In this sermon, the preacher talks about various topics related to God and faith. He mentions putting a key in their home in Tulsa and getting in their car in the evening. The preacher also talks about a new heaven in New York and the importance of having a vision. He emphasizes the character of God as holy and powerful, contrasting it with the limited understanding of God in society. The preacher references the Book of Romans and discusses the wrath of God against ungodliness and unrighteousness. He criticizes the lack of belief in God and the prevalence of powerful religions in America.

Tonight I'm speaking on the subject of the Bible, God vs. God. We live in the most religious age the world ever knew. There has been the most tremendous revival of religion in the last ten years that this world ever saw. Now that's right, not of Christianity, not of men and women loving the Lord Jesus Christ, making His will the paramount thing in their lives. But everybody's done got religion in the last few years. There isn't an infidel or an atheist to be found in all of America. When D. L. Moody was at the height of the days when God was using him so, he put a little ad for paper in Chicago one time and said he was going to preach at such and such a place that seated 5,000 people and nobody except atheists were invited to attend. Nobody was allowed to attend that service except people who said they didn't believe there was a God. Of course, you and I know there's no such thing as an atheist. For if you're a member of the human race, you know there is a God, you know that. But like I was a professed infidel, I lied in my teeth, but I had to have some teeth. And God's after you, and you don't want Him to get you. That's the way it was with me, and that's the reason you're going to hell tonight. You don't want to be saved. You're doing your dead level best to be good. You never do get saved. You have to have something to give you peace so you can sleep good nights, don't you? So I said there wasn't any God. But 5,000 professed atheists showed up that one night to hear Mr. Moody preach in just one situation. When Mr. Finney was at the height of his power, I've seen the pulpit stand for what he stood in the road to war. In his writing desk, down in Rochester, New York. When he was in Rochester, when a nine-month campaign, evangelistic campaign that lasted nine months, sponsored by two little Presbyterian churches in the little town of Rochester with 10,000 inhabitants at that time, half a million now, over 100,000 souls were swept into the kingdom of God. And that one little town, they came from everywhere. And he held a meeting while he was there, and nobody except lawyers who professed to believe there was no God were invited to attend. He had over 3,000 lawyers. Just lawyers from all over that section said there wasn't any God. You can't find a person like that now. Bing Crosby has the most beautiful voice I ever heard. He's either drunk or singing beautiful songs. He's a devout church member, drunk or sober. Frank Sinatra, bless his sweet little heart, hadn't got married again because he's a devout church member. Everybody in America now has got powerful religions. The prize fighters, after they've knocked the brains out of their bones, get on television, Hello Mom, the good Lord helped me tonight. That rotten personality, Arthur Godfrey, closes his programs, be the good Lord with him. We'll see you tomorrow. All that baseball players have got converted. Alvin Dyer, the manager of the New York Giants, a member of a Baptist church in Louisiana, sends his ties regularly to his home church but manages a baseball team that desecrates God's holy day by playing on Sunday. Bobby Richardson, the star second baseman of the New York Yankees, is used by the youth for Christ, much he's not playing baseball on Sunday. Smokey Burgess, the rotund catcher of the Pittsburgh Pirates, is a very devout Christian, we're told, although his Christianity allows him to deliberately shake his fist in the face of the word of God and engage in a sport on the Lord's day. Everybody's got religions. They've got a God, Brother Emery Riggs, that smiles while they violate everything this book says at the moment. Everybody's got religions. Who's your God tonight? You've got one. He's the one you worship at his shrine. Who is it? Is your God the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ? Is your God the one whose character and eternal purpose and eternal provisions for the needs of men constitute the makeup of this book? I have in my opinion questioned that you worship in the God. The vile sinner in this community has got him a God, and that God gives him peace and some satisfaction, some joy and pleasure. The God of the Bible. The God of the Bible, who's described in the book of Psalms, the wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God. Who's going to turn them? Somebody invented the story that God doesn't send people to hell, they send themselves. That's silly, isn't it? Well, they wouldn't know how to send themselves to hell, even know where it is. Be like a man committing crime, arresting himself, convicting himself and putting himself in jail. No, if anybody winds up in hell, the God of this book says, I'll send. The God of the Bible is the God who has invested in the Lord Jesus Christ the destiny of all men. In the 17th chapter of John, the Lord Jesus speaking to the father said, as thou hast given him, talking about himself, authority over all place, that he should give eternal life to as many as the father as thou hast given. And this is life eternal, that they might care no doubt you know, and you know only the one you obey. That's what the word know means in the Bible. That they might become acquainted with and experience the power of and thus obey thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. This God of the Bible's got you on his hand. The Lord Jesus Christ brought you on chariot. He's got to damn your savior. He's dead sure going to do one or the other. Do you know the God who damns, and the God who through the Son of the Lord God gives eternal life? And eternal life is to become acquainted with and experience the power of and obeying to the only true God. America knows, doesn't know this God. Which God are you worshiping tonight? In the first chapter of the book of Romans, we have a picture that's like almost of the front pages of our papers today. Here in the first verse 18, For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness. Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them, for God hath showed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clear as sea, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without equal to Solomon. There's a human being living on topside of God's earth now that has an excuse for not serving God according to the life he had. And why are they without excuse? Verse 21, they are without excuse because that when they knew God the glorified, neither were they happy, for he made their imaginations and their foolish hearts were darkened. And professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and they became such silly, terrible, damning fools as to change the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like the corruptible man, and became so awful in his foolishness that he got his own little pocket knife out. This actually occurred, and it's taking place today. And he carved him a little dog after the image of a man. But pretty soon, even a dog after the likeness of man was a little uncomfortable, so the next step that men took was to get their little pocket knives and carve them out of dogs that looked like a bird. But that bird was a little too holy and powerful and exacting, and men got their pocket knives out and created them a god that looked like four-footed beasts. That wasn't bad enough, and men got their pocket knives out, and they really created them a god that allowed them to wallow in sin and still sleep well at night. And they took the knives and built them little gods after creeping. That's exactly what happened in history being repeated. Wherefore God pushed them. No, I read it wrong, didn't I? God didn't push them. God didn't get them in that shape. But when they got in that shape, God gave them up. First on clean living, second to vile affections, and third to a reprobate mind. And when God reprobates you, you're gone. I was holding a meeting in Winston-Salem, the North Winston Baptist Church, and all hell was broken. God finally broke through, and we had a tremendous and gathering of souls. The pastor baptized 165 of his own church members when he was over. Most church people need to get saved, and it spread all over the city. The chairman of the board of deacons, he came and heard me preach one time. He didn't like it. He didn't come back. I didn't know it. And long when the meeting is breaking some, after the service one night, a big old fellow, his stomach was about a half a mile before the red stop, and he came up to me, and he said, young man, I didn't like you, sir. I said, well, it's your privilege. He said, the God I see won't send men to hell. I said, thank you. I imagine you'd tell me the truth, that God you serve won't send men to hell, but the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ will. Will. Who's your God? You cut him out with your own little pocket knife. He says, whatever you do is all right. You know, this is a generation where everybody does what's just right in his own sight. Who's running your life? The little God of your imagination? Or the God whose character and purpose is revealed in this book? I do not question that you serve a God. I'm asking you to consider whether it's the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ or the God of your own little feeble mind. People say to me, Brother Bernard, I don't think there's anything wrong with so-and-so. Well, that don't spell much. None of us are too bright. Our minds are still suffering from the fall. We've ruined that world. Ain't none of us got much change. That's right, sister, you laugh about it, but you've got half-idiots. You were ruined by the fall. Isn't that right? The fact that I don't think something's so, there ain't no use to get excited about that. My little feeble mind don't have so much. Yours don't either. But lay it in suggestion. There's one person in this world who has been given the right, and only one person, to do your thinking for you, and that's the Lord Jesus Christ. Who does your thinking? Who controls your imagination? Who decides what's right and wrong in your everyday living? When you and the law and the matter reached up and tried to pull God off His throne and said, I'll not be subject to you, you lost all your rights, and you just got one right left. Every last one of you got a perfect right. If you want to, you can do it. Stand up right now and say, God, I'm getting tired of all this foolishness. I demand my rights. Send me to hell right now. Otherwise, you don't have any rights. You lost them when you rebelled against God. Is that right? But this generation of church members have created their own God. Eating up to kill a mule to sleep sounds the law. Live like hogs while they sin. Say you love Jesus, and your God makes you comfortable. But the God of the world has confessed it to the God's men half the