In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ to transform, triumph, and transport individuals. He acknowledges the intelligence and accomplishments of people in the world but emphasizes that salvation comes through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The preacher urges the audience to examine their own hearts and question whether they have experienced the transformative power of Christ in their lives. He concludes by highlighting the message of the gospel as the only means of salvation, contrasting it with the expectations of signs and intellectualism.

Now, I'm not going to take time from the message for the introduction. Many of you have known and have heard our brother Worth in times past. Those of you who haven't are going to hear him this morning. Now that you're here, I'm going to hear him every night that you come along because he'll be doing the preaching. And I might say that the greatest thing about Worth Ellis is that God loved him and gave his son to die for. And he believed it and received that son with all the attendant miracles connected with our receiving of Christ into the heart. And that's what we're hoping will happen to many here in the world. Lord bless you, we're all praying for you and for the Word. It's a real joy to be here with you for this week of meetings. I don't know about you, but I sort of feel on edge. And I told one of the Christians this morning, I said, I'm not going to be surprised if somebody gets saved today. That wouldn't be too early. I believe God is able, I believe God is willing. As a matter of fact, I know he is. Will you turn with me, please, to the book of Romans, chapter 1. And as a visiting speaker, I want to exercise my prerogative of speaking on my favorite subject. And we're going to read from the first chapter of the book of Romans. And while you're finding a place, I want to remind you, please do not come to these meetings expecting to hear anything new. Or anything fancy, or anything deep. And if you hear something you've heard before, even from me, don't be surprised. Romans, chapter 1, reading from the first verse. Shall we pray? And now, our Heavenly Father, we thank thee for the privilege of opening thy Word. And we thank thee for this blessed book thou hast given to us, that is, a lamp under our feet and a light unto our path. Through the entrance of this Word into the hearts of sinners, light is given, the light of the world, our Lord Jesus Christ. Honor the Word, Father, we beseech thee. And glorify thy Son. Amen. Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God, which he had promised before by his prophets and the holy scriptures, concerning his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David, according to the flesh, and declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead. By whom we have received grace and apostleship, for obedience to the faith among all nations, for his name, among whom are ye also the call of Jesus Christ. To all that be in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world. For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing I make mention of you always in my prayers, making request, if by any means now at length I might have a prosperous journey by the will of God to come unto you. For I long to see you, that I may impart unto you some spiritual gift, to the end that you may be established, that is, that I may be comforted together with you by the mutual faith, both of you and me. Now, I would not have you ignorant, brethren, that oftentimes I purposed to come unto you, but was met hitherto, that I might have some fruit among you also, even as among other Gentiles. I am debtor both to the Greek and to the barbarian, both to the wise and to the unwise. So as much as in me is, I am ready to preach the gospel to you that are at Rome also. For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God and the salvation to every one that believeth, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. I believe that every one of us here this morning are well aware of the fact that this day in which you and I are living is characterized by a terrific scramble on every hand for power. It seems that men today are overemphasizing the value of power out of all proportion to other things that are relatively just as important. Nevertheless, when the subject of power is brought up in a discussion, no poor child of Adam's race who has ever experienced the redeeming, transforming power of the blessed evangel of our Lord Jesus Christ shall ever find it necessary to take a back seat. Let them speak of the power of a hydrogen bomb and of the H-bomb. You take a hydrogen bomb, for example, and you drop it on a man and it makes a mess out of him. But you let him believe the gospel message of the Lord Jesus Christ and it will make a man out of a mess. And all of the powers that man has concocted and all he shall ever invent will never be able to transcend the power of the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. And I do not know of a greater privilege that could be conferred upon a poor sinner than to have the opportunity and the privilege of telling others about this marvelous, transforming power, the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. I noticed in this verse, I believe personally, and if you'll pardon me and don't try to ask me, or don't ask me rather how I can notice the ring of something in a verse that's written, but there seems to be to me in this verse of scripture a ring of triumph in Paul's voice. I can detect a note of triumph there. I have been in testimony meetings where people have jumped up out of their seats sort of like a jack-in-the-box, you know, and say, I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it's the power of God and the salvation, and they plop right back down in their seats. But I do not for one moment believe that the apostle Paul used Romans 1-16 as a favorite verse for a testimony meeting. I don't believe that for a moment. But I believe that when he said, I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God