In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the power and profundity of the two words "he came" in the book of John. He suggests that simplicity is often more effective in conveying profound truths than using excessive and unnecessary words. The preacher highlights the eternal hope that springs in the human heart and the aspirations for immortality that mankind has always had. He also points out the tragedy of mankind's love for sin over love for God, contrasting it with the joy and praise that nature and the world express when Jesus came and will come again in glory.

I am to speak tonight from the 11th verse of the first chapter of the gospel, as given to us by the Holy Ghost through his servant John. The words are, he came unto his own and his own received him not. That is only a single sentence broken by a comma. He came unto his own and his own received him not. I want you to notice first of all the words, he came. You know, in the early part of the chapter, we learn what he was doing before the world was. Before the creation came to be, before Bethlehem, we read simply in little short words, he was, in him was, he was with, he was God, he was in. Those are simple words, but they are at the root of theology. They are at the root of all truth. Now, in this verse, for the first time, we have a hint of the incarnation. He came, that's the first hint. Before that, it had been in the eternal past, or it had been since the creation, but before the incarnation. In him was life, in the beginning he was, in the beginning he was God, all things were made by him, in him was life, and he was the true light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world. Now it says, he came. And I have been struck by the wonder of these words, he came. The story of pity and mercy and redeeming love are all here in two words, he came. All the pity capable, that God is capable of feeling, all the mercy he is capable of showing, and all the redeeming grace that he could pour out of his heart, all are at least suggested here in two simple words, he came. And all the hopes and the longings and aspirations and dreams of immortality that lie in the human breast, all had their fulfillment in two words, he came. I wonder if that should not suggest to us that simplicity is always best, and that you can say more with short words than you can with long ones. And that brevity beats the interminable pulling out of verbiage that we preachers are given to. It says, he came. And all the hopes of mankind, and man has always been a hopeful creature. John Milton says, hope springs eternal in the human breast. And that eternal hope that springs always in the human breast is like the lark at break of day arising. That hope finds its fulfillment here, he came. And all those longings and aspirations, I repeat, because man has always been an aspiring creature, even while groveling in the dirt, even while lying in the pigsty, he remembers his father's house and says, what am I doing here? He may lie there and never get up, but he aspires, he remembers. And all the dreams of immortality, because all the human race has dreamed of immortality. Nobody wants to think that when we say the remains, our brother tonight used the phrase so common, the remains will be at Lane's undertaking, establishment. Now there's something in us that fights that. We fight that to the bitter end. Our mind will not accept it. You know you're going to die, but you do not believe you're going to die. Your mentality will not visualize it. You will not surrender as as Bob Bryant said, your universal being. You will not give it up to the clay. You have whole hopes of immortality and dreams of a life to come. And all of this is summed up here in the two words he came. I want you to know that these two one-syllable words occupying only seven spaces on the line, I suppose that's the editor in me, but only seven spaces on the line, these words he came. And yet what he tells us here is profounder than all philosophy. Now I'm not simply using words, and I'm not using superlatives carelessly. I realize that there is a danger that we should stress too much and underscore too much. Sometimes I get articles, as they're laughingly called, from men who get their effects by everlastingly underscoring or writing them in capitals, and some even go so far as to write them with the red part of the ribbon. If they want to emphasize, they use the red part of the ribbon, or underscore or make capitals. You never, you don't have to edit articles like that, you just have to fold them up and send them back. Nobody wants to read anything where the writer couldn't think of anything to do except underscore. It is like the preacher that never can make a point without roaring. You've heard that, that type, haven't you? If the thing sounds good, they beat the desk and roar. That's supposed to be spiritual, but it isn't spiritual, it's