In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the power and significance of the gospel. He describes it as a dynamic and revolutionary message that should captivate the attention of its listeners. The preacher also highlights the importance of being raised in a holy atmosphere and having a foundation of righteousness. He shares a story of a young boy who willingly sacrificed himself for the sake of others. The sermon concludes with a discussion on the concept of rest and the promise of entering into God's rest through belief in Jesus.

God has nothing to add. And he says, if anybody adds to the book, he'll add the plagues, and if anybody takes away, they're going to be in a serious situation. And I say again, it's to me an awesome thing that if the world does last another 2,000 years, which I'm quite sure it won't, not in the present setup, God has nothing more to say to mankind. He's said it all. What more can he say than to you he has said? And I remember walking into Dr. Till's office, and it was, I think, maybe the most unique privilege of my life, to talk to him on many occasions just the two of us alone. And I remember when I walked in this particular day, he said, Len, lock the door and let your hair down, you know, relax. And he said this very wonderful, disturbing, challenging thing. And he said, you know, Len, not many of us are going to look God straight in the face at the judgment seat. Most of us will hang our heads. And he said, I'm not too troubled about the things that I've done, that I have to answer for. It's the things I could have done that trouble me, if I'd been more alive in God. You know, it's true of all of us, and Christians anywhere, that you are just as spiritual as you want to be. The truffle's in your own hand. You can talk all you like about being sanctified in our baptisms of the Holy Ghost, and all very wonderful. But the Holy Ghost won't drag you out to bed at four o'clock in the morning and make you pray. Even if you're getting overweight, he won't push you from the table and make you fast. The truffle's in your hand. You're as spiritual as you want to be. It's equally awesome to me to realize that no man that ever lived, ever had a greater Bible than I have. You can think of Finney, brilliant lawyer, preacher, Spurgeon. Isn't it amazing that Spurgeon was saved at 15. He never went to Bible school, and by the time he was 19, they had to build an auditorium that seated 5,000, and they filled it twice every Sunday. At 19 years of age, without any Bible school training. Some ladies in the church I'd passed had asked me to go see their mother. She was a beautiful character. She looked like Whistler's mother. She sat in a high carved chair, and she had a little lace thing on top of her head, and a lace collar, and a footstool. She was the very essence of dignity. When I went in, I just bowed and said, well I'm very privileged to see you. She was 95 years of age, and she said, you know my daughter's come home on a Sunday night, so excited, and they tried to re-preach your sermon. You preached a long while, about all she knew, but anyhow, I said that's right. And she said, you know, you remind me so much of Spurgeon. You must preach like Spurgeon. I said, now look lady, thank you for the compliment, but I'm sure Spurgeon was a million miles ahead of myself. And then I said, did you ever hear Spurgeon? Oh, many times, many times, she said. He used to go to London to buy things in the spring. We went on Thursday, bought on Friday, toured the city on Saturday, and went to Spurgeon's cab night on Sunday. He was amazing. He said he would come in and say something, and people would be smiling, and maybe bring tears to your eyes, and you'd rub the tears away, and the next thing is still the voice was way up there in eternity, lifting the congregation into the presence of God. I think one of the things that does disturb me in America is that there's very little pulpit praying. Spurgeon will let anybody pray in his meeting. He didn't say deacon, so-and-so, Johnny Brown. He said it was more important to prepare what you're going to pray about than he's what you're going to preach. So very often the prayer's the same. Bow your head, thank Lord, Lord we thank you we're here this morning, bless the choir of 18, and the offering, and help us with the building front, and thank you for all the blessings, and that's it. You've got three problems with a congregation. One is to get them there physically. The second is to get them there mentally. The third is to get them into the presence of God. We're so attached to springs, and all other things from the dirty world that we've been in for a week, that it's difficult. You usually don't get people there till about five to twelve, then they're looking at the watches, and want to get home to watch the rams play the goats in the afternoon. Hebrews 11, as we said yesterday, is an awesome chapter, and the thing that really fakes me about it is that while they subdued kingdoms, and wrought righteousness, and obtained promises, and stopped the mouths of lions, and did all the fancy fantastic things they did by faith, not one of them ever had a bible. I say again, the only only proof you have that you're in deadline with the new testament, if you say we're in the apostolic success, and there's only one way to prove it, that is have apostolic success, and then it's irrefutable. Hebrews 11, 24 times in that chapter faith is mentioned. It's mentioned 32 times in the epistle. It's mentioned over 300, maybe about 330 times in the new testament. Only twice in the whole of the old testament. Because again they didn't sign articles of faith like we do to join a church, they acted in faith. I looked for a book for about 30 years, I got it fairly recently, called the possibilities of grace. Written I think by a Nazarene priestess. Well isn't this what it's all about? We were in the church not too long ago, and the pastor said to me, you see that fine looking man over there, with a balding head, and nice shoes on? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's worth three quarters of a billion dollars. See the man on the left? President of the National Bank. See the man over there? One of the biggest branches in the district. What's that got to do with spirituality? You'd almost imagine that because tapuna somebody gets the baptism, they give God confessions. God isn't looking for confessions. Sometimes I wish I could shout from the housetop, God is not looking for sponsors. Maybe a TV manager. All God is looking for is men who are totally abandoned to his will. And for those of us to move up in simple faith, to really, really exercising this remarkable thing called faith. Which again as I said yesterday, has been so abused. Faith can do anything, that's nonsense it can't. It can only do what God wants. If faith can do anything, why don't you get a group of preachers together, let them fast a week, and believe God, and for the devil to get saved. That'd clear a lot of mess up, wouldn't it? Nobody has faith to believe that. Why don't we pray, the Lord would raise up, raise up Sturgeon, and a few of the great saints. He doesn't do it that way. You can have all the faith in the world, and pray, and have hands laid on you, and do anything else you like. And if you're 70 years of age, you won't wake up 25 years of age tomorrow morning. There are certain things that faith can do, there are certain things that faith cannot do. Now we said yesterday again, that the epistle to the Hebrews is really an exposition of the wilderness journey of the children of Israel, and the book of Psalms. The marvelous dealing of God, dealings of God with Israel. I think if I can use this language, you understand one of the heartbreaks of God must be the slowness by which we mature spiritually. I'm not talking about a lot of head knowledge. I'm not talking whether you know Greek, or Hebrew, or you can explain, and give me the structure of the epistles of Romans, or something else. I'm talking about our personal relationship, our personal development in spirituality. Remember in the Ezekiel is the prophet of degrees. Everything's done a little at a time you know. And as I said the other day, I do believe in instant purity, because there are no degrees of purity. I think it's pure or impure. There are no degrees of purity. I believe in instant purity. I do not believe in instant maturity. Listen, there isn't a man on God's earth at night now, and I don't care whose name you name, there isn't a man that's yet arrived spiritually. There's still more land ahead for all of us to possess. I don't care what miracles you've seen, I don't care what faith you've operated, there's still so much territory. As we said yesterday, the children of Israel could have got out of, they could have got out of Egypt into the promised land in about 10 or 11 days. It took them 40 years. Why? Hebrews explains why. Because they um, they entered not in because of unbelief. Now Hebrews 11, the key word is faith. The key to me, to Hebrews totally, is Hebrews 11 6. He that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that