This sermon addresses the topic of believers navigating through days of apostasy, emphasizing the importance of recognizing the signs of apostasy and staying grounded in faith. The speaker shares stories and insights on the challenges faced by Christians in a world straying from God's truth, urging believers to hold fast to the Word of God and rely on the Holy Spirit for guidance and strength.

Thank you, and I also want to thank your pastor for inviting me down to speak at this service, and it's always been a pleasure to come down and speak in San Diego. I suppose I've spoken in San Diego almost as many times as I have in Los Angeles. We used to have a Bible class in one of the Baptist churches down here every Tuesday night. We had that one for about ten years. They got tired, and so I did too, and so we stopped the class. There's a preacher in his church. One weekday morning, he was just looking around. He heard a noise out in the foyer of the church, and he went out, and it was a little boy just looking at everything, and the preacher says, Son, would you like me to show you around? And the little boy says, I sure would. And so he began to show him around, and they came to a plaque where there were a lot of names. And he says to the preacher, he says, Who are these? And the pastor said, Those are the ones who died in the service. And the little boy looked puzzled. He says, Was it the morning service or the evening service? And I hope you're going to be able to make it through the evening service tonight. I'd like to pass this on because this may apply to somebody, a lot of somebodies, maybe even your pastor. And these are 15 ways that you can know that you're getting old. And if these apply to you, you're getting old. Number one, you feel like the morning after even though you didn't go anywhere the night before. You get winded playing tiddlywinks. Your children begin to look middle-aged. You know all the answers, but nobody asks you the questions. You look forward to a dull evening. You help a little gray-haired lady to cross the street, and she's your wife. You turn out the lights for economic rather than romantic reasons. You sit in a rocking chair and can't get it started. Your knees buckle and your belt won't. You just can't stand people who are intolerant. You have too much room in the house and not enough in the medicine cabinet. Your back goes out more often than you do. Your pacemaker raises the garage door when you see a pretty girl go by. You sink your teeth into a steak, and they stay there. And the last one, you burn the midnight oil until 9.30. Now, this evening, I'm going to do something probably a little bit different, but I want to bring a message that I brought at our Founders' Day banquets, and they are putting them in video and tape and all that, but it's a message that we feel that needs to be gotten out today. And the subject is, if I have a subject is, what can believers do in days of apostasy? And the first thing that we have to do is determine whether we are in the apostasy or not. I'm turning tonight to the little book of Jude, and I'd like to read a few verses, beginning with verse 17. But, beloved, remember ye the words which were spoken before of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ, how that they told you that there should be mockers in the last time who should walk after their own ungodly lusts. These be they who separate themselves, sensual having not the Spirit, but ye, beloved, building up yourselves in your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life, and of some have compassion making a difference, and others, save with fear, pulling them out of the fire, hating even the garment spotted by the flesh. I'll start with another story that concerns preachers. This preacher was tooling down the highway a little fast, and an officer saw him go by, and he took out after him, pulled him over to the side, and he says, Who do you think you are? Well, he says, I'm God's servant, and I'm out doing God's work. And the policeman looked at him for a minute or two. He says, Did you know that I'm God's servant also? And I use the same Bible that you do. And the Lord told me to go out into the highways and byways and bring them in. And I'm taking you in. So the first thing we need to determine tonight is are we in the days of apostasy? In the 50s, I brought a message at the Church of the Open Door saying that we were, that I felt that we were beginning to enter the time of the great apostasy. That was the time that liberalism was running rampant. And there were a great many that they chastised me. They still do it by letter, that they say that you ought not to say that. You don't know that. And I have to confess, I don't know it, but I can say tonight that we are not in the beginning of the apostasy. We're in the midst of it. And I'd like to give you just one quotation. I don't intend to labor this point. The Chicago Tribune of March the 20th, 1968, speaks