In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of being conscious of eternity rather than being focused on worldly possessions and self-image. He explains that there are four different perceptions of ourselves: the person we think we are, the person others think we are, the person we think others think we are, and the person God knows we are. The speaker encourages the audience to see themselves as God sees them and to be honest before Him. He also shares a powerful illustration of witnessing the suffering and brokenness in the world, highlighting the negative impact of pornography and the responsibility of older generations in corrupting young minds.

I'm not going to use it for myself. I have to publish a book, and I don't have any publishers, so I guess my next book might cost about ten or twelve thousand dollars, and if you covered that tonight, I'm grateful. And if you didn't, you'll be back tomorrow night, so that should make up the slack. But I do not get a penny out of my book, or out of the tape, and give all the profits to missions. So you won't be helping me in any way. You might be helping to fulfill the song you just sang. Prophecy of Isaiah, chapter six. Prophecy of Isaiah, chapter six, reading from verse one into verse nine. In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. Above it stood the seraphims, each one had six wings. With train, or with two, he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two did he fly. And one cried unto another and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. And the pulse of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke. Then said I, woe is me, for I am undone, because I'm a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. For mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. Then threw one of the seraphims unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with a tongue from off the altar. And he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lord, if I touch thy lips, thy iniquity is taken away, and my sin purged. Also I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, here am I, send me. And he said go. There is an automatic division in my judgment in this short reading. There are three words in verses 5, 7 and 9. They're so simple even a preacher could remember them. Verse 5, the word woe. Verse 7, the word love. Verse 9, the word go. The first is the word of a man. The second is the word of a seraphim. The third is the word of God. The first is a word of confession, woe is me. The second is a word of cleansing, lo, this has touched thy lips. And the third is a word of commission, go. An unusual feature about this wonderful chapter is this, that it is dated for us in the year that King Uzziah died. We mentioned a couple of nights ago that when the king was anointed in Israel it was with pomp and circumstance. He was the anointed of God. You remember Saul, the king of Israel, was anointed and the Spirit of God entered him and he got gifts of the Spirit because he prophesied, but he ended up a suicide. This man was anointed to be king of Israel and he died with a leper's rag on his lips. And as I said, in the year that King Uzziah died, I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted up. It isn't what we know that disturbs us, it's what we see that disturbs us. After the meeting last night, if you were here, there was a strange brooding of the Spirit, and a very lovely young lady came to me afterwards, tears running down her face, and said, Mr. Regner, did it hurt you to preach like you preached tonight? I said, it sure did. She said, it hurt me. I said, well you were hurt, I was hurt, but I'll tell you something more, God was hurt. He was hurt because people disobeyed him. Well, I went to bed. I didn't sleep, which is not unusual. I got up, went to bed about three o'clock this morning, got up at seven, and in the early hours of the morning I said, now Lord tell me why, why, why a lot of people were disobedient last night. And he gave me the answer shortly, just like that, right from heaven. They have no vision. Here is a vision, a threefold vision. A vision of God, a vision of a lost world, a vision of the man himself. Isaiah had a very wonderful ministry. He had a very wonderful friendship with Uzziah. Uzziah was a great king. He established a lot of reforms. Isaiah was almost blue-blooded. He was an aristocrat, and if you read the first chapter and the first verse, you'll discover that he reigned, he ministered, he prophesied through the reign of four kings. But he says, in the day that I, that Uzziah went out with a leper's rag, when he died I saw the Lord. This man again is in this, I'll use the word, I don't like to use it, but I'll use it, this very fabulous character, very fabulous classification of being a prophet. Prophets are God's emergency men for crisis hours. Prophets are men who live with God. And God had given a revelation to this man, and he doesn't give revelations to many, maybe, but he gave a revelation to this man. He said to Uzziah, the son of Amos, go and lose the sackcloth from off thy loins, and put off thy shoe from my foot. And he did so walking naked and barefoot. And the Lord said, like as my servant Isaiah walked naked and barefoot three years for a sign and a wonder upon Egypt and upon Ethiopia. Can you imagine the humiliation of it? Read it when you go home, that's in the twentieth chapter. In the second chapter, God said of Israel, a rebellious nation had become like Sodom and Gomorrah. And the only way for him to draw attention to God's anger against the nation was that he humiliated himself naked there in some public place. You'll preach his death and do that of course. You haven't enough passion to do it anyhow, most of us. Of course, you'll get dressed up to be Santa Claus at Christmas. You'd act a fool at a Halloween party in your church. And if you spit yourself and laid naked in the shopping plaza these days, they'd arrest you. If you did it on the beach, they'd photograph you. But you see, these men are men of intense passion. The man Jeremiah, I was reading about him today, and remember what he did? Even the prophets ganged up on him, and the priests ganged up on him. And the wages he got for, as they even declared, he delivered the message of God. And so they sank him into a pit. It was a drainage place where all human excrement and filth went. And he sank down in it and was almost about to drown until they rescued him. And those were his wages. Now of course you get filled with the Holy Ghost and become a millionaire in two years. If you don't, you didn't get the baptism. You see, the Apostle Paul never aspired for greatness or riches, even after what you would call maybe one of the most, perhaps the most successful ministry of all time. And he's still saying after he's raised the dead, after he's raised the hell, after he's been to the greatest festival in the world, he began in the intellectual capital, pardon me, he began in the historic capital of the world where he was born, Tarsus. He ended up in the intellectual, he ended up in the military capital of the world, Rome. In between he went to the religious capital of the world, Jerusalem. He went to the intellectual capital of the world, Acts 17, and argued with the philosophers and poets and stoics and philosophers. And he went to the immoral capital of the world, Corinth, the very sewers of hell ran through the city. And he didn't stage a healing meeting. And he didn't rent the Coliseum there that seated a hundred thousand people. He could have put a notice up, I am the Apostle Paul, I am the rightful inheritor of the ministry of Jesus. Everything Jesus did, did I do, because he did. He raised the dead, he cast out devils, he got people who are lunatic straightened out, he unplugged their ears, he took the scales off their eyes, but he never capitalized on it. All our healers need big meetings and big offerings. They came to the apostolic, I don't find any apostolic preacher ever went in a building anyhow. Nobody would take them in, they were afraid to be identified with them. There's an old, old hymn that says, blessed are the men of broken hearts who mourn for sin with inward smarts. And I would be impressed with your eloquence, with the greatness of your best ministry in your church. Tell me, do you know anything about the fellowship of his suffering? To use a common phrase, do you get bellyache or really heartache over the condition of America tonight? We're pretty near Sodom and Gomorrah stage or else we've passed it. Sodom hadn't one bible. Sodom hadn't a church. Sodom hadn't a preacher. Sodom hadn't a prayer meeting. Sodom had nobody to