and the salvation to everyone that believeth through the Jew first and also to the Greek, he meant simply this, that this glorious, dynamic message of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ was interwoven into the very work and the root of his being. It was that transforming power, it was that which gave him emphasis in all of his service for the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, to understand the wonderful greatness of such a statement by this as this rather on the part of Paul, when he could say, I am not ashamed of the gospel, you need to know what the Jews and the Greeks thought of the gospel message. He said, I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God and the salvation to everyone that believeth to the Jew first and also to the Greek. But if you were to read in 1 Corinthians chapter 1, you would find that the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ, of which Paul could say, I am not ashamed, was to the Jews a stumbling block because they looked for signs. And the Lord Jesus said, there shall be no sign given unto you except the sign of Jonah, for as Jonah was three days and three nights in the village of Wales, so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. And the only message that the soul needs today to be saved is not a miracle, it is not some sign from heaven, but it is the testimony of holy writ that Jesus Christ was delivered for our offenses and raised again for our justification. Christ has died and the death of Christ put my sins away and his resurrection justifies me in the presence of a Christ holy God. And so to the Jew, the message of the gospel was a stumbling block because they looked for signs. But to the Greek, it was foolishness because they were brain rattlers. And brain rattlers, for your benefit, are those people who exalt their intellect above the revelation of almighty God. It was a stumbling block to them because they stumbled over it. They were trying to reason their way to heaven. And I'll tell you, when a man lets his brain get in the way of his salvation, or get in the way of his salvation, in my book he's not very smart. I don't care how intellectual he may be. So Paul could say, I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ for it is a power of God unto salvation. I believe that there were two reasons Paul could say this. And I also believe this, that if you and I as Christians are going to be able to face this world with all of its cynicism and all of its infidelity and atheism and skepticism today and downright unbelief and disinterest, we are going to have also to have in our possession these two glorious things that literally surge through the body of the apostle which cause him to say, I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. And the first reason Paul could say this is simply because it had done something in his own life. Now, no one, I don't care who they are, if he's honest, can recommend anything which he has not tried. Now, a man or a woman who recommends something on the hearsay of others is skating on very thin ice. But the reason Paul could say, first of all, I am not ashamed, he knew what this message had done in his own life. On his way from Jerusalem down to Damascus with papers in his pocket from the chief priest to find any he found in Damascus of this way, that is, the Jesus way, who had left Judaism in terms of the Lord Jesus, to bind him and test him in the prison, to bring him to Jerusalem for to stand trial, he was smitten down there at noonday where the light had shone brighter than the sun. And he heard the voice from heaven saying, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? Who art thou, Lord? I am Jesus whom thou persecutest. And there that blind, bigoted zealot of a Pharisee lying there, flat upon his back with his sightless eyes staring up into the shekinah glory of heaven, he got a vision of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that which transformed a man or a woman's life is clearly stated in the Word of God. And Stephen puts it in his words in Acts chapter 7, the God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham when he dwelt in Mesopotamia. And it is the transforming dynamic of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It's the Lord of glory appearing to the sinner as his savior, the one who died for his sins and was really ready to give him eternal life. And he experienced that on the Damascus road shortly after he wrote these words, By grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is a gift of God, not of work, lest any man should boast. To him that worketh is the reward reckoned of death, but not of grace. But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted to him for righteousness. And there that day Saul, a prophet, came face to face with the hated Nazarene, and he realized for the first time in his experience that the one whom he had hated and done everything he could to destroy his followers was the man who had died for his sins, and God had glorified his son Jesus and had exalted him to be a prince and a savior. And he was simply overwhelmed with the glory and the majesty of the Christ of God, and his life was transformed. And I'll tell you one thing, he was never the same from that moment until he reached the glory. He was a transformed man, so he knew what he had done in his own life. How can you say today, professing believer in Christ, that you are not ashamed of the gospel of Christ unless you are positively sure that you have met the Lord of glory? How can you say that you're not ashamed of it unless you know what it's done in your own life, unless you have experienced its deliberating power and authority over sin? The blessed Christ said, God breaks the power of canceled sin, and he sets the prisoner free. He gives us his Holy Spirit to live within us, and that's the authority for a new life. Therefore, if any man be in Christ Jesus, he is a new creation. O things are passed away, and behold, all things become new in the life of the man that