seek him. No, of them that diligently seek him. Remember the woman that lost the piece of silver? She didn't seek for it, she sought diligently. She sought with urgency. She must recover it. And God never encourages laziness. Sometimes I think pastors are about the laziest people in the world. You see, they don't have to get up for a certain time, they don't have to bed, they can go to bed when they want. That is if they're just pastors. If they're disciples, they can't. We tell people who come to the altar, you're saved, your name's written in heaven, you're going to have a five-decker crown, you're going to have a free ticket to the marriage supper of the Lamb, and a free mansion on Main Street, and oh we've poured all the blessings. And they're not all true either. But, why don't we tell them the other side of the coin? If you've really been redeemed, if you've been bought by the Christ, if he's redeemed you from your sin, if he's come to take possession of your personality, one aspect of this thing is you're a soldier of Jesus Christ. And a soldier has no rights. You can't find me, one man in history, inside or outside of the church, who has been a success in any particular sphere, who has not been a disciplinarian. Not one. John Wesley was contemporary with some of the greatest figures in history. And one day, one evening, he took supper with Dr. Johnson, one of the most famous men in literature. They had what Wesley had a weakness for, partridge pie. And after they'd eaten, and they talked a while, Wesley got a little disturbed, and he said, well, I shall have to go. Go, go. Well, they hadn't risked much. This old doctor lifted out that great big turnip that he had, and looked. He said, why man, it's only a few minutes to nine o'clock. Fold your legs under the table. Take it easy. Let's talk. Oh, Wesley said, I have an appointment in the morning at four o'clock. Four o'clock? Who are you going to meet in the morning at four o'clock? God, he said. He's in every morning at four o'clock. If you only buy one book out there, buy a treasury of prayer. Dr. E. M. Bounds, one of the great characters in American history. One of the greatest prayer, men of prayer. His daughter used to write to me, and she said, Brother Rayfield, my daddy normally rose at four o'clock in the morning for the main part of his life. But as he got older, he rose at three o'clock. Why, some of you have just finished seeing Johnny Carson at that time, or a night show or something. Wesley rose at four o'clock. E. M. Bounds rose at four o'clock. John Fletcher rose at four o'clock. Robert Mary McShane, who is the opposite number in English history to your very marvelous, in fact, one of the most unsurpassed men in American history, who died at the ripe old age of 29, David Brainerd. He rose before sunlight. The founder of the Chandrinman mission, Dr. Hudson Taylor said, The sun never rose to find me in death. Books can be a curse as well as a blessing. They become crutches. There's a hymn that talks about certain things being earth guides, and not our chains. Sometimes we reach for a book, it stirs us, and we get an outline. We copy what somebody else says, and we take some second-hand theology and second-hand thinking to people who possibly read the book before you did, and said, he hasn't got much. This is the greatest unexplored thing, I was going to say. Shall we say, error in the whole world. After all, did God finish his production? Did he close the assembly line, if you want to put it that way? Did he finish with great men when he finished with Wesley and Finley and Booth and Spurgeon and a few other fellows? Do we have to relax and say, well of course, we're not living in those days. God doesn't do that anymore. I think there are some of the greatest men ever on in the earth today. The only thing that holds America together certainly isn't the church. It's some godly man in it. I told you the other day, I know a man in this country, he's very sick right now, maybe dying, he's 90 years of age. He hasn't been to bed one night for the last 30 years. Prayed every night from 10 o'clock at night till 5 or 6 in the morning, by himself. Takes tremendous burdens for different areas of the country, or different parts of the world. No woman in Chicago looks after a sick mother, but she prays five hours a day. No little man in Canada who's even lived in a tent through seven winters up there. In his last letter he told me, he said, they laid me out for the third time. Sent for the relatives and said, well he is dying this time. I know he fooled us twice before, but he can't survive. He gets so weak with fasting and prayer, they find him frustrated enough to lift him into bed and give him attention like a newborn child. And he carries such burden, he sweats and he grieves and he groans. Now he's pretty heavy, he weighs about 95 pounds. You see, we read about Brainerd 200 years ago. We read about these other men and think, think God somehow doesn't produce men. The great men never strut on TV. That's what placed the dwarf. The men with the greatest, most profound knowledge of God and spirituality, are men who are hidden away. And I say again, it's a slow business. Growth, through growth in grace, is really, really, really a slow business. When I first read E.M. Bounds, I read him in the few days I did go to Bible college. And when he said in his book, Power Through Prayer, it takes 20 years to make a sermon, because it takes God 20 years to make a man. I thought, well, I'm not that serious after the winter. When I get out of this place, they'll think the Virgin has risen from the dead. Nobody's ever thought it but that one old woman, and she was too old to really understand. But I'm saying that to say this, you see, we've got to explore this book. And I told you that Hebrews 12 is corrected, as God is never wrong, as you know. And we're moving into a bottleneck in history that's mentioned in Hebrews 12, where it says that everything that can be shaken will be shaken, that the kingdom that cannot be shaken may remain. God is going to shake every system in the world, like our financial system is like that right now. Economically we're struggling. Morally we're broken up. Everything is being shaken, just so that God can honor his Son and show the kingdom that cannot be shaken will remain. Now this epistle is not addressed, as you know, like the epistle to the Romans. It's addressed to whom? You say it doesn't carry a title. Oh yes, it does. As I said yesterday, this epistle has not one word to say to lost people. And listen, there isn't an epistle in the whole Bible that has. After the Acts of the Apostles, the whole balance of the New Testament is to the Church, correction to the Church, ministry to the Church. If you read the first five books of the Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy is a recap of the other four books. If you take the five books of Psalms, which there are five books in Psalms, the fifth is a recap of the other four. If you take the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and then you come to Acts, what is Acts? The book of Acts is the Church doing everything that Jesus did. And until she does that, she's not a healthy Church. The Apostle Paul did everything that Jesus did, didn't he? And the world doesn't have to believe us because we stand up here and denounce this and denounce that and denounce something else. Isn't it amazing that in his day Jesus never made any reference to the system of slavery that was crippling the world under the Roman Empire? Isn't it amazing that Paul never said, well there's a new Caesar come on the throne and he's more diabolical than the previous Caesar. They never bothered with those things like we did. They presented Jesus Christ as the answer to the problem. Tell you again, you see Paul, he was born in where? He was born in the historic capital of the world, Tartus. He ended in the military capital of the world, Rome. In between he went to the religious capital of the world, Jerusalem. He went to the immoral capital of the world, which was Corinth. He went to the intellectual capital of the world, which was Athens. And he said he was all things to all men and he was. If ever you can find it. I'm going to say, let me have it. But there's a poem written somewhere in the 1800s by F. W. H. Myers, M-Y-E-R-S. It's a poet's poem. I thought I'd found a good version just recently. It has 72 stanzas and it had the five stanzas I wanted were not in it. And all it's called is St. Paul. It's one of the most dramatic things ever written outside of the Bible. One phrase of it says this, then with a rush, the intolerable craving shivers throughout me like a trumpet call. All to save these and perish for their saving, to die for their life and be offered for them all. He talked about the world gazing at the cross with an empty wonder. Consumed with emptiness. When you think of the majesty of God, when you think of the enormity of the gospel, how in the world can we present a gospel that people can go to sleep while we preach it? It should be the most dynamic revolutionary thing. The