carry its sin. You say Sodom was destroyed because it was rotten. Sodom was destroyed because the church failed. There were not ten righteous in the city. And God blew the whistle on them and ended the game because there were not ten righteous, not because of the iniquity merely. I reminded you the other night of this saying by that great German who said many years ago that Christianity is a very simple but a very sublime thing, to live in time for eternity. And my gripe with Christianity today is we're not eternity conscious people. We're self-conscious, money conscious, position conscious, possession conscious, eternity conscious. I believe tonight the greatest need that we have is this threefold vision. And you know what? I believe there's everybody in this meeting tonight that God wants in all America to be here. There's nobody missing. He gathers people where two or three are gathered. He gathered you. He brought you directly by his desire and his will. And before you shoot a prayer to heaven and say, Lord give me this threefold vision, I want a vision of thy holiness. I want a vision of my helplessness. I want a vision of the world's hopelessness. Before you do that let me try to remind you in some way of the cost of it. You see I'm sure that Isaiah could, pardon me, Isaiah could have had this vision a long while before this, but obstructing his vision there was a person in the way. There was a friend in the way. But immediately God took that friend out of his life. Suddenly he has a strong revelation of God. You'd better not pray tonight because it may cost you your dearest friend. It may cost you a job. It may cost you some other thing to get this threefold vision. Notice again these beautiful words, wall, law, goal. The first a word of confession, the second a word of cleansing, the third a word of commission. Keep them in that order. The wall is me, I'm undone. I'm unseen. The visiting angel coming with a life call touches him and cleanses him. You see it was a vision of height because he saw the Lord high and lifted up. Answer this simple question. How often do you go to church to meet God? Did you come here tonight to meet God or heard a sermon about him? I hear people say, oh holy ghost come into the meeting. If you did, most of us would run for that door. We'd do it in about nine, a hundred yards in nine seconds. It was a vision of height. He saw the Lord high. It was a vision of depth. He saw into the recesses of his own nature. It was a vision of breadth. He saw lost world. It was a vision of deity. He saw God in his holiness. It was a vision of decadity. He saw himself. It was a vision of beauty. He saw lost world. The cherubim and seraphim were not singing about the attributes of God omnipotent or omnipresent or omniscient. Those are the attributes of God. They were singing about the essential nature of God. They were singing holy, holy, holy and revelation says they cease not to say by day or by night. Endlessly they cry holy, holy, holy is the Lord. And the greatest need of the church of Christ tonight is to see the holiness of God afresh. He's lost all sense of his majesty. I saw the Lord high and lifted up. And his train filled the temple. Well of course when you start talking about vision somebody gives you a medicine and says now you better be careful about this you know. Don't get too spiritual. No other Christian ever warned you about getting too rich did they? Particularly Baptists. Nobody ever said now watch it you might get too rich. Did anybody ever say to you don't study too much you might become too wise. But people if you start pursuing holiness, not just the gift of the spirit but the very character of God himself, somebody says hey watch it watch it. And they've got nice little cliches you can hear here. I've heard them in Australia and around the world. And they say something like this you know you can be so heavenly minded you very sweet. But I want to tell you the church of Jesus Christ tonight is within 10 million miles of becoming so heavenly minded she's so earthly minded she's so heavenly used. You see if you have a vision without a task you'll be a visionary. If you have a task without a vision that's drudgery. You know some of you poor preachers say oh boy Friday tomorrow I have to start getting two more sermons. Well if they make you tired do you want to make the congregation tired? Two more sermons. Oh dear. The man that lives in the secret place of the most high. You see we're in a shocking state these days. Do you know why America is sick? Because the church is sick. Do you know why the church is sick? Because you preachers are sick. That's right. You become an errand boy for the church. You repair the bus ministry. You repair the buses. You repair this. You do that. You do the other. And you've no time to pray. You've only two things to do if you're a man of God. Just two if you're a pastor. Give yourself continually to prayer and to the word of God. Well what about the sick? Let the deacons visit them. What about the dead? Let the deacons bury them. It's good to say. Let the dead bury the dead. But I thought I thought that was a deacon going out but it isn't. You see the preacher has become a burden. You rent him like you rent a donkey. When McLaren went to Manchester he was the king of the pulpit. And when he entered that great sepulchre of a church that was empty they offered him a new house. They offered him a big stipend. They offered him a carriage and horses. And he said he'd accept it. If they accepted his terms what are your terms? Well he said you want my head and my feet. You can have one or the other not both. The result was he never went in anybody's home. But he spent hours in prostration before God and when he came there people were hanging almost on the chandeliers to hear to him. We've got a paralysis in the pulpit. We've too many dead men giving out dead sermons to dead people. If you have a vision without a task you'll be a visionary. If you have a task without a vision that is drudgery. But if you have a task where is your vision? You'll be a missionary. And I get disturbed about people who will give money for the foreign field. For people at the other side of the world and your neighbor at the other side of the street you're under hell and you've never been after them. I don't believe there's a church in America needs a bus service. You pay for buses. You maintain them. You insure them. You pay for gas. You know how to get rid of them? Get enough compassion to fill the empty seats in your car twice on Sunday. You won't need a bus service. You might get some fleas. That's for the few dirty people and maybe the kids will get sick in it. Those very empty seats in your automobile will rise in judgment against you at the judgment day. In the year that King Utah died I saw the Lord high and lifted up and his prayers filled the temple. Now that must have been some vision. But you see when you get a vision like that it's totally transforming. The vision of the holiness of God which will come to in a few minutes was totally overwhelming. There used to be a preacher in England and if you preachers haven't read him you should have. His name was P.T. Forsyth. And if you've got out of the playpen, you know, you don't need to read Run Baby Run or Cross with a Switchblade, but you're a bit more grown up than that. Read P.T. Forsyth. And read his book on prayer. It's fabulous. We've got the title for the moment. But he has a book called The Justification of God. And I remember a few years ago going to hear a man who had been an outstanding socialist in England. He was a rebel. He was going to pull the monarchy down. He was going to transform England and then somehow just like on that Damascus road God laid hold of him. And D.R. Davis got marvelously converted. He had already written a book called Socialist Saturday Night. He tells about socialism, Fabian socialism, you know Bernard Shaw stuff and H.G. Wells, the guy's going to turn the world upside down. That was the answer. And God told him it was easy for him to sit in authority over others when his own life was in the state of rebellion. He got marvelously saved. He became a great preacher. And I heard him more than once. And he wrote the introduction to this book, The Justification of God. Let me read it. I haven't memorized it. In its foreword he says this, I find this book deeply moving. That's the book The Justification of God. Forth I have seen once and for all the agony of God in Jesus Christ crucified. And that abysmal vision convinced him that the material progress of society, and he wrote this about 70 years ago, the material progress of society is only