In this sermon, the preacher starts by mentioning the excitement surrounding football in England and a recent news story about a figure skater's intense training. He then criticizes Bible students for not being as dedicated to their studies. The preacher emphasizes the importance of delivering a dynamic message to awaken people and save them from hell. He also discusses the role of Peter, one of Jesus' apostles, and highlights the significance of having Jesus as a role model. The sermon concludes with a mention of the book of Revelation and the hope of an incorruptible inheritance in heaven.

Reminds me of when my mother used to dress me. She wasn't always so gentle though. Well, I've heard that hymn, And Can It Be, for at least 70 years of my long life. I've never heard it sung worse than tonight. Terrible. I'd imagine Charles Wesley turned over in his grave. You see, in the original, there are about six stanzas, and every stanza has a separate chorus to it. I think that one, No condemnation now I dread, Jesus and all in him is mine, Alive in him my living head, And clothed in righteousness divine, Bold, I approach the eternal throne, And claim the crown through Christ my own. I like the other verse, He left his father's throne above. You know, the best of modern hymn books, I collect hymn books. If you have some old ones, bring them. I've given a lot away. But you know that hymn, some of Wesley's hymns that were written in 1740, had no less than 27 stanzas. Imagine singing 27 stanzas and a chorus after each one. Our people would fall asleep. But then he used to preach for three hours. George Whitfield preached on Boston Common. I preached at that big church on Boston Common some years ago, so I wanted to go see the place. And George Whitfield preached there to a crowd of 20,000, and snow was falling gently, yet he preached for nearly three hours. When he finished out of, I think there were 20,000 there, 1800 of them were laying prostrate on the floor. That's really been slain in the spirit. They didn't just hit the ground and get a bump on the back of their head. They were transformed. But laying there for hours and hours. When that happened repeatedly, the police used to come round, and they'd kneel at the side of a man that was prostrate there, you know, with his face upward, and smell his breath. If he was drunk, they took him off to the lockup. If he wasn't drunk, they said he got, what do you call it, Tennant's disease, I think it was. Because every time, there was a fellow called Gilbert Tennant, and he had a son called John, and he had a son called Gilbert, and Gilbert travelled with George Whitfield for just over a year, and the critics said at the end of the year he could preach better than Whitfield, so he must have been quite a preacher by the bracing, glad I wasn't around then. Anyhow, it's good to see you. Thank you for the offerings. I've got a pretty down-to-earth message, I think, tonight. It's from the first epistle of Peter. I'll be here one more Tuesday night, then you'll be free of pain for a long while. I think it was John Owen. Have you read about John Owen, any of you? John Owen, one of the great Puritans, he said the sin of people in the Old Testament was that they resisted God the Father. The sin of people in the New Testament was that they resisted the message of the Son of God. And in his day, 300 years back, he said the sin of today is we resist the Holy Spirit of God. But in today we resist the whole lot, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. So here we've got this wonderful epistle, and I remind you again, I'm reading the Living Bible, King James Version. Peter, an apostle, isn't that fantastic? I remember the first time in America, I heard some funny things in America. I remember once being in a place, and somebody asked the president of the Bible school, how do you get to so-and-so? He said, you can't get there from here. That sounds pretty Irish. Well, how did Peter get from there to here? Peter, an apostle? Never give up. We're looking forward to our son coming home. He'll be here, God willing, Thursday night. We've got three sons, three marvelous sons. In fact, three of the most wonderful men in the world. And I'm not biased. The oldest, Paul, is a pioneer missionary. He's been down in South America for 20, I don't know, 26 or 27 years. Never asked for a penny support. Has no church backing. And yet, he has five children. He's on ten radio stations. Well, you didn't mention money anyhow. The other one, the last one, Phil. He has an earned PhD. He meets kings, literally. Presidents of nations. He's done work in Africa for National Geographic Society. He goes to France and lectures in French. He speaks, I don't know how many languages, and his wife too. David always jokes about the fact he's not retarded. Nobody in our race has ever been retarded in our family. They're all in yours. I mean, no. But he was shy. And yet, he's just resigned as a pastor in the largest Pentecostal church in New Zealand. 1600 people, Sunday morning. And Sunday school in another room with 500 in there. And set out world preaching. You see, three times in the last four years, people from different parts of the world have gone into his church. He's one of five elders. They don't even call themselves pastors. And each time somebody's gone, they've gone up to him. They've prophesied over this. Each person that's prophesied over him. Maybe there are six altogether. Everyone has said the same thing, and those men never met, never knew each other. Each of them said, God has called you to be a voice to the nations. In the last two years, he's been around the world twice. And I don't know how many. I have a stack of letters on my desk now. People want him to preach. At least three churches want him as pastors, but he won't go. If you want a church, why leave a church with 1500? And get 1500 heartbreaks trying to build another one. You get a heartbreak for everybody in every pew nearly. But he's not looking for a church. God has called him to be, I believe, an