of the pro-communism influence of the churches through prominent spokesmen and seminaries and concludes by saying, the betrayal of Christ in the name of Christianity is one reason for the moral and spiritual malaise with which this country is afflicted. The melancholy fact is that the churches no longer influence the development of national character. People go to church mainly because of an impulse to participate in a service of worship, not because of any spiritual guidance they expect from the clergyman. Now whether that's entirely true or not, certainly today that we are seeing the greatest breakdown of morality and the church apparently can do nothing about it today. It seems to be a helpless and hopeless situation that the church is in today. And if there ever was a time when we needed a revival, today is the day. And it doesn't look as if a revival is on the way, at least not where I go. And I want to say that this is something that's happened in our day that's different than anything that happened in the past. It was back in the forties and fifties that liberalism, denying the inerrancy of the word of God, had its flame. And they lost the battle. If you don't believe it, you go into a liberal church some Sunday morning. I asked one of my deacons to go down to the First Methodist Church. That's been several years ago, of course. I've been retired quite a few years. And see how many were there. He came back and he told me later there were 18 at the Sunday morning service in an auditorium that seats 2,500. May I say to you how the mighty have fallen. And liberalism is as dead as a dodo bird today. I have no fear of liberalism at all today. Even all these seminars they're having on the inerrancy of the word of God. I want to say this to you right at the very beginning. Paul speaks in Colossians that he prayed that they would have an epignosis. That means that they would have a full assurance that this was the word of God. The full assurance that the Lord Jesus Christ could save them. And today, I've asked in several churches in the East, how many here are assured of your salvation? You know you're saved. And you know the Bible is the word of God. And I would say that about 50% of the congregations only put up their hands. I was amazed that it was like that today. May I say, I think that we ought to have today, and that's the reason I don't go to these seminars on the inerrancy of scripture. They write me in. This friend of mine wrote me and says, what's the matter with you? Don't you defend the Bible anymore? I said, no, I'm letting it defend itself. I'm giving it out. I find out that when you've got a lion in a cage, you don't need to put a guard there to protect it from the pussycats in the neighborhood. The lion will take care of himself if you just open the door. And the word of God is like that today. And I want to put it like this. I do not believe the Bible is the word of God. I know the Bible is the word of God. And I hope that tonight I can offer some evidence of that, that we can know that the Bible is the word of God. And it's the word of God, as old Dr. Warfield, who was the German scholar, said, the only theologian that America ever produced. And he put it like this. The Bible is the word of God in such a fashion that whatever the Bible says, God says. I like it like that. It's God's word. He is speaking in the word of God. And that's a thing I think is very important for us. But the new thing that's happened today is liberalism is just about dead. But in our conservative groups, Harris's are coming in. At least I've labeled them Harris's. Some think out, not to. But many of these men have been friends of mine in the past. Let me just mention them, and I'm not going to labor this point either, because all I want to be sure of, that we're in days of apostasy, that in conservative churches today, a new gospel is being preached, and that's the lordship gospel, the lordship salvation, that you are not saved until you make Jesus Lord. And I said to a friend of mine that teaches that, and he's in a seminary, and I said to him, what do you do with the thief on the cross? Did he make Jesus Lord? All he asked was, remember me when you come into your kingdom. That's all he did. He just had faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And I can imagine that old tough Philippian jailer that came in that night, and he was ready to kill himself, because Rome would have done it for him. And Paul says, don't do yourself any harm. We're all here. And then this man said, what shall I do to be saved? And if anybody needed to make Jesus Lord, it was that old rough Philippian jailer, but he didn't mention that. He said, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved. I like the way that a man who teaches at Boston University, and he's in the psychology department, and he's rolling caps, you put those two together, you've got something. And he has, I'm convinced, has had a sound