puts his trust in the Son of God. Now, if your life has not been transformed, please quit trying to fool yourself into thinking that you're a Christian. Now, number one, he knew what he had done in his own life, and secondly, he had seen it work in the lives of others. You know, there's nothing in the world that increases my courage, that increases my absolute faith in the unsearchable riches of Jesus Christ as the seeds of preaching of this message by a poor hell-deserving wretch like me, the use of the Holy Ghost to transform other lives just like he has transformed mine. I haven't got the faith it takes to be an unbeliever in the light of such overwhelming evidence. Satan comes to me because I am no exception any more than you. Occasionally on this shoulder, on this one, he whips a little insinuation in my ear, and he says, suppose the Bible is a fairy tale after all. Now, I don't believe too much in experience. I stand flat-footed that they own God's divinely, infallibly inspired Word. I believe the Bible is the only authority for the full assurance of salvation, and yet I find myself again and again when Satan comes to me and says, maybe the Bible's a fairy tale. I said, well, old boy, find me another fairy tale that'll change my life back like the one I read in the book that changed it forward, and then I believe the Bible's a fairy tale. How can a poor sinner have his life changed by a fairy tale? So Paul knew, you see, it had done something in his own life, and he knew what he'd done in the lives of others. In the seventeenth chapter, for example, of the book of the Acts of the Apostles, you'll find Paul, Silvanus, and Timotheus on a second missionary journey. They go into the city of Thessalonica. He reasoned in the synagogue three Sabbath days, maybe more. The Holy Spirit doesn't say, but at least three. He was shortly after driven out of the city of Thessalonica. Six months or so, maybe a little later, a little less, you take your choice, he sat down, and he penned his message to the Thessalonian believers, and he said, Paul, Silvanus, and Timotheus unto the church of the Thessalonians, which is in God the Father, and in the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace, mercy, and peace be unto you. I want you to notice this. With three days' reasoning in the synagogue, the message he preached was this, openly alleging that Christ must each have suffered and been raised from the dead, and without benefit of publicity, without benefit of any preparation, no one to put up his tent, no one to put up his seat, nor to put down his sawdust form, with no publicity of any kind. And with an all probability, the only man in the whole city that knew a verse of Scripture from Orthodox Jews that had migrated there for material gain. And he went into that heathen city, given unto idolatry, and preached three days in the synagogue, and he wrote some six months later an address to the epistle to our New Testament church, carved out of the rock of idolatry in the city of Thessalonica, and he preached to them the gospel of Jesus Christ. And that's the reason he could say he wasn't ashamed of it. Well, bless your heart, brother, if you were preaching the gospel, you'd go in the heathen city, and was given over to idolatry, and go in that city and preach the gospel to them, and then sit down six months later and write a letter to our church in that city. Would you believe the message he had, Paula? He didn't organize the church. Now, don't you ever be guilty of thinking he organized it. No. The Holy Ghost organized the church at Pentecost, and then added some more to it there at Thessalonica. But it was through the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and I'll tell you, beloved sinner, oh, listen, well, whenever you experience this marvelous, transforming power in your own life, you'll know what we're talking about. I can't explain it to you. All I can tell you is how wonderful it is. And when you get saved before this week of meetings is gone, maybe today you'll come to me and say, well, man, I didn't know what you were trying to say, but now I'm beginning to catch on. Ah, when the first cloud of the joy of the forgiveness of God overwhelms that soul of yours in the sense of your unworthiness, you'll understand what we mean. So first of all, he knew what he'd done in his own life, and he knew what he'd done in the lives of others. Now, I'll grant you this. If you know these two things, you can stand up anywhere in the whole world, I don't care where it is, and say, I am not ashamed of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, for it is the power of God and the salvation to everyone that believe it. Now, the question arises, if the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ is the power of God and the salvation to everyone that believe it, just what is this gospel that we must believe in order to be saved? Now, I do not know the time in the history of Christendom when there needs to be more and more of a clear enunciation of the distinct gospel of Jesus Christ that results in the salvation of a soul. Everything today that carries a religious flavor to it, whether it's a song or whatever it is, has gospel attached to it. And most of the music, there's no gospel in music either. And it's doing despite to the glorious message of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and it's confusing and clouding up the issue. So I want us to turn right now back to the first chapter where we read in the beginning, and I want us to notice the gospel of Jesus Christ is the power of God and the salvation, exactly what it is. It tells you you have to believe it to be saved, and that's all the Bible says about how to become a Christian. Now, I want you to notice in verse 1, Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called him apostle. Underline these words, separate them from the gospel of God. Permit me to skip verse 2 and look at verse 3, concerning his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Now, whatever you hear preached, or whatever particular