apostle. Well, not quite an apostle, a voice anyhow, to this generation. And I hope sometime he'll come up by the grace you will have him. He's a very precious man. Okay, here's Peter. Peter, an apostle. I was sparked off talking about David being very slow, as he says. Would you imagine a man there selling fish, a sticky fisherman, would write two of the most amazing books in the world? Would you imagine that wherever Jesus went, he was one of the cabinet ministers, he took with him Peter, James and John? Would you imagine he would ever be one of the most distinguished men in the history of the world? You see, when God, when Jesus found Peter, he wasn't Peter. Well, who in the world was he? He was Simon. The very word means shifty, irresponsible. If you took a little grain of sand from the ground and put it under a microscope, it has peaks on it like that and cavities like that. You can't build on sand. If you put them under pressure, you get sandstone. We used to live in the beautiful city of Bath in England, started in 55 B.C. by the Romans. It's a law there that every building must be made of bathstone. It's stone they quarry out of the hills. The foundation of the abbey in the center of town was laid in 444. I wasn't there, but that's what they say. But you see, they take that stone and they saw it, just like you saw wood. And all it is, it's actually just grains of sand being put under pressure. And Jesus found Simon. I guess he was a bad-tempered rascal, like one of those longshoremen, you know, with a big long tongue and bad language and bad temper. And yet Jesus took him and now he's an apostle, writing an epistle. I said that to clarify the fact that some of you may think an epistle is the wife of an apostle. And this man that would have been selling fish all his life, actually now is one of the ordained, anointed men whose message is reaching 2,000 years after. Incredible. There's a boy lying dying. He's yellow as butter, yellow as a flower. He weighs 90 pounds. His arms are about as thick as my two fingers. And he's coughing. And at the bottom of the bed, there's a four-poster bed, and there's a beautiful, one of the most beautiful girls in America there. She's the daughter of Jonathan Edwards. Her name was, what, Esther? And there's a young man dying. 29 years of age. Gave his life for the Indians. Do you think he ever dreamed that one day, you know, when Methodism had its revival, like other, like Azusa Street, that fire never went out anyhow. But Methodism went up, and it began to do awesome things. It took a severe dip. John Wesley wrote to Charles, his brother, and he said, look, see that every one of our mysteries, every one of our pastors, reads the life of David Brainerd. The most brilliant young man in England, a hundred years ago, was Henry Martin. He read about David Brainerd. Martin was senior wrangler in the university. He carried off the Smith Prize that nobody had ever captured. And right in the middle of what he thought was going to be an adventure for God, God called him to India. Why? Because he read the story of David Brainerd. And so your fire begets fire. So what did he do? He went to India. He had a colossal mind. He might have been an inventor. He might have been an Archbishop of Canterbury. He might have been the President, or as we would say in England, the Prime Minister. But he gave his genius. He didn't just bring his lousy sins. He brought his body, his soul, his spirit, his mind, his future, all his possibilities, and laid them on the altar. And God took him to India. What did he do? He took the Greek New Testament and translated it into Hindustani. After that, he tackled something more difficult. He translated the Greek into Arabic. In fact, just now I was reading the other day a new book. It's not a new book. You get Bordens ice cream and Bordens this, that. Well, Bordens is one of the very powerful families in America. They had a wonderful son. And Woodrow Wilson, sent him a telegram one day, I've appointed you to be the American Ambassador to China. He called the President back. He said, Sir, I love my country, but I love Christ more. And he went and did a super job for God in China. If I remember the story correctly, and then he was, he went to, he went to Egypt to do something. And of all things in, where was it now? In Cairo, I think it was. He had some, what do you call it? I can't hear it. Cerebral meningitis at 25 years of age. And yet he left his mark. You see, the blood of the martyrs, the seed of the church, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die. If you follow church history, much of church history has come to life, like when we go home, we have an insert in our fireplace. It always seems though the fire's out. So we open the doors about two inches and the wind gets in and boy, the fire goes up. And God has a way of using men and women like that because we realize they're immortal, very human. So the Lord takes over this man like a rock. You'll never find Peter backsliding after Pentecost. All his backsliding was before. And I'm convinced of this. If a man has a real Pentecost, he'll never pass out. That's why you get Oral Roberts and these guys never had the Holy Ghost as far as I'm concerned. You see, a man is not a heretic because he goes on preaching heresy. I mean, he's not an apostate. He's an apostate because he's come up to light and what would happen tonight if God Almighty recalled all the malfunctioning preachers like recalled cars? You might have 90% of the pulpits in the country empty on Sunday. Who's preaching the whole Council of God? We listened to the news as we were coming out. Sam Nunn was asked, why don't you run for the presidency? He says, it's not in the line of politicians to go around trying to get votes saying, listen friends, I want to be the next president for four years. That's the message that's come out of the last eight years. You don't tell the truth like that. It seems you don't do that preaching either. You let people go to hell instead of awakening them with some dynamic message