conversion. And in Southern California in the 60s, some of us never knew what happened, but many of the Catholic schools closed. In fact, we were offered one. We could buy it. And it was because of the fact that the schools had put in Pham's psychology, and it had absolutely, had wrecked the schools. And they're now building back. This man wrote The Psychological Seduction, and in it he put it like this. He says, Christianity is not a ceremony. Christianity is not even the church. Christianity is not a system. Christianity is a person, and that person is the Lord Jesus Christ, and it's who he is, and what he has done, that's Christianity. And nothing else is Christianity. How we need to get back to him, the Lord Jesus Christ. And today we have wonders and miracles going on, and I've got friends in that. They're dropping by the wayside, let me tell you. This friend of mine, he says, McGee, I want you to know that I do not think that miracles stop at the day of Pentecost. I think that miracles are for the day. All of them are. Healing, all the rest. Now they refuse to be called charismatic, but that's what they are. And he says to me, I believe that God will raise up man that will raise the dead. And I told him, I says, when you get your first one, bring him around, and then maybe I'll go over on your side. But until then, I consider the miracles you're talking about, I consider they do not happen today. And then I've mentioned psychological religion, and then there's the new age. And did you know that all of these are beginning to split up the conservative wing of the church? And I want to tell you, we will win in the day. Now this has come along, and I honestly believe unless we have a revival or a moving of the Spirit of God, we're going to see again the fights of the twenties. Only this time, it's going to be among the conservatives holding some little position, and you can always recognize that they add something to what Jesus did for us on the cross. Jesus paid it all. He doesn't want my two bits. He doesn't want anything I do, and he doesn't want my commitment because he's found out that I lied about that two or three times. And don't you look at me that way because you've done the same thing. May I say to you, thank God tonight for a Savior who did it all. And I can know I'm saved because I trust him. I trust him, and that's what he told me to do. Now what can believers do in days like we're in today where everything you can think of is being taught on radio and TV? I hope you don't think that through the Bible isn't. I want to thank the Men's Chorus for that number they sang. The one that we use was made by a group of Baptist men in Los Angeles 35 years ago. I may get the record of these fellas, and if they'd let me, I might use it because they were good tonight. Somebody told me, he says, you can always tell when the Through the Bible is coming on. I said, I'm glad you know that because we've tried to identify it with that song. And if somebody will sing it a little differently and a little better, we want it. Now, I want us to look tonight at, well, I hate to say this, but seven things that God asks believers to do in days of apostasy. And I think that they'll deliver all of us if we just hang on to these things that he has told us to do. It's like the, Lord will forgive me, I hope, for telling these, but the family going out having a picnic. And in the family, there's a very large woman. In fact, she was fat. And so they came to a nice shady place, but there's a barbed wire fence there. And so they said, we'll go there. And she said, I don't know what I can get through. And they said, well, do the best you can. So she got down and tried to roll on there. And when the rest of them got through and they waited for her, she hadn't shown up, and they yelled back to her, says, are you about through? And she says, I've got two more points to make. And when I make them, I'll be coming down. And so I've got seven points to make tonight. Now, notice he says, verse 20, but ye beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith. Now, I do not believe that we can have strong Christians today unless they have a knowledge of the word of God. I think that is so essential today that someone said to me, why have you just taught the Bible? I said, because I started that way. I did it in every church I served. And that's all I know to do. It's just to teach the word of God. And I believe today that that is the answer. And you'll find out that the strangest thing is that when you go to the Bible, again and again it refers to itself, that you are to study, to show yourself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. You study the word of God. And the middle psalm is 119. It's the middle of the Bible. It's the longest chapter in the Bible. And every verse, they say every verse but three, but the word of God is mentioned in every verse in that middle book that's right in the center of the Bible, how