line of doctrine a man may be propagating, on the authority of inspired writ, what is the gospel of Jesus Christ except that which concerns Jesus Christ our Lord? It's the good news of God concerning his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Now, I want you to notice again in verse 9 that we read, it is called the gospel of his Son. That's right in the middle of the chapter. And so it's the good news of God concerning his Son, Jesus Christ. Now turn with me, please, to 1 Corinthians chapter 15 for a moment. Now, I've heard men preach on the radio and preach the full gospel, and some a gospel and a half, and some three quarters, some a half gospel, and some no gospel at all. But I believe we have here the authority, without a shadow of a doubt, to say that in the most comprehensive terms, the definition of the gospel of Jesus Christ must of necessity conclude all the revelation in the Bible concerning the Son of God that's apart from his judgment. It must of necessity include his preexistence, his eternal sonship, his incarnation, his perfect, sinless, spotless life that qualified him to offer himself to God without spot for our sin, his death, his glorious resurrection, his ascension into the glorious present ministry as our very high priest of his believing people on earth, his premillennial second coming again to establish his kingdom upon this earth and to put his enemies down under his feet. All of this is the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. But notice, when you turn to 1 Corinthians 15, you find only two things mentioned in the connection with the gospel it says. Now, there's a reason for this. Notice in verse 1, "...Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand, by which also ye are saved." Look at me a moment. Do you want to be saved? Are you here today and do you know that you're a sinner and you want to be saved? All right, notice, Paul says, "...brethren, I am declaring unto you the gospel by which ye are saved." Will you grant me that? Do you believe the Word of God? Look at it. And notice what you find next, how that Christ was crucified for our sins according to the scriptures. He was buried and raised again the third day according to the scriptures. And when Paul told the Corinthian believers, I'm going to make a statement of the gospel to you, by which ye are saved, he included all three tenths of their salvation. They had been saved in the past from the penalty of their sin when they put their trust in Jesus Christ. They were redeemed, saved day by day in the virtue of the life of Jesus Christ at the right hand of God. He corroborates this testimony in Romans 5 and 10. If when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more being reconciled, being brought from a place of justice and into the family of God, we're being saved daily in His life. And so they were being saved day by day in the life of Jesus Christ. But they were yet to be saved in the day that comes from the fact that the Son of God, or by the fact rather, that Christ was coming again to receive them unto Himself. He said, this is the gospel by which ye are saved, and it mentions only the fact that Christ died and that He arose again the third day. And so that's exactly what a sinner has to believe. And the reason for that, friend, is simply this, that upon these two outstanding facts of the gospel, all three tenths of salvation rest firmly and squarely. Listen to that lovely verse again in Romans 4, 25. He was delivered for our offenses and raised again for our justification. The subsequent resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ upon that depended on being kept saved, you see. We're saved by the death of Christ from the penalty of sin, by the life of Jesus Christ from the very power of sin, and someday by the coming again of the Lord Jesus from the very presence of sin. You know, I've gotten hold of the truth recently that has revolutionized my Christian life. I can say that I have been absolutely the happiest in the last three weeks that I've been in the 18 years that I have been saved. And before this week is over, if the Lord keeps me in His hand and doesn't let me get away from Him, if I shout, don't you worry, I'm not a Pentecostal. But I tell you, it's wonderful when you get this truth. Now, I want you to get it. Child of God, and also you sinner, and here is what God will give you today if you will, by faith, bow your knees to Jesus Christ and receive Him as your Lord and Savior, here is what God will do for you. The very moment you do it, He'll give you His Holy Spirit to live within your body, to give you the power to live a new life. And the Son of God who was crucified on the cross to put your sins away, purchased eternal redemption, peace with God, joy and heart satisfaction arose from the dead, with thanksgiving and glory. And here is a great fact that revolutionizes Christian living. The very one who died on the cross to purchase for me all of these blessings is alive in heaven at the right hand of God to make them real through me day by day. And bless your heart to get excited about ballgames and you get excited about this. And I'll tell you, listen, when it gets to the place I'm not excited about being saved, I'm backslidden and I always go and confess it to the Lord. Think of it! Think of it! Jesus Christ, by His death, put your sins away. If you believe that, He'll give you eternal life, peace with God and all the blessings, and He's alive in heaven to dispense them to you day by day and give you His own divine life. See? That's what the gospel of Jesus Christ is. And upon all these glorious facets of the gospel rests upon these two facts, Christ died and was raised from the dead. He's alive in glory today and He's coming back again. He's going to receive His people to Himself, put His enemies down under His feet. Now, there are those today who will accuse us of preaching a new sort of evangelical Christianity and bring about the apostle Paul. They would have us believe that Peter's variance with Paul concerning this blessed