In this sermon, the preacher discusses the fall of man and its consequences. He emphasizes that when Adam and Eve sinned, they lost their privilege to live on earth permanently and were only given a brief time here. The preacher also mentions a vision of a new heaven and earth where there will be no more pain or suffering. He encourages believers to find comfort in the promise of Christ's return and not to fear death, as it is a transition to eternal life.

In my father's house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. I won't speak to you about the father's house in the many mansions. But when God put my head on my shoulders, he made it necessary for me always to know what this means and why. So, I must go back of the verse and lead up to it. And let me begin by making this rather plain statement, that man is made for the earth. According to the tenor of Bible revelation, God created all things to display his glory. I do not think you will find a single verse in the entire Bible that would contradict that simple statement. The first is that God made all things to display his glory, and the second or third word there is that God selected man as the extreme instrument through which he might display his glory. Looking in his own image and likeness, which cannot be said and never has been said about any other teacher. Then for reasons known to God alone, I have such a hard time keeping what little bit I do know inside my head. I am so glad there's so much that I don't need to know, and that I'm not even going to try to discover it until I get better equipment than I now have, better techniques to work on. For reasons known only to God, God chose the earth as man's sphere of activity. He chose the earth as the sphere of activity for this creature made supremely to show forth the glory of the creator. He made that man and mankind and us of the dust of the ground, and adapted our nature to earth's conditions. Did you ever stop to thank God that you were adapted to the environment around about you? You could not live on the moon, you could not live on any of the heavenly bodies. As far as we know, none of them would allow human life to exist. You certainly couldn't live in the sun, but you can live on the earth. God adapted our nature so that we can live here, as he adapted the fish to the water and the birds to the air. And he made the earth to be our mother, and our home, and our garden, and our workshop, and our bed. But, you know, the earth God made and gave to mankind was not the earth that you and I know now. Geographically, it was the same body, but it was another kind of the earth because it was the medium of perfect love where God walked with man in peace and beauty. And in the beauty of God's living presence, then heaven and earth bore a glory to him when God created the heaven and the earth, and a down-turning of God upon the earth made the very fields, and meadows, and arbors, and grassy places glorious and heavenly. And then came the fall. Never let the martyrs go out of the fall. Never let anybody cling for himself such learning, as shall challenge your right to believe that man has a fallen faith. For that is exactly what he is. Then came the great moral shock we call the fall. A shock that was felt in the heart of God, and in all of us circumference, and in the whole nature of man, body and soul and mind and spirit. And this fall that we know as the fall was of such magnitude as was never known before in all that creation of God. It was a greater magnitude, greater depth, and greater comfort than that other fall which we know in the Bible as the fall of the angels. When those strange creatures kept off their first escape, but left their proper habitation, and tore it well down into everlasting darkness, for which the judgment of the great day. And at that fall of man, he lost his franchise on the earth, and he can stay here only for a brief time. "'Brief life is here, thy portion,' wrote the old Bernard of Smyrna. Brief life is here, thy portion, and it was not supposed to be so in the beginning. For God adapted man to the earth, and the earth to man, and said, "'If you multiply and replenish the earth with the good, it shall be thine, and thou shalt eat of every tree in the garden, and the earth of the field shall be thine for food.' And then man came and lost his franchise, I say, and God said, "'You know, even now, we've saved a little while, and that little while that he's staying here, he suffers the loss of eating with his paradise of peace and love. And the earth itself suffers pollution, and then enters sickness, and disease, and soil, and sorrow, and mortality, and death itself. Someone, if you're looking closely, might challenge me and say, "'Why do you say mortality and death, because the two are not the same?' Mortality is the sentence to death, and death is the carrying out of the sentence of mortality. They are not the same. Death is the finale, the final. But mortality means the subject who is sentenced to death. When God sentenced the great political prisoner to death, he had him stand in front of him, and he said, "'Do you want anything to say before I pronounce sentence?' He said, "'No.' He said, "'I therefore pronounce that on a certain day you shall be hanged by the next until death. I sentence you to die.' And then the prisoner spoke, and he said, "'Your Honor, nature