important it is to know the word of God. God had his people. You put it up on your doorposts. And we today have some funny-looking bumper stickers, but if I'm going to put a bumper sticker on, and I really don't like them anyway, but I think I'd say something about Jesus. I think we ought to say something about him. And today, he's being neglected in many places. And the reason is his word is not studied. Paul, when he's ready to retire, in fact, he's through. He's on his deathbed. That's 2 Timothy. And he said to that young... He says, preach the word. Preach the word. Don't preach about the word or don't preach from the word. Preach the word. And that's a little different, you see. And that's all of these different isms today have gone off in that direction. The second thing he mentions is praying in the Holy Spirit. Now, you'll find that that's mentioned again by Paul in Ephesians, praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints. What is praying in the Spirit? A missionary on the Okra River Mission years ago sent me this definition of what prayer is. Prayer is the Holy Spirit speaking in the individual through the Lord Jesus Christ to the Father. You remember he says, if you ask anything in my name, I'll do it. And the trouble of it is, a man, in fact a neighbor of mine, said to me the other day, you're always saying that God will answer prayer. I said, he will answer prayer if it's prayer, but if you handed him a grocery list, he didn't say he'd fill that for you. But he has promised. I said, it has to be in the will of God. And as one old preacher I heard years ago at Winona Lake, he says, I want to be so close to God that when I pray, I say what he wants me to say, and he has me say what he wants to hear. Now, when prayer gets done, I think many times, in fact, I've quit going to a prayer meeting in Pasadena. The people that go there, there's one preacher, he monopolizes the time. He takes up all the time. And I feel like, well, one fellow says, why do you get up and leave? I says, well, because I know the Lord took the plugs out of his ear, so I'm not going to stay there and listen to him. Now, praying in the Spirit, and we need prayer like that today, and it's desperately needed. Now, the third thing is, keep yourselves in the love of God. Now, he didn't say, do something to make God love you. You cannot do anything to keep God from loving you. I don't care who you are, God loves you. God loves you. God loved Joe Stalin. I hated him. If Joe Stalin, on his deathbed, had accepted Christ as his Savior, God would have saved him. I wouldn't. God would. God would. And I want to tell you that the love of God, I hear it so much today, it's become almost a meaningless thing. But it's a glorious, wonderful thing, because you have to keep yourself in the love of God. A lot of Christians, they don't keep themselves. You can't keep the sun from shining out there, but you're not in the sun. It's getting in my eyes here, and may I say to you, you can get out of the sun, but you can't keep it from shining. When it's raining, you can get out of the rain. You can put up an umbrella, and you can get out of the rain. You can't keep God from loving you, but you can put up an umbrella. You can put up an umbrella of sin in your life, and you won't experience the love of God. I guarantee you that. You'll have to come back to him. I had a young fellow that was the son of a preacher in Indiana. He was a handsome boy. He came out thinking he'd make Hollywood. I saw him several times at the Hollywood Christian group, but he didn't make it. And he came in and said to me, he said, Dr. McGee, do you think my dad would take me back? I said, and I knew his father well, I said, he'd be delighted to. He says, well, I think I'm going to go back. I said, let's call him. I called him up, and I said, do you know who I got here in my study? And he began to weep. He said, it's my son. I'd been praying that he'd come back, and I put the sun on and let both father and son cry while I went outside and cried. It was wonderful. He didn't experience the love of his father walking the streets in Hollywood, living it up and going to every bar. But when he returned home, he found out what the love of the father really was. And there are a lot of Christians tonight that they've stepped out of the love of God. God loves them. God loves every person. There's not a person walking the ground today that God doesn't love. Now, the fourth thing, it says looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ. What is the mercy? I believe it's the rapture of the church. Looking for the mercy. But you see, God says that he's rich in mercy. Paul, when he wrote Ephesians, he bore down on that word mercy. God is rich in mercy. He has plenty of it. And I've got so, I'm using a lot of it. I'm here tonight because of the mercy of God. I asked him, I said, I was down here last year, not for this group, another group to speak, and I was