in the well, and you can barely hear his voice. He shoved down here. All right, Levi. He says, yes, I'm all right, but how are you going to get me out? We said, just dunk over to one side a little bit, and we'll throw this tub. Now, get a hold of the handles and lift. He can lift till he's dead and never get himself out of there because he and the tub are on the same level, and one can't help the other. How can a science help me? How can science help me? Because science begins and ends on the same level with me down here in the valley. There's no leverage, no fulcrum, no elevator, no ladder, no stairway, no rope, because it all begins and ends down here on this fallen level, so that Jesus Christ is above human science. How we'd love to make Jesus beholden to the science. Once in a while I see a book. I told Brother Mac that we had preachers and preachers down on the loop tomorrow, and I said, well, after I preach, I'm going over and buy a book. He said, do you think you need a book? I have them stacked up like this up there in my study. Well, whenever I run onto one of these books and it's through science to God, oh, it shuts the cover. I wish I could say I pray a prayer for the poor blind man who wrote it. I don't. I haven't yet. Maybe I'll get around to it, but he's blind, and here he is through science to God. Lift, Levi, hang on, you'll get yourself out of that well yet. But he won't. He's still where he was, and he'll die down there and rot. So human science can't help us to heaven. But he that is from above, he's not beholden to science. He doesn't know Edison anything, or Henry Ford, or Steinmetz. He doesn't know them anything. He is from above. He's above it all. Science works on a horizontal plane. He comes down from above. He that is from above is above all. And then I think of human civilization. And what is human civilization? It's simply education and science and art applied to the task of refining people and making them more comfortable in the valley. That is all. Science and art and reason, they go to work on a man. Now here he is down in the valley walking around on the dark and bloody ground, unable to get out or find anybody that knows how to tell him to get out. For a while he lives in caves and bolts his food uncooked, and they say pulls his mink in by the hair of her head. And they call him the caveman. Then civilization comes along and says, you shouldn't do that, junior. There's no way to treat a lady. Ask her right, and romance is born. And they call it civilization. And instead of taking her to a cave that drips with stalactite, he takes her to one of these modern jails. Walk up third floor, and with the refrigerator and all the electric appliances. Civilization has come along and refined this man in the valley. Instead of beating his wife now, he does something else. Walks out on her or something else. But that's civilization. And instead of eating his meat raw, he cooks it under a pressure cooker. She does. And that's civilization. And instead of taking the jawbone of an ass and going out and beating a man to death and getting it over one man, put off a bomb and kill 130,000 at a whack. Civilization. We're refined these days, brethren. Extremely refined. And instead of letting our beards grow until we tramp them off in self-defense, keep them stumbling, why, we take them off now in the latest forehead sunbeam, electric rays. We're more comfortable in this valley than we were before, but if you look down, you'll see blood and mud. We're still where we were in Adam's day. We're still where they were in the day of Genghis Khan and Attila, the Hun. We're still where we were and we can't get out. We're more refined and we're probably more comfortable. Out on 95th Street, there is a new store moved in, and it sells furniture. And there's a bed there. I can believe this or not, it's as big across as this piano and completely round. Completely round, but circular, I'll mark you, circular. And I have said it's for a fat man, but I don't know really what it's for. You wouldn't know, you wouldn't know which is the head and which is the foot because there's no head and no foot. It's completely circular. And I'm quite sure that it'd be more comfortable to lie down and dream away into the arms of Morpheus on that round, lovely thing than it would be to lie down on a rock in a cave after having gorged yourself on uncooked meat and picked your teeth with a shattered bone. But we're all on the same level. And the man who rises in the morning and can't find the foot of his bed and falls out wherever he can, he's just as fallen and just as lost and just as hopeless as the man who sleeps on a brick bed in China or crawls out of a cave in Cambodia. We're all down in this valley. We're fallen, and he that is of the earth is earthy, and human civilization has never done anything to lift us up to God. It simply made us more comfortable without God. No, he that is from above was before the world was. Civilization to him is simply the change of color of a molecule in the palm of his hand, no more. And then, human religion. Now, human religion, and that takes in all religions except the religion of him who is from above. Human