has sentenced you to die.' He turned around indignantly and walked away." Now, the earth has become to us the symbol of death and mortality, and loss of eating with all its joys, and the paradise of peace, and the presence of God, and health, and safety, and assurance, and rest, and has become a symbol of all the opposites of these things, so that the earth has not a good reputation with Christians. It never has, but it has. From the day that God said, "'Thou shalt rise,' meant that, "'Thou shalt descend,' down to this very hour, the more spiritual we become, the less we have to do with the earth. The earth, with its darkness, and light, and shadows, and twilight, with its promises and disappointments, with its lies, and deception, and pain, and cries in the night, and sorrows, and dreams, is a symbol of everything that is unlike God. But God did not forget it. We have been made in his image. The moment we saw that, we had been made in his image. Angels which had not their first estate had no redeemer. They were not made in his image. They were simply made. Those strange, weird creatures we call humans were not made in his image. They had no redeemer. Lucifer, the son of the morning, who said, "'I will be like God,' and fell, has no redeemer." He was not made in God's image. But God had made in his image that creature he calls man. And so, when that creature fell, God said, "'I will go down now.' And so, God came down in the form of a man, and there is the incarnation. And he came down to this same earth, to this sad isle under the man's feet, and assumed our loss, and took upon him our demerit. I like the king of joy, O Christ, I like the everlasting son of the Father. And when thou tookest upon me to deliver man, I'll disopen the kingdom of heaven to all the leaders, through the sharpness of death. And so, he redeemed us." There you'll have the answer to the doctrine of the church. This is what the church believes. This is what the Bible teaches. What is the present work of Christ saying? The present work of Christ proposed is to be an advocate of love, a savior of his own love, and to prepare a place for his people in the house of his Father and our Father. Now, sin necessitates the separation of body and soul. You'll see, I said at the beginning, that man is made for the earth, and that is right. If you will think a little bit about it, you will find that it is man's body that is made for the earth. It was his body that was taken out of the dust of the ground, but it was God who blew soul into his nostrils, and he became Lord of his soul. It was the unity of God, not in the body of the man, but in the spirit of the man, that made a man. The body is simply the vehicle, the organ through which the soul manifests itself down here. That's all. It is the vehicle, that instrument which the soul of man uses to express itself. Just as my right hand, if I were a musician, might be the vehicle through which the music in my soul might express itself, so God has given man a body. I have said that a hundred times in this portrait, in various contexts. Never underestimate yourself, and don't think it is humility to cry down your body. God has given us millions of new, delicate, and tactile, and adaptable, and beautiful instruments. And if there were no sin, there would never even be the remotest shadow of a thought about the beauty and usefulness and dignity of the human body. The body, in itself, is simply a service. It has no power in itself. There is no will in the human body. There is no affection in the human body. There is no thought in the human body. The thought lies in the human soul, in the human heart, in the human mind, in the human spirit. But the body is the instrument through which that thought shines and expresses itself. Let us give you some scripture now on this. Listen to this. Let not sin, therefore, reign in your mortal body, but he shall be buried in the lust thereof. Neither yield to your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin. Yield yourselves unto God as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God. You see, it uses the very word I use, instruments. Oh, I didn't think of this when I used the word. For God so thinks, he says in verse 17, I see well that since you are the servants of sin, ye have since, O David, from the heart that form of doctrine, which God delivered you, in doing a certain thing before your servants of righteousness. I speak after the manner of men because of concern for your flesh. For he hath used your members, servants, to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity. Even so, now yield yourselves unto the members, servants, to righteousness unto holiness. So, you see, the human body has been an instrument. There are those who do not believe that Christ could become incarnate because the body was evil. God would not come in contact with evil. The false premise there is that the body was evil. There is no evil in the earth's matter. There is nothing evil in matter itself. Evil lies in the spirit. Evil is the mind, is the heart, is the spirit, is the soul. They're the only evils there are. The only reason the human body does evil is because the human spirit uses it to do evil. God is the help of sin. If your spirit doesn't do anything, your body won't do anything. But the spirit can act if I can bother. You see, I'm getting around the