sick in the hotel room and I couldn't go and I didn't want that to happen again. So I got down on my knees last night and I said, Lord, don't you let that happen to me again. I want your mercy. He's rich in mercy. I use a lot of it. And if you want the mercy of God, he's got plenty for you. He's rich in mercy. But the great, oh, the great thing is one day he'll take us out of this world. He's already taken me out since I was here. I've lost 50 pounds. I can turn around in this coat and the coat won't even move. See, it's right back where it was. And I turned around. May I say to you, a dear friend gave me a check this past week for $500. He says, you go buy yourself a new suit. I said, when I quit losing weight, I'll go, but I don't know when that thing's going to stop. I've lost 50 pounds. In other words, a fourth of me is already up there. And if he'd come tonight, only three-fourths of me would be going. But I'd love for him to come tonight. And mercy. Oh, how wonderful the mercy of God is when you fail him. When you fail him and others turn their back on you and criticize you. Oh, it's wonderful to be able to go to him because he has mercy for you. He has mercy for you. He knows your heart. He knows your condition. He knows that you were tempted. He knows it was a bad thing. But he's got mercy. He'll extend it to you. And he wants to bring you back into fellowship with him. And then the next is of some having compassion making a difference. And actually, I'd like to change that. And these people who think I think it's sacrilegious to tamper with the King James Version, may I say I'm going to change it here. Some have compassion who are in doubt. Now, there are a great many people today that are in doubt. There are a great many people that are in our churches today. They're in doubt. We had our Thursday night Bible study. One of our members brought in a lady, and they were there every Thursday night. And this woman had come down and asked me a question every Thursday night. I got tired of that. It looked like she was trying to trip me. And so I was just a little, you know, rough one night. She turned and walked out and went over and sat in the car. And then this lady's a member of the church. She says to me, said, Dr. McGee, don't talk to her like that. She's in who's who. She's working her way out of Christian science. And she'll come through. You'll just be patient with her. Have compassion, he says, because some are in doubt. She had a lot of doubts, I'll tell you. She had a lot of them. So I went as quickly as I could to the car, and I asked her to forgive me. I absolutely was crude to talk to her like I did. I said, I'm sorry. And she said, that's all right. I'll forgive you, and I'll come back. And she started coming on Sunday morning. And one Sunday morning, she came forward and accepted Christ as her Savior. Have compassion. If I hadn't gone out to that car, that woman never would have come back, because I can be very mean. You think I'm sweet, but I can be mean. But don't be frightened. I've got to the place now. My age is so I can't run, and I can't fight, so I'm nice to everybody now. Now, I come to the next one, and it's others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire. Now, I'm going to be personal here. I didn't think I'd do this, but you people are sitting so nice and quiet, and the others went to sleep, so I'm going to. Well, I know it. I started off with it, so here it is. You ask me how I know that the Bible is the word of God. It's because we're living in a day when I think men are being plucked out of the burning. Maybe we'll not have a great revival, but there's a great turning to God today. We're seeing it in our foreign broadcasts. We're now in 34 different languages, and we're seeing people in every language now, including Turkey. They are turning to the Lord. And we think this is the greatest day to get out the word of God. You say to me, you're very dogmatic saying you know the Bible's the word of God. Well, there was a contractor up in Oakland, California. He would go to mass every morning and listen to my program. He told me after he came south, he said, if I could have got to you, I'd have punched you in the nose. And I believe that he would. He says, because every time you're teaching Romans, you said I was a sinner, and I wasn't a sinner because I went to mass every morning. And then he came down, and he accepted Christ, and he joined the church. And he may be here tonight. He works out of San Diego, and he's been written up in your paper. He's an apple bill, Bill Hagerty, that takes across the Mexican border to the people that live in the paper box houses. He takes beans, and he knows enough people he can go around and get them to buy a sack of beans and apples. That's what he does. And he witnesses to them over there. He plays a record. He's got everything on tape that I've ever said. He accepted the Lord as his Savior on Thursday night. May I say to