cross cast up by the sea whose undercurrent is tragedy. Hence his insistence on the holiness of God and the historical, the historic fatality of the cross. For Christ persisted in his one determination to keep saying no to history, even when events were seemingly confirming human pretensions. You see this whirligig we're going right now about making a new world order. I happened to hear that nearly 60 years ago. I happen to remember that these men were aspiring and they were putting the church in the garbage can. And H.G. Wells says we can have a new world order without the church, without Jesus Christ. He did not talk about repentance and sin. He talked about the sufficiency of man and the adequacy of materialism and the inevitability of progress. And he said we'll bring in a new world. We'll pull down the hills of wealth, fill in the valleys of poverty, make the crooked places safe. We'll cast the magic spell of politics over the world. And we'll bring in the millennium. That's what he said in 1912, two years before World War II. At the end of World War II, before World War I, pardon me, 1912. At the end of World War II, that same man who had already witnessed history of the world and written tracts and charter and whatnot, he was standing there on the edge of a world that was shaking to pieces. And instead of saying by political power and our maneuvering and our skill, we're bringing a new world order. At the end of 1939 and 45 war, H.G. Wells was standing stricken and paralyzed and saying this. It's all captured in the title of his last book, Mind at the End of its Tether. He said like Jean-Paul Sartre that we're in an impasse and there is no way out. I noticed somebody asked this political aspirant just the other day, Jackson. Well, what about the political, pardon me, what about the crime in the country? We can't do a thing about it, he said. All we can do is build bigger jails. There's no way of transforming men. He's right. Apart from regeneration, there is no way to transform men. And the only way to have regeneration is to have revival. You see, don't, be kind to yourselves tonight. You're all just dumb as you came in. Just be a nice little pew-dweller. Pay your tithes, pastor will love you. You'll make it to heaven, just about. But if you want a vision, you're very careful about it. You see a little later this man is crying there before God in the 64th chapter of this book. You see God so pruned him of every ambition and so purified him that you'll find him there. He sees the sin of the nation. He sees the holiness of God. And God must do one of two things with sin, either purge it, pardon it, or punish it. And he prays one of the greatest prayers. And I don't care if you can raise the dead if you can't pray. Do you know what he prayed? To that God he's seen in his holiness and majesty, he says, oh, but thou wouldst rend the heavens and come down. David Garrick once heard George Whitefield cry that word out. He said, I'll give ten thousand golden sovereigns if I could say it like that, and I'm supposed to be the greatest actor in the world. I can't say, oh, like George Whitefield says it. I wonder what he would have given to hear Jeremiah say it. When he says, oh, but my head will water. Or if you've heard David saying it, when he says, oh, Absalom my son, tell me this, did you ever cry? Get to the place where you do a language and all you say is, oh. And it traveled a million trillion miles into eternity and God heard it. Well, that's how he prayed because he had this vision. Oh, but my head will water. A man would never have become a major prophet and written a book like this with our 66 chapters in it. It has been criticized, analyzed, attacked more than any book in the Bible. You find even a lot of fundamentalists declare there were two Isaiahs and some think there were 22. There was one Isaiah. This book is divided right down the middle. Chapters 1 to where? 39 make the first part of the book. Chapters 40 to 66 are the second part. And do you know why the same man wrote them? Because this man has more concept of the holiness of God than all the other prophets put together. In the first chapters, 1 to 39, you find twelve times he talks about the holiness of God. In the second part of the book, chapters 40 to 66, he mentions the holiness of God 17 times. And the only time that this is mentioned again, the holiness of God is mentioned by that great prophet Jeremiah on two occasions and three times in the psalm. He's all overwhelmed with the holiness of God. He's on holy rise and to behold iniquity. Well God, in heaven, what's he thinking about the cesspool you and I live in tonight? I can remember when people talked about prostitutes. We don't talk that ugly word now. They call them tall girls. I can remember when you used to shudder if somebody talked about sodomy. Now you can be homosexual and be accepted in the ministry. How much longer do you think God is going to accept the stink that comes up from America and England, the modern Sodom and Gomorrah? How long do you think he's going to do it? And here is a man who says he wondered. He wondered. God said he wondered that there was no intercessor. And he said, Lord I'll stand in a gap. I will be the intercessor. All right, he had a vision of God. He had a vision of himself. He had a vision of the lost world. I don't have time tonight to stay with all these things for sure. But I want to remind you again, let's take the last vision first, the vision. I don't know if what him moved you tonight, it moved me. All Zion hates. All Zion, hurry up. That's why Jeremiah works. He says, listen, before very long you're going to be howling when the invader comes. You're going to be crying the harvest is past. The summer is ended and we're not saved. And they said, forget it. We live in the strongest nation in the world. We've more food stored up than any other nation. We can meet anybody that's coming. And all that happened was a smart military diplomat, he changed the course of the river and the enemy got in and they stole the city and everything that was around. And there came a day when the whole nation, that tribe or the evangelist preached on it in your church, is not the tribe and individual, it's the tribe and nation. The harvest is past. The summer is ended. Your preacher maybe preached the other day on that lovely event, Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey, deity on a donkey. Didn't he? And didn't he talk about the triumphal entry into Jerusalem? Was it the triumphal entry or was it a tearful exit? It says the people cried over the city. Why? Because they had reasons. I'm going to tell you, I believe in the judgment that I find this, that when Jesus went into that city, he could see Titus coming up the road. He was going to spill that city with blood. I believe he could see the Jews at Buchenwald and Dachau being liquidated by Hitler. You don't give God a brush off whether you're an individual or a nation. They thought they could get by on their own strength. I was reading, what is it, the 49th chapter of Jeremiah this afternoon, where it says, Go you get up there among the stars and set your place up in the sky. The eagle builds a nest. And you know what? The symbol of this blessed, wonderful country we live in is an eagle. But do you remember it was also the symbol of the Roman Empire? And at one time it was a symbol of Russia. And when I was a little boy in England, we used to sing about the Kaiser eating currant buns while the eagle on his hat flew away. It was a symbol of strong Germany. And every nation that has had an eagle as its symbol has gone down. It is inevitable that America does that, yet it is, unless the church repents. I remind you again, in the Old Testament, God's problem was not the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, God Almighty's problem there was Israel. In the New Testament, after Matthew, Mark and Luke, the whole balance of the New Testament is to the church, not to the world. If you had lived in England a number of years ago, 200 maybe, if the guy knew the city of London, he'd take you to this intersection and that, he'd show you a place, a market where somebody was burned to death. But if he knew London, he would say, now come tomorrow morning, and as the clock gets to eleven, a big handsome man comes down the street. Physically he's tall, intellectually he's tall, spiritually he's tall. His name was Thomas Binney. As far as I know, he only wrote one hymn, Eternal Life, Eternal Life, How Pure the Soul Must Be. When placed within my searching sight it shrinks not, but with calm delight can live and look on thee. And then he says, the spirit