old Crakers used to say that a man is his own atmosphere. Just as though you had a cup here of boiling water and if you take tea in it, well it will make tea. If you put coffee in it, it makes coffee. If you put beef essence, you get some hot soup kind of thing. By the same token, they said if the man is charged with God, he'll charge the atmosphere. Of course, the same people said the preacher has to give one whole day, Tuesday, when he doesn't see any faith, not even his wife. He shuts himself away to listen to God and he spends the whole day with God, getting his sermon for Sunday. Then he spends all day Saturday playing golf. No, they said he played all day Saturday. He was alone to prepare the man to deliver the prepared sermon. And then on Sunday he wasn't accessible because he came into the pulpit so charged with God. He'd been in the presence of God so much, he was so overflowing that there was such a tremendous overspend. So three days a week he wasn't accessible. As I said the other night to the preachers, if you're a preacher you have only two things to do, not bury the dead, not go visit the sick. You've two things to do if you're going to stay by the New Testament. All you have to do is give yourself continually to prayer and the word of God. Now if you push the sickness visitation on the elders and other things on the elders and go play golf, they shall fire you. But actually, if you're going to be truly a New Testament preacher, if you're going to be a true New Testament follower in that sense, Acts chapter 6 says you've only two things to do. I went to a certain church, there was a pastor, they laid down certain conditions, offered to buy me a new house, very good things, very good, very good. Now I said here are my conditions. Number one, we abolish offering. There's no right to take collections from drunkards and thieves and other people. God's people should support the house. Number two, we're going to have a half night of prayer in this church every Friday night. Number three, you elders, you're going to visit the sick. That's your job according to the New Testament, not my job. Acts 6 says I have two things to do only as a preacher, and that is give myself continually to this word of God and to prayer. You do the rest in the church, it's not my obligation. You can't find a great preacher that ever takes around drinking tea with women and running to hospitals here, there, and everywhere. In fact, a preacher told me in New York, in one of the very fine old churches there, he said I'd kill myself in this city because one hospital is 20 miles this way outside of the city and the other is 15 miles, and if I drive through I take all the afternoon, if I get the subway I have to fight my way out, and I'm killing myself chasing people. This church went down, down, down, down, until they left it, embarrassed. I'm saying again this, this book, nobody ever had a bigger Bible than you have. Maybe they used it better, and that applies to me as well. Nobody ever had a private way, a back stair up to God, there's only one way. Nobody ever had any more anointing of the Holy Spirit than you, if you really desire that anointing, whether you preach in the pulpit or sit in the pew, a teacher's understood that. As I meditated this morning, I remember a friend who said, you know, I wouldn't like to inherit a million dollars, I wouldn't know what to do with it. Now God says he not only gave Jesus Christ, but with him he has freely given us all things. What are we doing with it? Again, I tell you this again because I want to drive it like a nail in a sure place, but God has nothing more to say to humanity. He finished talking 2,000 years ago, and we haven't caught up with him yet. And if the world lasts another 2,000 years, God hasn't another word to say to us. It's all in this book. What more can he say than to you, he has said, as we sang a few minutes ago. All right, Hebrews 11, 6, you come to God and believe that he is, he is what? He's everything he said he is. One of the great things in the beginning of this book is that he says of the Son, thy throne, O God, is forever and ever. A scepter of righteousness is the scepter of thy kingdom. God will never abdicate. God can never push him, no one can push God off his throne. God doesn't change his mind. He said it, it stands, it's immutable as God is immutable. I've said sometimes, it's a facetiously, that someday somebody's going to pick up the Bible and read it and believe it, and when they do, we'll all be embarrassed. That's what happened with a lot of people in Indonesia and in other countries where they're not so sophisticated, and the truth hasn't been watered down. They read it and they bump into it and say, oh, isn't that amazing? You say, well, go back a minute, what does it say there in Hebrews 2? Well, it says, if the word spoken by angels was steadfast, well, was it the word spoken by angels steadfast? When the angel came and spoke to Abraham in the door of his tent, was that word steadfast? When the angel came and pronounced judgment on Sodom, was that word steadfast? When angels appeared to men in the Old Testament, when they appeared to the Son of God, was their word true? Well, if the word spoken by angels was steadfast, what about the word that God has given? And immediately it says, how shall we escape if we neglect all great salvation? And we go drumming a poor sinner and we thump him and say, you won't escape if you neglect salvation. He's not talking to sinners, he's talking to us. How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation? How great is it? Well, you better read the context. What does it say? The great salvation which at the first began to be preached, verse 3 of chapter 2, which first began to be spoken by the Lord, was confirmed unto their ears by them that heard him, God also bearing them witness. Now, here's your great salvation. Bearing them witness with signs and wonders and divers miracles and gifts of the Holy Ghost. You go to a church like that, that has signs and wonders and divers miracles and gifts of the Holy Ghost. I've been reading Chancery's little book, an abominable thing, Signs of the Apostle. He streaks everything Pentecostal under the rug. Get out, it's all false. He says there are no apostles these days. All right. If there are no apostles, there are no evangelists. Because he made some apostles and some prophets and some evangelists. If you've got to be consistent, be consistent, but don't fool with the Word of God. Cut it out. Just to tell the story of an old lady in England who went to a church, very fundamental, and then a young college fellow came along and he told them, you couldn't believe this. And every time she went home and she cut it out of the Bible. About five years after, she was terribly sick. Thought she was dying. And a young preacher went along and said, well, you've been such a blessing in the church. People talk so well about you. But remember the comfort of the Word. And she said, well, read it to me. And he picked it up and it was all cut out. It was about three or four pages. Oh, he said, this is fabulous. Have you been cutting pages out of this? Yes, every Sunday you said we couldn't believe this and I cut it out. Because I might get confused, you see. So I cut it out, I cut it out. What does God talk about? His Word that if, if we take anything from the book, well, what do you have to do? Cut it out? No, cease to preach it, that's all. And by the fact you will not preach it to the people, you cut it out of their thinking. Our people are no more spiritually educated than the man in the pulpit. And if he's got a bias against this and he won't preach that, he withholds it, he cuts it out. You see, we isolate things. If you say to somebody, well, we're not to be unequally yoked together. What do they think about? Oh, well, that boy's courting a girl that's unsafe. He's going to be unequally yoked. Well, that may be one application. You know, half the preachers in the country got a millstone around the neck, you know why? Because they're unequally yoked ones, spiritual deacons in the church, that's right. By the same token, if you say, choose you this day whom you will serve. Well, oh, well, that's Joshua standing before. No, sirree, every morning you get out of bed, that text should hit you right between the eyes. Choose you this day what you're going to do, because it'll never come back. You want to waste it, waste it. You preachers want to go golfing and goofing, go do it. But remember, it's going to meet you at the end of the line. Choose you this day, it's never coming back. People say, oh, well, I won't do much today, I'll do two days work tomorrow. Well, then if you do that, you lost two days today, because if you can put two days work in tomorrow, you can put two days work in today. So you don't win anyhow. But you see, life is a one-way street. And you can suddenly discover your spiritual barrenness and impotence, and you can't backtrack. There's no such thing as praying and somebody laying hands on you, making you 25 years of age again. What a great salvation we have. He that