In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the importance of being vessels for God. He shares personal experiences of witnessing people repenting and being transformed by the power of God's grace. The preacher refers to the 14th chapter of Revelation, where it mentions a group of virgins who follow the Lamb wherever he goes. He also mentions the greatness of God's love and how God desires to reveal His love and power to His people. The sermon includes references to the book of Isaiah and the promise of comfort and restoration for God's people.

I want to turn you to God's Word tonight on a theme that the Lord has been sort of keep on nudging me about since I've come here. And I want to be obedient to the movings of the Lord. I can remember first preaching on this theme some years ago up on the Wirral, not very far away from here. It wasn't at a famous house that you know about, but it was in the course of a campaign in which I was asked to join. And I can remember with what great pressure at that time God came to me that I should minister along this tremendous line of God. And it is a tremendous thing. You know, beloved, God has prepared great things for us. I'm so thrilled really that once a man or a woman becomes acquainted with God and with His powers, that God does not hesitate from that time onward to make known to those people the greatness of His love. And by reason of the power and the grace and the presence of the Spirit of God, that they can come to be what God wants them to be. Now, I'm so glad about that. I'm so glad that God has not tried to make us attain to impossible things. I'm thrilled that when Jesus came into the earth, He started off this way, with God, nothing shall be impossible. A statement like that prompted the great Charles Wesley to write his hymn, All Things Are Possible To Him Who Can On Jesus' Name Believe. Lord, I know more thy truth blaspheme. Notice his strong language. Thy truth I lovingly receive. I can, I do believe on thee. All things are possible to me. And as you would expect of that great prophet, he wrote right down the line that God raised up those two Wesleys to preach in this land, the effect of which has not yet completely died out of it. And praise God is preserved to us at this moment of time. I expect sometimes when you hear me talk, first you must think I must be, I'm a Wesleyan. And another time you'll think I'm a Quaker. And another time you'll think I must be Pentecostal after all. And then perhaps you'll think I might be a holiness. Then you'll come to the conclusion I'm just about a mix-up of everything. Well, beloved, the great truth about God is that though men have specialized certain doctrines and attitudes and brought them out as time has succeeded to time through the earth because they've been lost sight of by other things, God is greater than all the little partial things. Amen. Isn't that a wonderful thing? And in him is all truth. And we are told that when the Spirit of God, and we were told this by no less a person than Jesus Christ himself, should come, he would lead us into all truth. Now the tragedy with so many people is that they have partial truth. Now I don't suppose anyone would claim that they have all the truth, but what they do have is the Spirit of all truth. So that when the real truth is preached, that Spirit who, if he's inside, will witness to you that it's true. Because he's the Spirit of the truth. And it's a glorious thing that once we really yield up to that truth, then that truth makes us utterly free. Free from the doubts, free from the little cliches, free from the little sort of cul-de-sacs into which we run ourselves unhonestly if we face it. We find there's no way through, only we're too proud to turn back and admit it. God adds truth to truth and makes clear his wonderful ways. He's always done this throughout time. As he approached his people of Israel of old, he came under all kinds of figures and names even, beginning right in the beginning of the book with, say, the simple definition of God, L-E-L, meaning power or the hand which indicates work and power. Moving on through his revelations of himself as L-alien or L-this or L-that, God Almighty, so on and so on and so on, kept revealing himself, more truth, more truth, more truth, as people without the Holy Ghost in those days, little upon little, line upon line, could assimilate and take in. Broke in through Abraham, came in through Moses, revealed himself through people like Joseph, all sorts of things like that. And he kept coming, coming and coming, drawing out from those first beginnings a people that should be exclusively his. The earth having started to become overrun and would have been overrun by that which was entirely evil if God hadn't have stepped in, say, upon occasions like Babel where he confounded speech in order to stop wicked hearts conniving. And then when he came down, say, and judged Sodom and Gomorrah. Or when he flooded out those terrible abnormalities in the flood. All these kinds of things. And God gradually moved, if you like, to give himself elbow room, space to keep the Holy Seed going until he could at last bring in that which he wanted. The meanwhile, speaking to us by figure, speaking to us by shadow, speaking to us by type, foreshadowings of course, setting out beforehand in this way and that way something of the largeness of his heart and the greatness of his love. Trying to make us see things. He brought his people out of Egypt, for instance. He called Israel his first born son. Destroyed the first born of Egypt because the devil, through Pharaoh, had gotten hold of God's first born son. So he destroyed the devil's first born. And brought his own son, first born son, out. Brought them in, these who were the children of Israel, latterly after forty years of necessary wandering. I suppose you've mostly heard people say it was needless wandering. I want to tell you it was necessary, as we read this morning in the book of Deuteronomy. Originally it need not have been. And it's like this with so many people. If you'd have gone through originally with God, you need not have gone through what you've gone through since. But having refused to go through originally, then it's been necessary for you to go this long, long old trail until God has eliminated that awful thing which in the beginning made you hold back from going through with God. Rude. Read Deuteronomy chapter 8. Make a mental note of it. That will explain it to you. But God, in the end, as he always