In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the importance of recognizing Jesus Christ as God. He urges women who may be leading their children away from God to repent and acknowledge the victory of God. The preacher then directs the audience to study the words of Jesus in John 14:1-3 and 6-9, where Jesus assures believers that he will come again and open the door to heaven for them. The preacher emphasizes that Jesus is not just a teacher or a sacrifice, but the way, the truth, and the life, and that salvation can only be found through him.

Our Father, from whom come all blessings, earthly and heavenly, Thy divine grace and goodness, grant us the free, full, final forgiveness of all our sins, through the gift of Thy saving Son, Jesus. Yet how have we repaid Thee for Thy lovingkindness? Have we wholly and sincerely turned to Thee in Christ? Have we fallen on our knees in penitent contrition for our sins? Have we resolved that with Thy Spirit's help we will live truer, better lives? O God, judge us not for our thanklessness, nor punish us for our ingratitude. According to Thy rich mercy in Christ, our sin-bearing and sin-removing Savior, do not withdraw Thy compassion from the people whom Thou hast hitherto loved and blessed with unparalleled benediction. Give us and send us Thy Spirit throughout the width and breadth of this land, so that thankful hearts may now be raised to Thee. O Lord of hosts, more than all else, we ask preserve to us and our children the full gospel of grace in Thy Son, our Savior. Then we will bless Thee forever in the heavenly thanksgiving. Hear us for Jesus' sake. Recently a listener wrote me, I do not believe in God, nor do I know for sure that there is not a God. If you can show me the way to your God, I will be eternally grateful. Now why, we ask, first of all, does this young man refuse to believe in God? His letter answers this question, explaining, my family is not what you would call a Christian family. They believe that one's life on earth is the important thing, and do not believe in a life after death. Now pay close attention to this shocking statement. My mother, who is the most influential person in developing my beliefs, is an agnostic. What a horrifying charge. Unless the unbelieving mother of that young man repents and comes to Christ, she will suffer a crushing and eternal rebuke. On the awful day of God's judgment, her own children will rise up, point the finger of accusing scorn at her, and declare, you, our own mother, kept us from God, from Christ, from our salvation. Now you have kept us out of heaven, and you, our mother, have helped send our souls to hell. Unbelieving mothers, if nothing will turn you from your own unbelief and make you confess your frightful sins before Christ, if you were so stubborn, blinded, and hardened that you say there is no God, no heaven or hell, don't bring double damnation on yourself by leading your own flesh and blood away from the Lord, away from the Savior, away from heaven. If, like this mother, some of you women are the murderesses of your own children's souls, may the Almighty take you, break you, make you suffer the closest misery earth has to hell, so that in the agony of your suffering you feel the folly of your faithlessness and acknowledge the victory of your God. Now today we have heaven's help for that young man. As for millions throughout the world who ask, is there a God? Who is he? Where can I find him? Not on the basis of human reason, human guesses, human wishes, but by heaven's eternal truth, I tell you, Jesus Christ is your God. Drop everything that may divide or distract your thoughts. Give the next short quarter hour to the most magnificent mercy heaven itself can offer you, and study Christ's own words in our text, Saint John chapter 14, verses 1 to 3 and 6 to 9. Let not your heart be troubled. He believed in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions. I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there ye may be also. I am the way, the truth, and the light. No man cometh unto the Father but by me. Jesus is gathered with his disciples only a few hours before he begins his sufferings for the sins of the world. In these last moments, more than ever before in the three and a half years of his ministry, Christ speaks of God. He does not debate the question whether there is a God. He does not present long arguments to prove that there is, but without question or argument he tells his disciples, ye believe in God. Today, too, we will waste no time in answering the so-called arguments of atheism. All normal persons with sane minds believe that there is a God. Their conscience teaches them that, no matter how blasphemously infidels shriek, there is no God. They keep their mouths shut when danger or death draws near. They are afraid that of that inner voice which within them tells them there is a God, and they fear that it might be right. They fear that they may have to face the Almighty. But not only does the conscience prove that God exists, our human reason also requires that we find a divine creator, a divine planner, a divine preserver in the marvels of nature. Have you ever heard of a man who stood on Bedloe's Island in New York Harbor and, gazing up to the Statue of Liberty, said, How astonishing! Think of it! All the pieces of this mighty bronze figure came together by chance. No one designed it. No one made it. It just happened. You know too well where a man with such insane ideas belongs. Yet when some so-called experts make even wilder and more irrational claims, they are often hailed as outstanding leaders in human thought. Consider the human body. In comparison with its measureless marvels, the Statue of Liberty is a crude, coarse, clumsy thing. Our skin has 1,500,000 sweat glands. Our lungs have 700 million cells. Our brains have 3,000 billion nerve cells. And above all, we each have that super miracle