that's very, very unpopular. Anyhow, Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, elects according to foreknowledge of God through sanctification of the Spirit and obedience and sprinkle of blood, grace be unto him peace, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has begun us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of the dead, from the resurrection of the dead. You know, again, it's difficult in one sense to think of this rugged, rough man possibly having much education and yet he has the best education of all. Why? He had a role model called Jesus Christ. Why didn't Jesus take 1,200 men? He could manage them. You've got 12 men and then he gets on the inside group, becomes one of the famous three and he eats with Jesus, he sleeps with Jesus, he walks with him, he talks with him. He says that Jesus has dominion over death, disease and the devil which the church should have even today. And yet here he is slowly, slowly, slowly coming to maturity. I remember going to Western United States the first time I went. I wanted to see those Sequoia trees out there or Redwoods as you call them. I'm particularly interested in that big one where you can drive the car right through him, right through it, very beautiful. And they told me that those trees were planted before Jesus was born by the rings that are growing. I guess the base of that tree is about more than 12 feet wide. And they say, this is the slowest growing thing that's known to man. I say, forget it. Well, what's growing slower? A hundred years. I mean, you've had enough teaching for a hundred years, but where are you? How much do we absorb? You see, it's difficult again to think of this man. He might have died, made a fortune selling fish or something and he listens to Jesus, he comes to maturity. Peter, an apostle? You know, one of the most famous pictures in the world was painted by Raphael. In Madrid, in Spain. And for years, artists came from the world and they stood in awe before it. Nobody dares speak hardly. Well, there's a famous Englishman by the name of, now what's his name? Oh, he'll come to me in a minute now. John, it's an art critique. Anybody know the art critics? You don't remember him? Roskin, John Roskin, thank you. Do you have some art? Good. John Roskin, thank you. Well, he stood and he started laughing at the thing. Well, it's sacrilegious, he could have been stoned to death. What's wrong with the picture? He said, honestly, I'm trying to find out what's right with it. What's wrong with it? Well, in the background of the picture there's the Dome of St. Peter's and that's the other end of the Mediterranean. What have you got the Dome of St. Peter's in the background? Well, it's just an artist's impression. Well, it's wrong. How many men are there in the boat? Eleven. Well, there's only seven in the story in the Bible. Well, any more criticism? Yeah, the dome shouldn't be there, the numbers shouldn't be there. What about the man over the edge of the boat? He's got a needlework, what do you call it, a crocheted collar and crocheted cuffs and he's pulling in fishing nets. That's St. Peter. How many of you went a fisherman? Raise your hand, let me see. You're afraid? Oh, well, OK. Because I usually said Peter fished when he was back swimming too. No, but if your wife hasn't given you a lace collar and lace cuffs you've never fished in your life. That's the Rolls Royce way. Can you imagine it? But that's what we think about saints as somehow kind of not just human. Well, this man is totally flesh and blood. No wonder, like that verse that we sang just now. Along my imprisoned spirit. The man that wrote that had no cloud of corruption following him. He wasn't divorced ten times. He wasn't drunk. He had no police record. He's one of the purest men in England. And he was trained in England. He became a don in the university which means he became a teacher. He was a friend of the Archbishop of Canterbury. He was a friend of the Bishop of Gloucester. He was a friend of John Wesley's, Charles Wesley's, John Newton, William Culper that wrote the great hymns like well, the one on the blood. There is a fountain filled with blood and so forth. And yet he was unborn. One day he had a miraculous experience of being born again. Do you know what? People don't get born again now. They come to the altar, make a confession, they came damned and they go out damned. They're not born again. They go to heaven. It says they rejoice over sinners that repent. Nobody repents. How many men get up and say, no, I'm a new creature. I think I told you the story of the man in Africa that came to the front one night, a little black man. When he went out, the pastor said, oh, you're the man that was kneeling at the front. He said, I'm not. He said, yes, you are. There's only one man who has a striped suit like yours. Come on. You know, the fellow thought he was in a long place. He was black and it was apartheid. Anyhow, the pastor insisted. He said, you're the man that was at the front. He said, I'm not. He said, you are. There's nobody there now. He said, but I'm not the man. That man died at the altar. I'm a new man. He had a new creation. If any man be, I like that, such a sweeping, any man anywhere at any time, he can be the biggest sex pervert, the biggest liar. He can have broken every law of good a million times, and if he becomes a new creature, he's a new creature. He doesn't just get a new head and new feet, he's a new creation. He has a new will. He has a new appetite. He has new interests. He has new desires. He's new. So they told me, I think, Sonny, did you tell me your daughter-in-law's going to have a baby? On the second hand, I love to see babies. They're new. Everything's beautiful about them. And if a man's born again, of the Spirit of God, he's a new creation. Sure, there's excitement in heaven, because the redemptive work of Jesus Christ has been made real. I was thinking this afternoon about this. Did you ever embrace a corpse? My first year from school, I went to work in the office at one of