cometh to God must believe that he is. He is what? That he's able to save to the other one. He is able to make all grace abound to you. He is able to keep you from falling. You've got an outline for Sunday, you preachers now. He is. Preach on the he is of God. He is. He is. All right, let's look at the words. I don't want you all to get parking tickets. Let's look at Hebrews 11 here. Let's start at the beginning of the chapter. Let me just say this quickly again. Remember this, don't get terrified when you walk into a Hebrews 11, and stand back and say, oh look at Moses, how high he is. Oh look at Abraham, how tall he is. Oh look at this man, how vast he is. Look at the other side and say, Moses, man of faith? He was a murderer. Noah? He got drunk. David? He's an adulterer. Samson? He got messed up with some, a woman in some clothes. They're a bunch of rogues. Again, you think if I was trying to prove what faith could do, I'd quote a prostitute? But God does in Hebrews 11. He talks about Rahab the harlot. This is not to show us these supermen that God used. It's to show us that even if your life has gone to pieces, in other words, like what Jeremiah 18, I went to the house of a potter, the vessel was marred, that God can take that vessel that's marred and still make it a vessel sanctified and meet for the master's use. It's not what there is in you. If you're a young person, don't back off and say, I don't have many brains, I've not been to school. That's not the point. It's not what you have and bring to God, it's what God can bring to you if you submit yourself in his will and follow the path of obedience through his word. All the possibilities of grace are there. Now there's a pattern here in Hebrews 11. I'll tell you this honestly, it took me years to find it. There's an order. God is a God of order. He's a God of law. And the first characters mentioned here, faith is a substance, all right. Let's go to verse 4. By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous. God testifying of his gift and by it he being dead. Yes, beacons. Is God arbitrary? Why did he accept the sacrifice of one man? They both did as well as they could, but he accepted one sacrifice. One was the labor of the man's hand. God had already given a pattern because blood had already been shed. Isn't it amazing that when man got into the garden of Eden, he stopped at the tree of knowledge and he still stuck there. He hasn't moved since. He never went on to the tree of life. The first Adam, what a marvelous character he must have been. Perfect in every way. And Jesus Christ was not as, was it Faber? No, Newman I think, that said in his hymn, O loving wisdom of our God, when all was sin and shame, a second Adam to the fight. No sir, there's no second Adam. Jesus is not the second Adam, he's the last Adam. If you have a first Adam and a second Adam, you might have a third Adam. But Jesus Christ is not the second Adam, he's the last Adam. He is the author and the finisher of our faith. And because of Adam's sin, his nakedness was exposed, tried to cover himself with his pig leaves, and God shed blood. It was God that prepared the covering. It was God that took the animal skins and covered his nakedness. So then there is no covering before God except the covering of blood. If the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of an heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctified for the purifying of the flesh. And that's what it did in the Old Testament. If you touched a dead bone in the garden while you were digging, you'd immediately touch death. You had to run to the sanctuary to be cleansed. And the blood of bulls and goats, sanctified for the purifying of the flesh. But he couldn't purge the conscience from dead works to serve the living God, like the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son. You see, the blood of, when this man committed his murder, which he did there at the beginning, as you know, he threw his brother and hid his brother. And God said, your brother's blood crieth to me from the ground. Now one man brings his offering, ooh, beautiful, attractive, lovely fruit. The other man brings an offering, a lamb. We figure a lamb was slain and it was accepted. And his brother was immediately angry. People are still angry when you talk about the blood sacrifice. Still gets the liberals pretty mad. They'd call it a butcher shop religion, but there it is, the blood was shed. And then his blood was shed. And the young fellow thought he got away with it. No detectives in those days, nobody to see him and God said, thy brother's blood crieth to me from the ground. Do you think the 50,000 boys that were slaughtered in Vietnam, that while we've forgotten about them, we're too busy wondering if we'll pay three cents a gallon more for gas, do you think their blood doesn't cry to God? Do you think the martyred Huguenots or, um, what was it about, was it, I don't know, 1895, somewhere there, where the Armenians were slaughtered? The great London preacher used to preach Thursday noon time to all the celebrities and politicians and business people came for the lunch hour service and Parker was there. Somebody slipped him a note and said, the, the, uh, the great, uh, uh, sultan of Turkey had slaughtered the, uh, Christians, the Armenians. Old Parker stood up there in his imperial splendor. I have a picture of him. He's a head like a lion. If you haven't seen a good lion, go to the pastor's office, big head there. He's got a head like a big majestic head. Raise his hand, let us pray. And he prayed and he said, I, I say that whether the, uh, sultan of Turkey is a friend of the King of England or a friend of, uh, the King of Germany, because he has slaughtered your children, God damn the sultan of Turkey. Can you imagine all the robbers, Billy Graham getting up, Lord, because Mrs. Ford says the youngsters can have sex before God damn foot. Boy, that would have raised a hullabaloo, wouldn't it? You've got no preachers with guts enough to do things like that anymore. But you never shed blood of what he cries from the ground to God. If you haven't read it, read the character of George Fox, the, the, the, the founder of the Quakers. An amazing man, not only in scholarship, he's notorious because he made himself a leather suit, because his suit wore out, and he made those leather breeches. And he had visions of God, and he prophesied, and everything came to pass. He'd all kinds, he didn't major on miracles, he didn't major on gifts, he exalted Christ. And he came to the city of Litchfield. My dear wife and I have been through it many times, you'd have great twin fires outside of the cathedral. And he said, as I got near the city, my feet burned, and I took my shoes off, and put them under the hedge. And God said, you walk through this marketplace, at a long, long marketplace, and raise your hands and just say this, Litchfield, woe unto Litchfield, thou bloody city, that's all you have to do till you get to the other end of town. Brother, that would take the baptism of the Spirit every morning to do that, wouldn't it? He said, I walked to a crowded place, the constable was looking at me, people looked out of shop, and I walked out crying, woe unto Litchfield, thou bloody city, woe unto Litchfield, thou bloody city. Oh, was I glad when I got to the end of the city, and thought it was all over, and the Lord said, turn round and go back and pray it again. He said, I went back and I did it. But my feet had cooled by that time, I think mine had burned off nearly. Put on my shoes and away I went. A few days after, I stayed in the home of a wealthy man, and in his library I reached down a book, it seemed by chance, and when I opened it, it said that 200 years before that time, a bunch of Christians had been slaughtered in the middle of that city, and he said their blood was crying through me to that city. Why is Abel at the head of all these men and women of faith? After all, everybody of faith isn't there, as I mentioned, the great man of faith, Elijah isn't mentioned in the chapter. Joshua made the sun stand still. If you don't think that takes place, well, let's go outside and let Mr. Hugh do it. He made the sun stand still, but he's not mentioned in Hebrews 11. It's not a perfect catalogue of men and faith, there's a type here. Why is this man the first? For the simple reason that he did one thing that means two things. First of all, he built an altar. Secondly, an altar is a place of sacrifice. Thirdly, it's a place of worship. You know, we never teach our people, do you know what they won't teach you in Bible school or seminary? They'll never teach you how to worship. I preached to a hundred preachers in a swamp, a good place for preachers. I preached in an old place where they'd dry out drunken people. I was trying to get the preachers drunk, in the spirit, but I mentioned worship. Afterwards, a big, tall, handsome man came and he said, Brother Raven, you're on your way home. Please stop off and preach for me Sunday morning. We have a choir festival at night. I'd like you to preach twice, but of course you can't upset the