In this sermon, the preacher addresses the issue of individuals who have strayed from their faith and are now living in bitterness and defeat. He specifically mentions young men who were once filled with the light of God but allowed worldly influences, such as relationships, to change their future. The preacher emphasizes the importance of living a Christian life and being a good example to others. He also highlights the need for personal accountability and warns against disregarding the truth that God's light reveals in our lives. The sermon encourages listeners to examine their actions and make necessary changes to align with God's will.

Again tonight, from the book of John, and I am going to talk about the results of rejected life. John 8, 12, these words, Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world. He that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. Then in the twelfth chapter, verse 46, the same book, I am come a light into the world, but whosoever believeth on me should not abide in darkness. And I want to support this by reading a passage from the sixth chapter of the book of Matthew, spoken by the same Lord, but recorded by a different evangelist. Verse 23, our Lord says, but, oh, we'll read verse 22, too. The light of the body is the eye. If therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness! And even in our staid and straight-laced King James Version, to avoid punctuation, there is an explanation point following the word darkness. How great is that darkness! Now, I think you know that millions of words are printed every day, literally millions of words. But there is not one authoritative word ever published anywhere in the world, except, of course, it comes from the sacred scriptures. There is not one word published on the North American continent that I would want to die by. If I knew that my evening this was to be my last, and that I'd never preach another sermon to see another sunrise, there hasn't been a newspaper published anywhere in the world today that I'd want to see. There hasn't been a book published in 1954 that I'd want to read. There hasn't been a word uttered in the League for the United Nations that I would want to hear. There is no authority anyplace. Everybody is writing and everybody is talking. But for dying men, there is not one word of authority anywhere, except as we hear the sure, true, clarifying words of Jesus Christ. So let us tonight hear these words, their sure words, accurate fit the circumstances, their true words, true to all the facts, present and eternal, their clarifying words, in that they pierce straight through all the fog of man's ideas, straight through to the truth. Now, our Lord is not only true, but he is honest, and he doesn't have anything to hide, and he doesn't have anything to gain, and he doesn't have anything to fear, and he doesn't have anybody whose favor he's courting. He's perfectly, completely frank, and he's loving with it all. This is not the cynical language of one who, from his vantage point of safety, speaks with contempt to those who are not supporting him. These are the loving, loyal words of one who backed them up with his own blood. And now this one tells us, authoritatively, that men are by nature darkness and in darkness. And then he tells us that he has come to be their light. He doesn't apologize or water it down or put any notes in the margin saying, I didn't quite mean that. He tells us authoritatively and boldly, we are in darkness and you are yourselves darkness, but I am the light of the world. Now, we're not going to try to prove that. Faith doesn't prove anything. Faith believes or doubt rejects. And he that has not faith, I have nothing to say to him. But he that has faith will hear the words of God. And Jesus says, I am the light of the world, and he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. Now, that's what he tells us. And he tells us that the light will not always shine on them. For he says, walk while you have the light, because the time will come when there will be no light. The light will not always shine, and it's possible to reject the light and shut it out. And then he says, when that time comes, how great is that darkness! Now, that's not a question. That is a statement put in the form of a question followed by a lightning flash of exclamation. Now, there are two degrees of darkness, according to our Lord. There is the darkness that has never had any light. There is darkness that is the result of no light available. Behind them, in their darkness, we sing. And we sing it correctly. They are in darkness because there has never been a sun to shine upon them. And then there is another degree of darkness, more intense than that, and that is the darkness that follows rejected light. The darkness of the night before the sun comes up is one thing. The darkness of the hermit who hides in his cave among the cobwebs and bats, and who will not come to the light, is something else again. The man can see the dim silver star shining above, and he says, It is night, and I fear to move, lest I fall over a precipice, or into a river, or trample on a snake. I am afraid, I must stand still, I have no light. But there is hope for him, because giving him a little time, the sun will arise. That is the darkness of the heathen. But the darkness of those to whom Jesus spoke was not the darkness of the man in the night who was waiting for the sunrise. It was the darkness of the man who had fled from the sun up and was hiding in a moral cave, refusing to come out where the light could get to him. Let's look at Israel before