day. The God of the Bible is holy. H-O-L-Y, holy. You don't like a holy God, do you? Huh? Oh, but he's thrice holy. This generation of church members desecrate the Lord today. We need some people who believe in God today. You could starve to death. But if you believed the Bible, you wouldn't work on Sunday. You'd starve to death for you. You'd say, well, I have to work on Sunday to keep my job. No, you don't. You'd starve to death. It'd be better to starve to death than to plonk your fist in the nostrils of God. He'd say, I don't care. If you did say you remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy, I'm going to work. And of course, next Sunday you're going to go see Grandma and get up and sing and cut the weeds. He didn't say he remembered the Sabbath day to go visit. He said, this is my day. This is my day. But there's two things to do on the Lord's Day. That's worship the Lord in a way you don't have time to during the week with energy that you can't do during the week. You've got to make a living to spread your bounds. But one day of the week is not the Jewish Sabbath, but the Sabbath never was the Jewish Sabbath. The Sabbath belongs to the Lord. He's dealing with the Jews of the elect nation. It's on Saturday. Now he's not dealing with an elect nation. He's dealing with a called-out church. I wouldn't be in the shoes of this generation of church people that do just as they please. On the Lord's Day, he called himself Christian. I remind you, he's holy. He's holy. He's holy. Bobby Richardson can go all over the country and preach to the youth for Christ and talk about how he loves the Lord. And get out on the Lord's Day and plumb his face and the nostrils with this book and the God of it. Because off on it, it ain't gonna do it. I'm afraid of God. And I don't want to have to deal with the law of God. Send me to hell. Remember what I was saying? Why the churches are full of people. Swap wives on the hour, by the hour. All on what God says. Isn't that right? You see, I'm talking about this generation of religious people. Everybody's got religion. Most of the people are members of some kind of church. And we sleep well at night while we pamper God's holy word under our feet. And then you now have an old-time preacher that says if you're gonna pay for disobeying God's plain teachings, you can't get by with it. Why, I know people, I've said this, I'll say it again, I know people that dare to claim to be products of God's saving grace. That put their hands on that which he says is mine, that tithes is mine, says the Lord. I don't want to have to deal with that law. Somebody says the tithe is a part of the law. You bet your bottom dollar it was, bud. And that's what you're gonna be judged by. That's the judgment. No. No, I don't have to deal with it. Not me, brother. Not me. Not me. God's holy. God's holy! When I said, call the Lord, I lifted up! He said, whoo-hoo! We're not under law, we're under grace. Let's go retail like this generation. No, he didn't. He said, who is me? He said, I'm a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. We need a vision, and the only way to get it, brothers, pay a little attention to this book, and people say you believe it. What I'm talking about then in this book all the time is talking about the character of Almighty God. His character is expressed by his commandments, his prohibitions. The God of the Bible is holy. The God of the Bible is powerful. He's the God of all power. This generation don't know a thing about the God who has power to damn you or save you. What they call the gospel all over this country is preached by the little old few who've got standing on the outside hoping the great big man will take pity on them and let them in. But it's a solemn thing to turn. For instance, don't try to turn to it. I'll read it before you get through it. It's a solemn thing to turn to a scripture like I'm reading now in the 19th of John where the Lord Jesus Christ in the days of his flesh, when he was before Pontius Pilate, the powerful Roman governor of the Jewish people. And Pilate was up against it and he asked the Lord some questions and Christ answered five of them. And then Pilate sinned against the answers and then Pilate asked the sixth question and Jesus gave him no answer. Just let him go. And that scared old Pilate to death. And when Christ wouldn't even answer him, he reprobated him. Let him go. Gave him up. With answering, the scared old Pilate, Pilate said unto him, Speak it thou not unto me. Don't you know that I have power to crucify thee and we have power to release thee and the Lord of glory who humbled himself and tabernacled him in a tent of flesh like me and was a man just exactly like me except he never sinned. The Lord of glory, the God of the universe, stood there. And that little old silly Roman emperor said, Don't you know I can do with you as I please? And the Lord answered, Thou couldst have no power at all against me except that we're given thee from above. Why, honey, you can't even spit in God's face. God, he gives you the power to do it. Now, you're into his hands. He's not yours. You know that God? The God that can damn you or save you as he pleases. The God that doeth whatsoever it pleases him in the heaven and the earth. That's the God of the Bible, not this little old bitty God that has no way to see what you're going to do or he's going to do. The God of the Bible is the God of all things. We still don't believe it, but he does save people because he owes them salvation. He saves people out of greatness. We've found and determined to preach a gospel that makes God have to give everybody a chance, but he don't. Whether we preach