choir master. That would kill you. His daddy put two stained glass windows in the church. But anyhow, he said, I hope you'll stay and preach. And I preached Sunday morning for him. That Saturday night, he went to his home for dinner. He leaned over the table and said, as Bunyan would say, his eyes, the water stood in his eyes, and he said, Brother Raven, you really got to me Thursday night when you talked about worship. He said, I don't know that much about it. I've been to Bible school, I've been to seminary, I've read books, but how do you worship? Well, how do you worship? Oh, you get a book on worship, and it isn't worship at all. It's all on praise. You get a tape, get somebody's tape on worship, and it's all how to lift your hands, and sing, and what do that? Forget it. Worship is the most wonderful thing in the world, and the thing we do least. We don't have time to worship. How can you worship God when you tell the Holy Ghost to come 11 o'clock Sunday morning, and leave at 12, and come back 7 o'clock Sunday night, and then you don't need him till 7 o'clock, make Wednesday night. Since when did you become God's emcee? You can talk about your holiness churches, your Pentecostal churches, are all slaves to the clock. We've all stripped everything down. Now the choir will sing, and now somebody will take the offering. Now we'll do this, stand up, sit down, stand up, sit down. Preachers should have buttons there, and press them. You'd all shoot off your feet. It'd be much easier, and then press them again, down you go. Why not mechanize it? We mechanize everything else, and we're mechanical without knowing it. I go to churches, not often, I don't get in many churches, and I won't go in most of them, but I go to some, and they say, well, the Spirit has his way here. We let the Lord have his way. I said, well, why did you mimeograph it last Wednesday? They printed it in the church office last Wednesday, what God has to do on Sunday morning. Just to come at 11, we're going to sing hymn 123, and after that the choir is going to sing, and after that Johnny's going to read, and after that something else, and it's all mimeographed for a solid hour, and you tell the Holy Ghost he can have his way. Quit lying, get it all sewn up. He built an altar. Altar, we say to people, almost to see, come to the altar. The altar is only there for one thing. What is an altar there for? To die on. If you don't want to die, don't come. We prostitute the altar, and it's a place of worship. You bring a sacrifice, maybe I'll talk on worship tomorrow night. I'm not quite sure, but maybe I will. It's a very thrilling, to me, exciting subject. I was going to give you a clue, but I won't, and let you wait till tomorrow night. Well, you see, you proceed from the place where you really learn to worship God. That's the gateway. You can't go any further. The first man mentioned in Hebrews 11 is famous for what? For worship. The second man, who is he? Enoch. What's he famous for? Worship? No, walking. You go back to the record in Genesis 5 there, and read about Enoch. And everybody in the chapter, I think, lived longer than Enoch. Can two walk together except they be agreed? No, they can't. And Enoch walked with God. I wish somebody had a tape recorder, and plugged it in, and tell us what they talked about all that way. It would have been very wonderful. Walking with God. God hasn't walked with anybody, as far as I can find, since he walked with Adam in the cool of the evening. And after that, it seems he quit. But now he walks with God again. We think sometimes in a hymn, I'd rather walk in the dark with God, than walk alone in the light. Most of us would rather walk in the light, anyhow. So, the first man is there because he worships. After you learn to worship, you learn to walk. All right? But notice, will you, that in learning to walk, he had this testimony. The greatest testimony you could ever have. He pleased God. Hey, I wonder what he pleased God is. All these people in Hebrews 11 did something different. Look, one of the most difficult things in your life now, and all the journey, your pilgrim journey to the gates of the city. One of the most difficult things in the world for you, is to find out God's will. And there's only one more thing more difficult, and that is to do it. And very often we back off from God's will, not because it will cost us something, but it'll cost your family something, and cost other people something. And we start considering it this way, and that way, and the other. And then it says you need patience to do the will of God. Well, I don't need to be abrasive with you about that. I'm sure you're all full of patience, aren't you? Or are you like the man that said, Lord I need, I want patience, I want it now. This man walked with God for hundreds of years. Oh, you need a lot of patience. And yet in everything he pleased God in his walk. Do you think your walk pleases God? Does mine please God? This man starts down here in Ur of the Chaldees, and he goes up here. Do you know when God started working on Abraham, do you know how old he was? How old was he when he started working with God? 75 years of age. How old was he when he died? 175. So cheer up. It took God hundreds of years to develop the man. Pretty slow business, isn't it? Here's a man, and the Lord says, look your faith won't be tested by a walk, it will be tested by work. Oh no, wait a minute, you say, we're not saved by works. Who says we're not? Well, because this man Abraham, read the whole fourth chapter of Romans, it's all practically on Abraham. And Abraham, of course, you remember Abraham was justified by faith. Yes, you're dead right, he was, if you believe the Apostle Paul. And he wasn't, if you read the epistle to James. Because Paul says he was justified by faith, and James says he was justified by works. And if your faith doesn't work, nobody has any right to believe in you anyhow. We're justified vertically before God by faith. We're justified in what we believe, and we exercise by works, the way we work for God. Oh now, people say, you want to watch Raymond Lee stretch his words. You don't of course, do you? Except you say, look I expect you in this church every time the doors are open. And of course, I expect you to tithe. Otherwise I'd have to go to work. But no works of course, no works. Of course you insist on You say, well shouldn't people tithe? I don't know, not in the New Testament. No tithing in the New Testament. If you're tithing, you're in the wrong building. You should be in the synagogue up the road. But what's the difference in the New Testament? Well in the New Testament, you give him everything. That's the difference. You have to ask God if you can use his money. You don't just give God your lousy sins, and say Lord take care of me, and be sure get my name in the book, and put a reserve ticket on the door knob of my mansion on Main Street. And I'll take care of the rest. You take care of my sins, I'll take care of my money and other things you know. Oh no, he says, I want the whole lot. Your spirit, your soul and body, all you have, all you will be. Come on, lay, lay it here on the altar. I remember a friend of mine saying, he was preaching and he said, God expects everything he said. Everything. Right, right, right, right to your billfold he said. Well he said, he said the preacher put his hand in his pocket. Oh he said, some of you have got in water to the knees, but you haven't got water to the loins. He said, that's, that's where your billfold is. And he said, the preacher put his hand in his pocket while he was preaching, took it out and put it in his upper pocket. Didn't want the Lord to get to his checkbook. Gee, God is, is so strong isn't he? No, he's so patient with us. Here is a man who, who meets the requirements of God, and he offers a sacrifice. And God accepts the sacrifice. Of course he got killed on the job for doing it. And right after him, a man walks hundreds of years with God, and has this testimony, he pleased God. Isn't that what the apostle says, that we don't get involved with this world too much, that we may please him who has chosen us to be chosen. And then Noah comes along and he builds an ark. But you see, you get a lot of inside knowledge when you walk with God. Because it says that Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark for the saving of his house. By which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith. You know God's just as slow in making people, or pardon me, let me say, we're just as slow in maturity as these other people were. The time factor is, is an awful, awful thing in our Christian lives very often, isn't it? I mean I know God's going to do it, why doesn't he hurry up and do it? A young lady said to me one day, I thought, I said, well how's your father? He isn't saved yet. She said, you know what, I feel like giving God a push. I said, nearly everybody does, but nobody's as brave as you to say it. We all like to give God a push, aren't you going to do it? I mean, why keep me waiting? You're going to do it, I've got to promise you, you're going to