light of the many mansions, and the Father's house, and heaven, and the New Jerusalem, and the City Four Square, and all that. What's the philosophy factor of it all? What leads up to it? Why? You simply accept it dumbly as a dogma and say, Yes, I believe that. The Bible says it, and I believe it. Surely you believe it. You're not a Christian. You're just a parrot. And there isn't a parrot anywhere in the pet shop in Chicago that could be procrastinating on 316. Or close to the Apostles' trees after a while, and getting upseas. He'd say it in his own way. And if all we are going to do is to have somebody keep coming to us without knowing why it's like that, then we're simply Christian parrots. But if we think it through and ask God Almighty to help us, we'll know why things are like this. And so, the body can't act upon the spirit, but the spirit can act upon the body. Now, you want to know the one-notion scripture on that? I know it too well, but I'm going to tell you something. First thing, it's a three-way thing in all, isn't it? It says that Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring them to God. Whom took the death in the flesh, but christened in the spirit? I wish also whom went in Christ and was christened in Christ. Christian times were disobedient when once the long-suffering of God reigned in the days of Noah. Now, that tells us very plainly that Christ Jesus was off doing something specific and intelligent and courageous while his body lay in Joseph's new tomb. The body couldn't move. It could do nothing apart from its spirit. But while the body lay in earth in the tomb of Joseph, getting stiff and cold, his spirit was off the body of Jesus, preaching in the depths of hell to the spirit-incursions which before time were disobedient in the days of Noah. Now, if that isn't enough, and you say, Well, I'll give you that in the sixth chapter of Revelation. Listen to this, verse 9 and on. When he had opened the sixth tomb, I saw unto the author the souls of them that were slain for the word of God and for the testimony which they held. And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, that thou not judging of any of our blood on them that dwell on the earth? And they both were driven under every one of them. And it was said unto them that they should not, they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellow servants also and their brethren that should be proved as they were should be fulfilled. Ah, notice here. Here were some souls, and they were set up safely under the altar of God, and they had been slain. That is, not the souls that had been slain. They were the souls of them that had been slain, as they were. The souls of them that were slain. What must claim the body? Jesus said, fear not them that can kill the body. Rather, fear him that can cast both body and soul into hell. So, here we have these souls. Now, what were they doing? We find that they had intelligence. We find they had memory. We find they prayed. We find that they had a sense of justice. We find they know that God is holy and true. They know that men dwell on the earth, and they know that God is a judge who has ended himself. And they had shed their blood. Now, all that was true. These souls whose bodies had been slain. So it's perfectly possible for your spirit to act without your body, but it's not possible for your body to act without your spirit. So, you think that your body now can be good. And could that be, when the Lord releases you from the conscience of your body, and then you're finished and tore away? Why can't it move your body along? Because God has said, Uncle, thou shalt return. Sin has done this thing. It has been that has separated us from our spirit, made it necessary. Somebody says, Then why have the heavens at all? And that's what I'm moving up to. Why have the heavens at all? There are those who teach that there is no such thing as a heaven. That earth is to be man's heaven. Earth is to be man's ultimate residence. It is to receive immortality, and then earth is to be his sphere of operation. And you think that that is in soil. It's thought otherwise all through the Bible. Why then, if man was made for the earth, and belongs to the earth, and is at home on the earth, and breathes earth's air, drinks earth's water, eats earth's food, walks upright along the earth, and adapts himself to a changing climate, why then is a heaven necessary? Why is there any heaven above? Why any place beyond the sky? It's God he sings of. Well, the answer is this, that God made us in his image, but did not make our bodies so, but made our spirits so. And when we sin, body and soul and spirit and mind, and fell in that indescribable calamity that was after the fall, God sent his Son to redeem us. And I'd like to correct any of your thinking, if you have been thinking wrong about this. I'd like to correct your thinking on the idea that Jesus died to reclaim us, or that he died to restore us. Well, he died to do both of those things, but he died to do infinitely more than either or both of those things. For you see, my brethren, Jesus Christ did not come down as Adam's other half, or as Adam's friend or advocate, to restore man back to the image of Adam. That would have been a restoration. That would have been a reclamation. That would have been undoing the work of the fall. He came to do infinitely