does, praise him, despite everybody's folly, stupidity, wickedness, turnings aside, brought his people into the promised land. Giving them their inheritance so that they were God-landed people with substance of their own, finally he established his own way of worship and everything in their midst in the great tabernacle. And he got a people for himself that at last, and you won't find this word occurring very early in the Old Testament, we're going to dwell on it in a minute, I expect you all agog to know, well what is he really going to say? It's a long introduction, well that's fine. My wife sometimes says to me, why don't you get on with it dear? But there it is. Well, I sent her home. Well, at least she's gone to my daughter's. And her daughter's of course too. Her privilege, I have to stay among other people's daughters and sons. But the great thing about it is that, we shall be looking at it in a moment, that God got this people together that started from a vagrant, almost, wandering seed, started with a man named Abraham for instance. And God brought him out, dealt with him, and kept working, working, working. Called them his son, called them his children, and then finally, having brought them into his land, he got them to a point where he called them his virgin. His virgin. And I want to talk to you about spiritual virginity. His virgin. You know that this word virgin is usually conferred upon pure maidens. And what a wonderful thing it is, and what an honour it is for you girls, you women, to be able to bear such a description. And God looks upon his church, and he can think of perhaps no higher thing to call his church than virgin. Yes, you were born again, he called you his son. Yes, he gave you an inheritance. Yes, he taught you how to worship. Yes, he brought you into things that you could say were your own possessions. And you were his landed gentry. And you talked about being in the kingdom of God, and God your father. But he looks down from heaven, and God knows in this age in which we are living, his eyes are running to and fro in the earth, looking right down here now upon us Lord, right down here into every heart, and he's looking for virginity. Let's read. We're going to read in Jeremiah. Now Jeremiah, as you know, has a name amongst the mockers, for being a broken hearted, weeping prophet. And occasionally in the newspapers, you will find politicians described as Jeremiads, if they raise up a weeping voice about certain states in the country, very rarely because by and large newspaper writers are uneducated. But occasionally they come to the knowledge of truth. Occasionally they take up things and they use them quite wrongly. But this Jeremiah was the man that was chosen of God to come to the place, and this is what you'll understand beloved, to show the heartbreak of God. And the mockers may mock, and those that don't understand can say their ignorance. But people that know will understand clearly that in the latter days of the history of Israel and Judah, God raised up prophets among them, that should weep forth his heart in the ears of men, that they for whom God had done so much, should have turned away from God in spiritual fornication. And that broke him. And that brought a Jeremiah onto the scene. A whole seer had to appear to weep forth again the heartbreaks of God. And this is what you'll find, and a Joel had to arise and tell the priest to weep between the porch and the altar. That's what they had to do, because everything had gone rotten down to the seed under the clods. And God was moving to show his heart. Dr. Campbell Morgan, that prince of preachers in his day, preached a series of sermons on Hosea, subtitled, The Heart and Holiness of God, to show God's heart. And I want tonight to read in a famous chapter of Jeremiah, and move here and there onto other scriptures, finalizing in the New Testament, for what is anything worth to us that doesn't finalize in the New Covenant? On this great theme, the chapter 18, then, of the book of Jeremiah, the weeping prophet. And in this 18th chapter, the word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying, Arise, and go down to the potter's house, and there I will cause thee to hear my words. Then I went down to the potter's house, and behold, he wrought a work on the wheels. And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter. So he made it again, another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it. Now I want you to see what God is saying. The potter made another vessel, not the original one. See? He doesn't say he remade the same vessel. He made it again, another vessel. That should speak volumes to you. Then the word of the Lord came to me. I saw it now. He was ready to hear it, when he saw what the potter did. He's ready to hear it. O house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter saith the Lord? Behold, as the clay is in the potter's hand, so are ye in mine hand, O house of Israel. At what instant shall I speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck it up, and to pull down, and to destroy it? If that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them. And at what instant shall I speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build, and to plant it? If it do evil in my sight, let it obey not my voice, then I will repent of the good wherewith I said I would benefit them. Did you see what God says? This will explain so much that's happened in so many lives. If you'll take it in, into the depths of your heart. The potter changed his mind about the vessel. He started to make it one thing, and it was marred in his hand. So he changed his mind and made it something else. Same basic clay. Now therefore, go to, speak to the men of Judah, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, saying, Thus saith the Lord. Behold, I frame evil against you, and devise a device against you. Return ye now every one from his evil way, and make your ways and your doings good. And they said, There is no hope. But we will walk after our own devices, and we will, every one, do the imagination of his evil heart. Therefore, thus saith the Lord. Ask ye now among the heathen, Who hath heard such things? The virgin of Israel hath done a very horrible thing. Will a man leave the snow of Lebanon, which cometh from the rock of the field? Or shall the cold flowing waters that come from another place be forsaken? Because my people have forgotten me. They have burned incense to vanity. They have caused them to stumble in