do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So why doesn't he do something for my father? Because he's more interested in doing something in you, that's why. I was saying, I think yesterday to the pastor that I preached a number of times in the Bible School of Wales, how many of you have read the book Reeves Howells, Intercessor? You haven't read that? One of the greatest books of modern, in modern writing. Norman Grubb wrote it. Reeves Howells, R-E-E-S Howells, Intercessor. Read it. He went to buy an estate. He knew God wanted him to buy it. Got a promise from God. He said, now Lord, this is a big thing. And the Lord said, well you look at chapter so and so. And he looked at it, and the Lord said, I'll give you so many shekels. And so he figured out how much a shekel weighed, and how much a shekel was worth, and he figured it all out. He went to see the lawyer, and he said, I want to buy a house, so not forget, I think it was Dorwen Fowl in Welsh. So the lawyer said, I'm sorry, that man just going out, he just bought it for the Catholic Church. Here, the document isn't dry yet, see. Now look, let me show you some other pictures here. I've got some lovely pictures here. There's a beautiful mansion up the road there. Do you see all that? Are you interested? No. Well, what are you really interested in? Dorwen Fowl. You can't have it, being sold. No, he said, the Lord has given it to me. What? The Lord has given it to me. No, I've got to check, I've got to deposit here for it. Oh, let me show you another place here. Do you see this place? He wouldn't move. So finally the lawyer said, here, read this document as well. You know, get rid of it. So he called the lawyer back and he said after a while, Sir, would you read this at the bottom here? Well, I've read that document many times, nothing new, what is it? Well, I just wanted to read this, right at the end of this man's will, as he wrote 100, 200 years ago. Under no conditions whatever must this estate pass into the hands of the Roman Catholic Church. Do you believe he said that? I never saw that. That's what he said, I didn't put it there. Is your check legal now? No. Did you say you were going to buy it? Yeah. All right, Mr. Howes, I won't ask you for a deposit. Good thing he didn't, he had just a quarter in his pocket. That's hardly a deposit for about $200,000 that you're going to spend on a Bible school, is it? Rees Howes went home and he said, I started praying. He said, I'd always wanted to beat the Roman Church and I felt I'd done it. I felt so happy and he said, I knelt down to pray and the Lord said, shudder. Does the Lord ever say that to you? Or can't he get a word in edgeways either? Well, Lord, I just felt I got an estate out of the hands of the Roman Church and you know I promised to pay in 10 days. How much did you promise to pay? All right. I forget the figures, let's imagine them, something like this. I promised to pay $225,000. Oh, that's all right, the Lord said. Thank you, Lord. No, he said, I'm saying it's all right. I promised you $200,000, I'll pay my share, now you pay your share, which is $25,000. Well, Lord, I've only a quarter in my pocket. Well, that's not my business. I didn't sign the contract. Well, Lord, the cattle on a thousand hills belong to you. He said, yes, but your share is $200,000. Well, I've signed a legal contract to pay in about 10 days. What am I going to do? I don't know, that's not my responsibility, it's yours. Well, I suppose I'll have to go back to the lawyer and you know, when I go back and tell him now I can't have it, when I told him that God had given it to me, he'll think I'm a fool. Oh, the Lord said, don't worry about that, he thinks that already. You've got no problem there. You just go back and tell him that you, um, so he went back and he said to the lawyer, look, you won't understand this, but I'll tell you what, God promised me so much money and I'm going to overpay it. And he said, I wanted to, will you write to Admiral So-and-so that owns the estate and tell him what it is? We're going to build a Bible school, I'm going to open a school for, just for missionary children, not preachers, they couldn't get in. I couldn't even get my boys in there. Explain it. Oh, well, I'll try. And Reese Howells came back triumphant a few days after. The Admiral had written and he said, well, seeing that it's for such a noble thing, I'll reduce the price to 180,000. Now he's got a bit of cash to play with, got some surplus cash. But Mrs. Howells said this to me after I'd spoken, better wait and let's go upstairs and walk on the corridor there, beautiful veranda overlooking the English Channel, the Welsh Channel may be there. And she said, you know, as we look down, brother Rayfield, everybody knows that Daddy, meaning her husband, bought this estate with a shilling in his pocket which was worth 14 cents. Then she turned and there was a door and she said, you see that door? I said, yes. She said, my husband went in that room at six o'clock in the morning and came out at six at night every day for 11 months, except one day. And that was the day his mother died. It was there that he, he didn't take a leap in the dark. People say, well, take a leap of faith, leap in the dark. No, no, no, faith is the most observant thing in the world. Why did Moses endure? Because he saw him who was invisible. Faith sees where nobody else sees. Faith is substance, it's as real as having it in your hand when you get assurance. And there that man worked day by day until he was absolutely convinced he knew the mind of God and had the will of God. And after 11 months of praying every day for 12 hours a day and searching the word, he came out bounding with assurance and he knew that he had the mind of God. I said yesterday, my muscles are not so strong because I've not exercised. Our faith is weak. Why? It's not been exercised. It's a verbal thing, it's a mental thing, it's a theological thing. We find out articles of faith. We talk about the faith once delivered to the saints. Very beautiful. But when it comes to an active faith, a faith that's operative. We used to sing a hymn when I was a kid. Faith, sinful faith the promise be. And that's what it says here. It talks about these exceeding great and precious promises here in the word of God. After all, that's all these people had. Come on now, isn't it really amazing that a man can get up from out of the chaldees and he's got no bible to go with. After all, you and I don't show too much very courageous faith with every promise that God has ever given here in the book. How did they hear God's voice? How did they stay on course all the time? They were up against the world, the flesh and the devil, exactly as we are. And yet they did stay on course. We have all these great, these exceeding precious promises. But you know what? Basically there are three things that faith does. Faith reckons. He that cometh to God must believe that he is. Faith reckons, faith rests, and faith rests. There remaineth a rest for the people of God. When you go home read through that fourth chapter. At the end of the third chapter says, he sware unto them that they should not enter into his rest. And they did not enter in. The last verse of chapter three says, because of what? Because of unbelief. Not because of the Philistines, not because of the Amalekites. They did not enter in because of unbelief. Now it's true they didn't have it on a paper like you and I have. I've gone to my bed often in certain circumstances and put my finger on Hebrews 11 6 and prayed and said, Lord I hold to this promise. You may know a better way, I didn't. He that cometh to God must believe that he is. They didn't have a bible they could show each other. Who showed Abraham any promises? Look let me say this honestly, and it may be a bit abrasive again, I'm pretty good at that I guess. But you know there's no reason in the world why every one of us here this morning shouldn't be 10 feet tall spiritually. Sure as God's in heaven. He said every word he's ever going to say to us will be 2,000 years of the history of the church of the living God. And we're in this stage of where we're still in the spiritual playpen. Look at that fourth chapter again. Chapter 4 verse 1 says, let us therefore fear lest the promise being left to us of entering into his rest we should seem to come short of it. Chapter verse 3 says, we which are believed to enter into rest. Verse 4 says, God did rest on the seventh day. That's the rest of creation. Verse 5, in this place again they shall enter into my rest. Verse 8, if Jesus had given unto them rest that there is Joshua, which is the same as Jesus, Joshua in the Old Testament. If he had given them into the rest he wouldn't have spoken of another day. Verse 9, there remaineth a rest for the people of God. Verse 10, he that entered into his rest. Verse 11, let us enter into that rest. Now come on, come on with all your sanctification of being baptized with the Spirit. Have you entered into rest? Do you know what we do in our stupidity? We're so eager to get people saved and filled with the Spirit. We offer too much for too