the largest hospitals in England. What do you call it? I was going to say the monastery, no, the mortuary. Same thing, maybe. Boy, I saw all these corpses laid out. Some were beautiful. But yesterday, near our house, what do you call these things, animals that wear armour plates? Armadillos, yes. Did you ever have armadillo pie? Neither did I, never will I if I have the opportunity. But they tell me that they do make armadillo pie. Then, of course, they make rattlesnake pie, too. But you know, that thing was killed, and usually there's blood running and what not, but no, it was lying there, but I didn't go pick it up. Imagine you pick the thing up, worms come out of it, then the stench comes out of it. Oh, I could tell you so much you'd be sick. But do you know what? That's what you were like when Jesus found you. Dead in trespass and in sin. Maybe a stiff-necked Methodist like me. Maybe just a pale, pathetic Pentecostal. Trained in Pentecost, and yet never had the fire. Maybe then I know. But you see, when God comes, he's the architect of the universe, and the most amazing thing is human personality. But when God can get control of it, we say the sky's the limit. No, eternity's the limit. You see, I never know when I see somebody at the altar what that person's going to be. I'm very respectful. I stay till he's saved in my meeting. I stay till he gets saved. And I've stayed sometimes the early hours in the morning. It's more wonderful than any birth in the world. How do I know the potential of that man? I don't know it. Gabriel doesn't know it. Only God knows it. So he gets this man. And here he's written this again, this marvelous epistle. Verse 3. Blessed be the God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope. By what? The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. It's shocking to say, but I'm going to say it. We're not saved by the death of Christ. You can talk about the blood as much as you like. We're not saved by his death. We're saved by his life. If he's not living tonight, you're not living. You're fooled. We're saved by Jesus Christ from the dead. It's just like you build a pyramid and then you turn the pyramid and you balance it on one point and that point is the resurrection. It was Dr. Jowitt. He was a Presbyterian, I believe, in Carl's Lane Chapel, Birmingham, England, one of the great preachers of his day. Boy, there was a smorgasbord there. You talk about preachers. If you're in London, I might see Sonny, where are you going? Well, where do you think I'm going? Going down the East End to hear that long-bearded, hellfire preacher, William Booth, that founded the Salvation Army, half-Jew and half-Gentile. I see Bracey, where are you going? Oh, boy, I'm going to the other end. I'm not going to the East End. I'm going to the West End. I'm going to hear the good old Baptist, Dr. S.B. Meyer. Well, where are you going, brother? Oh, I'm going down to the City Temple. What was his name? Joseph, thank you. Joseph Parker, a hellfire preacher, if ever there was one. And you know, actually, if you liked a more dignified meeting, you go to St. Paul's Cathedral, it's old 3000, and you couldn't get a seat Sunday afternoon listening to a man, Dr. Clifford, who expounded the Word of God with authority. The whole of London was one sea of revival in those days. You know, I see three things What did I say they were? I've forgotten before I told you. Majesty, I know, intensity, immensity, and eternity. I'm not going to try and put them all in tonight, either, because this is not preaching, it's a Bible study. I do remember, I do not get the, I do not get the New York Times book review. I took it for five years because I got it free, but when they charged me, I quit. But three years ago, I remember a critic said about the dullness in the church. He said the trouble with the modern preacher is he's lost sight of the awesome majesty and the, no, awesome, what was it now? Awesome beauty and thrilling majesty of the gospel. Isn't that a criticism? What in God's, what in the world is a mason preaching the redemptive work of Jesus Christ? It was Jowitt, Dr. John Dowett that was preaching at Cars Lane, Birmingham, and he said when he wanted a refresher, he went to London not to see the sights. I went to Joseph Parker, I sat in the corner, and he said it was Easter, the place was jammed out, and he said he, Parker, with his elastic vocabulary, he used to exhaust almost the whole vocabulary in every message, and he said, I happened to be there that's pretty good, isn't it? I've used part of that, I've improved it of course, but sometimes on Friday night I get a chalk and I put a circle on the board, like the tombstone they put over the grave of Jesus, they put the tombstone there, and then they put wax so that they make it airtight, they put wax in the filling between the stone and the wall, and then they put the imperial seal because it was the mark of Rome so you have the stone and the wax and the seal, and then you have 16 soldiers, and then the devil's scared, he says you know this Jesus man has been a terror to me for years, I'm not sure if I've got him, so one demon says your majesty I'll tell you what, let's roll the sin of the world against the stone, so they roll all the sin of the world against the stone, so now you've got the sin of the world, the stone, the wax, I think there's something else to do, rally every demon in hell, so you've got the stone, the wax, the seal, the soldiers, the sin of the world, and every demon there, and Satan says just 30 seconds so we get it down to 10, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, the superstar generals there, and he made a map, showed them on a map of the world, he said there is a sleeping giant, it's China, and he put his finger in the middle of it and said there lies a sleeping giant, let it sleep, because if it ever wakes up and marshals its, its what, its physical army and its resources it will shake the world, right now it's the headache to the whole world, we're afraid of China, Russia's afraid of