more than that. He came to raise us not to the image of Adam, but to the image of Christ. The first man, Adam, was a living soul. The second, Adam, was a life-giving spirit. And the first man, Adam, was nailed over earth, so that the second man is the Lord from heaven. And redemption, then, is not to pay back dollar for dollar and straighten man out, and restore him into Adamic roots. The purpose and work of the lack of being redempted in Christ Jesus is to raise man as much above the level of Adam as Christ is above the level of Adam. You and I are not gauging upon Adam and being transformed into his image. We're gauging upon Christ, and by the Spirit, we're being transformed into his image by the Spirit of the Lord. So, earth was, we might say, good enough for that being who was created out of clay. But it's not good enough for him who is redeemed by royal blood. Earth was fit and proper to be the eternal dwelling place for that creature who was made by God's hands. But it's not appropriate nor sufficient to be the eternal dwelling place for that being who was begotten to the Holy Ghost. Every Christian, every true Christian, is begotten, born again in the seed of the Word, born up off of the fallen Adamic plane onto the unfallen Christ plane. He belongs up there. But in sin, in the meantime, separates body and soul. And now our redeemer is about to leave the earth. He has come and done his work, God's redeeming, man-redeeming work. And he's about to go. And he calls in my father's house. There are many mansions. And I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself. And where I am, there ye may be also. Jesus Christ claimed that he never left the bosom of the Father. He said, The Son of Man which is in the bosom of the Father. Yes, he claimed. While Jesus was on earth as a man walking among men, by the mystery of the ever-present God, the indivisible substance of the Deity, he could remain in the bosom of the Father. Indeed. So you and I are to be elevated and promoted. Wouldn't you like this? Wouldn't you? Wouldn't you wish you might have seen Adam? Wouldn't you wish you could have seen Adam and me? You'd never want to look at anybody else again. That's perfect prayer. God smiled and molded his way, and knelt down to the bank of the river. Like a man extending over in her gaze, that great God that had set the sun in the sky and tangled the heavens with the sun in the sky, that great God made a man, and blew into him the breath of life, and he became a living soul. And that was man. And then raised him in redemption infinitely beyond that life. And now he says, I have gone to prepare a place for you. That bottle that he gave him, it disintegrates and drops away like a cocoon. And the spirit of the man pours away to the breast of God. I've said a hundred times that a Christian oughtn't to make so much of death. The fact that we Christians are so everlastingly neurotic about dying indicates that we're not very certain spiritually. If we were, well, we should be spiritually on the alert, expecting as a child lying in bed all its dark wings of the morning light, Christmas morning. And if you and I were to play spiritually where heaven was so close we could hear its warmth and see its light, we wouldn't go so frantic if we got something wrong with it. Can you imagine a man who is going to leave Alaska and be given a glorious estate of 500 acres and forests? Can you imagine him running white-faced to his wife and saying, honey, I'm afraid the time draws nigh. When I shall leave this tight-locked financial estate, it is, yes it is, to haunt the land up there and go to Florida. He says, boy, some signs and indications I think we're about ready to move. And if the Christians were where they should be, I'm quite sure there wouldn't be such frantic running for somebody to pray for me. I had to questionize it. Pray for me. I'm afraid I'm a Christian who has to go to heaven. It was that sharp-brained, vitriolic tongue holding his parents down. And so the Christians didn't believe in heaven as they said they wouldn't hesitate so long to go there. In my father's house for many nights, I go to prepare a place for you, the spirit of just men made perfect. A gathering place, a home of God's elect. Let your mother Dutch know that she's going to have before too many weeks a nest full of ducklings to pull them down on their own white breast and line the nest with sound. You might not know this, but a farmer knows this. When a mother rabbit knows that there are some little, sightless rabbits coming into the world, you get your eyes open in ten days, some probably, but you get your eyes open. But when the mother rabbit knows that these little ones are coming, she tears the fur from the under part of their body and lines the little depression in the earth. And when the little ones are born, sightless and all but pale, they're laid in the loveliest and most beautifully lined little jewel box where the song of death. When the human mother knows that there will be before long coming into her house and home a little one. I've known a great many mothers in my time, but I've never known one yet, never known one yet. I've walked up with it, brought it to the event, to shout and shout. And we're laying it in a pool, baby blankets, in boots, in rags, in water bottles, in all sorts of things. We prepare for those we love. In my