religion is built out of the bricks made from the bloody mud of the valley in which we find ourselves. And we have done pretty well, I suppose, refined things very well. Instead of having just an ordinary tub now, we have a golden basket. And it has its handles on the side too, and we call it religion. And men step in that golden basket woven of gold filigree, reverently take hold of the sides and pull that we don't rise one inch from the bloody mud of the valley. Religion doesn't help us. Christ is above religion. Religion is horizontal. It comes to us from somebody else. Mrs. Baker Eddy, or Joseph H. Smith, or Muhammad, or Confucius, or Leipzig, or somebody else teaches us, and they teach us from where they are to where we are, but there's nothing vertical, nothing elevating, nothing to lift us. It's all horizontal. It's all on the same level. All rest down on the mud of the valley. But suddenly there is one who came from above. He that is from above is above all. And from religions he borrows nothing, and to religion he owes nothing. He is himself the religion, and is himself salvation, this Jesus. Blessed Holy Ghost, how we inspired John to say it. And that's why the study of comparative religions means very little to a man. You can study the religions of the world all you want to, and you're simply getting a little help from a man who's down as far as you are, maybe a little taller than you. But what's the difference of a few inches in height when we're all standing in the valley, and the heaven above is leagues beyond us? Now with this thought that Jesus Christ cometh from above, above all religion, above all reason, above all science, above all civilization, above everything. Now we know why he said what he said in following, that the Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into his hand. Now we know why he said the testimony of the Son is final. And we know why he said, he that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life, because the Son brings help from above. And the life that lies above, and the hope that lies above, he brings down. And he came from above down. All others came from without too. He came from above down, and he brought down the help we needed. And he told us of that other world from which we'd fallen. He told us of God, and the many mansions, and the redeemed, and the just spirits of just men made perfect. He told us of eternal life. He came down. And he that receiveth him hath everlasting life, and he that believeth on him hath eternal life. And we see now also why he that obeyeth not the Son, death remains on him, and he's doomed to the valley. And the wrath of God remains on him, because he has despised him who came from above. Oh, my friends, I know I sound old-fashioned, and I suppose that I am counted radical by some. But with a great calmness and prophetic insight, I am able to tell you that Jesus Christ is enough for you. That you don't need Jesus Christ, plus a thousand additions that come from the same level as you come from. What are they to give me? What can they offer me? What can they bring me, except to comfort me and cheer me a little while here on the blood-mugged valley floor? But as we're getting out, only one can help us. Is there anyone to help us, one who understands our griefs? Yes, Jesus Christ. God sent his Son, and he that receives his Son has the help he needs. He has the out. He has the up. He has the lift from above. He has that eternal life which was the Father who came down. And he that rejects all that and disobeys the Son has cancelled out any help from above, and he must lean on his brethren who are the same as he, and no further up. How foolish to lean on a man that can't help you. God called it leaning on a broken reed, or a reed that would break and run into your hand. Poor crutches and canes and braces that we wear around in this world of ours, trying to help ourselves to God. The world is blossoming out now with books on how to get peace of mind and peace of soul and peace of this and a peace of that, and when it's all over, it's a piece of mud and human effort. But it's not God, and it's not eternal life, and it's not him that comes from above. Oh brethren, there is one who came from above, and he's above all, and you don't have to apologize for him, and you don't have to try to make him palatable to the carnal world, and you don't have to make him fit in to the pattern of the lost world. He's not like the valley in which he came to, to which he came. He's not like that valley. He's different. All together different, because he came from above. And when he opens his mouth and talks, there's no dust in his throat. And when he reports, he's not guessing, he knows he's been there and seen it. No man has ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of Man, which is in heaven. And when he spoke, they looked at each other with a simple hearted, and they said, wonderful, wonderful, no man ever spoke like this. Those who had a vested interest in the valley, they cursed him and said, he's disturbing us, taking away our living. We'll kill him, and they did. And he ascended back from whence he had come, back from whence he came, but he's