little. We suggest if you come to the altar and really get filled with the Holy Spirit it solves all your problems. If it doesn't it only gives you strength to get through your problem. A lady came to me one day and she said, Mr. Raymond, I received the baptism of the Spirit about a month ago and it's been the worst month I've ever lived. I said, that's great. It's what? I've run into more trouble and opposite. Great, great, great. I don't understand what you mean. I said, well let me tell you. Did you ever hear of somebody called Jesus? Yes. Do you know he was a son of God from the moment he was conceived in the Massic to the Virgin Mary? And do you know that Jesus never spoke that we know of, never preached that we know of, never did the thing we know of until he was anointed by the Holy Ghost. And immediately he was anointed. He was led of the Spirit, not of the devil. He was led of the Spirit into the wilderness. And he was buffeted. This very epistle talks about Jesus with strong crying and tears. Where? Two places I think. Garden of Gethsemane and in the wilderness. And he was buffeted 40 days of the devil from A to Z on all points, sexually as well as anything else. Otherwise he wasn't tempted at all points. And when he came out of the wilderness, oh my, if it had lasted another day he'd have been on the edge of a nervous breakdown. That's the way we present it. Do you know what it says? He was led of the Spirit into that conflict of temptation, and he returned in the power of the Spirit. He had surplus power left. He wasn't tottering and exhausted. He was a devil that was exhausted and tottering and baffled. Beat him on every round. 30 minutes of rest for the people of God. You see the children of Israel came out of where? They came out of Egypt, a type of the world, under the bondage of who? Pharaoh, a type of the devil. And the Lord said, there's the promised land, the land flowing with milk and honey. It's not all going to be easy. You don't get in the gates and stand on an escalator and say, angel would you take me to some grapes? I need them today. And you don't say to another angel, would you bring me a drink of water from the fountain of life? When you get into that promised land there are 32 kings you've got to fight. But you know what? You'll lick every one of them if you obey God. And they lick them all except one when they disobeyed God. Sometimes we talk of the Spirit-filled life as a life of victory. Well how can you have a victory without a fight? God didn't fill you with the Holy Ghost to make you happy like some folks. You go to a meeting, a banquet, a breakfast. Some of you fat folks, you love your breakfast and your banquet. If you've given all the money to missions, you've given to these fat preachers, you'd have had some said. But you like to go and get stirred up and sing and be happy. The business of the Holy Ghost is not to make you happy, it's to make you holy. To use a new phrase, God is not concerned so much with charisma or character. Some of the lousiest people in Christendom today are preaching in charismatic circles. Divorcees, I could give you the names. There's no question asked whether you're pure and holy. All they ask is do you speak in tongues. That's the password. Some of the greatest preachers in this country are holiness preachers. The Nazarenes are some tremendous preachers. Dr. Taylor and others. But you'd never get them invited to a charismatic meeting. Why? Because they won't bump away on tongues that's why. And they won't kiss a nun. But God's concern is character. What does it say? It says about Saul, the king of Israel, he had an evil spirit and he did evil things. Jesus says a man has an unclean spirit, he does unclean things. Then if a man with an evil spirit does evil things, a man with an unclean spirit does unclean things, then the man with a holy spirit will do holy things. That's what Paul says in Romans 6, doesn't he? He talks about the form of fruits of your life. But now you have your fruit unto holiness. You know you may have to stand and shout and strut in a meeting to let folk know you have gifts. But you don't need to open your mouth to let them know you have fruit. I never heard fruit talk. Did you ever hear fruit talk? No, she didn't. And she's smart and she never heard fruit talk. Did you hear it? Her husband isn't so smart, but let's ask him. Did you ever hear? No, no, fruit doesn't talk. Did you ever hear those lights? I'm glad those lights don't talk. It will be confusing. I mean, you know, these wealthy churches, look at all those lights. Doesn't look like economy. But anyhow, isn't it good that lights don't scream? Let your light shine, not shout your head off. As I said last night, if you stand up in a, in a, in a Nazarene church and say I'm saved and sanctified, it is a praise of the Lord. You go to a Pentecostal church, say I'm saved and I got the baptism. Hallelujah! Great! You pass. Pass with the Nazarenes because you're sanctified. Pass with the Pentecostal because you have the baptism. But if you stand up and say very sweetly, Christ lives in me. As I say, facetiously, when you sit down, your wife may nudge you and say, George, when did that happen? I mean, I've been living with you 20 years. He never told me, when did it happen? Why, you know I got the baptism so long. Oh yes, but I mean, I've never been suspicious I'm living with Jesus Christ. Supposing you pass as I met your children coming out of school and say, you're called George. And I say, does Saint George live at your house? No. My daddy isn't Saint George, he's just a preacher. Well Romans says we're called to be saints. It doesn't say that in the Greek, it says we're called saints. We're sanctified, we're sanctified. Maybe we'll get to that Friday night on problems in the Christian life. But you see there remaineth a rest for the people of God. The most relaxed thing in the whole world is to know you're in God's will, though it seems as though you're running so fast you're not even moving. Don't you think a man needs to rest when he's building an ark for 120 years and everybody curses and laughs and says you're awful. Have you ever realized that people have never seen rain? It had never rained from creation. The Lord watered the earth with dew every night. And when this man said there's going to be holes in the sky and holes in the ground, the water's coming down. Uh-oh, Noah's a nice guy, I bought some cattle for him. He never does you a wrong dirty trick. But I don't know who he's been listening to preaching, but they they're driving him nuts. He says the earth's going to break up and the sky's going to break down and we're going to be flooded. I doubt if any of them had ever seen a boat in their lives anyhow. Well I mean how's he going to get it off top of that hill? It's a silly thing isn't it? Faith doesn't ask any questions, it just obeys. What's God doing? I have no idea and it doesn't worry me because I know he's too wise to err. He's never made a mistake yet and he's not going to start now. You need patience after you've found the will of God. That's a test. To find it is one thing to have patience to watch God, but remind you again read this epistle and find how many times it says they endured, they endured, they endured, they endured the contradiction of sinners. You see this is why he says, and I'd better quit here, he says strengthen the hands that hang down on the feeble knees. Do you know why? Because the epipharist are the Hebrews isn't it? Yes. Who were they? Well they were a fairly new bunch of folk on the earth. And here's old Isaac going down the street and he sees Jacob there, not the old ones in the old testament, but you know they still carry those names. And he's going down he says hey Jacob and Jacob says well how are you? Fine. And Jacob is it true you're still meeting with that gang of folk up in that back alley? You know the first 300 years of Christianity there were no buildings, no church buildings. Under Roman law a Christian could not own property. He couldn't even own his own house. Modern churches are modern invention really, fairly. Well um I mean I don't want to really ridicule you, but any case you know you know really Jacob you've really left the substance for the shadow haven't you? I mean just a minute before you answer that. I mean like you know I'm a devout Jew and we have the law and the prophets. You don't have a law and the prophets. Hey look there's a there's a priest going into the temple in his garments of glory and beauty. You don't have a temple? You don't have a priest? And you see they're taking that bullet for sacrifice, you don't have a sacrifice? I mean you've just about got nothing. You've left the substance for the shadow. You've left the visible for the invisible. Christian nods a moment and he says well have you got anything else to say? No. Can I speak now? Yes. Oh well now you say that we don't have a temple. Oh yes we've got one right on this street. Where is it? He says you're looking at it. I'm the temple of God. What? Somebody asked one of the most distinguished sages in China just a few years ago. Have you read