their ways from the ancient paths, to walk in paths in a way not cast up, and so God goes on. I want to ask you a question. What do you think incense really stands for? If you don't know, originally it stood for, in the original sense, in the original type, it stood for the life of a man ground down to powder or little pieces, and burned before God to give the smell, the aroma of a life. Of course that man was Jesus, but he only offered in your place because your life gives off an odor. Your life gives off an incense. What does it smell like to God? What is it you get incensed with? Lust? What is it you get incensed with? Pride? Jealousy? What is it that incenses your being to do this, that, and the other? So that the wrong odor rises to God. This was the trouble with the Virgin of Israel. She stank. The Virgin had turned from her virginity. She had left her high and holy calling. God didn't just want to look upon them as a group of men that were sons, or just as children in possession, in royal possession, in some holy land. He wanted to look upon them as a people whose hearts were pure and fixed in eternal and abiding love on Him, without defection, and without turning aside to waste its affections and its inward powers and possibilities on this man's invention, or this thing of religion, or that practice amongst men, or hand themselves over to the smashing, grinding thing that breaks down your whole inward man and gives forth some savor? Not unto God, but unto men. This was the thing that God accused Israel of. You ought to read in the opening chapters of Jeremiah. He says, My people have gone about seeking love. They stand in the ways like a wild ass in the wilderness. She'll be found in a month, he says. Giving your loves to this. Give your lovers to that. Give your loves to something else. And God wanted pure, virgin love unto Himself that nothing else could share, except it be given out in the pure way that I spoke of earlier this night, to include in all those who have by a birth, miraculous being brought into a life and a state, and filled with the Holy Ghost, that they themselves also exist as one pure burning flame with whom you want to burn in devotion unto God and God alone. That's the marvel of God's grace. Oh, in the beginning He had a people that were virgin unto Him. Hallelujah. They had no loves for anything else. They didn't lose out. They didn't get a love for this, or a love for a weed, or a love for a bit of glass dug out of the earth. Love for these kinds of things. Love for flesh. Love for I don't know what. The ways of the world. And God is wanting a people that are virgin unto Him. Absolutely in their birth state. And never changed. Oh, what a glorious thing. If God could look down on every one of us tonight, that here in this room, we're in that glorious place and state in which God gave us birth, when we came out, that blessed pure blood and water that flowed as Jesus' heart opened womb-like on the cross to bring forth His people unto God. And make our people that had come through His flesh, and through His blood, and through His water, and through His Spirit, and through His glorious humanity, unto God, to be a new people unto Him. Totally given up to Him. Virginity, who've never played with sin since. Who want to keep themselves right before God. Oh, hallelujah. This was the tragedy with ancient Israel. And I want to say this, beloved, and all you men come up smiling now. God counts you virgin in this. It's nothing to do with the sex. It's to do with the state of the heart and of the mind in the presence of God. It's nothing to do with you're married or unmarried in the flesh. It hasn't to do with a girl suddenly thinking she's going to take the veil and marry the church and remain virgin and all this business. It's nothing to do with that. It's to do with a glorious spiritual state into which Christ, the King of glory, can bring the life all glorious and pure and holy and acceptable in heaven. That's what it's all about. Israel, when God had done what He did for her, that's the tragedy. And Jeremiah weeps his tears and breaks his heart. He cannot leave it. He knows what's going to happen. God says, I've devised an evil device against you, Jerusalem, and He did it. And as you turn to His book called the Book of Lamentations, Jeremiah again brings out this marvelous yet dreadful thing. You know that he's found sitting down outside of Jerusalem after it had been sacked by the Assyrians when God, because these people turned from their state, dealt with them. So I want you to keep your finger in the second chapter of Lamentations and turn back with me first into the Book of Isaiah or in thought you may. We need not turn to it exactly. But perhaps if you want to, I was just thinking of the time factor, we'd better turn to chapter 39 probably of Isaiah. Sorry, 37. And in 37 you have the account of the attack of the Assyrians on Jerusalem and how they come to set up mounts against Jerusalem. The terrible Assyrians. And they mock God. And they send a letter to Hezekiah and all sorts of things like this. Verse 14. The letter is received. And he goes to prayer. He spreads the letter out before God in the end of verse 14. I don't know whether you've ever done that. I've often spread letters out before the Lord. And Hezekiah prayed unto the Lord. All sorts of things. Listen to this man in the state of his virginity. This is how he prays. Oh Lord of hosts. God of Israel that dwellest between the cherubim. Thou art the God, even thou alone of all the kingdoms of the earth. Thou hast made heaven and earth. See the man who is virgin to God. He says, Thou art the God of all the kingdoms of the earth. And you say, what's the man talking about? These Assyrians, they've got Baal, they've got Nebo, they've got all these other gods, whatever. Hezekiah, has he gone mad? Is he living in dreamland? Doesn't he know that the nations all around have got this kind of God and that kind of God? And here he is praying like a blind man as though he can't see and understand anything. He's saying, Thou art the God of all the kingdoms of the earth. Amen. Thou hast made heaven and earth. Hallelujah. The gods of these other kingdoms have never made anything of any of them except fools. And here's the Lord. Hezekiah only sees the Lord. He's got a pure eye, a single eye. He's got a pure heart at this point of his life. And let's go on shall we. Climb thine ear, O Lord, and hear. Open thine eyes, O Lord, and see. And hear all the words of Sennacherib, which