the coming of the Lord. Israel was a nation before Moses' time and before that memorable and dramatic moment when the man of God went on to the mount among fire and smoke and cloud and sound of a trumpet and had the law. There had been some dim light. God had appeared to Abraham and appeared to Jacob and to Isaac, and the patriarchs had some light. There was the light of tradition handed down and God's requirements accorded with that dim light. And that is why some of the old patriarchs did things that we wouldn't do today and that our Lord would not have them do, because God always takes into consideration the intensity of the darkness or the degree of the light. And Israel before Moses' time did some strange things. Jacob did some strange things. Jacob with his four wives had no rebuke from God about it. That was before the coming of the law. Abraham and the rest of them did not live the kind of lives that enlightened Christians would live, but they lived in faith and trust and obedience to the light they had. Then came Moses and the law. Then came a sunburst of revelation on Sinai's mountain, and God told them about himself and about man and about man's relationship to God and the moral requirements of God and told them of the origin and the destiny of man and that man was made in the image of God and that he fell and that there must be a sacrifice. And then they took that light and they had light such light as no nation had. The old Orientals had certain light, surely, and the Greeks and the Romans and the Egyptians had light. But Israel had light of an intensity and pureness of quality that no other nation had. It was the very light of God revealed in the law, and as soon as Israel received that light, they were responsible for it. Now, let me tell you this, my brother. If you imagine that going to church is something you can do with a shrug of your shoulders and a snap of your finger, let me correct that. It isn't anything of the sort. When you expose yourself to moral light, you become responsible to that light and you become responsible to obey it. Therefore, going to church is not the casual thing it's supposed to be. All these ads tell us, go to church. We see the ads here and there, and some radio programs now close and say, go to church Sunday or synagogue or temple. And they want somebody to go to church. It's supposed to be a very casual thing. My brother, it's not a casual thing. When Moses got the law on Sinai's mountain, they became instantly morally responsible to that law. There used to be in ancient days, when I was for a short time in the Army of the United States, a high-ranking but private, there used to be something they did that I don't know whether they do it now. So if this doesn't fit what you know about the services, men, just remember that these are different times. But they would take a bunch of green fellows in there and they'd put them through the works. I remember when you pulled your hands down, everybody slapped his thighs until it sounded like thunder. And immediately we were corrected and told to bring our hands down with a snap that never touched. I can still do it after all these years. But among other things that they told us to do was to listen to what they called the reading of the Articles of War. You took a green rookie in there and he could knock a sergeant down if he got mad and there wasn't much said about him. He could disobey orders and they didn't do too much to him. But one day they lined them up and they read the Articles of War. And as soon as the Articles of War were read, immediately they became responsible to military law and any disobedience in wartime could have brought upon them not only the guardhouse and military court-martial, but death itself. Instantly. It only took a few minutes to read the Articles of War, but they said, now you're no rookies anymore. Now you're not innocent civilians anymore. Now you're responsible to the military. And from here on you're soldiers responsible to the military law, which in time of war is strict and rigorous. In exactly the same way Israel could wander and sin, and God wouldn't in those days. But the moment God took Moses on the mountain, read to him the Articles of Morals, the moral law, they became instantly accountable to God and accountable to that law. I wish I could tell you that the result was a nation of supermen. I wish I could tell you that they all snapped to attention and said, yes, sir, and began to walk in obedience to the law, but I can't. I can tell you they did nothing of the sort. I can tell you that they followed their own lusts and affections, and they broke that law time and time again until God rose up early in the morning and stretched forth his hands to them, and they would not hear. And God sent punishment upon them and scattered them like chaff to the ends of the world. Look at the nations before the coming of our Lord, the nations of the world. And if you can look at an old map, you'll see them there. Idumea, Achaia, Palestinian nations, Syria, Greece, Rome, and all the nations of the East. They were in darkness. They had their philosophies, and they had their religions, and they had their low idolatries, and they had their high dreams of a single, one God. And they had their Plato's and Aristotle's, and they had their monotheists and their believers in the true God. They had all this. But their light was only the light they got out of their own head, the dim, muted light of their own thinking. They had not the light they lighteth in the sense that Jesus meant when he said, I am the light of the world. The very best