that surrounds my soul, the cherubim and seraphim in this chapter, they may bear that burning bliss. The holiness of God is so majestic that even cherubim put their wings, they hide, they can't look on him. They look through their wings like you look through your lenses when you put your shades down, and it's very funny. And even the eyes of cherubim can't bear the holiness of God, and they filter his majesty as it were, his holiness, through their wings. And they can't bear him to look on them, and so they cover themselves with their wings, they try and hide. And yet he says, the spirit that surrounds my soul may bear that burning bliss, but that is surely theirs alone, since they have never, never known a fallen world like this. And another hymn writer says, thou didst not spare thine only son, but gavest him for the world, and that a fallen world like this two hundred years ago, you couldn't have found a piece of pornographically serious electronics. You couldn't have found X-rated films. You couldn't have found the dirty, rotten, lousy things that bequeath young people. And don't blame them, because after all, the kids don't control the brewery industry, and the teenagers don't publish all the lousy playboys and all the other girly magazines. And the kids don't make the dirty films. The older people make them, and they trap young people, and the kids end up in jail and end up in hell. I spent two years in the sewers of New York with David Wilkinson when he, right at the beginning, when he was almost nobody. I've seen girls so beautiful you'd stare at them for their beauty, not just their figures, their faces. They weren't all gutter girls, they had some of them two, three, four degrees. They'd been to Vassar and Smith and the best universities, then somebody fooled them. Somebody introduced them to a drug, somebody introduced them to sex, and they got their kicks, and they ended up in the river. You'd have girls coming out of office, and the next thing you'd hear, that girl that stayed two weeks, you remember that gorgeous looking girl? They dragged her out of the East River last night. She'd been assaulted sexually. She'd been half, her clothes taken off her. Don't blame the kids for it. We talk about delinquent kids. You've got to go a bit further back than that. I think the trouble is delinquent parents. That's where it started. It's a big world, isn't it? As I've asked you more than once these days, because I'm at least trying to get some, trying to make you uncomfortable, you see. Is that when you wrote off 50 million people in Vietnam and Cambodia and Laos, did it cost you a tear? Or was that the night you had a chicken supper at church? Or was that the Sunday you got excited because your juniors beat the Nazarene juniors or something at baseball? Did it cost you a tear that 50 million people went into captivity? Did you feel as though a mule kicked you in your stomach when Mr. Forbes signed the rights of Helsinki for Russia to keep every captive she has? And do you think Almighty God didn't take record, and do you think he won't pay the price for it? You can't maneuver God, either financially or politically in any other way. And we're hell-bent for destruction right now unless God does a miracle. Now don't get worried about it when I tell you something. I'm not a supreme optimist. No sir, I'm more than that. I've got faith. I happen to have a God that sits on the circle of the earth tonight. This man goes on to talk about this God as the high and lofty and he inhabits eternity. This earth is merely his footstool, a cloud to the dust of his feet. And God has one great big gripe in his heart, and that is that we're blaspheming the name of his promise. And God keeps his promise. I like that hymn that says, forever and ever, not for a day, he keeps his promise forever. And I've got a little thing tucked away in my mind and in my heart, and that is this enjoy too God's going to pour out his Spirit. Every article I pick up, quote 2 Chronicles 7 14, let my people who are called by my name humble themselves. I don't believe that's a word for today. Preachers do, because it puts all the responsibility on the pew. So they whip you about it. Well I've got news for you. The holdup of revival isn't in the pew, it's in the pulpit. The key to revival is Joel 1 13 2 13 3 13. What does he say? Let the priests weep between the altar and the doorpost. Let them wring their hearts and not their garments. Let them cry to heaven. The holdup, the blockage, is in the pulpit, not in the pew. Some of you men have wished to God you'd never even been a preacher when you stand at the judgment seat. You bow beneath a carnal deacon. You scratch people's backs just to get a few dollars. As I say, sometimes this is a day when people have itching ears, but I've no commission from God to scratch them. I might scratch you, but not your ears. Do you know at this point in history this? I don't know what the date is tonight, couple of days off, first of May are we? But you know at this point in history the two most serious things are number one to be a Christian, number two to be a preacher. Do you know that tonight there are more lost people in the world than at any point of history? More unsaved people. You know people think it's real nice to be a preacher. Well I was still enough to believe that for years. After all I was in my 20s. I had a church where people lined up outside in England like a movie house to get a seat at night, nearly fought to get in. Boy I was on top of the earth and then the Lord began to deal with me about things. Then I began to travel to other countries. Then I began to wonder why in God's name we're still building churches. One dot not too far down the road here cost six million dollars. My that would have built a lot of bible schools and published a lot of books and literature in a foreign country. You must enjoy flying around the country. Forget it, keeps me awake at night. You've got real benefit if you're dumb. You won't get worried and troubled about some things that we get troubled about. I wake up at night and find myself crawling into into a house in New Guinea where the where door was 27 inches high and about 13 inches wide and it had wall to wall dirt. There was a gorgeous woman there. She wasn't black. She wasn't white. She's a rich copper killer and she has a baby there on her breast and a dog starts screaming so she puts the dog on the floor and feeds the baby and she puts the baby on the floor, picks the dog up and feeds it on her breast and when she's got the dog quiet she puts it back on the floor and she doesn't clean herself or anything. She just feeds the baby. And you go in the next house and you find a woman suckling a pig and you go watch them bury the dead and they're terrified. They scream as though there's chains of hell on them. Do you know what the early church did? When one man went to prison, when Peter went to prison, everybody stayed up. They sent a message out, hey get the Peter's in prison and if he suffers we suffer. Nobody goes to bed till he gets out. Boy they prayed that night I'll tell you. They all wanted to get back into bed. So the sooner we pray and get him delivered we get back into bed. And they went to church and they prayed and they prayed. Has your church had a night of prayer for the Christians in Russia? Eh? Or are you all through to death? You've got another birth next Sunday. Come on now. You play the game of Christianity by the rules in this book, not what your preacher says or I say or anybody else. More heathen tonight. Russia with how many millions does he have? 230 million people. China with how many millions? 