coming once more. And in the meantime, the way is open. Shaft is now made in the clouds, and the light shines through. And he that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life. And he that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life. Right now, right now you can do it. You say, but I've got to eat this, or dress this way, or join that. Why waste your time fooling around on the horizontal level? Down on the same plane with everybody else, your help must come from above, not from without. And it can come from above, right where you are now, right this minute, without waiting, right now. You can bow your head, and the light of God will slip into your heart like quick silver, like a flash of light from above. God can save you and bless you right where you are now. Take you up and give you the essence and foretaste of that eternal life which is with the Father. And you'll have life, not all there is. You'll have more when he comes, but you'll have life, eternal life, within your own bosom now. He that is from above is above all. I want to say to you, Christians, don't go around apologizing for him. Don't go around worried because you can't make his doctrines fit in with what you've learned in school. All you learned in school was one fallen head instructing another fallen head. Some of it true, some of it false, some of it all mixed up, but it's one head instructing another head, all on the same muddy floor, together, fallen. You don't have to apologize for him who comes from above all, who on that plane of life is above all, equal with God and is God, who came down from above and comes down from above. The dear old German mystics of a few hundred years ago had their own nomenclature and their own theological phrasings. Sometimes we'd throw it out as not being quite accurate or squaring with the way we know doctrine. But they used to say, when a man is born again, Jesus Christ is born in his heart. They said the Father is everlastingly generating the Son. The eternal generation of the Son was the doctrine they held and that we never hear of now anymore. But it was the eternal generation of the Son. And they said when a man, a sinner, believes in Jesus Christ, God generates the Son within. And he's born anew for the generation of the eternal Son within his bosom. High and lofty concepts, my brethren, certainly infinitely superior to the low views we have now, that I accept Christ in order to escape the atom bomb, or I accept Christ in order that my business might prosper, or I accept Christ for some other low reason. They said we accept Christ in order that the Son may be generated within us and we may be born into the new world. Praise his name. That's help from above. I'm finished, and it's time I should be. I simply leave it with you, my friends. God sent his Son, and his word is final. And your reaction to him is final. And whatever you do toward him, God marks as final. You take him, you have life. If you disobey and reject, you have not life, and the wrath of God remains on you. In the doom and the gloom of the valley are yours till death removes you. Let us pray. O God, our Father, we bless thy name, that thou didst send us help from the sanctuary, out from the heavenly palaces, down from the lofty heights above. He came. He came to be born under law, to be born of a woman, that he might redeem us who were under law, and who by the curse of the law were lost hopelessly. Down to the mud and the blood, down to the shadows and the gloom, down to the tears and the tomb, he came. We bless thy holy name for sending him. He came because he wanted to come, but he came because thou didst send him. And Father and Son agreed. We bless thee, O Triune God. We praise thee, O blessed Holy Ghost, the conscience of the world that still keeps dimly alive the racial memory of the world from which we fell. Great God, we do not want thy wrath to be upon us. We want to have that eternal life which was with thee. We pray help tonight. There might not be one go out of here who has not received the Son, who has not obeyed the Son, who has not now taken the Son, believed the Son. O Son of Man, we hear thy voice. Son of God, we see thy light. With our grant, we pray that as we go from this place tonight, we may go driven by the hard, overwhelming force of logic to Jesus Christ the Lord, to know that there is nothing on our level, ancient or modern, that can help us remotely, but only he who came from above, only Jesus. Blessed be the name Jesus. We pray thee help us to love that name and follow with us wherever we go. Help these friends who have listened tonight. We thank you for the privilege of speaking to them. O Lord, we pray send them out with a bit of another world on their hearts, a yearning, a longing, an aspiration, that they may open wide the gates of their soul and receive the Lord Christ in. And rest in him, and trust him, and know that even now in spirit they can be raised out of the valley, and finally that he is coming, taken out for good, and the valley itself transformed, no longer from the valley of death, but now of life. For the knowledge of the Lord shall cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.