it or not, I've had the preachers just point their mouths at me. All I was doing was denying that salvation is by death. If God only knew a chance to hear the gospel, then he's in debt to you. He don't owe anybody a chance. One listens to the gospel. He don't owe us a single cent. If you ever heard the gospel, it wasn't God paying off his debts. It's God showing mercy to you, brother. You don't want to be under obligation to God. You don't want to brag in heaven and go around boasting about what you did. You ain't going to make it. They say by grace through faith, and that's not even ours. It's the gift of God blessing a man's soul. That's why we turn heaven into hell. If this gang of church members got there because they think they saved because of what they did, and they like to brag about what they've done, God ain't going to let them get in heaven with a brag. Ain't nobody going to brag on nobody except the Lord in glory, brother. Amen. And the God of the Bible says he'll punish sinners. The God of the Bible says the soul that sinned, it shall die. The God of the Bible says he'll by no means clear the guilt. The God of the Bible says the wicked shall be turned into the living. The God of the Bible says I will punish sinners. Somebody invented that little old silly outfit about God loves the sinner and hates the sinner. Now that's downright silly, isn't it? There ain't no sin apart from the one that commits it. And God loves that old wicked sinner enough to pity him and sincerely desire his salvation. And he doesn't decree his salvation. And he doesn't love that sinner with any sin, any love, a saving, except pity. Well, God sincerely desired to save everybody. But up to now, he hasn't done it. He saved only those ones whom he promised they'd bring. Right. Honey, maybe God just won't let you go and send you to hell. He don't owe you anything except eternal death. For the waste of the sin is death. That's what the Bible says. And if he pays you off, he'll just leave you alone. That's why they send you to hell. The God of the Bible sends people to hell, folks. The God of the Bible sends people to hell. In August of 1947, I went to Salem back to Stratford. Charles Stevens, he's been here three times, I lived in Oklahoma. And he asked me to come and hold a meeting. I remember it was in July. I said, oh, it was in July of 1946. God gave us a landslide. We had huge converters and trumpets and all this wonderful stuff. And the doctor told me I had to come in and spend four months in teaching in this school that he just started with. I think it was the third year, being their evangelist. And we put a key in our home in Tulsa, got in our car and came. He said it stayed four months, which it stayed two years. And I remember the first meeting I held after I got there, about the last of January 1948. It was in the early 20th century. And from doing that, it was a new heaven and a new earth. Listen to me, from this to me. Once in a while, when I get through the non-human week and I get through, I like to turn over to the second people, the third chapter and the 13th verse. That chapter is talking about when all hell was falling on the Tulsa area. When will anyone be the God? And the Elohim of God is the first of the first. And the 13th verse has a tremendous power. The writer of that blessed book says, Nevertheless, we according to His promise, keep on the walk. Walk the walk. New heaven and a new earth. It's going to be paradise one day. Where is it? Where is Christ? It's coming, brother. It's not going to be forever. No! Hell, this soil, this earth, will be heaven and a new earth. I beg to live here. I believe in heaven. I'll be right here on the earth. I know what to do. It's going to be good. But brother, let's sit here. Let's sit next to the house somewhere. There's somebody to do the work. Well, we didn't have what it may be, where your old church building used to be. Just out in smoky, beautiful, beautiful grass. Ah, Virginia's a beautiful place. Ain't one thing wrong with Virginia's people. Ah, you could take all the people in Virginia that are blowing the smoke of their breath in the mouth of the God saying, you're not going to tell us what to do. Ah, it'd be pretty good place, wouldn't it? Oh, and they've got you two young preachers there. It won't be long now. One of these days. I know it, brother Barber. God said it. He promised it. I ain't got no more questions. Look, Barber, do it. One of these days. One of these days! There's going to be a new heaven and a new earth, and there ain't going to be no people running around you raising hell and trying to put God off his throne. There's going to be a day. And they think God's so good he don't take you to hell. He's so good. He promised! So I ain't going to be defeated. It'll be a brand new heaven and a brand new earth. Where in the earth? I can't tell you. God won't send anybody else to hell. The people will run in the new heaven and the new earth. He promised, bless God, In the twenty-first chapter of Revelation, thy shall in no wise enter into anything that defiles thee, neither whatsoever workest abomination, nor makest a lie. The only laws were written in the book of life. Amen. Lord, I cannot forage neither silver nor gold. I'd make sure of heaven I'd enter the fold in the book of thy kingdom and on its pages so fast that hell may be just my taste. There is my name written there. I'm interested in that. Lord, I'll go out of my body and live nearly all my life separated from my wife and children who want to buy me something. I'm going to need them even better. Just. I'm going to live in the new heaven and the new earth. Better than they are left by chance. And