father's house are many men, and I go to prepare faith for you. And he's preparing faith for those who shall be born up out of the agony and stress of this world into the love of the everlasting kingdom into that world above. And what do you suppose he's up there for? He's up there to be a high priest, of course, and a sinner, I suppose. But he's up there getting ready too. And if he made a duck, he'd take her down from its breast to line the nest, for it's lovely. If he made a green rabbit, he'd hardly enough grain to go home. Young, if he put in his heart and his instinct to pull her from its breast to line its nest, for it's young if he puts in the heart of a human mother and her yearning to get ready for these little visitors. Don't you think that he is acting quite as he did with his own humanity when he prepares a place for his people. Therefore, no Christian ever ought to be afraid to die. You don't have to be. It's my father's house. You know that he said, my father's house. And if it's his father's house, it's our father's house, because he is our elder brother. And he said that he saw in the book of Hebrews 2, that he is the eldest among many brethren. It tells us that in Romans and Hebrews. He is the firstborn among many brethren. And he says, I go to my father and your father. Didn't he say that? My God and your God. And if the father's house is the house of his son Jesus, it's the house of all of his other sons-in-law. We Christians are better off than you know. And therefore, if you have to, or you stagger along another year with that 54 model, you know, I wouldn't feel so bad about it, boy. You have a mansion if you're a true Christian. And sister, if you have to wear that dress the third time, I wouldn't let it get me down. I'd wear it. And if you can't have that house and church, ranch, house, all on one floor, you have to have roller skates to get from one side to the other. If you can't afford it, don't let it trick you. My father's house are many mansions. Why am I saying he passed anything to show them out? But we should be so foolish as to get our affections set on things which are on earth. For, guess what? We're only here for a little while. Oh, I'm looking for heavenly-minded Christians, and they're hard to find as white deers. Hard to find as holy souls. We've got a two-compartment heart. We believe in Jesus Christ and yet eternal life is one of these compartments. But there's another compartment worth as worldly as you. May God deliver you. And help us to deliver so that we'll not be afraid of death. We'll not be afraid of tomorrow, nor afraid of the future. We will not. And we do allow ourselves, on time when the TV sets up, to be burned out. It's Saturday night, we can't get service till Monday morning. And we're forced to the bitter necessity of spending a little while without it. Sleep a little bit. Couldn't get along without schoolbooks that long. I think. I don't know who he is, but I could be shot in the dark. I've heard this. That's a problem. Couldn't get along without him. Can't get along without the TV. Dear dear dear God, what am I scared about? My father's house. And my own brother. He's been up there fixing it up for me. And he said that if that wasn't the case, he surely would have told me. But he didn't tell me that he wouldn't. He didn't tell me that he would. Therefore I believe he's fixing up a mansion. He will fix me up a mansion which forevermore shall stand. For my stay shall not be strengthened in that happy holy land. Now there's much more. And I think I probably owe you much more. Let me give you three more minutes. Then I'm going to close. But I want to read to you a man called Visions. He said, I saw a new heaven and a new earth. For the first heaven and the first earth were passed away and there was no more sea. And I saw a new Jerusalem coming down from God out of heaven. They said it was a bride to join her husband. Isn't that too bad? And he relegated it to the funeral. And they never dared talk about it unless there was a corpse in the presence of the bereaved. Oh brother, the man who wrote this wasn't on his way to the funeral. He was on his way to the new Jerusalem. And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, God is a man. You will dwell with him and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and he shall be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and they shall be no more debt, no more sorrow, no more crying, and there shall be no more pain, for the former things are passed away. And he saw the great and beautiful city having the glory of God, and her life was like unto a stone, and most precious, even like a chalice, clear as crystal. And he describes it, and then says, And I saw not all the temple therein, for the Lord God Almighty hath little lamb of the temple of it. And he said, And he who needed the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in. For the glory of God did lighten it, and the lamb is the light thereof. Oh brother, I'm not so sure about the old camp-making song that glory in the fact that we'd be worse sun and moon were not needed. I'm not sure about the ever closer to the truth than this fit and dignified modern theology that will allow you to get happy about your future home. If we compelled everyone to fall in line with our modern use of things, we'd never let a bride look forward