they had was inadequate, and the very worst was too low to describe. The welter of vice and superstition that took them was men that made beasts out of it. And then came Christ, and the light was shining. The light that had always been in the world, the light that lighteth every man, the light that gives a certain moral responsibility to every man, now added to it the shining light from above. John tells us that Jesus Christ was that light. And for 200 years that light shined, and shined during that time on all the civilized world. Men became responsible for what they saw, and men were responsible for what that light revealed, and men are now responsible for what that light revealed. Think not of dispensations and changes of years in the passing of centuries. The light that will rise tomorrow morning to give light to the city of Chicago, shone on Abraham when he came out of Ur of the Chaldeans. Yes, it had been old when Abraham took his family and left Ur of the Chaldeans to go into a land which I will show unto thee, and that light was old when it shone down on the bowers and flower gardens of the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve walked in sinless purity hand in hand, before they committed the tragic act that plunged the world into moral night. And it was old before Adam was. So let us remember that the light that lights us tomorrow or now and tomorrow out of heaven is the same sun that shone back there. And a thousand years from now, at the end of some millennium, that light will still be the same light shining on the bodies and minds of men, filling the body, as Jesus said, full of light through the eye, doing the marvelous chemistry of photosynthesis, causing the flowers to grow and the plants to be green, be the same sun. So the passing of the years and the change of history and the change of the maps, the rise and fall of kings and the fall and rise of empires hasn't changed the light that came when Mary gave birth to the sun. His name was called Jesus. He shone back there and he shines now. And just as the sun as it moves around the earth may shine upon the roofs, the tile roofs of the homes of the rich or may shine upon the grass roofs of the homes of the poor, may shine on tyranny or shine on filth, may shine on poverty or shine on wealth, it is the same sun shining in unbroken continuum from the beginning, since God set it in the heaven and said, light the day. So there is a light that has come into the world and the passing of time and the new inventions and the penetrating of the minds of man into science doesn't change anything at all. The light still shines. The light shines on a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the principle that all men are created equal, a nation that is not very old in the long sweep of history. We call it America. We stand stiff at attention with our hands in front of us and our hat in our hand. We sing the Star Spangled Banner. We're glad for the nation whose flag flies over every post office and schoolhouse in America. But before America was, the light shone. And after America has been dissolved in the flux of nations, the light will be shining. And the red man roams the hills and vales that we now call the vales of Temple Hill, the light will be shining. When God forbid that any of us should live to see it, the heel of the oppressor camps on the eastern seaboard and starts west to conquer our land, the light will still shine. There's been no change. I am the light. The light is here. He is the light, and there is no other light. Men called for other religions. Wells, before he died, called for another religion and said we ought to have another Bible, and said that there ought to be a synthesis of religions. And I have even seen and bought Bibles that were supposed to be a synthesis of all good things. I held and attempted to buy and didn't Bibles that were compounded out of all the high, fine, lofty parts of mankind from the beginning. But that doesn't change it. The light is still shining, and men can compile their little Bibles and die, and the worms can crawl into their brain chambers and feed on the gray matter that one time compiled a Bible that had no God in it. But the light still shines, and the light that's shown on Palestine shines on Chicago tonight without diminution. There's no dimming down of that light. I am the light of the world, he said. He that follows me shall not walk in darkness, and he said it not to them there only, but said it to us here also. Says it not only in Hindu lands, but says it in America. Says it not only among the Indians of South America, but says it among the white people of Chicago, Illinois. So we hear it, and we're responsible. And there is no avoiding it. And we can bog ourselves down in argument all we want to. We can get mad at the preacher because he is a little too straight-laced. I take up beating all the time. I get letters as if they were not in print with Burton's blisters on me. I've got so I can grin and read them to brother Mac that they say, Listen to this one. So I get letters, not from around here. I don't get letters from our people. I don't mean that. You don't write me letters. You call me up. But I mean they get letters from all over. Most of them thank God are good, favorable, warm-hearted letters telling me they're praying for me. But once in a while there will be one that will really take the hide off. But I can't help it, and I don't care. We're responsible for the like. And you can't hide behind differences of opinion. You can't hide behind modes of baptism. You can't hide behind church politics. You