called life. Yet although scientists themselves do not know the structure of the microscopically small parts of the bodily tissues or substances and stand bewildered at the marvelous system, the amazing design of our bodies, nevertheless loudmouthed skeptics and misdirected university teachers cry out, There is no God, no eternal designer who formed man, no divine creator who called him into existence. The human race came into being by sheer chance. What utter nonsense! No wonder the Bible declares, The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. Look at your hands. You know that mathematically the chance that the ten fingers you have would accidentally take the order they now have is only one in ten billion. The chance that they would appear in their different sizes and characteristics is only one in many trillion. Even common sense rules out the delusion that our bodies are accidents, that we have not been designed by an all-knowing, all-powerful God. And whatever your reason tells you, Scripture leads a believer to look to God and to declare, I am fearfully and wonderfully made. If there is no almighty God in heaven who brought us into being, if there is no judge of eternity before whom every one of us shall give an account of himself, if there is no heaven and no hell, why worry about truth, honesty, purity, love, and faithfulness? Why keep pledges and promises? Why be restricted by marriage? Why not glory in war, revel in bloodshed, gloat over others in agony? Why not carouse, lie in steel, kill, curse, and crush your fellow men, pander to your passions, live as animals in unbridled lust, close the churches, cut down the cross of Christ, stop the preaching of his gospel? These are the logical extremes of godlessness. The Bible puts all atheists into one class, and the word that never makes a mistake says in sweeping condemnation, they are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good. O let our land hear and heed God's clear verdict. Those who say there is no God are corrupt, abominable, none doeth good. At the same time, may the Holy Spirit give us the farsightedness and insight to realize that in communism, as it spreads over our world, we are confronted by the biggest and best organized advance of atheism world history knows. Its leaders have boasted, quote, we have destroyed the king of the earth, now let us destroy the king of the sky, unquote. Its writers print notices in their books that one cannot believe in God and be a good communist. Its teachers daily drill children in the denial of God. Its playwrights ridicule religion on the stage. Its military leaders permit no chaplains in their armies. Now, if you want to worship your God freely, if you want the right to own your own home, if you want the privilege of having your children brought up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, if you want the God who blessed this country in the past to bless it also in the future, if you want this generation to sidestep the horrors of World War III, fight atheism on every inch of its advance, say to communism, stop, you cannot curse our land, particularly if you eagerly seek peace for your own soul. May God keep you from thinking that you can find your problems answered in atheism. Godlessness never helps except to hurry its victims to hell. It fails in every crisis. Scores of red atheists face to face with bankruptcy of their creed have humbly sought refuge in God. Even the end of notorious infidels seems to have been marked by divine displeasure. When Voltaire died, his friends wanted to honor his request and give him infidel and blasphemer, though he was a church burial. So they closed his dead body with the colorful garments fashionable in that day, placed a large wig on his lifeless head, and seated his corpse in their carriage as though he was sleeping. Through deceit and against later protest, the body was interred with full church rites and then buried. Later, when atheism exerted its short control, his corpse was reburied in the Pantheon of Paris. But years after, when France recoiled from its bloody revolution, a group of men entered Voltaire's tomb, put his moldering bones into a bag, threw them into a deep pit they had dug outside the city, and poured quicklime over them. The Bible tells us that Jehoiakim, the unbelieving king of Judah, would be buried with a burial of an ass, passed forth beyond the gates of Jerusalem. The end of atheists in the past, the death of present-day rebels against God like Hitler and Mussolini, the vengeance to be wreaked on the infidels in the years to come, the champions of godless communism, no matter how securely their bodies may now be embalmed, all these cry out in warning, be not deceived, God is not mocked. Yes, we tell our disquieted young friends, there surely is a God. Far more important, however, than our assertion, is the fact that his own conscience and his own reason show him that there must be a God, that the countless miracles in his body, his world, his universe, combined in chorus to acclaim God, that the wrecked and ruin of atheism show the fatal folly of denying God, that the sacred scriptures, and this is our supreme authority, settle the issue first by assuring us God is, and then asking us, is God yours? To answer that question, it is not enough to know that God exists. You must also know who he is, and how you can make him yours. The real issue in many troubled hearts and minds today does not center about the question, is there a God? Rather does it ask with Job, all that I knew where I might find him. Not nature, not science, not reason, not the conscience, but the Bible, the revelation of heaven's own truth, tells you who your God is. In the 31 verses of this chapter in Saint John, from which our text has been chosen, Jesus speaks more than 100 times of his Father, himself, and the Holy Spirit, ascribing to each divine name, divine power, and