you that, friends, you can't find salvation in the yellow pages. It's not there. It's only found in the Word of God. And that's the only place that we go. We are on a station called the North Pole Station. It goes into Alaska. And the pilots up there, if it's a storm, they have to get on the beam of that station in order to come in. And so he, one night, is coming in, and it's a storm. And he got on the beam. And I was on at that time. And he says, Do I have to listen to that damn preacher? And he turned it off, and he was lost again. So he came back and found the beam again, and he listened to all of it. When he landed, he didn't get out of the plane. And they sent a car out. They thought something had happened to him. He just stopped at the end of the runway. They went up to him and said, What in the world is the matter? He said, I just accepted Jesus as my Savior. May I say, friends, you don't get that by reading even the newspaper. Only the Word of God can change lives at all. And the other night, I was speaking at the Eagle Rock Baptist Church. And a black boy came up, fine-looking young fellow. And he had an English accent. He speaks English much better than I do. And he said to me, Dr. McGee, I'm from Kenya. And I've come over here to school. I said, What are you going to be? He said, I'm going to be a preacher. He says, I just wanted you to know that I listened to your program. And I've accepted Christ as my Savior. And I think God's called me to preach the Word. And I'm going back there. May I say to you, the Word of God, that's the reason I know it's the Word of God. It works. If you've got something else that's working, let me know. I'll try it. But I'll try anything that will change the hearts and lives of men and women. And then I hesitate to tell this one. Don Robbins has the center here, Servicemen's Center. Don Robbins was years ago. Gosh, it must have been 30 years ago. He was working down at the dock. He was sitting there. And another fellow sat down and turned on his radio at noon. We'd come on at noon in those days. And this fellow, Don Robbins, says, Turn that preacher off. I don't want to hear him. The fellow says, If you don't want to hear him, you can move. And he didn't want to move, so he stayed there. Next day he listened. He listened several days. And he told the fellow one day, He says, Hey, you haven't turned your radio on. And Don Robbins accepted Christ. He says that I'm his spiritual father. But I hope my son's a better looking than he is. But he's done a fabulous work here in San Diego. I was in Athens, Greece. And the young fellow that runs the servicemen center there told me, He says, I patterned mine after Don Robbins in San Diego. And he says, Everyone you'll find out here does the same thing. I found it was true in London that they patterned after Don Robbins. May I say to you, I know the Bible's the word of God. It changed that man. And God has marvelously used it. And let me tell this last one, and then I'm about through. And if I'm not, I ought to be. I'm long-winded, very long-winded, always have been. Two members from my church were walking out. One said to the other, Our pastor sure does preach a long time, doesn't he? And the other said, No, he really doesn't, it just seems long. So maybe that's the problem. This one, there was a lady, and she's a lady now, she wasn't then. She started coming to the services. And she, one morning, Sunday morning, accepted Christ. Said she'd been listening to the radio a long time. Said, I buried my husband the other day. Says, We own the largest bar in South Los Angeles. Now this was 30 years ago, I guess. And she said, And I said, Is that all you've got that he's left you? She said, Yes. And she said, I'm going to have to give that up. She said, If you tell me to take a hammer and go in there and break every bottle, I'll do it. And I said, Oh my goodness, don't do that. I said, If I thought if you broke every bottle, it would stop drinking in Los Angeles, I'd urge you to use a hammer. But it wouldn't affect drinking in Los Angeles one whit if you did that. And I said, You sell it. That's all he left her. She got $150,000, and she has a job. She joined the church, and she never wanted to participate in anything. She said, These women, if they knew my background, they wouldn't want me in their group. And I said, But you're different now. Some of them were sinners, too. But she never did. As long as I was there, she never would participate. But she said, I'll be here every Sunday. You can count on me. She was there every Sunday. May I say to you, That's what the Word of God does. And that's the reason that all I've got is stock and trade. And then, let me take this one, the lights. Others say with fear. We're plucking them out of the fire today. And hating even the garment spotted by the flesh. Now, I wish I could explain that to you. If Dr. Jabelin had known what it meant, then I'd know what it means. And I've looked at