hath sent to reproach the living God of a truth. Lord, the kings of Assyria have laid waste all the nations and their countries, and have cast their gods into the fire. But for they were no gods, but the work of men's hands, wood, stone. Therefore they have destroyed them. Now therefore, O Lord our God, save us from his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that Thou art the Lord, even Thou alone. Then Isaiah, the son of Amos, sent unto Hezekiah, saying, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel. Whereas Thou hast prayed to me against Sennacherib, king of Assyria, this is the word which the Lord hath spoken concerning him. The virgin, the daughter of Zion, hath despised thee, and laughed thee to scorn. The daughter of Jerusalem hath shaken her head at thee. That's how God speaks. That's the virgin state. See its victorious living. At that time there was this remnant still in Israel. These people who had shut themselves up to God, and for their sakes, and for their sakes alone, God moved. And if you read the rest of the story, and history confirms it by the way, independent testimony to the Bible, Sennacherib, and all these people, though they're not given that name in the account of the Assyrians, their Assyrian name is given here, here's the Hebrew name given of it, Sennacherib. You know what happened to him? You don't? Well, read the rest of the chapter. That's what you have a Bible for. And as you read right through, you'll find that God moved, because these people there, just a handful, so to speak, at that time, were keeping themselves for God, and for God alone. I hope you know what power there still is in a godly people, in the midst of a godless land, a nation. I hope you know that God still moves for the spiritual minority. I hope you know that. I hope you do. I hope some of you, even at school, let me refer to something that affects our own land. Some of you went to school, and I don't suppose even the sort of blandest approach, from the simplest of souls in this room tonight, would ever by any measurement call our country Christian. But there came a time in the last world war, I told you about the first one last night, but I can remember the second one much more clearly. When the king said, we'll have a day of prayer. And we had a day of prayer. And God sent such a calm in the channel that rowing boats could bring soldiers out of Normandy. The spiritual minority, always. Little rowing boats could go across. It was as placid as a lake, more calm than Galilee ever knew to be. God's not going to keep on doing that. He didn't keep on doing it for Israel. I give you an illustration of what God still will do for a believing remnant. And marvellous it all is when God moves. That's what he did for a virgin people. A people that only saw God. A people that reigned. You can always tell a virgin she's filled with holy laughter. You can always tell her, I'm speaking of a spiritual virgin of course, you can always tell her she remains in confidence when others are in panic. She doesn't know anybody else. She doesn't seem to have the senses whereby other people sense all kinds of doom, darkness, desolation, gloom, despair, overrun by the enemy and I don't know what. She abides alone. She looks up into the face of God. She triumphs over everything. That's the calling. That's the glory. And God at that time found virginity toward him. People who would not go to this or to that or the other but stood alone before God. One of the tragedies of the country in which we live, it rests with the church. All the tragedies in England rest with the church. All the tragedies in the world rest with the church. Of course they do. You find books written by bishops. Disgusting revelations of their own atheism muffled up under the title bishop and all this kind of thing. There was a time, I don't know, I've lost count now if you've heard me say this before, I remember the time when I discussed this with dear Edgar Trout who's now gone on to be with God. 18 bishops of the Church of England headed the list for psychic research in England. Leading them straight into the devil and to hell by the leaders. 18 bishops of the Church of England rather. And what do you think of it? Do you wonder now that they've licensed sodomy in England? Do you wonder now that they've allowed witchcraft to flourish in England? My lords have consented to it. And they're the spiritual leaders into darkness, death and hell. Not only the Church of England. I don't want to just go through all these things. I state what could be public knowledge if you try to exercise yourself to find out. And because leaders are blind, don't you be blind followers of blind leaders. You and I ought to know the truth. There is a state of virginity. And one of the most tragic prostitutions of spiritual life in this day in which we live is with witchcraft. White magic. Black magic. Spiritism. Not spiritualism as it's called. Spiritism. Selling ourselves out down the river. I don't know whether any of you people have got mixed up in this. If you have and you've never been dealt with about this, this, this night, you must get it clear with God. That everything that comes through mediumistic or psychic powers of research is fornication. Handing out your soul and spirit unto devils. God be thanked. There is a virginity still in the earth. There is a people that have shut themselves up to God. Not monastically. They live out in the thoroughfares of life. They live out in the busy streets. They go to its business houses. They work in its schools and its hospitals or out in its forests. That's what they still do. They live in a tiny little house along some street or else somewhere like that. But they are living for God. I bless Him that He spoke about, our lovely Jesus spoke about. You are the salt of the earth. Hallelujah. You are the salt of the earth. The whole earth is one great big lump of meat rotting away without bone in it. No backbone except to do sin. How God has called us unto Himself to be holy, to be pure, to be His alone. Glory be to the name of the Lord. He said, the virgin of Israel has done a horrible thing. This is what God says. It isn't often He uses that word. See His heart. It's horrible. Horrible He says. God should give His Son. I know He hadn't then but all the animal offerings only bespoke the giving of the Son, the coming of the Lamb of God. Still in the future in Israel's day. Nevertheless so all powerful that it affected them hundreds of years before Jesus ever