ridiculous. How'd I get over there? But I was saying, I was saying that I do not want to use superlatives, but there are some times when superlatives are absolutely necessary, you can escape them. And when I say that these two words in John, he came, contain for founded truth and all philosophy, that's a superlative statement, but it is nevertheless a balanced and accurate statement. For not all the great thinkers of the world ever thought out anything that could even remotely approach the wonder and the profundity of the words he came. And these words are wiser than all learning. Not all the men who have ever gathered together the lore of the ages and written them in books have ever thought of anything as deep and wonderful and wild as the words he came. These words, if they're understood in their high spiritual context, they are more beautiful than all art, and more eloquent than all oratory, and more musical than all music, and more lyric than all song, because they tell us that we, when in the darkness, were visited by the light. Oh, that that might strike us. I wish we could get as thrilled up about it as they were in those early times. I wish that when we sing the light of the world is Jesus, that we could get a look on our faces that would make the world believe we mean it. Now, Milton celebrated the coming of Jesus into the world in one of the most beautiful odes that ever has been written that begins, This is the month, and this the happy morn, wherein the Son of heaven's eternal King, of wedded maid and virgin mother born, our great redemption from above did bring. For so the Holy Prophet wants it seen, that he our deadly forfeit should release, and with his Father work us a perpetual peace. Then he says of Jesus that glorious form, that light unsufferable, and that far-beaming blaze of majesty, wherewith he was wont in heaven's high council table to sit in midst of final unity. These he laid aside, and herewith us to be, forsook the courts of everlasting day, and sought with us a house of mortal clay. That was Milton's description of the incarnation. It says he came, and I, for one, am plain childishly glad that he came. For one, I'm childishly glad about it. I heard Tim Cullard, brother, preach on the radio today while I was getting some rest this afternoon, and he had a voice that's worse than mine with the cold that I had tonight, but his was permanently bad. He sounded like a tuba that had gotten rusty, and it was really bad. But the man was happy about something. He was delighted about something. That's about it. This thing wasn't to him. He wasn't bored with it. And while he was preaching, some of his brethren would sit within sound of the microphone and say, That's the way brother preaches. Preach it, brother. But we sit and take it as though we were bored with it, and I'm not sure that we are not. I am not sure that we are not, that we're not bored with it. I'm not sure that we haven't heard it so much that it doesn't mean much anymore. But he came, those wonderful, beautiful words. He came, and then it says, Here he came unto his own. Now, that's going a little further with it. He came unto his own, and his own received him not. Now, it's a strange thing that the two words, his own, his own, are the same in our English, and yet they are utterly and completely different as used by John. For the first, his own, is translated his own things, his own world, his own home. He came unto his own world. He came unto his own possessions. He came unto his own things. And one translation says he came unto his own home, but his own people received him not. So that his own, as used in the second place, does not refer to the same thing as used in the first place. He came to his world, and his own people didn't know who he was, and didn't receive it. Now, he came unto his own world. Let's let it rest at that. For this is Christ's world. I wish you might know it. This is Christ's world. This world we buy and sell, and kick around, and lord it over, and take by force of arms. This world is Christ's world. This is his world. He made it, and he owns it all. This mother of God business, sometimes I hear it on the radio. I sample everything. Somebody asks me, How do you know so much about what's going on in the nightclubs and shows and all the rest? I listen to the radio. I sample it. If I had time, I'd visit them and take my notebook along and come out and blow them out of the water with a torpedo. But I can't go there, so I listen sometimes. And I hear the services, they would call them that, in which we say, The Mary Mother of God pray for us. First place, Mary can't hear, she's dead. The second place, she's not the mother of God. Mary's the mother of Jesus' flesh, but not the mother of God. And it's time we find that out and know it and dare to stand up and say, We don't want to oppose anything I do. I want to oppose the devil wherever he sticks his sooty