800. Do you remember that time again when Napoleon had his warlords there and he was at that time thinking he was going to conquer the world. And he ran his index finger around the ragged edge of a great country and he said to his warlords there lies a sleeping giant. Let it sleep. Because he said if that nation ever wakes up and harnesses its manpower to its minimal power, if that giant begins to let the world look out. And the country that he outlined on his map was China. The biggest headache to American and English. He's got the atom bomb. Did you ever notice that from the day that Mr. Nixon went to China and shook hands with those militant godless unbelievers that he went down and America went down? Let China discover her strength. Let her harness that strength and let the world look out if she begins to march. Change the figure instead of seeing Napoleon there, see the devil there. Instead of outlining China, outline the church on the map of the ages. And Satan says there lies a sleeping giant, the church. Let it sleep because if she ever really discovers the power of the Holy Ghost, she'll shake the world. Christianity has never, never, never had a bigger challenge. And I have an idea in my mind that if God had rolled out a plan of the ages from the incarnation to the consummation and said to the apostle Paul, you can live in any period of history, it'd have taken the very day in which you and I live. The burdens are bigger, the enemies are stronger. If he'd said it to David, David would have said let me live now because we're surrounded by giants but with no David, only Goliath. Most people want the Holy Ghost for their own benefit, just to be a bit happier, clap your hands, play a few records, read a few books and oh isn't it lovely to be filled with the Spirit. Brother, if you claim to be filled with the Spirit, I'll tell you what, you're on the danger list with God because you owe God a lot more than anybody else. A lost world tonight. I'd like to take you on a trip around it but I don't have time. Except remember again, I think the domino theory has started now that Mr. Hirvon Kissinger is in trouble about giving away the Suez Canal and a few things. He's going to try and salvage his reputation in Africa anyhow. But you see one domino's gone, Angola's gone. They're pushing like mad to destroy the most Christian state in the whole of South Africa. Ian Smith is a born-again Christian. Kissinger won't even go talk with him. He's getting information from others because he wants some favors and rescue his own shattered reputation. But there's a country for you. I've got a boy living there. Isn't it amazing that you could get in a jet in this very city and in three hours you could be flying over an area in South America where it's not 1976 Anno Domini but 1976 B3. I've flown over Australia at night and seen those lights there. And you know the people in Australia, the aborigines don't even wear a g-string. They have no houses, they've no food, no utensil. It rains once in five years up there and when it rains they get down on all fours and they lap it up like dogs. They've no weapons except that fantastic boomerang. And people go to church every Sunday in lovely cities and I preached in them in Australia, Melbourne, fantastic beautiful Sydney with its amazing bridge. And the Christians there sit in comfort and ride in their automobiles and enjoy life. And people living a thousand years the other side of the cross, only a jet ride away from them that nobody bothered. God pity us how selfish can we get. And if that makes you feel comfortable let me remind you there are some Indians in this country that most of us have forgotten. If you want to find some of the wildest go to the west coast of Canada there and I have a friend who gave his life to the Indians years ago and he says there are 400 different pockets of reservations around this country in Canada. And he tries to get around them. He has some fantastic stories of redemption, how God saved those people. Nobody knows, nobody knows, nobody's taken a computer or anything else to find how many people there are up the Amazon. Come on some of you young theological students looking for a nice church. Are you big enough to go up the Amazon and face death and hell and destruction? One of the most heroic fellows I know in the world was a guy I heard of a few years ago. We haven't heard of him, I don't know when dear, six weeks years ago. 22 years of age and the last letter we had through another friend. He said I'm at this point of the Amazon. God has called me to go further up. We don't know any white man has ever been. But from a native I understand even my gun is no use, there's nothing to shoot. The people are desperately wild and superstitious and they're filled with a spirit, demon spirit. I can't get any mail for six months but maybe I'll make it back and if I do, keep writing, I'll pick up my mail. The food is like nothing I've ever had before. There's nothing to shoot, there are no birds that fly, there are some nice juicy snakes if you know the right one. But he said there's always a compensation. Do you know up that area of the Amazon they have they have worms 18 inches long and 20 inches long and if you cook them right, well maybe you'd start better start eating worm burgers if you're going to be a missionary. Your kids come in and say man you got coke again and you know I like Pepsi. You say all right dear daddy, daddy get in the car and take them back. An important slave sits on his throne suffering until daddy gets there. Don't blame anybody, you can't blame school for that, you made him stop. My boys were at the ends of the earth. I like that last verse of that hymn we sang tonight, always tears me up. Give them thy sons to bear a message glorious. We've got one being sweltering away there in Papua New Guinea, the other one's in the middle of South America, the other's in Africa. I'd give 13 sons if I had them but I'm glad I didn't get them to be baseball stars or train them. I told them look you're in this world, do something for God. We left the house flooded with missionary literature and they picked it up and read it. We took them to meetings where there was inspiration and challenge. Norman Grubb came and a lot of his team. Don't you for one minute think that all Christians die happy. No sir, some of you will die as miserable as drunken. Do you know why? Because you missed God's will, that's right. And you wish to God when you're dying on your deathbed if you leave a million dollars. That won't make any difference. You say I'm going to leave it for missions. God won't give you two cents for it, the judgment seat. You say how do you know that? Well I read my Bible that's why. See here's a casket, there's an old boy in it, Baptist of course, and he's left ten million dollars to missions. God won't give him ten cents for it. Why not? Because the Bible says the Lord loves us what? Well have a look at him. Does he look very cheerful? Did he give it? No, no, no, he didn't give it. He could have given that years ago, but he kept it. He didn't give it. Death took it from him. Life isn't just. Oh it sure is. Queen Elizabeth the first of England said to a doctor I'll give you three thousand pounds worth maybe thirty thousand dollars these days if you'll extend my life two days. He said I can't do that for a queen. Ah yes. Only one life. A lost world. Let me finish with this. That boy that's in South America now trying to build a Bible school. That's why I give all my money for missions. That kid lives as economically as he can and he's putting an orphanage up because kids out there are despised. And he has the walls of his Bible institute up. He's been down there 12 years and never asked me for a penny and he has no church supports him. He never sent out begging letters. Thought it would be some of that. But I remember when he was a little boy and we were going through the city of Leeds. He looked out of the car window and he said daddy what's the building? And I said son that's a jail. What's a jail for? I told him. What's the tower for? Where they hang men? Why do they hang them? I tried to explain. And you know just like that I came back to my mind a thing that has disturbed me. A thing that the president of one fine holiness group in this country heard me say when I was preaching at a minister's conference. He said to me three years after that brother Ravenhill I'm 74 years of age and from the day that you preached part of that message on Isaiah 6 and told us that story from that day till this I've never been in bed after four o'clock in the morning. I'm 74 years of age. Completely shattered by laziness because I told him about a man called Charlie Pease. He was the Al Capone of England. He broke every law of God and man. And finally the law caught up with him. Finally the judge said Pease you hang by the neck until you die and God have mercy on your soul. And according to British law you've got to give him 21 days, three weeks to repent. When he was there in the prison cell they watched him night and day. He didn't go to sleep for what they watched him. They cut his food up so he couldn't commit suicide. And the night before he was to go to the gallows an officer came in his room and said Mr Pease he said yes, got something to tell you. Yeah, tell me I'm going to hang by the neck in the morning so I'll be here. That's how worried he was. He said I've told you I did everything I wanted to do. I murdered people, I raped women, I broke into banks, I've had my fun, I pay my bills, I've always done that. And in the morning when the prison governor and the prison doctor, I think Pierpoint was the hangman, they