came. Reaching backwards and forwards the sacrifice of Calvary has been the only salving power to stop this earth spinning away into its destruction. That's all. And God has kept His word to us. Amen. He says it's a horrible thing when a man does that. When a man's been born again to the Spirit of God. When at the cost of the agony, the bloodshed, the sacrifice, the self-giving of God wrapped up in one glorious act on a cross. That a man should come into all the good of that. Oh God help us. When he's seen the agony of his God for him. And seen the power of God at Calvary. That he should give himself away again under sin. Horrible. When God's been sacrificed for you, where will you go next? If you despise that. There's no house of prayer that can hold you. There's no cell of monastic power that can do anything for you. Nothing. Only Him. Glory. But I want to say something to you to put hope into your heart. If you happen to be one of those people who've turned away from this. I want to tell you that when the vessel is marred in the potter's hand. It's still in the potter's hand. He'll make you another vessel. If you're ready. He can restore the virginity. He can bring that glorious place. He can fashion a vessel for himself. But let's look into the lamentations now, shall we? In chapter 2. Jeremiah came later than Isaiah. Not only in order of scripture, but in history. Not a lot later. But he came. Let's start to read in verse 10. The elders of the daughter of Zion sit upon the ground and keep silence. What a tragedy for an elder brother. Not a word to speak. Nothing. They've cast up dust upon their heads. They've girded themselves with sackcloth. The virgins of Jerusalem hang down their heads to the ground. Mine eyes do fail with tears. My bowels are troubled. My liver is poured upon the earth. Hark unto the grief of this man that he should use such language. He's weeping for God. He's representing God among the people. It's a false statement of Calvary, surely, isn't it? His tears, his livers poured out upon the ground. The destruction of the daughter of my people. It's all because of this. Because the children and the supplings swoon in the streets of the city. They say to their mothers, where is corn and wine? When they swooned as the wounded in the streets of the city. When their soul was poured out into their mother's bosom. What thing shall I take to witness for thee? What thing shall I liken to thee, O daughter of Jerusalem? What shall I equal to thee that I may comfort thee, O virgin daughter of Zion? For thy breach is great like the sea. Who can heal thee? And here's the trouble. You may have wondered why I spoke as I did a little earlier, taking the word bishops on my lips. This is your reason. Thy prophets have seen vain and foolish things for thee. They've not discovered thine iniquity to turn away thy captivity, but have seen for thee false burdens and causes for banishment. False prophets. The preachers are wrong. That's what God says. I hear a man stand up and he exalts the nation. I won't name him. I've got nothing against him, dear man. But I had to disagree with him. He stands up and he says, those of us that are followers of Christianity, you may have heard him. And when he said it, I was listening that morning. One of the rare mornings I get a chance to hear anything about him. I don't know whether there's a repetition at night. I don't know. Of this famous man. The followers of Christianity. And I said to my beloved wife, I said, I'm not a follower of Christianity. What do they think? Here it is, you see. I said, I am a follower of Christ, not an anity. That's the tragedy. He's manufactured a false thing for us. Well, I won't say where he is. He'll tell you who it is. Who's following Christianity among us? I tell you, if you follow Christianity, you'll land up in as big a mess as those that are proclaiming Christianity. It's Christ and Christ alone. The living, glorious Lord in your heart, so you don't have to follow Christianity. False prophets. Manufacturing false reasons. They've not discovered thine iniquity to turn away thy captivity. When a man or a woman wants to get free of their bondages and their captivity, beloved, they've got to have their iniquity discovered first. So says the scripture. You don't have to discover who it is that's holding you in bondage. That's the devil. But the iniquity for which he's holding you in bondage has to be discovered and only true prophets ever discover that. And they don't care if in process of doing so, they break a person's heart. Better have a broken heart than go to a lost eternity. Better know the truth now than know it when it's too late for you to do anything about it. This then is the great testimony of God. Thy breach, it says here, is great. Like the sea, who can heal thee? You know how great the breach of the sea is when it comes, don't you? When that tremendous wind came last night, you know, and all sorts of things happened, some of our minds went back to an occasion about two years ago. I've discussed it with dear brother Gerald since. When the sea came up in that mighty gale and tide at Aberystwyth, when it washed over the top of the hotel there on the front, smashed the place and the water surged in. And brother Gerald, who's no spring chicken, probably about the strongest man in the room, I would think, having been a retired champion boxer. Or still is, not having been, sorry. And then, opened the door and found the weight of the water at his front door so great it forced him back. And that was only a little of it. The sea that came up and lashed over the top of the house, roared its way in. And who's going to stop it when it comes? And God says that's what happens when a man or a woman leaves their original virginity, that state into which God brings them by His grace through the precious blood of Jesus Christ, and he leaves it, you leave it, you think you open a little chink, I tell you that the sea comes roaring in. You can't stem the hellish horde as it comes in. There's no barricading against it. A little praying or a right comforting, little messages as they're called, won't help you. You need a prophet of God to come by His power and say that's the cause. It's vile, it's filthy, it's iniquitous. You've sold yourself out for nothing. Repent and get right with God. Virginity, priceless. Who can buy it? Virginity cannot be bought, it's born. And what a terrible thing when anybody lets it go. Tragic, tragic. Let me go one step further into that book of Amos. The story is repeated again and again. These minor prophets, I wonder sometimes whether they're called minor prophets because their writings are small in space or because they struck the minor key in their prophecies. Isaiah struck the major key. Comfort ye, comfort ye my people. Amen. Saith your God, say unto Jerusalem that her warfare is accomplished. And so we go dancing down through the latter chapters of Isaiah. Amen. I want you to see that chapter 40 comes after 39, after 38 and 37. It's still talking about a virgin people. And these are the people that can go comforted, glorious, dancing down through these great major symphonies from heaven. Oh, marvellous. Glory, glory be to God. I will pour water on him that's thirsty. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he's anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. Oh, ye thirsty, come ye to the waters. Ye that have no money, come ye buy and eat. Yea, come buy wine and milk without money and without price. And so we go down the dazzling way in the major courts of Isaiah. And then you come to Jeremiah and he hits the minor notes. And Amos is continuing it. And in the fifth chapter it sounds like the clap of doom of Amos chapter 5 who started off by saying, and bless God for him. He says that he was just a herdman. Chapter 1 verse 1. That's all he was. Just a herdman. I'm not a prophet, he said. I'm just a fellow that looks after the cows. Amen. Yea, it's like the day when God raised up a man that had been scrambling about under benches picking up shavings from a carpenter's bench and made him the Messiah. That's what he does. The high priest, this, that, the other, the great prophets, he's bypassed them all. He took a fellow. The Lord knows, he says he's anointed with the oil of gladness above his fellows. That's spoken of Jesus. He took what would be a fellow from Nazareth. That's right. And he took a herdman and made him the voice of God to the nation. And look what he said. Here, chapter 5 verse 1. Hear ye this word which I take up against you, even a lamentation, O house of Israel. The virgin of Israel is fallen. She shall rise no more. Gone. Gone. Tragedy. We'd be left not a virgin in Israel. Not one soul left for God. No one back on the fundamental, all glorious, eternal principles of pure and holy life. Turned aside to sin, lusting, leasing, licentiousness. All gone away under somebody else's patent God. Patent panacea for this, that, and the other. Psychiatry. Humanism. Everything bar the glory of this revelation that God gave first by a star to some wise men in the east. Laterally by shepherds to the nation. And they come in to find a babe lying in a manger. If it hadn't been for this tremendous thing, where all should we be? That God, knowing this and thinking in terms of grace for men and women and looking over through the years and never to be turned aside from this original purpose in his heart, had prophesied in Isaiah's heyday these words. I'm reading from Isaiah 7. The Lord spoke unto Ahaz, verse 10, saying, Ask thee a sign of the Lord thy God. Ask it either in the depth or in the height above. But Ahaz said, I will not ask, neither will I tempt the Lord. And he said, Hear ye now, O house of David, is it a small thing for you to weary men? But will ye weary my God also? How wearying it is to God when God speaks to a man and says, Do something, and he says, I won't. How long are men going to try God's patience? How long are they going to presume upon grace? You've wearied men, you house of David, he said. You know how the house of David wearied men. David had hardly been gone, and certainly Solomon had only just gone when up rose a man and he spoke about the taxes that Solomon had laid upon people. He said, My father, he says, he scourged you with whips, I'm going to scourge you with scorpions. That's how he started to talk. An utterly debased and immoral man. Wearied men and wearied God. And God comes to this man Ahaz. He says, Go and ask aside. He says, I won't. I don't care, he said, you can ask it in the height, ask it in the depth. I don't care. Ask me a sign. Oh, hallelujah, when God throws his bosom wide open like that and shouts it from the housetop, why doesn't everybody run? They do, but away. Verse 14, Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign. Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. Hallelujah. Which is by being interpreted, God with us. Listen, God found one virgin. It can only ever happen through virginity. If God should find a virgin church here in Liverpool. If he should. If he could find a virgin church. He might come and say to you, ask a sign of me. Ask a sign of me. I'll give you a sign, bless God, that man could never have thought to ask for it. That a virgin should conceive and bear a son. God knew he couldn't. Sinful hearts, no they can't. God said, I'll give you a sign. Virginity, virginity. No wonder he broke his heart. Ah, I want to think of the prophet Elijah. I want to think of him now. You know how God had raised up this great man of God. You know that he came into contest with the false prophets of Jezebel. You know how he stood on that mountain. You know how the altars were built. And how at last, because God had in Elijah a man that was pure unto him, the fire came down from heaven and consumed the sacrifice. When all the prophets of Baal could do nothing else but smash their own altar down and stain it with their own blood. Throwing in frantic cascade from their veins as they cut themselves in a religious furore into a phantasmagoria of heathen worship. They still do it to this day. And Elijah prayed and the fire of God came down from heaven, burned on the sacrifice, consumed the altar, licked up the salt water in the trench. For it was salt water, they got it from the sea. Amen. And hallelujah. God worked. But then for some reason or another, because Jezebel said, I'll have you, yet Elijah fled. He ran away from Jezebel. Mind you, not that it isn't a bad thing to run away from Jezebel. I'll talk about them a little later. Well, I want to. He went. He didn't know where he was going. He went till he was weary and sank down under a juniper tree. And the angel of God came to him. You know what happened. God woke him up, fed him, said, go on, Elijah, eat. And he had to go in the strength of that meat 40 days and 40 nights until he got away somewhere to the backside of a desert where he was hidden away in some hole called a cave. He went inside and the voice of the Lord came to him and said, what