China, we're told there are a million men up the wall in China and if it ever wakes up and harnesses its power it will shake the world, change the figures, there's the devil with a map of the ages and he says there, there's a church of Jesus Christ asleep, let it sleep, if it ever wakes up and discovers the power of the Holy Ghost it will shake the world, if it doesn't the world's going to shake the church, and in our generation, we're coming to our Friday night class, you know ten years from now this country's going to be a hell unless there's a revival, we're heading for panic, I wish to God we were afraid of God as we are of Russia, we're not afraid of God, the man in the street isn't afraid of God, the man in the pew isn't afraid of God, in most cases the man in the pulpit isn't afraid of God, back up, the people in the seminary are not afraid of God, we're heading straight for judgment, I may preach on that, I'm not sure, next Tuesday night, it hurts to preach, it costs too much, but if the Lord lets me do it, I'll preach it, because we're heading there, nobody's going to escape, Teddy Kennedy may pay off the Pope, he won't pay anybody else off, whoever liquidated Jimmy Hoffer is going to stand at the judgment seat, Marilyn Monroe's mysterious death or something there is ahead of us, this pact we've signed with Russia won't change a firecracker in the battle of Armageddon, nobody's ever outdone God and Armageddon will be the most awful battle in history, actually the most awful battle was fought in Gethsemane, so I'm begotten again to a lively hope, come on now, I come to your church some Sunday morning going out and say how was the meeting, it was dead, how can I have a dead meeting with the living Christ, if you have a dead meeting he wasn't there, it's a formality, it's a ritualism, but when Christ is there, dear God I'd like to have been in that Azusa Street meeting, I'd like to have been in some meetings, I'm a link between the past people that lived a hundred years back, I met them, well, in 88 William Booth was pulling down the strongholds of hell in England, Colonel Brangle left America to join him, the greatest expositor maybe ever, Dr. G. Campbell Morgan went and I didn't talk with Dr. Morgan about this but he wrote to me once, I should have kept the letter, when everything was blazing, when everybody was shaking, the power of God everywhere the Salvation Army went, they caricatured them on the stage, where are the men that really killed them, now a hundred years after, they had no financial backing, but one of the men told me every Salvation Army Corps as they call their fellowships there was an unwritten law you spent Saturday night in prayer and he said, Brother Aidan, we'd come in, we kept two coats, they used to wear the coat down to the knees and he said we'd come in from a meeting, a street meeting on Saturday night you could scrape the eggs off and the rotten tomatoes and stuff and you washed it off when you got home and you got your nice suit the next day and came out, but he said they prayed through the night, a man would get up and he'd say, victory, victory, the walls have been broken down, tomorrow night there'll be twelve people saved or tomorrow night, Sunday night, there'll be six people he said there were never more than one out, every Sunday you went, I'm looking for a church, God help us, and I pray this may be one and you are the preacher, Brethren, where you can say to your neighbour, listen, you can't come to our church three Sundays without getting saved, you'll get under conviction the first Sunday and the second Sunday, the third night you'll be born again, but this man told me he was down on the Strand in London, there's a big theatre, at that time it was a hall you could rent and he said, I went in that hall and the back row, the bums and prostitutes sat on the back row, mostly they were men, they wouldn't even go near the women and there they were and he said, the Holy Spirit of God was on the meeting, William Booth preached one of his hellfire messages and he made an altar call and the people wouldn't move, so he turned around and he said to the officers behind him, pray, pray, he said, boy you ducked your head down and you prayed, nothing happened, pray, and he said, Brother Rayneal, you'll tell people this, I was told this in the hills of Wales just outside Swansea, a place called Rubiner, I spent the afternoon with a man called Major Thomas and that was in 1932, he was about my age, about 82 years of age, he said, Brother Rayneal, you'll tell your generation what I tell you today, they won't believe you, I said, I don't care what they do, they can go to hell if they don't, he said, the Holy Ghost would get hold of men at the back and he said, they'd be so under conviction, they would shred their hymn books, you could see where they sat, there were piles, what used to be a hymn book, you could see the sweat run off their noses and off their chin, they were in such agony of spirits, under conviction and then he said, the old genuine saint, now come on, hold it, pray and he said, the Holy Ghost would lift men off the back seat and carry them over the audience and drop them at the altar, dear Lord, any Pentecost would run for the door in a meeting like that, they'd be terrified, they'd say, we're in the wrong place, it's spiritism, do you know what we've done, we've made the Holy Ghost the prisoner of our theology, he can't have his way, not in Pentecostal churches even, God help us, we're afraid, we should be afraid of something, it's furious, but nobody's going to botch the Holy Ghost stuff, when he comes, he's going to come in all his dreadful majesty, we'll see hundreds of years of prayers answered in weeks when the Holy Ghost comes and he must come, I don't know if I mentioned this, I'll say it here anyhow, I don't care what the world says about the church, I don't think Oral Roberts and those guys should make the world a mocking church, a football field, a football field for the world to kick around, but when Jesus says his church