can't hide behind philosophies. You can't hide behind this crazy relativity of morals they're teaching in the schools now. You can't hide. He said, I am the light of the world, and the light shineth in the darkness, and the darkness comprehends it not. He that follows me shall not walk in darkness. But if you quench the darkness and dim it down, how great will be the darkness. The light that shines is the light from heaven from God. It is the light in the face of Jesus Christ. You don't have to know a world of theology. There is a light shining. The boy that gets up in the morning can find his way to school with a light. He doesn't have to be able to know the speed of light. He couldn't remember till he got to school anyhow. He doesn't have to know how many millions of miles the sun is away. He doesn't have to know the size of the sun or how far the flames of light go from its surface. He can tell us that, but he doesn't need to know it. He only needs to get up and in the light of it walk to school. In the light of it stay out from under trucks and cars. In the light of it walk to school. The farmer doesn't need to know much about the starry heavens above. He only needs to know that when the weather is right and the season is right he can plow and plant, and then when nature moves on a little later he can reap and store. He only needs to know that. There is a light that shines upon the world, and there is a light that shines on the hearts of men. You don't have to know all that can be known. Israel did not reject the Lord because of philosophical reasons. They rejected the Lord for moral reasons. Now, you listen to me say this. This is the kind of thing people attack me for saying. They write me in and say, why don't you modify your statement? Why are you always making flat statements? Of course I am. And I'm telling you this, I'm making this statement, that I do not believe there is anybody that ever rejects Jesus on philosophical grounds. He rejects Jesus on moral grounds and then hides behind false philosophical grounds. He's got a pet sin somewhere. He's in love with his iniquity. Then he calls me or some other pastor up and says, I want an appointment. So we give him an appointment. And he sits there and says, I have intellectual difficulties about the Pentateuch. I have intellectual difficulties about Jomon Yisrael. I cannot believe that the world is created in seven days. If he was an honest man, God in heaven would respect him. But my Bible tells me that when you preach Jesus Christ, the Holy Ghost will take Jesus and bring conviction on men and convict them of sin and righteousness and judgment. And I believe that every one of these that are hiding behind intellectual difficulties are hiding because they're morally unwilling to obey. When we fall in love with our sin, we can imagine and manufacture 10,000 syllogisms to keep us away from the cross. But it's wonderful how when a person gives up his sin and puts his pride under his feet and looks to the light, the whole body and mind is flooded with light. I've talked to people that have come out of rationalism and unbelief and atheism and all the rest, and they smile at you with clear eyes and say, oh, wonderful now, the light has flooded in. A blind man can argue there is no sunshine, but when he gets his sight, the sunshine floods in. So Israel did not reject our Lord on doctrinal grounds, nor on philosophical grounds, really. So men reject him today. In case any of you would want a bit of support further for what I've been saying, John 3, verse 19, verse 21, notice this. This is the condemnation that light has come into the world, and men love darkness rather than light, because they are deep for evil. For everyone that doeth evil hateth the light, and neither cometh to the light lest his deed should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest that they are wrought in God. Now, if that means anything, it means that our Lord teaches that people who reject him reject him for moral reasons. This is the condemnation that light has come into the world, and men love darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. They didn't want to follow him. Israel not only disregarded the light, but Israel rejected the light. God called them stiff-necked and hard of heart. They had a perverse antipathy to the light, because it interfered with their iniquity. And that is our difficulty today, more dangerous than Communism to Christianity. I don't think Communism is dangerous to Christianity. I don't think it is. I don't believe that Communism can ever destroy Christianity, if Christians live like Christians. I couldn't destroy Christianity in Rome. Every time they killed ten, a hundred more came forward and said, kill me too. Sidney, history tells us that. Back in Roman days, when they were killing Christians, there were hundreds and thousands going into the land with a great Roman architect. He planned and built an amphitheater, a beautiful, wonderful thing. He was the big architect of the day. That's Christopher Wren, that he signed, if you please. And the old Roman emperor decided that they would have a kind of a dedication of the thing, so he said, get a lot of hungry lions and bring them into the pit, and loose them into the runways, and we'll lead the Christians down, and we'll have a gorgeous time looking at them kill these heretics. So they did, and they killed them one after the other. Of course, they were making a great deal out of this architect. And the architect was present, and he walked down after they had slain, after the lions had chewed up a few Christians, and