went in to see the man. He got up and brushed his shoulders as though he was going to a wedding. The prison doctor walked ahead, the prison governor walked ahead, an officer walked ahead, and the preacher walked ahead reading dreamily out of a book. And he got almost to the place where he had to go three steps and put his head in the noose. Somebody pull a switch and he's tilting and electrifying him. Pull his neck up. He almost got to the door when suddenly he grabbed at the preacher and said what are you reading? Oh the preacher says I'm reading from a book called The Consolations of Religion. Consolations of Religion, what do you mean? Well he said that's what the book's called. He said listen a moment ago you said something about a city with pearly gates and ghosts. I'm not interested. But you didn't say this. Something about the wicked shall be turned into hell. You said there's a pit where men fall forever and ever and ever and never reach the bottom. Where men are eternally dying and they never die. Where men are, where men are burned forever and they're never consumed. By this time the procession had broken up. They were all surrounding the criminal. And he said preacher tell me this. When something comes out of me you say my spirit will charlie peace be eternally falling and never reach the bottom? Will charlie peace be eternally burning and never consume? Will death get hold of me and I never die? Now you've been to church and heard about the second birth. Then some of you go to a church where they preach about the second blessing. And you all go to churches I suppose where they preach about the second coming. Did you ever hear anybody preach on the second death? The death that never dies? Don't waste your time telling me that we believe in hell. It's a serial little thing we pigeonhole in our minds. If you believe that every relative, every neighbor in your street, everybody you work with in the office will eternally die. They'll fall forever and ever and ever and never be consumed. They'll burn forever and ever and never be consumed. They'll be in the grip of second death and never die. The prayer meeting will be more packed than any other meeting you ever have. You'll say if I can only get to church one night a week I'm going to the prayer meeting. God's problem in America or England is not Jehovah's Witnesses. The spiritism God's problem with us is dead fundamentalism. We know all the phrases and the terms. He saw a lost world. Do you wonder he was moved? He saw a holy God. There was the holy being and he saw him in all his majesty. And later he talks about him. Oh the high and lofty one who inhabits us eternity. Tell me this one of you. You haven't been to hell for a long while have you? You haven't seen people perishing. You haven't been around the world today have you? I try and go around the world every day I live. Praying for the lost. Praying for people in captivity to sin and superstition and lust and devilry. I can see the countries where I've walked. I've been up in the bush. I've seen people in all their rottenness. But the other side of the coin is you see God in his holiness in his majesty. I think there's nothing we need again more than to see the holiness of God in his majesty in his glory. This very man says he's the high and lofty one who name is holy. Oh thou that inhabit us eternity says in chapter 57 verse 50 whose name is holy and I dwell in the high and holy place with him that is of a contrite spirit and a humble heart. And if you say I don't know God in his holiness well get a contrite spirit and a humble heart you'll reveal himself. What's the other statement he makes? Oh do you think really? Come on we're not acting tonight. This isn't a nightclub. Isn't you for Christ or something? You're adult. You came here because God had a date with you. Do you think you dare pray? Dare I pray this prayer of Isaiah in 63 15? Look down from heaven from the habitation of thy holiness and of thy glory. What a God. I've seen men bowing before gods of wooden stone beating their breasts and bringing their offerings. I walked down the street in Thailand away up 350 miles north of away at least outside of Bangkok and at four o'clock in the morning I saw people behind those big peak fences they have slipping a plate of rice on the shelf and the priest coming down and he'd take it and tip it into a sack and the man would carry it and there they were trying to pay for their sins before ever they'd sin that day. I went to other countries where they string their prayers just like you see the beautiful decoration the bunting on a ship. I've seen people howling and wailing. I've seen them carry bodies of beautiful little boys and girls to the dump in India. I went down a path there in Papua one morning. It rains just about the same minute every morning nine o'clock or just after I walked down that path. Wild bananas, beautiful orchids, their weed. The fragrance was majestic. The scene was just a paradise for photographers. As I walked suddenly I became conscious of something and I looked. There behind me was a woman maybe 60 years of age. Her legs were about that width. Her withered breasts were hanging almost to her knee. Her teeth were all rotten and she was trying to say something and I didn't understand. If I spoke to her she didn't understand. And I went a bit further and there was a village and there were some younger women. They weren't dried up and withered. They were very attractive maybe. And they had their children and they had their God. I walked back in the trees and I lifted my hands up and said, God why? Why? Two thousand years after Jesus died. Two thousand years after the message that God so loved the world. Why? We're not evangelizing the world tonight. Don't fool yourself. It's gone to hell faster than ever it's gone before. But I'll tell you what revival does. Every true revival does two things. Number one, it produces new songs and people go singing and marching to glory. And number two, it launches out a whole slew, a whole army of missionaries. Every revival is genuine. No, they had no idea of the holiness of God. Their God is a witch doctor or a piece of stone where the witch doctor is a priest. They live in fear and torment and agony. Let me have a close. The last vision is we need a vision of ourselves. Do you think we dare ask for that? It's the worst vision of all. A vision of myself. A hymn writer said years ago, search me oh God my actions try and let my life appear as seen by thine all searching I to mine my ways make clear. Search all my thoughts the secret springs the motives that control the chambers where polluted things hold empire or the soul. Search till thy fiery glance has cast its holy light through all and I by grace am brought at last before thy face to fall. You see if you read the five previous chapters when you go home you'll find that this man, this man is jealous for the God of Israel. He knows the sin of the nation. He says over and over and over and over and over again in chapter five. Warn to you and warn to you and warn to you and warn to you. Woe to you drunkards. Woe to you that join house to house. Woe for this and suddenly the eyes that looked upward and saw holy God. The eyes that looked outward and saw the hopeless world they looked inward and he saw himself and he has no more woe for anybody else. You know it's not my brother nor my sister it's me oh God. It's not the pastor or the deacon it's me oh God standing in the need of prayer. And he says woe is me I'm undone I'm unclean I dwell in the midst of the people of unclean lips. Do you remember what happened to Peter when Jesus came near he said depart from me I'm a sinful man oh God. Do you remember Job with all his victory at the end when God came near he said he bowed down in uncleanness. Here you have a major prophet. I'm going to tell you that the rest of this marvelous gospel according to Isaiah as Martin Luther says would never have been written if God would never have trusted him if he hadn't had this crisis experience we've got. He is a prophet but he says I'm undone and I'm unclean and I dwell in the midst of the people of unclean lips. Then God came in mercy. You say well I'm a Christian I'm a Christian all right but I confess I've got an erratic will I get fired up in meetings like this and I'm at zero two weeks after. Well you know what Peter did he warmed himself at somebody else's fire till he got fire himself. You've got an erratic unstable will sure you have unless God has it in control. You've got a selfish nature. You remember that famous monk that died not too long ago. Every time I went through New York and went around west 