at least 20 commentators. I asked Dr. Barnhouse what it meant. And he talked to me privately for about 15 minutes and found out he didn't know either. I haven't found anybody that knows what it means. And you'll be sure of one thing, I don't know what it means. Hating even the garment spotted by the flesh. This is the closest that I can get to it. God does not want the works of Vernon McGee done in the flesh. Anything that I do in the flesh, God hates it. He doesn't want it. He wants that which is done through the Holy Spirit. That's all that he wants. I was speaking back east. They asked me to go to speak at a group. They were liberal fellows and all other kinds unsaved. And so I thought I want to get their attention. So I started telling them jokes. And I got quite a few of them. I like telling them. So I got to entertaining them. And I didn't have but 10 minutes to talk to them. I wasted the time. And nothing happened there either. When we got in the car, my wife said to me, she says, who do you think you are, Bob Hope? And then I knew what I'd done had been done in the flesh. God doesn't want it unless it's done in the spirit. And we ought to hate that little spot. You know, that little spot. It gets in the way of so many of us. I do fine. I get to a certain place and I just slip in a little something. It's out of the flesh. You notice a while ago I told you that we were on 34 foreign stations and 34 languages. That's bragging. May I say to you, that's of the flesh. I should have kept my mouth shut. May I say to you, there's so much being done today in the name of Christ that's not of Christ. Only that which the Holy Spirit does. You see, I believe in commitment. But I know that when I was 17 years old, I didn't know anything. That next summer I went to a young people's conference and I found out that Jesus wanted me and he could use me. And down at that conference, I never shall forget, a wonderful preacher that told me, I went to him privately, about committing my life. And I told him, I said, it kind of worries me. I think he wants me to preach. He says, if he wants you to preach, he'll open the door for you. May I say to you, friends, I want to say to you that, oh, how the flesh can get in and keep us from doing the thing that the Spirit of God wants us to do. I tonight thank God. And I told my wife the other night when we got to bed, I said, you know, one of these nights I may leave you. May be gone the next morning when you wake up. I won't wake up. I said, just know one thing, that Vernon McGee did what he thought God wanted him to do. And he was going to do it right to the very end. One preacher said to me, he says, you ought to retire. I said, I'm going to let God retire me. And I've had indications from him that he may be getting ready to do that, too. But God will have to do that. These are the seven things, the seven wonderful things that believers can do in days of apostasy. And it's a joy to know that God has outlined for us, put it down, one, two, three, seven things. He says, you do these things. And the apostle says, it's not going to bother you. It's not going to worry you at all. May I say to you tonight, are you in that place that God has called you to? Are you doing what God wants you to do? And I wonder, in closing, if I can ask this question. How many of you have really never accepted the Lord Jesus Christ in your heart? There's never been a transaction there. You've never told him that you trust him. You've never told him that you love him. Alan Fleiss, who was president back of Columbia Bible College, he and I were in school together. First night of school, we walked up on a hill, a red clay hill in Georgia, and the moon was coming up. And I said, oh my, he made that. He made that, how wonderful it was. And Alan said to me something that I'll never forget. He says, every night before I go to sleep, I get in bed and pull the cover up, and I say, Lord Jesus, I love you. I love you. I thought that was a pretty good idea. And I've been doing that all these years. Nice thing to do. I fail him maybe during the day, but I say, Lord Jesus, I love you. Well, how wonderful it is. How many of you here tonight would like to lift your hand? That's all I'm going to do, just ask that you lift your hand. I'd like to remember you in this closing prayer and say, I want to trust the Lord Jesus Christ with all my heart. I want to trust him. Just lift your hand up. I'd like to see it and I'd like to remember you in prayer if you're here tonight. I recognize this is a Christian group, but there are some in here that have never yet trusted him. And I'm talking to you. Oh, accept him. What a Savior he is. What a marvelous, wonderful Savior. Heavenly Father, we thank you tonight that you are who you are. We thank you for sending the Lord Jesus into this world and that he provided us salvation that is complete and secure. And we pray tonight that we may rest in him, for we pray in his name. Amen.