nose in my business. If Mary is the mother of God, then Elizabeth is God's cousin. And you can go back through and find that God had grandchildren and uncles and all the rest, which is, of course, absurdity. Mary's not the mother of God. A body hast thou prepared me, said the Holy Ghost, said Jesus in the Holy Ghost. A body hast thou prepared me. And Mary was the mother of that body. God Almighty used the body of the Virgin Mary as the matrix to form a body for his Son, his eternal Son, who was with the Father and was God. And that was Mary's job, God bless her little Jewish heart, was her business to be the recipient of the eternal Son and give that Son a body. And so instead of saying, Mary the mother of God, we should always say, Mary the mother of Christ. And then we have it right. We have given Mary her proper honor, higher than any other honor given to any other woman since time began, or ever will give. So that Jesus Christ made this world, and he made the very atoms out of which Mary was made. And he made and created the very atoms out of which his own Bobby was made. And he made the very straw upon which he lay in the manger. Now, I'd like to have seen the baby Jesus. I dedicated a little red-headed girl here, and if it got buttered, I could have swallowed her in one go. And I'd like to have seen the baby Jesus. I'll never see him now, because death has no more dominion over him, and he's a grown, free, blooming human, now glorified yonder, the right hand of the majesty. But he was there nevertheless, that baby Jesus, lying on a manger. And he, the baby, had made the manger, and had made the straw, and had made the beasts that were there, and had made this little town and all that it was, and had made the very star that looked down this one. He came unto his own. Now, our Lord Jesus Christ is not a guest here. I wish we might figure that out. They say that a lot of people make a great deal out of God being their guest, or God being their senior partner. They run the business and their name's on it, but God's their partner. They make a great deal of that nonsense. The quicker we find it out, the better, and stand up on our two hind feet and there to tell people that we don't want to patronize Jesus Christ. Time will stop it. They write nice books, and around Christmas time, even the newspapers come out with a fawning over Jesus Christ our Lord. He doesn't need your patronage, brother, and he doesn't need your pity. He's not a guest here. He's the host, and we are the guests. We are here by his sufferance. We are here by his kindness. We are here because he's made us and brought us here. And this world is his world, and he can do what he wills with his world, and no one can upbraid him. He can do what he wills with life, and he can do what he wills in death, and he can do what he wills in nature, and he can do what he wills in that mighty cataclysmic overthrow that we call judgment. He has a lot of apologies in the day in which we live. A lot of people are apologizing for the Lord Jesus Christ. I think we ought to start apologizing for the Lord Jesus and start apologizing for ourselves. He doesn't need your apology, and he doesn't need your defense. When I run onto a book where somebody is apologizing for the Lord Jesus Christ and proving he isn't so bad after all, I always toss it aside. I won't waste my eyes on it. Jesus Christ who made the world in which we live, and whose fingers formed the crooked serpent and studied the stars in the sky under, and made the solid ground on which we stand and upon which we build our temporary buildings, he doesn't need me to run around apologizing and rushing in, taking his part and saying, Now just a minute, just a minute. Fairer he heart and fairer his heart, but it doesn't mean that. He sent judgment upon Sodom and Gomorrah, but it doesn't quite mean that. It means something else. It means exactly that, ladies and gentlemen. And when God Almighty turned Lot's life into a pillar of salt, it means exactly that. And when the Bible tells us there is a hell where the wicked will go, it means exactly that. It doesn't mean something else. So my business is not to apologize for the Lord Jesus, or patronize him, or talk down to him, or go to an altar in order to come out and be loyal to him. No, no. My business is to come crawling to his feet, a sinner filled with sores, and say, Touch me and make me whole. And I stand upon my feet, as I said over the radio yesterday morning, no longer to crawl like a spaniel crawling down the sidewalk on your tummy, but to stand up and look into the heavens, and say, I was once a sinner, but I'm redeemed, and the Lord has saved me, and now I'm his child, and I can keep my chin up now, and both, or three of them, or as many as I've got. Some of you, one won't be enough, but you can keep them out, because you belong to God, you belong to Christ. But in the meantime, we're not