with anticipation to her coming marriage. We'd never let a soldier look forward to his parole home. And if they did look forward, don't they have to keep their mouths up and act dignified? Why don't we let ourselves go? When the Church of Jesus Christ stopped being happy, she stopped being powerful. When she stopped being enthusiastic, she stopped being effective. When you get happy about something, it doesn't make any responding difference. Somebody will come around and want to know how you got that way. And if anybody, any people in all the white world have something to be happy over, it's Christ. Redeemed by the blood of the Lamb, yesterday behind them, still under the blood forever and forever and a day. Remembered no more or forever. God the Father, Christ the Brother, the Holy Ghost, the Advocate and Comforter. And our brother gone to his father's house and our father's house to prepare a place for us. Leaving behind him the promise that he would come again. Don't send Moses, Lord. Don't send Moses. Don't pray to Moses, Lord. He'll break stone. Don't send Moses. Don't send Elijah home, dear Lord. I'm afraid of Elijah. He falls down every minute. Don't send Paul. Paul's so learned, he makes me feel like a little boy when I read his epistles. Don't send him. I'm afraid of Paul. Oh, Lord Jesus, come yourself. Come yourself. We're not afraid of you. You took little children, put lambs to your fold, and we're not afraid of you. You gave the woman pig and the donkey, we're not afraid of you. Come, Lord Jesus, come to you. Ah, the people of God ought to be the happiest people in all the wide world. In this whole sermon tonight, I've got along on two little undersized and unique amens from the congregation. That's right. That's been your contribution to my sermon tonight, brother. One man said amen twice and didn't say it very loud. Oh, my father's house, your father's house, and this father's house, waiting there, shining in splendor, above all diamonds, above all rubies, above all royal gems, waiting for his people to come. Are you ready? Do you know now what the blood-washed Egypt means? Whatever the past has been, are you ready now? Whatever yesterday was, what is today? Whatever you've done, and what you've accepted and believed and practiced, are you now ready? Let's pray. My father's house are many names. If it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. We speak to you about the father's house, in the many names. But when God put my head on my shoulders, he made it necessary for me always to know what this means and why. So, I must go back of the verse and lead up to it. And let me begin by making this rather tame statement. That man is made for the earth. According to the tenor of Bible revelation, God created all things to display his glory. I do not think that you will find a single verse in the entire Bible that would contradict that simple statement. That God made all things to display his glory. And the second proof revealed there is that God selected man as the extreme instrument through which he might display those glories. Making him his own image and likeness, which cannot be said and never has been said about any other creature. Nameful reasons known to God alone. I have such a hard time keeping what it is that I don't know inside my head. I am so glad there's so much that I don't need to know. And that I'm not even going to try to discuss until I get better equipment than I now have, better techniques to work on. For reasons known only to God. God chose the earth as man's sphere of activity. He chose the earth as the sphere of activity for this creature made supremely to show forth the glory of the creator. He made that man and mankind and us of the dust of the ground, and adapted our nature to earth's conditions. Would you ever stop to thank God that you were adapted to the environment around about you? You could not live on the moon. You could not live on any of the heavenly bodies. As far as we know, none of them would allow human life to exist. You certainly couldn't live in the sun, but you can live on the earth. God adapted our nature so that we can live here, as he adapted the fish to the water and the birds to the air. And he made the earth to be our mother, and our home, and our garden, and our workshop, and our bed. But you know, the earth God made and gave to mankind was not the earth that you and I know now. Geographically, it was the same body, but it was another kind of earth because it was the medium of perfect love where God walked with men in peace and beauty. And in the beauty of God's living presence, then heavenly full glory shone when God created the heaven and the earth, and the down-climbing of God upon the earth made the very fields and meadows and arbors and factory places glorious and heavenly. And then came the fall. Never let the marginal you out of the fall. Never let anybody cling for himself such learning. As shall challenge your right to believe that man has a fall in peace. For that is exactly what he is. Then came the great moral shock we call the fall, a shock that was felt in the heart of God and in all of us circumference, and in the whole nature of man, body and soul and mind and spirit. And this fall that we, this disaster that we know as the fall was of such magnitude as was never known before in all the vast creation of God. It was a great...