doest thou hear, Elijah? And he poured out his plate before God. He came and stood out in the mouth of the cave. You know it all, don't you? The wind that blew. He might have blown slates off roofs. It was a strong one. The rocks rent with the wind. But God wasn't in the wind. The fire burned. God wasn't in the fire. Then a little still voice came and spoke to him. What doest thou hear, Elijah? And you know, don't you? Oh, he said, you know, Lord, they've done this. They've done that. They've broken down nine altars. They've done this. They've done the other. And the Lord said, look here. He said, I've reserved 7000 knees unto me that have not bowed their knees unto Baal. Hallelujah. There was a godly remnant. They only needed mustering. They only needed drawing together a godly remnant that had never given in to Baal. Never. They'd never sullied their souls with the evil things. God told him. And here is God speaking through Isaiah. He said, there's going to be a virgin. It'll be down to one. Bless God. I know it's a cliche and I know it's heard all over the place, but I want to say this, that with God, one is a majority. One with God is a majority. Hallelujah. Just one virgin. And you know the story, the precious story of Bethlehem. You know how the glorious angel came in to that virgin and spoke to her. And how through that virgin state, in that virgin state alone, Jesus came to this earth. You know. A virgin shall conceive. I want to tell you that with God, that's the only way it can ever happen. You can never conceive any of the great things of God by faith in your heart until you've come to virginity. You can't do it. Hallelujah. But when you come there and you're shut off, cut off exclusively unto God, it doesn't matter what people think about you, what your in-laws, out-laws, people say about you. It doesn't matter about that. It doesn't matter what your own flesh and blood thinks or anything else. If you can get to a place where you are God's and God's alone, that's when the great things can take place, beloved. Yes. Did you know that? God is looking for a virgin. You know I don't just mean a young maid. I'm speaking about spiritual condition now. It could be you, man. Glory be to God. It's always got to be that. Always. This is why so little is happening. Really. I know we hear great things about the spirit visiting here and there upon the earth. I still want to tell you that the heathen are multiplying more rapidly than the church. Did you know that? There's just one country on the earth where the church is multiplying quicker than the birth rate. So take heart. There is one spot. Hallelujah. That's a marvelous thing. I don't want to turn aside to discuss that now. But beloved, God is looking for us to be virgin. And until a man is prepared to come to virginity, he'll never be what God wants him to be. Let's have a look at what Paul, for instance, wrote in the second chapter, in the second book that he wrote. I'm reading in the eleventh chapter. Would to God, he said, you could bear with me a little in my folly, and indeed bear with me, for I am jealous over you with godly jealousy. Okay. 2 Corinthians chapter 11. Didn't I tell you? Oh, well, I thought you'd know it. You ought to. These are the things you ought to devour. Not whether the financial index is up and down. What is it you devour? These are the things you ought to have along with your breakfast flakes. Not a cigarette. Not a pill. Would to God, he says, you could bear with me a little in my folly, and indeed bear with me. You've got to bear with Paul now. Are you ready to bear with him? Can you bear what he's going to say now to you? Can you bear it? Can your heart take it? I'm jealous over you, he says, with godly jealousy, for I've espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. Can you bear it? Do you want to be chaste from everything? Every darling sin? And not make excuses for things? Do you want to be free from it all? Can you bear this gospel? Is it the good news from heaven, or does it sound like your death knell? Because you can't give this up, you say. You can't let that go. You can't do without something or another. And you'll have to do without it all. When they read over you, we commit to the ground the body of our dear brother or our dear sister. You'll have parted with it all then, except your sin, you'll take it with you. Or your virginity, you'll take that with you. You who said you couldn't part with it, you lie. In your soul you lie. You know you lie. With God, nothing shall be impossible. Bear with me, says Paul. Forgive me that I write to you like this. Can you take what I'm writing to you? Don't you see? I understood that it was an eternal contract, an engagement with Jesus Christ. I took it that you'd fall in love with Him and see only His beauty and all the things that once you thought were beautiful are now ugly. Your practices, your habits, your wants, your ways, you see them as the vile filth of hell and make excuse for nothing and only want what could logically pour out of the pure veins of Jesus Christ. That kind of life, virgin. Oh my God, is this possible for me? Yes, it's possible for you. Will a man leave the virgin snows of Lebanon? Yes, he will. It's a shame to say it. He will. For a pretty face? For a chance of more money? And what will a woman do for the idealization of her dreams of marriage to some Prince Charming? What will she do? No, she'll leave the virgin snows of the exceeding great and high mountain, towering above all things, on which if you stand on tiptoe, you'll see the foundations of the city of God coming down out of heaven, the bride. You only see her on the mountain, the mountain of vision. Do you live there? A virgin. We look at our bodies. We wallow in our own desires. We fight our battles. We look at our books. We listen to this. We do everything. And Jesus, that high princely lover from heaven, is set aside in preference for Dr. Spock, whether he wrote a book or appears on a television screen. That's it. You'll let Bach charm your heart and Beethoven and Mozart waft you away, but where does Jesus come? Lord, a virgin daughter of Israel has done a horrible thing. You who once were visited by the glorious God, he came on you, he baptized you, he nursed you deep into the heart of the life of that lover who shed his blood on Calvary, and there you began to drink of the pure delights of God. What are you drinking now? Just because of him? Or just because of her? You turned aside from the pure fountain of