divine honor. Together with thousands of other Bible passages, these verses teach that the true God, as he is revealed in scripture, is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, three persons, but one God, Trinity in unity. I'm not asking you to analyze or explain this magnificent mercy, but I do say on the basis of heaven's unbreakable truth, that if you've been searching for certainty in knowing who God is, your quest is over. Here in the Father who created you, the Savior who redeems you, the Spirit who sanctifies you, is the true God, the only God, your God. It is glorious grace that God in his mercy has told us just who he is, yet what greater grace to know that God also revealed himself to men, that he lived among men here on earth, so that they would recognize him, know him, believe him, and for all times be freed from uncertainty as to who the Almighty is. God who came down to this earth and was born as man, yet without sin, is Jesus Christ, and if you want the true God, you must worship him in Christ. Therefore Jesus implies in our text, it is not enough to agree that there is a God, you must find him in Christ. Here his words ring out with divine force, he believe in God, believe also in me. He declares himself to be the Almighty, he asks men to believe him, to worship him. As he said at another time, all men should honor the Son even as they honor the Father, and today he tells us in language so plain that a child can understand it, he that hath seen me hath seen the Father. Behold Jesus, and you behold your God. See how clearly and repeatedly Jesus proves himself your God in the marvelous statements of our text, you together with the record of his life, death, and resurrection. First of all he told his disciples in that farewell meeting, let not your heart be troubled. As he repeats that assurance to every one of you now, let not your heart be troubled. Believe with all your souls that Jesus as your God invites you to bring all your sins and sorrows to him, and in his love to find rest for your wounded spirit, to take all your trouble from your tormented heart, Jesus as your Lord of love permitted sinful men to nail his hands and feet to the accursed cross at Calvary, so that there is the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world. He could die in your stead and in your behalf, defeating forever all the torments of your conscience, all the contradictions of the devil, all the doubts of your true human heart. Jesus further promised both his disciples and all who believe in him, in my Father's house are many mansions. I go to prepare a place for you. He was riveted to the cross, not simply to show us how to suffer or to give us a high example of self-sacrifice, but to open heaven's door for us, trusting in him we shall live again, not as vague spirits, but in new radiant recreated bodies in heaven, in his Father's eternal house, with beauty, bliss, and blessing too magnificent for the puny powers of our human understanding to begin to grasp. Again Jesus assures all believers, his disciples, in the distant past days of his flesh, as in today's strife and doubt, I will come again. The days of this sin-cursed world are numbered. Jesus will come again in a second amazing advent, no longer poor and persecuted, crushed and crucified, but mighty and majestic as he crushes his enemies and delivers his faithful. His second advent is at hand. He is coming soon. Get ready to meet him as your God, the judge of the quick and the dead. In this return Jesus brings his highest joy to all believers, for he assures them I will receive you to myself, that where I am ye may be also. We shall be gathered to meet him and to be welcomed by his wondrous love. Then life's troubles and turmoils ended, we shall be forever with the Lord, always face to face with Jesus, ever in his blessed presence. Only God can grant you that eternal glory, therefore fall on your knees before Christ because he, your God, offers every one of you today eternal life with him. Listen carefully, however, as he calls out to you. I am the way and the truth and the life, and forgetting all human ways to heaven, your own way, the good works way, the pay your way way, all of which can never bring you back to God. Believe that Christ, by the shedding of his blood, not only shows you the way, prepares the way, but actually is the way to eternal glory. Believe him, the way, the truth and the life, and you were saved, all your sins and all the devils of hell notwithstanding. And now comes heaven's own warning. If you want to be saved, you must have Christ. There is no other way, no other truth, no other life. Pay close attention as Jesus declares, no man cometh unto the Father but by me. Our cross-centered faith is not one of many creeds that saves. It is the only one assured way of salvation. Stop searching for any other road to your redemption. Only by faith in the cross, the blood, the atoning death at Calvary, and the victorious resurrection at the open grave can heaven ever be yours. Come to Christ now. Join me in this deathless confession of faith, Martin Luther's 400-year-old exaltation of Jesus Christ, which I pray you will make yours today. I believe that Jesus Christ, through God, begotten of the Father from eternity and also through man, born of the Virgin Mary, is my Lord, who has redeemed me, a lost and condemned creature, purchased and won me from all sins, from death and from the power of the devil, not with gold or silver, but with his holy, precious pardon, with his innocent suffering and death, that I may be his own and live under him in his kingdom and serve him in everlasting righteousness, innocence and blessedness, even as he is risen from the dead, lives and reigns to all eternity. This is most certainly true. God grant that today, now, every one of you will say, in Jesus Christ I have my God, my Savior, my Lord, now and forever in heaven. Amen.