going to patronize him. I absolutely will not apologize for him. Here he is, he'll take care of himself. He made this world, he made the very bricks out of which this building is built, and he made the world in which we live, and so it's his world, it's my Father's world, it belongs to the Trinity and it's not mine, and I live here by the good grace of God, and everything I handle and touch belongs to my Father. These lovely flowers belong to God, they don't belong to me, and all the air and the winds and the clouds and the corn and the waving wheat and the tall noble forests and the flowing rivers, they're all his. He was, he was in, he made, and all things were made by him. And he came unto his own world, and his own world received him not. That is, his own people received him not, but his own world, that nature received him. His own things received him. It was the winter wild when the heaven-born child, all meanly wrapped in the root manger, lies. Nature in awe to him, a doctor, godly trim with her, great maker, thus to sympathize. We sang this morning about nature smiles and owns her king. So when our Lord Jesus came, all nature went out to greet him, all nature met him. The star led the wise men from the east, and the cattle in the stall didn't bother him. As they lay, little eight or nine or ten pound baby Jesus wasn't harmed by the beasts, that nibbled straw from around his tender little legs and arms. They know him. G. Campbell Morgan in that great book of his called The Crisis of the Christ, points out that when Jesus went into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil, he was there forty days and forty nights and was with the wild beasts. Remember that. And Morgan said that there was wrong conception about that, Jesus being with the wild beasts, that we pitied him and wondered how he could ever stand it to be with the wild beasts and think those wild beasts might have been wanting to attack him and he had to have angelic protection. And Campbell Morgan said properly, no, it was not true. The wild beasts recognized their king, and they crept to his feet and licked them, no doubt, and lay down beside. They recognized their Lord and their maker. And the very tawny lion shook his mane and kneeled beside his seat. And the very bear that might have devoured another man knelt and whined at the feet of the man who was fasting forty days and forty nights. So that instead of pitting Jesus for those terrible hours or days he spent with the wild beasts, we ought to remember that he was perfectly safe there. For not a sharp claw would tear the skin of the man who was God, and not a fang would rip the body of the man who was God. For he came to his own and his own received him. And the wind blew for his pleasure, and he waxed and grew in body and in wisdom. And the very earth on which he trod smiled, and the stars at night looked down on his humble carpenter's cottage. And the winds and the rain and the snow were all his strength. He was in harmony with nature. And I believe it's entirely possible to be more in harmony with nature than we are if we were Christians as we ought to be. Saint Francis was in harmony with nature, and the world has wondered at him. Some have laughed, and others have scoffed, and others have raised their eyebrows and wondered if he was right in his mind. But Saint Francis was so completely yielded to God, and so completely and fully taken up by the presence of the Holy Ghost, that all nature was his friend. And it says of Citra that the stars in their courses fought against him. And if the stars in their courses fought against the enemy, then the same stars in their courses fought in favor of the friend of God. And I believe it is possible to be so tuned to God that the very stars in their courses are on our side, and nature smiles and moans her king. God, when he made Adam, said, Now you be, you be over the whole business. And sin came in and wrecked it all, and when sin is removed, then I can see why Saint Francis could preach to the birds and call the rain and the wind his friends, and the moon his sister, and live a delighted life because the world, God-blessed world, received him. It is only sin we have to be ashamed of, my friend, only sin. It is not this world that God made, it is sin. And if you were to take sin out of the world, there wouldn't be a thing to be ashamed of, nor a thing to be afraid of. He took sin out of the world. If sin could suddenly be extracted from the world, suddenly extracted from the world, all of it taken out, there wouldn't be another sick man in all the wide world. There wouldn't be an insane man behind any bars. There wouldn't be a criminal in any jail. There wouldn't be a polio victim crippling around on crutches. There wouldn't be an old man of days, bent with his cane, waiting for the undertaker. There wouldn't be a man with a cold in his nose trying to preach. And there wouldn't