unsullied love. Oh, a virgin has done a horrible thing. Are you a virgin? You're a virgin if what you're doing is choosing God's will. You're a virgin if what you're doing is not going your own way but God's. You're a virgin if Jesus is first and only in that realm, in your life. You're a virgin if you only have in your heart, life, and relationships the people that God wants there. You're a virgin if your whole spirit, soul, and body is entirely sanctified in one unto him. You're a virgin, otherwise you're not. But have no fear. Have no fear though you may have shame. You can turn from it all tonight, for when God took Jeremiah down to the house of the potter and showed him the whirling wheels, he showed him the lump of clay in the potter's hands. And will you let it speak to you tonight? As the potter was shaping a vessel on the wheel, it was marred in the potter's hand. And the potter said, well I can't quite make you what I wanted you to be originally, but I'll still make you a vessel for my honor and for my glory if you'll let me do it. You've got to return to virginity. If you've lost ten years, two years, two hours, two weeks, you've got to return to virginity and start again. In the hands of the potter, he'll make you another vessel. If you repent and turn to him, the edict will go forth. He'll cancel that which has to stand according to eternal justice and righteousness as punishment against that kind of sin. He will send it forth. He says, it's all right, I'll make you a vessel again. I've seen them break. As their hearts opening, their sin has gone cascading out of them, not just by confessional naming of sin, but as the precious blood of Jesus has wiped it all away, as the breath has come from their lips. And it's gone. Gone. Gone. So I'll make you again a vessel. There are those, they're spoken of in the 14th chapter of Revelation, when John sees the young lamb on the mountain. And he says, those that were with him were virgins. They'd follow the lamb whithersoever he went. And if you didn't follow him when he went that way, if you didn't follow him when he went that way, well, there's forgiveness with God. And he'll start you again. Virgin. You've got to be virgin. You will not share your heart with anybody. Nobody. Nothing. He won't. He's God. Are you ready to be a virgin? Maybe you'll never cease to be a virgin. God bless you. He has devised and designed the way wherein every man and woman should walk. Right out there in the light with him. And when a man or woman does that, the blood of Jesus Christ that first cleansed him goes on cleansing him all the time. He may have been through mighty temptations. He may have felt that the pressure of outward things must surely be staining his character, for they sicken him in mind as the devil seeks to blast him out of the way. But the blood of Jesus Christ is greater than the subtleties of the devil. And he walks still virgin. And he walks still pure. And the blood goes right on cleansing him. And he follows the Lamb. And the Lamb leads him down here. And the Lamb leads him along there. But eventually the Lamb leads him right up there. And again he catches the vision glorious. And he sees the virgin city. He sees Jerusalem in the heavens that laughs and shakes her head in scorn and reigns already triumphant over all the foes. Hallelujah. Are you a virgin? You've got to leave him for virginity. You've got to leave her. Some of you may have to leave them literally, physically, but you've got to in spirit and in mind. If they will have sin born to associate with them, not in spirit, you can't help living with them perhaps. You've got to leave them. God alone. That's God's gospel. He's after a virgin. He's coming back for a virgin. Thou dost seek that bride all pure and holy. Those who now belong to thee alone. That's it. That's whom he's seeking. Anyone here tonight say, Lord, by thy grace bring me into her. Let my sin go. Let me feel the burdens roll away. Let me see the sin stains purged. Let me get a glimpse of the vessel that shall be. Let me know I'm in thy hands. Lord God, plunge me into this mighty fullness that thou hast preserved unto me in the Holy Ghost. Where neither sin can enter nor moth nor rust can corrupt. Where the devil is barred and where only Jesus is Lord and King and glorious in mine eyes. Amen. Do you want to come there? The Spirit of God is here. The Spirit of God is filling the room. The Lord Jesus Christ is moving in his kingly power. You're in the hands of the potter. If not, get into them now. Come on. Get in now. Go down to the potter's house, he says. I'll talk to you there. I'll show you there. And all the whirling things of life that you say have you in confusion. Voices shout here. Somebody else's fainting cure comes up somewhere else. And Lord, luck contributes his column daily. And I don't know what. And here are the eternal hands of God. And you can put yourself right into them. And he'll guarantee to plunge you into that love and grace of Jesus Christ that you'll be purer than pure by earth's standards. What the earth calls pure is filthy often in the sight of God. What the film censors say is permissible for people to see is vile in the sight of God. They'll give you certificates. But I wouldn't take my grandchildren to them. Would you? There is yet a purity come down from heaven in the Spirit. And no man can negate him. He's here, all powerful. Cry, man. Cry, woman. Don't cry out of anything else but your basic realization of your need. God's heard enough of the other over a cry that goes to heaven, wafted by the Spirit of God. And see with what power and haste he'll come to you. He'll cleanse you cleaner than burnished brass or polished gold. He'll make you so pure you'll hardly think you could have lived the life you lived last week. For he'll even blot it out and take it all away in that marvelous thing. Are you ready? Who's ready by the grace of God? Leave your sin, man. Stop insulting the God of heaven and saying it can't, it cannot be. Amen. Faith laughs at impossibilities and cries it shall be done. It shall be done not by me, Lord, but by thee. He'll do it. Amen. Are you ready to receive a gift? Are you ready to move in? Are you ready to come out of your desolations and your death? And stop blaming God that you're not all that you think you'd like to be. And stop blaming those elders or that fellowship or that church or something. Isn't God sufficient to come and manifest Himself to your soul? He is. Are you ready? Let's pray. Let's move in.