the Christians had praised God, and thanked, and died in their blood. This architect walked up to the man, they always called him sire, I never know where, but he said, sire, I have a request. Give an order to have me thrown into the pit. And the emperor said, are you kidding? He said, I suppose you use other language, but he said, are you kidding about it? He said, no, I mean it. He said, why? He said, I belong to that despised codger trying to wipe out. I'm a Christian. And the famous architect was picked up and hurled into the arena, and soon his genius was torn apart and released, because God had gave it to him. And the thing went on until the emperors began to get embarrassed, and they said, what are you going to do with these fools? And they killed ten and a hundred more, sand up. And they were rushing like flies, and so they had to call it off. And they said, shush it down, let's try to stay safe, but don't kill too many, or the place is getting too bloody. Christian blood was the seed that made the church grow. So I don't believe that communism can ever destroy the church of Christ. She can only destroy herself. And we worry about the church behind the iron curtain. My brothers and sisters, there have been periods down through the years when Christians met in damp basements among the flatworms and cobwebs and worshipped their God, and then sneaked out to their job, and at night, like hidden again, went to some hiding place and prayed and sang in a low voice and read what portions of scripture they could get, and they kept the fire alive in the midst of the fiercest and most brutal persecution. The fire of God can't be damped out by the waters of man's persecution. It's only when the church is rotten inside that she can die. If the church in Russia is dead today, it's dead not because of communism. No, communism is from hell without any question about it. But hell can't destroy the church. The gates of hell cannot prevail against it. I say if the church is dead, and I don't think it is, but if it is dead in Russia, it's because the Russian church, which is the Greek Orthodox church, had died from within. The tree that's blown down in the storm is rotten in its heart so it wouldn't be blown down. And the church that falls because of persecution is a church that was dead before it fell. So I haven't much worry about communism, neither have I any worry about liberalism. Some of my poor, tired, brethren, saints yet pursuing, are still running after liberals, taking a shot at them wherever they can see them out of the sight of an eye, they're giving it to them. I don't bother them because they're dead anyhow, the liberals and modernists. And they can't kill Christianity. Liberalism can't kill Christianity. It tries it, but it can't. The liberal schools and seminaries and colleges always got a pest or two coming in to the registrar and saying, I'm a Christian, I'm an evangelical, I believe the whole Bible. And they try to frown in a very cultured way, but they are very mad inside. And they say, well, you go on and get your classes and you may change your mind. And he goes through and takes it all and comes out with his mind unchanged and goes out still a Christian. They don't like it, but what are they going to do about it? And always find everywhere somebody that believes in God, somebody that's still true to God. I was in a membership here this morning, young men, who went through the fires of liberalism and modernism and has come out disgusted and stands up and says, I believe in God. What are you going to do with a man like that? Liberalism can't destroy that kind of faith. I hate it. The atheists, the unbelievers, the pagan, I can go along with. He doesn't know any better. But the liberal, he's the man who has put his own eyes out. And I have a much sympathy for him, but he can't destroy the church. For the faith of our father is an eternal fire that blazes in the bosom to believe in men. And whether they can ever get to a church or not, it still blazes there. Where, where does Christianity destroy itself in a given generation? It destroys itself by not living in the light, by professing a truth that it does not obey, by destroying the clutch between, the connection between their theology and their volitional life. This is what I say that I believe that makes me a Christian. It's how certainly I move in the direction of what I believe that will bring me. So it is rottenness within, carelessness, worldliness, evil, refusing to walk in the light, refusing to let the light of God find and change my dirty little mess of iniquity where I lie. That's what's destroying us, sir. Love of money, love of the world, unconfessed iniquity, private sins that nobody dreams we have. That's what's destroying the church of Christ. What the combined forces of hell can't do, the church can do. It says that if we walk in the light, we have fellowship, and I am come a light into the world. Those who ever believe other than me should not abide in darkness. Those are the words of our Savior. In the other text I read, I am the light of the world. He that follows me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. And there we have it. But when the light that is in you turns to darkness, how great is that darkness. How great was the darkness when Adolf Hitler was in the Christian country, turning to the destruction of Europe and said, we'll conquer Europe or you won't know it. And they didn't know it. You and I are still paying high taxes today, spending over foods and money today to help to try to straighten up a continent that one devil possessed man, who