God's going to send his angels of might to take out the pagans and cast them into hell. Glory be to God. Praise the Lord. Whoo! God's people can't lose. Amen. God's doing good. He said he would. Hallelujah. I'm looking at your face now. God can't give you a new heart, give you a new motive, and create you in holiness and put the psalm right for you on your forehead and clean you up and make you hate sin and love. God, he's going to send you to hell so you can't get out and live in the new heaven and the new earth. In Matthew 1 and 21, thou shalt fall. This thing seems thus far, these foul things. This thing will get far away when you fall by sin. Salvation is past and present and future, and before you get from faith, you're going to be saved from the very present of your sin. That's right. That's right. The only other reason God sends men to hell is to punish them for their rebellion and their sin. God's either got to advocate or punish men for their sin. You can't say, if he smiles on sin. I was preaching in Mobile, Alabama years ago. A dear Methodist layman, we call him a layman, loved God, had a lot of money. He got a five-hole tent that'll seat several thousand people. And asked me if I'd come without any church backing. That is, while I'm studying later, he said, I'll finance it if you come. And he brought me 30-minute radio time every day, and he guaranteed that the bill would be paid. He said, I want you to preach to this today. And I went. And God laid the message of judgment, the message of the security of God's holy law. That's all hell is. And for three solid weeks, on the radio, I preached on the horrors of God's secular law. That's all hell is. It's a place where men find out what to laugh about now. God's law is hope. And the punishment part is to be. You don't think so. In hell, you'll find out. And the radio manager didn't even profess to be a Christian, because soon the big shots in town began to phone him and write him, demanding that he take that creature off the earth. Why, that town was just crackling with the messages on the judgment of God, the severity of God's law. And he told them about it. Some of them threatened him. Some of the big merchants threatened to go to their federal radio commission, you know, and complain. He called me in and told me what happened. He didn't even profess to be a Christian. He was selling his time, his papers. He got to where they couldn't work in the store. Had the radio on, and I preached it, and God said, it's time. Oh, boy. You fundamentally, you should learn how to give. You ought to be on the radio. You ought to be getting impacted messages all over the place. You ain't even learned how. I said, you know, in the old times, that used to happen. I wouldn't call myself a Christian if I'd get dialed every time. But I'm going to preach it. The Bible talks about how laborers give in so much. That's what I'm saying, isn't it? And he's getting all those letters, and telephone records, and telephone calls. I said, well, look, I don't want you to lose your faith. You can't go with this. I'm not preaching on your radio anymore. He said, no, I ain't going to do it, preach it. I said, I know I'm not saved. It's the first time I ever saw anybody in a mobile paying any attention whether it was God or not. Church people don't pay no attention to them sons or sons. Most of them do, don't they? And he said, everybody's talking. He said, I said, things are happening this time. He said, it's crazy. He said, the prayer of my dad. I said, won't you please preach until it goes to bed? He wasn't even saying anything. He said, the table is over. And so he kept preaching. And I got a nice little five letter from a nice, filthy, in-to-hell, professing Christian. And he wrote me, he said, dear young man, I've been listening to your broadcast, and I'm an older man than you are. And he said, I think somebody ought to tell you that it won't do people a better good to defend the Lord. And the next day as I mentioned his name, I read his letter. He said, if you're listening, you've read it so right. But oh, holy God, so holy, that in order to keep from having this connection to the Lord, you've got to to your broadcast, than you are. as I mentioned his name, you've got to keep from having this connection to the Lord. deepest pain, and to feel your need is in. To feel with God's law and your faith. Someday he won't send you to hell to do you good, unless it is a bit of charity. He'll send you to hell to punish the church. And I ask once again every one of you, who belong to the Lord, please listen. By virtue of his grace and saving and love, send me so I can bring as many of them as you can. And above all, as you go about your work, whatever you do, live these days in the state of reaching out and calling on God. Oh God, stop people on that blind road to hell. They get wild with you, that savage country. Oh God, stop it. Huh? I believe in that word. I don't think you can stop that boy of yours with God's hand. Huh? Just live and stay in Christ. Huh? Your heart is reaching out to God. Oh God, open people's blind eyes. They're blinded. They can't take it right straight to hell. They think they're all right. And I fall to the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. The one that hung on a cross and struck on the way on earth is God. Let him keep and send everybody out of hell. In his name, the one that you've appointed to be your prime minister to turn everything over to him, he's the Lord. In his name we commit this service to mercy and forgiveness. We pray that people shall become seekers after the Lord until they shall find their service. Our mission is this. Amen.