the Quran? Yes. Have you read the Vedas? Yes. I read most of the holy books. Have you read the New Testament? Yes. Tell me this. What is the most amazing thing you read in the New Testament? I know what he'll say, the virgin birth, physical resurrection. Ah little China man said I think there is a book Ephesians. Yeah Ephesians, that's right. Chapter two in Ephesians at the end it says, are you are a Christian? Yeah I'm a Christian. You are the most amazing thing in the whole world. What do you mean? Because at the end of Ephesians chapter two, chapter two, at the end of Ephesians chapter two, it says that you are the habitation of God by the Spirit. You see in Christianity, Christianity is the only religion where a man's God comes and lives inside of him. And a heathen who studied all the oriental religions says the most amazing thing in the world is that that you, that God dwells in you. So the man says that we, you say we don't have a temple. Well sir we do have a temple because my body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. You say we have no sacrifice. Do you know what? Jesus Christ once made an atonement for sin and it did away with every other sacrifice. That's why the mass in the Roman church is blasphemy. He made a perfect offering. There remaineth no more sacrifice for sins as long as time endures. You say we don't have a high priest. Oh your high priest looked very pretty going in the temple there. But you know what? He could even fall down and die. And you know I have a high priest who is at the right hand of the Father who ever limits to make intercession. He can't die. You have to elect a priest periodically. We don't elect one at all. He was accepted by the Father to make a perpetual offering. And you say that I can't take an offering into my church that isn't there and present it and ask for some priest to go in his garment and little bells on his skirt and go in there and make an offering to God. You know I don't have to do that. He made an offering of his own blood and he's there. He has a perpetual offering before God. A preacher in England some years ago put a notice outside of his church, as they often do, that they announced a subject for Sunday morning and Sunday evening. They had a sign up. Sunday morning I shall preach on the unfinished work of Christ. By man alive. Each morning you know in England there's a slot in the door and they put your letters through the slot in the door. He needed a shovel every morning to pick up all the letters. Everybody's done got the finished work of Christ. The word of Christ is finished. Well he didn't argue. He just went and preached the sermon the Lord gave him. He ever limits to make intercession for us. The work of redemption is complete sure enough. But he's still active there at the right hand of the Father. That's the longest prayer meeting in history. The longest prayer meeting on earth was on a Wednesday morning the 13th of August 1727 when the Spirit of God came on the people of Birmingham in the Moravian Revival. Just as the clock moved to 11 the Holy Ghost came on a bunch of people. Do you know how long that prayer meeting lasted as a record? 100 years. Sometimes only two people in the church. Sometimes boys and girls seven and eight years of age were praying. But for 100 years that prayer room was never emptied. As far as I know that's the longest record of a prayer meeting on earth. Those young people didn't get involved in loving each other and when they get married when they were 17 they went down to the Caribbean. Those fair German boys and they stood on a slave block after they'd sold the slaves. The big blonde boys stood there and after these colored boys had been sold their boy went and said sell me. As a slave? Mm-hmm. How much for this fella? Put your tongue out let me see your teeth. They weren't driven to slavery they went to slavery. They had a sign that they wore in the church. In the middle there was a bullet. On one side there was a plow on the other side there was an altar and underneath it said ready for either. The plow service to be killed sacrifice. And when the money the golden coins were put in the hands of the young man who'd been sold to slavery he went over to his pastor Spendelberg or whatever he was called and he said please please send this back to Germany so another boy can come over on the boat. And when they when they got into the slave camp it was an unwritten law. They used to plow with five men. The white man would get in the middle he'd have a colored fellow here, two colored men on either side. And those five men had a rope around their bodies and they had an iron collar around the neck. And they were used as human oxen. They lived in the most horrible privation. They didn't try and run away from slavery they got into it because there was no other way to evangelize or slave colony. Why? Well for one thing thank God they weren't stupid watching channel 12 all their lives or channel 6. They were raised in a holy atmosphere. They were raised in the limits of this book. They were raised on a foundation of righteousness. They were raised to realize your life is not your own. You give it back to your master. Say one thing a few years ago I held a city-wide crusade in Windsor, Ontario. I remember it was held in the central church of mine. Quite a nice church about 32 churches cooperated. And after the Monday night service a little fellow came up to the platform. Charming little guy. Got red cheeks, blue eyes, shoes, shining, beautiful. Could I speak to you? I said surely yeah yeah what's your name? He told me. I'll go. Now tell me what. First of all how old are you? I think he was, I forget, 10 or 11. What do you want to ask me? Oh I don't want to ask you anything. Oh I said that's great. Well what do you want to tell me? He said sir I want to tell you I've just read Why Revival Parish and it's a great book. 11 years ago. And he said I'm reading, right now he said I'm reading Revival Crane. Talked for a little while and he said could I have your autograph? I said yes certainly. But you know what? I said I think I need yours. I never found a little boy at 11 years of age read Why Revival Parish and enjoy it and say I want to read all your books. He went away. A lady came down the aisle. She's a tip off the old block. He's got honey blonde hair, bright blue eyes, red teeth. Here his mother came, a hair party down the center, lovely honey blonde, lovely smile, beautiful woman. And she said excuse me but I saw my boy on the platform. Could I ask you what he said? I said enjoy it. He's a charming little fella. And I told her. She smiled and said yes. Well she said it's a little late. Could you come into our house tomorrow? I said well I don't visit homes usually except if I have a free day like Saturday or something. Where do you live? Oh we just live around the corner. Around the corner. Not a very salubrious area. Okay I'll come tomorrow. What time does your husband get home from work? Three o'clock. I'll be there at half past three. I went around the corner. Knocked on the door. Heard the baby squawking. She opened the door. Oh come in by the way. House is as clean as a pimp. Like the beautiful lady. Oh the furniture was gorgeous. I would say the whole house was worth about five dollars. Sure it all came from the goodwill. And she said my husband's just washing up at the back there. And I kind of looked like this. She said well she said we don't have much of a house do we? I said no we certainly don't. She said no we don't have much of a house but we have a marvellous home. Ever see any guy offering homes for sale? Tell him he's crazy. Can't sell homes and sell houses. Can't sell homes. We sat and talked. Had a cup of tea. And she said you know after we got saved we realized that the greatest treasure we have this side of heaven apart from our relationship with God is our family. How many children do you have? A young woman. Bright young woman. Oh she said I got six. Great. Do you know how we run the house? I said I wouldn't know. Oh we don't have very much money. I said no pretty obvious. The children take some feeding. She said at night when we finished up and all the dishes are lifted off the table they put in the sink and the children gather around the table. And every night we have one hour bible study with the children. Some nights daddy will want to quit at ten minutes to seven and they say daddy. Now I said to her do the children rebel? Yeah they do if we're short. They rebel if we shorten them. But if you go all the time they don't mind. But she said we spend an hour. We sing and daddy read the scriptures. Daddy pray. And we spend one hour every night of life with the family around the table. And then I let the tiny ones go to bed and I take one of them by myself in a room and we have another hour of the work. You mean they don't rebel? Oh no they enjoy it. They just love it. You should hear some of the questions they ask. You should hear some of the answers they give. Again nobody ever had a bigger bible than you have. God's checkbook Mr Spurgeon said all the checks are already signed in blood.