be sleepy people wishing he'd quit. And there wouldn't be an evidence anywhere of evil. If you could take sin out of the world, you could leave your house unlocked. Thank God, go to bed and leave her unlocked. And you could carry her money around your pants pocket. You wouldn't have to put it in a bank behind bars of a cop to watch. And you could walk anywhere in this city and not be afraid of getting attacked. You could take sin out of the world. So instead of apologizing for God and Christ, we ought to begin to apologize for humanity and apologize for our sin. But remember that he came unto his own and his own received him. And Jesus was never sick an hour. And nothing was ever wrong with him, but he carried a perfect body to Calvary. Sure, he bore our sicknesses, but they were poured on him. They were poured on him. God Almighty took all that swill barrel of bubbling, crawling sickness and poured it on the body of Jesus, just as he took that swill barrel of vicious, venomous juice called sin and poured it on him when he died. And he died under our sins and he died under our sicknesses, but he never had any sin and he never had any sickness. He came unto his own world and his own world smiled and ran to meet their king. The wind and the waves obeyed him. You say that was a miracle. Well, maybe it was a miracle. It looked like a miracle from our standpoint, but it wasn't any miracle for Jesus. He said to the wind, shh. And the wind looked up and saw who it was and shh. And he said to the waves, be still, and they saw who it was and they got soft and still as a mirror. It wasn't any miracle, it was just God Almighty acting like God in a world that received him. But when it comes to people, you have another story on your hands. His own people received him not. And that reminds us of the famous hymn that says, Every prospect pleases a lonely man is vile. His own people received him not. Now, there were the Jews, the nation of Israel, and they were of all people the best prepared to receive him, because they had the call in Abraham, they had the covenant with the fathers, they had the revelation, they had the tradition, they had the prophets, they had the temple worship. They had their holidays and their anniversaries and their psalms and their prophets, and they were of all people the best place to receive him when he came. But they failed to recognize him, and that was the greatest blunder in the history of mankind, without any doubt. The greatest moral blunder in the history of the world was when he came to his own world and the world received him, and he came to his own people and his own people rejected him. The very caterpillar on the leaf received his king, but the Jews turned him away. Oh, the blindness of it all. I read here in my Bible of that blindness. God said, Go and tell his people, hear ye indeed, but understand not, and see ye indeed, but perceive not. And make the heart of his people fat, and make their ears heavy, lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and converge, and be healed. There was the blindness that lay upon them, and they didn't recognize him. It was a stroke of God Almighty upon them for sin, and they didn't recognize him. Now, why didn't they receive him? The world received him because he was the world's God, I mean, the natural, the God of creation. But why didn't humanity receive him? I'll give you about five reasons why they didn't receive him. I'm going to cut this sermon short tonight. First, to receive Jesus when he was here in the world would have meant possible financial loss. The rich young ruler is an example of that. If the rich young ruler had followed Jesus, he'd have had to lose every bit of his property, for the Lord told him to go get rid of it, and they wouldn't receive him because they love their money more than they love their God. It would have meant a change in their way of living, and they refused to allow the pattern of their life to be disturbed. It would have meant a thorough inward housecleaning, for Jesus taught that the true in heart should see God, and the mourner should be comforted, and the meek should have the earth, and the merciful should be blessed. It would have meant a thorough housecleaning inside of them, and it would have meant an abnegation of self. He said, let him take up his cross and follow me. It would have meant faith in the unseen. They'd have had to throw themselves out on God, and that's why they didn't receive him. In closing, it's very satisfying for us to belabor the Jews, but I remember a word of Jesus, take the beam from thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly, to remove the moat from thy brother's eye. It's very comforting for us, here two thousand years removed, to preach about the Jews that received him not. It's a kind of a safety valve for us, a red herring that we draw across our trail to take God's eyes off our own sins, and to solve