had rejected the light brought upon the world, devastation and night and darkness. And that slow-eyed little father of color with the enigmatic monolithic smile they call Stalin. How many fields, how much blood, how many gallons, how many seas and rivers of blood is he being boiled in tonight? He was a Georgian and heard the gospel and studied for the ministry. Did you know that? Joseph Stalin. Vassal of Yugoslavia or something, what do you know what? Suppose I ever get to write the name. But that was he made when he called himself the man of steel, Stalin. And he trampled the light of God under his feet and the blood of the lamb and became the murder of nature. How brave is that? While most sinners are not put in history where they can be so dramatic in their sin, the darkness is just as great. And I tell you, there are many that are trampling under feet the truth that the heathen yonder are starving for, the opportunity for deliverance. Now, I won't make this closing word, and it is, watch what you do with personal light, the light God has given you for your own guidance. How many there are in bitterness tonight that sometime in a happier moment had light and didn't walk it. How many young men, beaten and defeated and old before their time, disgusted and betrothed and yet trying to live for Christ, but showing poor examples of what a Christian ought to be, yet hanging around the church, giving a little to the Lord's work and doing the best they can. But back there, five years, ten years, twenty years ago, the clear light of God shined on them. But they allowed their girlfriend to change their whole future. Now they are married and have been, and both wish they weren't. They never say so. Babies, deaths, sickness, defeat, scourge, both trying to struggle along and be Christians. And thank God they are, and I hope they make it through, and I believe they will, to be Christians. But back there, they disobeyed personal light. How many inhabit relationships God has rebuked, the light has shown in and rebuked, but you haven't done anything about it. If you ever try this next summer, try this, you'll remember it. You're in the country somewhere on a picnic or tramping around. Roll a stone over it, a stone that's sticking up above the ground and you can handle it. Roll it over, and you'll see flatworms and bugs and beetles and every kind of leggy and weird-looking insect, miniature dragons. They'll dash in all directions. Afraid of you? No, sir, afraid of the light. They are the dwarves in darkness. They are the vermin of night. They belong under the stone. When you turn the stone over, you panic them. They don't see you. They're not afraid of you, they're afraid of the light. If you still have an old-fashioned house that has a basement in it, you go down in your basement sometimes, big after it's been dampened, and as soon as you throw the light in, they duck for under the nearest place to hide. They're dwellers in the night. So is with the conscience that has learned to love its iniquity. Every new flash of light panics it. But instead of coming out to the light and saying, here I am, my God, do as you what you will, they hide under the nearest rock. How many Christians, oh, I hear these optimists. Boy and man, are we filled with optimism the day in which we live. We've got more people publishing statistics to show that we ought to immediately begin to make believers, for we, for the largest percentage of our inhabitants. They make speeches in which they tell us statistically that there are more Christians in America than there ever have been, more people in the churches, more money given to the church, and all that. Can't fool me with statistics, brother. As soon as the light shines, 90% of those statistics run for under a rock. They hide under a rock because they're not going to obey Jesus Christ. They get his gospel for moral reasons, so they go to his church for social reasons. So what's the light? I mean, that's for me too. I've got that to think about. You've got it to think about. He's giving the light. He says, I'm the light of the world. And if anybody follows me, he has the light of life. The light will go brighter unto me everlasting days. You'll be my disciples, and where I am there will my servants be, and my Father will honor him, he says elsewhere, if you'll come along. But you've got to have your spirit, and the pattern of your sin destroyed, and come into the light. He that loveth the light, he comes to the light. He that is true, he cometh to the light. What about you tonight? That's all. Are you obeying the light? Is there any unobeyed light? How dare you ask God for more light tomorrow morning or tonight before you go to bed? How dare you say, oh, God, lead me? How can God lead a stubborn man? Don't pray. Dare not pray. Oh, God, give me light. How can God give light to a man that hasn't walked in the light he has? But it is in you, the light that God's given you. I hope you're walking in it. I have reason to know that many of you are, but for those of you that aren't, I've been very bold tonight. I like that pat, which is intended to be humorous, but it has a smile in it, because Isaiah likes it very bold, and says, except the remnant had been left, God would have destroyed Israel. So I've liked it very bold tonight, and I dare to tell you there is a light that shines on us all. We're responsible for that light. That light gives itself up in Jesus Christ, who is the light of the world. He calls us to walk in that light at our own expense, the expense of our sins and our nigglies. Put them away and come and follow the Lamb.