that he gave his blood for, when he says his church is poor, wretched, naked, blind, miserable, and that's what Jesus said about the church, is he coming for a bride like that? Is he going to stand in his church as it were and some woman comes crashing through the gate, she stinks, she hasn't been bathed for ages, she's blind, she's ugly, she smells, is he coming for a church like that? Did he go through the hell of Gethsemane? Did he taste death for every man? What's death? Separation from God. My God, why has God forsaken me? What do you think the angels did? Don't you think it staggered them? Don't you think they stopped rejoicing and started weeping and said, dear God, why did you let your son go down to do that? He left his father's throne above you, saying, so free, so infinite is his grace. Emptied himself, he put his royal robes on one side. In heaven they worshipped him, on earth they spit on him. There they worshipped him, there they whipped him, and God didn't interfere. And you think because God hasn't sent judgment on you, you got by with it? No. At the end of the line, that's the bottom line, the bottom line is the judgment seat of Christ. That's the final audit. Nobody's got away with a thing, not one person. We'll mention that next week. But here, the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. For what reason? Well, look at the next verse. How many of you have had an inheritance? Let me look. Now, one of the offerings is so bad. Nobody here had an inheritance. Terrible. Well, check with your lawyer before you come next week. We've got a good offering. Do you know what I've got through Jesus Christ? I've got an inheritance. What does it say about it? Well, number one in the King James Version, I've got an inheritance, number one, incorruptible, undefiled, beyond the reach of what? Inheritance and incorruptible, beyond the reach of death, undefiled, beyond the reach of sin, and then what? That faith is not the way, beyond the reach of time. Come on, you dumb Pentecostals, why don't you say Hallelujah? Say it in English, you don't have to say it in tongues, you wouldn't know anyhow. You're going to have an inheritance when this world has rolled away? When you can't see a grain of sand that was once America? When nobody talks about the Roman Empire, the Medo-Persian Empire, the British Empire? Forget it. I have an inheritance, incorruptible, beyond the reach of death, undefiled, beyond the reach of sin, that faith is not the way, beyond the reach of time, reserved in heaven. Good Lord, why do we get cast down? I was looking at some pictures in my office the other day, I've forgotten them. We live in part of an old mansion, a huge place, I think the pillars at the front are about 30 feet high, they were removed before we went, but it's a gorgeous place. Across the field Lord Belmore lived there. There were quite a lot of gorgeous castles in that part of Ireland. I went along when they had some exotic beasts and exotic birds, and I was taken into a lounge half the size of this room. I remember there was a great big, one of those great big beautiful harps there, and lovely antiques, and then there's a chair and it had a little tab on the corner. I noticed in the back in needlework it said R.E. Rex E. He was at the coronation of the Queen of England. He and his wife Lord Belmore, and the tag said Lord Belmore, the other said Lady Belmore, because there's only 3,000 seats in Westminster Abbey. They put chairs down the aisle, and those who had chairs down the aisle were allowed to buy them and bring them home. So he brought them home to show his grandchildren. He shows everybody that I sat here at the Royal Wedding, beautiful, the kings of the earth were there. The Queen put on the, she had about 10 crowns I think, and she put the most gorgeous with I don't know how many million dollars worth of diamonds. It must give you a headache carrying that around. And there she's robed and everybody else is super, super duper. Billions of dollars worth of money represented, the kings of the earth, the nobility of the earth, the statesmen of the earth, the scientists were all there, and he said I just sat there awed, watching the Queen come down the aisle. And she was, well she was the Queen, well she was the Queen at that time. Anyhow, it was the Royal Wedding. He said it was fabulous. Well his, his butler told me this. And he said they're keeping these, oh I'd like one of those, no, no, no, no, no, they're going to stain the family from here till the earth's destroyed. Oh, oh, this was in Ireland of course. So he said, are you Irish? I said my grandmother was a Maguire. That got me off the hook. I said no, I'm English. He said, were you at the Royal Wedding? I said no. I said I couldn't have gone. If I went to the door, they'd say what's your name? I'd say Ravenhill. They'd turn up the register, they have a Royal Register, all fabulously designed you know. And they look, they say no, there's a Lord Ravenscar, there's a Lord Ravensea, there's a Baron Raven somebody else. But there's no Ravenhill. There's a Churchill but not Ravenhill. OK. I said well just let me look. And he said OK, you can look through the door. I peeped through the door, I see all these chairs lined up and all these dignified people. He said I guess if you got to the door and they turned you away you'd feel real bad wouldn't you? I said no, you wouldn't. Why people offered millions to go to the Royal Wedding. Our son was invited to the Royal Banquet of Princess Diane Charles in West Africa recently. He turned it down, thought that was good. But what do I want it? I'm going to a thing like that. Let's say I'm going to a wedding. The King of Kings and Lord of Lords is going to have the Bride of Brides. You talk about beauty. I don't know why they have beauty competitions. A silly girl goes home and washes it down the sink. I'm sure some of them must sit for hours till some painter and decorator does them up. Ridiculous. Can you imagine in eternity? You can't. Can you imagine the background orchestra singing