our own conscience by reminding ourselves that the Jews received him not. But I warn you against any kind of such self-deception as that. Who more than you who listened to me should receive him? You have two thousand years of tradition behind you that the Jew didn't have. You have revelation that the Jew didn't have. You have the Old Testament, you have the Old Testament and the New. You have information the old Jew didn't have. You have light the old Jew didn't have. You have opportunities the old Jew didn't have, and you have an urgency by the presence of the Holy Ghost the old Jew didn't have. I do not think for one minute that we ought to spend our time belaboring the Jew, comforting our own carnal hearts by saying he came to his own world and the Jews did not receive him. And we would only be building the sepulchres of our fathers, as Jesus said, and we would be as bad as they that slew the prophets. We had better look to our own hearts. Why do not we receive him? The answer is, it might mean financial loss to some people if they receive Jesus. There are people in business in Chicago that's lucrative business, and if they ever receive Jesus, they are going to have to get out of that business. You say, I don't think so. I think they can just glorify God where they are. Well, I admit that there is a lot of that going on now. No matter what you're doing, you just say, I'm a Christian now, and then you begin to testify where you are. I have suggested that if things keep on going from bad to worse in evangelical circles, the time will come pretty soon when we'll put John 3 at the bottom of a beer mug so that when a fellow drains it and looks at the bottom, he'll see salvation shining out at him. Halfway houses will have texts that the girls give out with their favors. Pretty soon, if we don't stop somewhere, if somebody doesn't get a hold of us, that's what we're going to do. Brother, there are some things you can't do and be a Christian, and you might as well settle that now. The Jews knew it, and so they rejected Jesus. They wanted to do what they wanted to do. And they rejected Jesus because they knew they couldn't do it if they received him. And there are people with all this revelation and all this light and information, and yet they will not tonight receive him whom the very angels and stars and rivers received, because they know they've got to give up something. It will mean financial loss. It will mean a change in your way of living. And some of you people aren't going to change your way of living. You're going to go underground. I'm sure that's all my preaching does to some people. It just drives them underground. I shell the woods occasionally, you know, for somebody that's bigger gun than mine yet, or even hell or somebody, I shell the woods. You all put your ears back and go underground, but you don't change your ways any, and God knows you don't change your ways. They outlawed the Communist Party, and now they say they've driven them underground. But a Communist underground, that is provided that you don't mean actually lying under there in a coffin, is more dangerous than a Communist up on top of the ground. And it's just as bad to be underground sinner as it is to be an overt sinner. You won't change your ways, I know it. And there must be a thorough inward housecleaning before you'll come. I'll tell you one thing about that manger, brother, that's clean. Be sure of that. Little Mary didn't go and have her baby in a dirty manger. Be sure that one little thing, now, was simple, it was plain, it was crude, but it was clean. They put fresh straw down for that, do you think? Don't you think they did? Joseph never would let her lie there, and her little baby lie there in a dirty crib. That was a clean place. Jesus never went any place where it wasn't clean. He won't inhabit any place that isn't clean, be sure of that. Some people would rather have the dirt than they would to have the Son of God. They'd rather have the darkness than come to the light. That's why they don't receive him. They've got the Old Testament, they've got the New Testament, they've got the hymn book, they've got churches, they've got radio preachers, they've got evangelists. They have opportunities, they have light, they have information, but they won't receive him. Because of the dew, they're going to have to clean up. Some people won't clean up, just won't do it. They don't want their houses to be cleaned. A woman came to Dr. A. B. Simpson one time, and she said, Dr. Simpson, I'm possessed of a demon. It's a male demon. I'm possessed of a demon, and I want you to pray for me. And Dr. Simpson said, all right, sister, get down here on your knees. And when he prayed, they say sometimes when he started to pray, he felt that heaven was bending. And he began to pray, and in a commanding voice, he began to order the demon to go out of her. She grabbed his shoulder and