44th street where the legitimate theaters are west 42nd or west 44th. I used to think of that man that used to go around there and when the girls came out from the stage he slipped his arms around them and said come on sweetie and take you home. You can have dinner and we'll dance and he said he took the girls home he and his friend and he said there was nothing immoral we just like company and he was a gourmet cooker and he cooked in wine and he made marvelous dinners. Then he said we rolled up the rug and put on the music and we danced. One day when he was sitting in a bar he said I said to myself was I made for this drink women man I'm not even living and he shook the dust off his feet and he went down to a monastery. When he got down there in Kentucky they took him in and shaved his head took his clothes and gave him a garment a cord and a candle showed him a bed where he could sleep showed him where he could sit at the refractory table. He took a vow to poverty. He took a vow to celibacy. He took a vow to silence. He was going to make a man of himself and he said the man that led him in at the door of the monastery surely must have been Francis of Assisi risen from the dead and Thomas Merton says I would walk around saying my paternoster praying keeping four feet away from the man in front of me getting up when the bell tolls. Oh yes sir they're disciplined. They don't sit up and watch Johnny Carson like you good sanctified preachers. They go to bed when the bell says go to bed at nine o'clock. They get up at one when the bell tolls. They pray till two and go back into bed. They get up at five and pray till six privately and then they go to pray at seven publicly collectively in the monastery. And he said I said man fancy breathing the dirty air of New York. Fancy sitting with your arm around the waist of a pretty girl, a chorus girl. Fancy the time I used to waste and here I'm in paradise regained. This is great. No noise. Nobody speaks. Nobody fights. Nobody argues. Perfect. Until one day somebody trod on the toes metaphorically of the man that led him in the monastery. That man who'd always been so pious and quiet and lovely and all. Suddenly he exploded and he got angry. Oh Thomas Merton said I see you coming in the monastery and changing your clothes and your habits of life don't make you a saint. It's still inside you better get rid of it. And he said I didn't find the answer to it. It's not in discipline. It's not in fasting. It's not in prayer. Patton wrote his life story didn't he? General Patton wrote a marvelous biography that he called the life of a soldier. And he said the thing that made me angry was not getting a bullet through my through my my my the the rim of my cap or through the tail of my coat. It was sitting there in the mess hall and other men were jealous of me. And I used to hold a street meeting Saturday night. There's a place to educate. You don't go to a cemetery. Seminary I mean. Uh have a street meeting at night. And I held a street meeting on a Saturday night and all the prostitutes came and the jailbirds and about eight or nine cops came. It'd be some great meeting. Some big fight. My that was an experience I'll tell you. How God came and met the lives of those people was just fantastic. I learned a lot there. I learned some things from a young man that was forever talking about Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer if you like. He had read all his philosophy. Three big tomes this height and this rich. And when I asked anybody got a question. Uh what about this? And he'd come up with some fantastic exotic argument you know. But I shot him down one night. I said hey this man of yours that wrote these three big volumes that are in every decent library in the world. Do you know one night he was in the day he was in the Tiergarten in Berlin and he was unshaven and you could smell him a block away. And he was homeless. And the keeper of the park said hey fella get up and go. And he didn't move. He said again hey who are you? And the dirty old bum said well there's a question. That's what I wonder. Who am I? And he said when you've told me that tell me this. Is there a God and can he be found? It was a man that wrote three books on philosophy telling you how to live. You see when Buddha was dying he was still seeking truth. When Jesus started he said I am the way the truth. The dirty ragged dirty man was a man who tells you how to find your way home. He'd even lost his address. The answer is not in education. The answer is not in philosophy. The answer is not in politics. The answer is not being austere and getting away in a monastery where you don't face reality. The answer is here. Let's wrap it up quickly. What did this man say? He says woe is me I'm undone. I'm unclean. And then he says when I cried unto the Lord you know God did what he always does. I heard Campbell Morgan say I don't like the hymn that says my all is on the altar I'm waiting for the fire. You never wait if you put it on the altar. The fire comes. The fire never falls on the altar. It falls on the sacrifice. That's why you sought blessing and it's never come because you don't want to be consumed. You don't want God to burn up your will and the plans of your life and take you home maybe. My darling wife was happy not to have a home for 15 years we haven't had a home. You try traveling like that and raising a family and getting around. For 15 years you've no home. We'd do it again isn't that right sweetie? We'd do that over again. For him sure he was homeless for 30 years. As soon as he cried woe. You remember Jesus says go ye into all the world and as they go he says stay until you be endued with power from on high. This man says I see a lost perishing world and God said who will go for us and he said here am I. But he said wait a minute and that angel took a pair of tongs and took a coal a live coal. It says not a coal a live coal. The altar was like a table but it had bars instead of a solid top. And those were sacrificed and the blood dripped from the sacrifice onto the live coal. And he took a live tongs and he took a live coal that had a drop of blood because the blood is symbolic of Calvary and the fire is symbolic of Israel baptized with the Holy Ghost. And he put them together and the blood and the fire cleansed him and he said Lord this has touched thy lips. And he didn't say your iniquity is suppressed and your old man is chained down. He says that this has touched thy lips that iniquity is taken away and thy sin purged. And there isn't a stronger Hebrew word in the in the New Old Testament. It's the very prayer that David said is any sin and uncleanness purge me with hyssop. Don't wash the surface clean me through and through. You've seen the cheap sloppy flippy evangelism fleshy fleshy evangelists of the day. They don't preach God's redemption. They preach forgiveness. God isn't concerned just to snatch you so you won't burn in hell forever. He wants to make his abode in you. He wants to create you so that that he can shape you and conform you to his image. And it's a painful process so much so that Jesus says you may have to cut your right hand off or pluck out your right eye. Some of the evangelists are liars and I don't apologize to say that. I'll answer to God for it. How much you can get for five minutes at the altar forget it. Because Jesus Christ every drop of blood he had everything he ever had. But immediately that life cold touched him with the blood on it and he touched his lips where he was unclean and that's what he'll do with you. Maybe it's your unclean lips. Maybe it's your unclean mind. Maybe it's your unclean body. Maybe it's your secret lust. Maybe it's your bad temper. Maybe it's your stinking pride. Maybe it's your conceit. But I'll tell you one thing. You can go through that tank and most of you'll be but I'll tell you this the old man can swim. You know that because he's still swimming in you so don't argue about it. You can be baptized in water and the old man can swim but if he baptizes you with the holy ghost fire he'll consume that old nature. I'm coming in dwell you by his divine spirit. The Scottish people say that Robbie Burns is the greatest poet they ever had. He wrote some Tommy Rot. Maybe the best thing that's known about him was he wrote the thing that says that he wouldn't have had the power to give to see ourselves as others see us. That's about as silly as you can get. I don't want to see myself as others see me. This man over here likes me. I think there is one man in the states. I've forgotten his name that likes me but anyhow. This man likes me so what? Everything I do is right. This man the first