He shall reign forever and ever King of Kings and Lord of Lords? All flesh is going to bow down before Him. And you don't get excited? Good night. Some people get excited when they're going, you know, for a weekend holiday. And I can understand that. But here I have an inheritance, incorruptible and undefiled that fadeth not away, ready to be revealed. When? In the last time. Where are we living? In the last time. What does it say in Hebrews 1? God who at sunlit times and in divers manners spake unto the fathers by the prophets hath in these last days, and that was written two thousand years ago, where in the world are we now? What about the book of the Revelation? Things which will shortly come to pass. The only book that says if you read it you'll be blessed. It outlines the future for us. I can't line it up, I don't know if you can. It mystifies me. To me the book of the Revelation is a book of mystery, a book of majesty and a book of misery because it tells me about the damned who are going to be forever in hell. But coming back to this inheritance it's not for a weekend. It's reserved in heaven for me. It's got my name on it. So when you see Gabriel put his head back, put an extra blast, you know he's going to say whatever they'll call me in heaven, Lord or Duke or something. No, poor old sinner saved by grace. Ravenhill, come up and get your crown. Boy, wouldn't that be wonderful? Hallelujah. Thank you. I'll shout for you that time, two places. There's only you and I in this meeting, I think. Think of all the guys that went screaming to a football match. Isn't that stupid? Yes. Dear Lord. I think of the man that came from England, never been to a football match. He went, he wrote back to his wife, he said, sweetheart, I went to a football match. Boy, they said America's rocking from coast to coast with religion. He said, those guys didn't play ten minutes? They all huddled together for a prayer meeting? Well, he'd never seen a football match. Weak old soccer, of course, football in England. How excited they can get about it. Just a newsflash, the other day said this girl, Peggy Fleming, I think, they asked her about skating. She said, I trained eight hours a day for eleven years. The girl that's going to get it this time, they say, the black girl. Her mother said, I've taken her 150 miles a day to take her where she can skate properly. Six hours a day for eight months. Dear God, you can't get Bible students out of bed in the morning to wait on the Lord. They're all looking, what do you call it, a sheepskin is that what they get? You know that scripture? It says they wandered around in sheepskins and goatskins. I wish we could get some sheepskin and goatskin people. Being destitute? Come on. The dying thief, I'll see him in heaven at the marriage supper. I don't believe it's part of the bride. Are you going to say that that man that slipped in the very last moment of his life, he's going to have the same reward as Wesley who was saved at thirty-five, disciplined his life fifty-three years, lived to be eighty-eight, made almost millions and he built churches, built off-ditches, printed Bibles, printed Methodist hymnbooks. Are they going to have the same reward? Forget it. Salvation's free but rewards are not. All we'll get up there is what we sent out. It'd be wonderful for the evangelists if God had matching funds wouldn't it? Boy they'll discover when they get up there, they wouldn't have a fraction of what they had down there. And you've had the reward of men. If God doesn't demand payment for sin twice, he doesn't give rewards twice either. Some of the richest men in the country were the poorest in eternity. I see some little folk that I know for years have fasted and prayed for Holy Ghost revival. I expect them to be at the head of the parade because the last shall be first and the first shall be last. You see it doesn't say anything about race distinction. The only race here is we're washed in the blood of the Lamb. This blessed man knows he has a resurrection life now. You can't love a theology, you can only love a living person. And he is the person. I'm still convinced with all my being every day of my life I cheer myself up. The greatest outpouring of the solicitation of God. I think in one of my books I call it the Pentecost without Pentecost, Pentecost. The human race is bigger now than ever. We're over the top of 5 billion people. How many of them are saved? How many are saved out of 5 billion? If we had a Holy Ghost revival for 6 months that brought 6 billion people to Christ that shall be a billion to go to heaven. That's too many. He's not willing that any should perish. We've lost sight of eternal grandeur, eternal glory, eternal rewards. Dear Lord, fancy sitting down to the side of Elijah or some other great saint of God. But dear old funny cause we got it right didn't she? I shall see him face to face. She forgets about 84 years of blindness to see his face. That's the most awesome thing that's ever granted to the human eye. Doesn't it say in the sixth chapter of Revelation? The richest men in the world, the men that invented computers, the men that run our nations, the men that run industries, the men that teach all the languages, when the rocks and the hills begin to tip over, they say hide us from the face. Of what? The wrath of the Lamb. You see, the option for the man in the street are you and me tonight. You either accept the blood of the Lamb or the wrath of the Lamb. There's no middle ground. And it's an awesome thing to recognize in the sight of God. If I'm unsaved, I'm so corrupt, I'm so vile, I'm nauseating. And yet what does he do? Trying to think about him. Theo Monod. Theo Monod, a French theologian I think, wrote it. Depth of mercy, can there be mercy still reserved for me? Can my God is wrathful, dare me the chief of sinners spare? I had long with studies great. How many of you came to Christ the first time you heard the gospel? Some of you heard it ten thousand times. Your daddy and mummy took you when you were this size and you heard it and