said, don't, don't, don't, Dr. Simpson, I love him. I love him. I love him. She was in love with a demon lover. That's the only example I ever heard of that. Did you ever hear anything like that? The most terrible thing I ever heard, I suppose. But there's a lot of that going on. We're in love with sin, and it's inside of us. And if Jesus Christ comes in, he'll run it out! And we'd rather have sin than have Jesus. We'd rather have buzzards perch in our hearts than we would have the dove to come in. But remember one thing, as long as the buzzards are there, the dove will never descend. Remember that. As long as the world dirt remains in our hearts, Jesus Christ will never come in. He came unto his own, and his own people would not receive him, because they loved dirt. They loved inward dirt, moral dirt. Respectability? Sure. You wear a hard chapter in Mark's clothes, and floor-shine shoes, and drive a $2,200 car, and have a modern kitchen, modern bathroom, modern everything, and live by a push button. But inside your heart, there is a filthy pool, and Jesus Christ won't come in until you drain it off. He won't do it. He came unto his own people, and his own people received him not. And it's the same thing today. We love our demon lover. When the Lord says, All right, I'll help you, we'll get rid of this mess, we say, No, Jesus! No, no, I love that mess. I was brought up in it. I want to be respectable, and I want to be outwardly clean, and I want the sepulcher of my life to be carefully polished and painted. But I don't want to get rid of the dead men's bones. I love those dead men's bones, and I don't want to get rid of them. Some of you clean, respectable, well-groomed people who leave this church tonight, and you'll take dead men's bones out with you in the sanctuary of your soul. You wouldn't let Jesus Christ come in and cleanse the temple. You'd rather have the swine there. Ah, how satisfying to blame the Jew. But think of ourselves tonight. Let him take up his cross and follow me, and we don't want to do that. Nobody wants to be that serious. Mr. McAfee was telling me about an Australian in New Zealand, Australian, a medical doctor, who preaches against communism, lectures against communism, and he knows his subject. He said he's debated with communists, and they say to him, Mr. Schwartz, you can't understand communism until you get over into it. He said they have to have a kind of a conversion into it. And I've been saying for a long time, long before I heard that, that communism is a religion. You don't reason yourself into it, you get converted. That's why they do such extravagant, strange things. That's why they obey to the death. They've given themselves over to a religion. They've been converted to communism. It's the devil's religion, and in a great many ways it parallels Christianity, only it's on the devil's side. And they become as fanatical and zealous, they give up their home, their family, and turn on their country and their friends and their very lives. And here we have the light of the world, the very sun of God, whose bright shining will burn as a leaf the devilish religion of communism. And we can't get up enough steam or enthusiasm even to keep from looking bored when we talk about it. I wonder if we've been converted at all. You can't understand Christianity until you're in it. You can't stand back and look on and you must be converted over into it by a miracle. Then you understand Christianity, then you understand God and Christ. But until Jesus Christ is received, miracle-working, transforming power into the light, there never can be any salvation, nor any understanding of the things of God. All nature received him, the very brown cupworm that crawls across the road, stormy winds fulfilling his word. Praise him, all ye stars of light, says the Holy Ghost. Praise him, ye trees and forests and hills and mountains, says the Holy Ghost. The beasts of the field shall glorify me, says the Holy Ghost. All nature sings to meet their Lord. Little, hard, selfish, sinful man rejects. Brethren, this is more terrible than atom bombs. This is more terrible than wars to the death. More terrible than diseases. This is death. What shall we answer him? When very nature receives him, and our hard little hearts say, No, I want that money, I want that girl, I want that fame, I want that job, I want that pleasure, I want, I want, always I want, and the Son of God stands outside, his own received him not. It's the tragedy of mankind, my brethren. If some Shakespeare, some Aeschylus, some Goethe could write it, it's the vast, illimitable, boundless, fathomless tragedy of mankind, that we loved our sin more than we loved our God. And the world around us sang when he came, and will sing again when he comes in glory. And our hard little hearts say, No. This is the tragedy, I say. No Faust, no Julius Caesar ever was as stark and as terrible as this. We rejected