night I preached boy I cut him to pieces or God did through me and he hates me. Only came tonight because his wife dragged him here. So this man likes me and so he's biased. This man doesn't like me he's biased. You say Mr. Rabinow I have a rather complex personality. I got news for you. You're dead right you have. You know why? Because there are four people living in you. Four? I thought there was one. No there are four. One is the person you think you are. One is the uh the other is the the people other people think you are. And the third is the person you think other people think you are. And the fourth is the person God knows you are. And he's only one that's right. He knows you. And when God begins to show you the mirror and you see yourself warts and all. Yeah when you see your secret monkeys. When you see those hidden jealousies. When you see that lust. When you see the spots and wrinkles inside. If you're honest before God you say woe is me. No I don't want to see myself as a raccoon. I couldn't care less. I don't really want to see myself as I see myself. I'll be too generous. Let me see myself as God sees me. Let me just give you one illustration. It's a terrible tell you what needs to hope so. It's from the greatest book in the world. And some say the greatest book in that book. The book of the revelation. And it isn't a dirty harlot. It isn't a drunkard. It's a church. And you know what that church says? We're the finest people in the world. And she made a portrait of herself. It's not difficult if you're an artist. You sit between two mirrors and you sketch yourself. You see your portrait. So she makes a picture of herself. You notice this? The church in the new testament is always a woman never a man. Why? Because the church brings to birth. The church traverse. The holy ghost conceives in the church. And so here is a woman. She paints herself gorgeous wavy hair. Beautiful enamel skin. Eyes, as the old testament says, as blue as the pools of heshbon. Teeth like a flock of sheep. Neck like a pillar of marble. Boy, some marvelous descriptions in the old testament about a woman put them all together. And she put them all together. And she smiled. And she was going out and I said, uh lady just a minute. And she says, uh, what do you want? I just wanted to tell you that while you were painting yourself, somebody else was painting you. Oh, I don't care about your opinion. Yeah, you're a smart lady. You don't have to bother about my opinion. But it so happened the person who was painting you there was the one who paints all the flowers. And he painted the rainbow. In other words, God was painting you. Do you mean that? Yeah. I noticed when you finished your picture, you wrote underneath it. Yes, I just found the title. That's why I turned back. Do you remember the church? Do you remember how she measured herself by others instead of measuring by the standard of God? And this is what she said, I'm rich and increased in goods. I have need of nothing. And I say, hold it a minute. Let me pull the curtain here. There's a picture here that God made of you. And I want to warn you, it's going to shock you. Can you take it? Yes, I can take it. What did she say in that picture? A face is full of color, her teeth are beautiful, her eyes are lovely. Ah, she's the perfection of a gorgeous woman. And I pull the curtain back and there's a picture of an old hag. And she says, who's that? It's you. There your hair is wavy. Here your head is bald. There your eyes are blue. There your eyes are bloodshot. There your teeth are faultless. There your teeth are yellow in decay. And underneath you said, I am rich and increased in goods. I have need of nothing. And God says, I'm naked and wretched and blind and poor and miserable. It was the same person. One as she saw herself, one as God saw her. Now this holy God I've spoken of tonight that sits on a throne that would make Solomon's look like a piece of driftwood. You, dear preacher, and you, sweet preacher's wife, and you Sunday school teachers, and you pew dwellers, you're going to stand on a dais by yourself. Just stand there with a thousand million eyes looking on. And God's going to bring the photograph you painted of yourself. You were so good and so great and so tall above others and so strong, so pure. He's going to bring the picture out and show the world the picture you painted of yourself. And then he's going to say, Gabriel, bring the picture that I took. And this is the man. He used to live in a place called Titusville in Florida, 1976. Or a bit further down the coast. This is a woman collected for mission. This is a man that taught in a prison maybe. But you see that was all works. It wasn't character. It wasn't your hidden relationship with God. It wasn't the nature of your being. Do you know why people didn't move last night as they should? They never had a vision of God's holiness and they never had a vision of their own corruption. We were in a meeting not too long ago. I preached mostly to preachers at that time, not all of the people. I wouldn't even bother to pressure them. I said, we sing a hymn. And if you're coming, come. And if you don't, go out. You don't owe me anything. I stayed out of bed most of this past night, anyhow, praying for you. That's more than you did for yourself, anyhow. And then he began to drift to the altar. First the preachers, then the fellows from the seminary. It was just after, what, half past nine at night? And a whole bunch of them were still there at six o'clock in the morning. The fellow wrote to me afterwards and he said, Brother Raymond, it was the greatest undoing. God put his x-ray on me and searched me like he searched Jerusalem with a camera. He showed me the festering parts of my nature. He showed me my secret lust. He showed me my pride. He showed me my dry eyes and my passionless spirit. He showed me that while I like to show off in the pulpit, I had no compassion. Brother Raymond, while you talked about going into that bottomless pit and then burning forever and screaming for an eternity that's beyond our comprehension. I must confess, I'd never heard about that in seminary or Bible school or anywhere else. God Almighty haunted me with it. See, God never told me to try and be a popular preacher and I never would, anyhow. As I told you the other day, you can do three things when you preach. Tell people what they already know and they love that. Tell them what they want to know and you'll be a hero. Tell them what God wants them to know, they'll get mad. Told you what God wanted you to know tonight. Wanted you to know that there's a lost world and you're obligated to it. Tell you that he's satisfied with nothing less than holiness in our lives and if you're not holy, you're not where God wants you to be. Tell you that if you cry, woe is me, I'm undone. Don't pray for a deacon tonight. Don't pray for your wife tonight. Pray for yourself tonight. I'm undone. I'm unclean. And when he cried, the angel came and touched him and cleansed him. Shall we sing 233? I'm going to put a fence around the altar tonight for the first five minutes because I think God wants me to. I'm going to ask you, preacher or deacon, first of all to come to this altar. Tell God you've lost your vision of yourself, of his holiness and of a lost world. Just the men, the pastors, the deacons, the Sunday school teachers. You don't have to do it. You won't. I don't count numbers. I'm not going to ask people to close their eyes. Jesus didn't say, will you close your eyes? I feel embarrassed in this old dirty thing they put on me and a crown of thorns and have a lot of phlegm down my face and blood running down. I feel awful. He didn't do that. He walked it out of me. Well, if you can't walk down the church where there's sympathy and love, stay where you are. I'd rather see one man that means business with God come and stay. Don't come and kiss the altar with your knees and get up and go in five minutes. Stay till you've confessed the thing God's spoken to you about. Your pride, your lust, your laziness, your tearlessness, your passionlessness. And stay till you've said, Lord, I mean it. Cleanse me through and through and fill me with thy spirit. You don't get in a meeting like this and get away with it. I'm going to tell you this, not because I preach. There's so much prayer going up for this meeting. There's a world that's deteriorating faster than you have any idea of. Do you know the church, what the church can do? Either concentrate in prayer or pray in concentration camps. There's a choice. Sure, I say some rough things. Don't worry me. I tell you what God tells me. This is the conclusion of this message.