heard it and heard it till you couldn't hear it. That great wonderful American hymn writer, the Quaker, John Greenleaf Whittier, went up to Niagara Falls when it wasn't modernized like it is now. It was maybe fifteen feet higher because pieces had broken off and fallen down. And he got an Indian guide to take him and he said, a mile away you could hear the falls thundering down. They got nearer and nearer. It got more deafening. He had to walk like this. When he got to the edge he saw the steam as it were vapour coming up and suddenly the Indian guide pulled his sleeve and of course the friends called everybody friend. He said friend what? What? I said what? Why you pull my sleeve? He said didn't you hear that twig snap? You ridiculous man. Hear a twig snap? This waterfall is like a thousand thunderstorms. You're fooling us. You didn't hear. I heard a twig snap. He said Indian follow us. Indian came through he follows. He shoot arrow. He said do you mean that? When I was little boy he said I came to these falls with my daddy and the chief and I was terrified. But I've lived near them so long I can't hear the sound of the water rushing over the abyss. You know we've talked about hell till it doesn't mean a thing. You can talk about hell and go to sleep. You think of millions going over the edge of the precipice. I remember as a boy somebody painted a picture. It was a mystery society. Tanner in the mission I think and it showed the whole river and instead of being water it was bodies and they were falling over the precipice into a Christless eternity. You don't forget pictures like that. You see that's why I say that the book of Revelation is a book of majesty a book of mystery and a book of misery because it tells me about the lostness. There's no hope beyond the grave. I've got an inheritance, again, special, incorruptible, undefiled, that faith does not away, reserved in heaven for you. Notice there's no period there. It's a comma. Who? You who are kept by the power of God. I intended to bring a little thing out of my office and I forgot. It's an inch and a quarter by an inch and a quarter. It's a piece of film. On it, on that inch and a quarter of film, every word in the Bible, 750,000 words are on that one little bit of film. Underneath it says, this Bible was carried by the astronauts on Apollo 15 onto the moon. My little Bible that they sent me from, from NASA was in the pocket of an astronaut when he walked on the moon. I treasure it. And you know what they said? It's wonderful for us to look up and you see the moon hanging up there. It isn't hanging on a string. It hasn't got any supports. All you see is that yellow disk up there. But he said, when I look back and saw the earth hanging on nothing, I was astounded. I look up and there's the moon. Nobody ever thinks it's propped up. Why does it hang there? God hangs it there. I look down at the world and he said, to see the world there. It's fantastic. They spent billions of dollars getting men on the moon. I don't know why they did that. And then we'd be making them sins. You know, what they should have done, they should have made one and sent it to Japan. They'd have made it cheap. We could send them every weekend. Anyhow, here, this is the world hanging in space. And when you see the world hanging in space, there's Australia, there's the sea underneath. Did you ever try to take a handful of water and put it on the bottom of a bucket? Ridiculous. How is it the oceans are hanging there? We were fishing. I don't often go fishing, but we were in the Bahamas. We had a free vacation and we went on a yacht and they said you won't catch any fish, you never catch fish, when there are creatures around. I caught a kingfish, let me see, it's about this, this, this length. It weighed 32 pounds, I remember that. We took it home to a house where we were living, where they had servants and beautiful place, and they served it up for dinner the next day on another silver platter with parsley and all. Why didn't you do that? The fish can't see what it's surrounded with. But it was beautiful. Well they cut the fish up, give the preacher a piece. He caught it, do the honors, so they cut a slice off and gave me the fish. Well I'd never eaten, it was a kingfish, I'd never eaten kingfish before, but it's great. Kingfish, what is it now, we have ruffian now is it? That's the best. Anyhow, I started eating it, didn't like it. Somebody said, did you put lemon on it? I didn't even know fish is like lemon. Put some lemon on it. So I put some lemon on it. Put some salt on it. Salt? Are you fooling? You get more than salt, it comes from down there. The tide comes in and fills a basin as big as this room, it evaporates and leaves no white salt. That thing has been swimming for, to be 32 pounds, it maybe was 25 years old, it's been swimming in the saltiest water in the whole world, and it needs fish? Here's my Bible. The skin on that fish is no thicker than that paper, and yet the salt can't get through it. I live in a lousy world like this. It tells me I can be kept by the power of God, through faith and through salvation. You see, we're, we're so accommodating to sin in our day, it doesn't grieve us. You talk about living with victory over sin, immediately say, don't go ahead and preach sinless perfection. I won't preach the defeatism some of you guys preach anyhow. What does the word of God say? Jesus said to a bad woman, go and sin less. You see those stupid, uh, bumper stickers some people have? Christians are not sinless, they just sin less. That's a lie from hell. You can't be a Christian and be a sinner. You can be a backslider and be a sinner. What did the Psalmist say? Before Calvary, before the Holy Ghost, thy word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against thee. What does John say in his epistle? He that is born of God doth not commit sin and he cannot sin. I don't preach the inability to sin, I preach the ability not to sin. Boy, I remember the first time I got on the Queen Mary, looking at that ship, the deck is 80 feet out.