him from our hearts because we want our own way. You will have your own way, and Jesus Christ will park on the sidewalk outside. The stars will sympathize, and the birds, and you will let him stand. Oh, Jesus, you've stood outside so many hearts so long. You've stood outside so many homes and businesses so long. How much longer? Dear people, we ought to do something about it tonight. We ought to be ashamed of ourselves, and we ought to open the doors of our hearts and let him in. I want you to forgive me. I shouldn't have preached at all tonight, this kind of poor preaching. But I'll be all right next Sunday, I'm sure. But anyway, forgetting that now, what about you? What about your soul? He came unto his own world, and it received him. But he came unto his own people, and they rejected him. How terrible. Let us pray. Oh, we can say with him this, Shame on us that we have left thee standing there. Shame on us we repent before thee. We're sorry for ourselves, for our friends. Sorry, Lord, for our neighbors, our fellow Americans. Sorry, oh Lord. We grieve and repent before thee. Millions attend ballgames, and millions attend prize fights, and millions attend shows, and they count their wealth in millions and multiplied millions, and they buy what they will, where they will, because men spend their dollars, thy dollars, freely for lusts and pleasures and entertainments and possessions. Oh, Lord Jesus, the poor little unpainted churches, the poor half-paid preachers, the poor groany old organs and badly-tuned pianos and cheaply-constructed buildings all tell the same thing that not very many have received. We're ashamed tonight, Lord. We're ashamed, Lord Jesus. The crowds are not in church tonight, they're in theaters, skating rinks, dance halls, body houses, gambling dens, but they're not in churches. Thank thee for every one that is, but there are not many. Oh, we're ashamed, Lord. We're ashamed for our friends, ashamed, Lord, that they have rejected thee so successfully, so long. They are guests in thy house, boarders sitting at thy table, breathing thy air, drinking thy water, sleeping on thy sweet earth, eating thy fruits, but they have rejected thee. Oh, Lord Jesus, we're ashamed, and we repent, and we're sorry. Forgive, O Lord, we pray thee. Forgive us. Forgive, O Lord, the half-saved Christians. Forgive the lazy, half-backslidden Christians. Hot, spiritual preaching only drives them underground. They sneak underground and go do it anyway. Keep it from the pastor and keep it from the teachers, but do it anyway. O God, how ashamed we are of all this. Holy Ghost, we have grieved thee until thou dost tremble in the corner. We have given thee no place. We are sorry. O thou dove, thou dost flutter over us, can't find a place for the sole of your foot. We are ashamed. O, make this church a clean place for the sole of thy foot to light upon, blessed dove of God. Come, flutter down upon us with thy light and strength and power and grace and healing and joy and loveliness. Come and flutter down on us. Forgive, we pray thee, the pigsties of our hearts. May we cleanse them and dump them out and fix up the temple and say, Come in, Lord Jesus. O Shekinah of God, we pray thee, come to the temples of our hearts. Help these friends tonight, for Jesus' sake. Before we go on, close prayer, please, friends. Who wants to be remembered if the Holy Spirit has spoken to you? You want to be remembered? Would you, by the old-fashioned way of raising the hand, say, pray for me? Who would say, pray for me? You want us to remember you. If you'd come clear out and be what you should be. Before we close our prayer, we want to remember any who want prayer. The only way I know is to have you indicated in some manner. Raising the hand seems to be the most convenient. All it is is a request for prayer. You'd like us to remember you. All right. God bless you. We'll remember you. Who else would say, pray for me? Yes, sir. I see your hand. Who else say, pray for me? At least two, and I think three have requested prayer. Who else? Yes, I see you too. There's four and five. We're going to pray for you in a moment. Oh, Lord, we pray for these five persons who have raised their hands and asked us to remember them. Oh, Lord Jesus, the world is so full of temptations, and the magnetism of the world is all but impossible to resist. But these people want to do it. They want to turn from everything that grieves the Lord and follow him. They want to be thine completely, fully. We pray for them. I said, pray one for another. We lift our hearts in prayer now and ask, oh Lord, that you will help these five persons to put away their resistance, throw down all opposition, and meekly surrender now their hearts to thee. For thee to come in, take over, set up thy throne, and reign from within, king of their lives by thy grace. Grant this, we pray thee, Lord Jesus, even right now, for thy name's sake.