evangel, and so we'll just let the scriptures speak for themselves. I'm going to give you a quotation or a part of a quotation from three of the prominent writers of the New Testament, from Paul and from Peter and from the apostle John, and I want you to see if you can find any context in it. In Romans 5 and 8, Paul says, But God committeth His love toward us, and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Peter, in his first epistle, chapter 3, in verse 18, says, For Christ hath once suffered for sin, the just for the unjust. That He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit as His death and resurrection. And we'll call our beloved brother John there in exile on the Isle of Paton, and send out his peon of praise over the blue again unto him who loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood. Any conflict there, folks? Any conflict? No! One and the same message for all the apostles. Christ died and was raised again for our justification. And I'll tell you, it's a grand thing to be saved. And you know, I'm positively surprised that I've been talking 15, 20, almost 25 minutes, and I haven't asked you yet if you're saved. But are you? Where are you there, sinner? God knows you hard. Are you saved? Have you had your life transformed? Have you? Well, in closing, I would like to leave with you just three glorious words, adjectives that describe this marvelous power that is the power of God unto salvation. And they all three start with a T, and they won't be hard to remember. And if you go back far enough to look in the margin of your Bible, you might find the points there because I told them to you once before. But listen, here are those three great words in connection with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Transforming, triumphant, and transporting. Now, you underline those three words, and if you feel a need in any one of these departments, friend, I've got the message for you today. Jesus Christ can change your life. Now, we've got some pretty smart cookers in the world today. I admire these boys in the universities, and I've noticed this. I was 18 years, almost, on construction work as a pipe footer and a welder before I quit work to go in the preaching of the word of God of regular in 1956. And I've seen them work. I worked on the big dam at Bug's Island, and I know that these men with engineering skill and cunning and with a proper amount of explosives can place them in strategic places, and they can change the very course of a stream that might have been going that way for a thousand, two thousand, three thousand, four thousand years. But I'll tell you with all of his cunning and his skill and his ingenuity, one thing a sinner can't do, or two things, he cannot transform a poor sinner's life nor change the destiny of his soul. God has said his son is going to have the right to do that and he alone. Oh, God has said Jesus must have the preeminence in all things, and if your life is going to be changed, he's the one that will do it. And this blessed gospel message is a transforming power, transforming. It'll change your life, friend. It'll change your life. I'll tell you, sometimes I get to thinking about myself, and I hardly know me. Really? When I get to think about what I used to be and what I am now, I hardly know myself, honestly, seriously. And I'm sure that people that used to know me, they don't know me at all. I know that. But it's a transforming power. I remember 12 years or so ago when Dr. John Alexander Clark came through the city of Durham for the first time, and I went out to visit him in Duke Hospital. He'd come in down from Florida way, and he was out for an operation on the bottom of his foot. And I wasn't surprised after I heard him tell me out of his own mouth that he'd walked across the continent some nine times of Africa, the continent of Africa. He went out there the first time as a young man of 19 to preach the gospel. God had laid that heathen country upon his heart, and he went out to preach. He said when he arrived in Africa there on the seashore and the coast, one of the first things he saw was a slave auction. These poor ignorant heathens had been brought in from the middle of the jungle, had been captured, separated from their loved ones, and families disrupted. They were being auctioned off like so many cattle on the slave market to go into these boats and never to see their loved ones again. He told me the story he gave his heart afresh to the Lord Jesus that day to carry the message of the gospel in inland Africa, because where the gospel goes, away goes that sort of thing. And so in time, he said he established him a beachhead with a certain tribe in the jungles of Africa there. He said one night he was invited to participate in a victory dance and a feast. Now a victory feast and a dance, said he, was where the natives of this particular tribe would gather to celebrate their victory over some tribe over whom they had a battle. And he said the first time he ever saw Captain Cayley, he was a giant of a nigger. He must have been seven feet or so tall. And he said that night when he first saw him, he was dancing madly around the fire out in the center of the circle. Now Captain Cayley's job was this. He was the chief executioner for the headman of the tribe. Whenever they went out and overpowered some of their enemies and brought them in, he had the job of taking their heads off, and that was his job. And that night, in a special celebration, Mr. Clark said, as I saw this man come out of the edge of the woods and start dancing madly around that fire, he had wrapped around his naked waist a girdle of human heads tied together by the hair with the blood freshly streaming down his legs. And he said, I sat there on the edge of the clearing with my Bible, nothing but the Word of God in my hand, waiting for an opportunity. He said that victory dance went on and on, and I said, Oh God, thou hast sent me out here into the jungle of Africa with nothing but the gospel of Jesus Christ, and look what I've got to cope with. Lord, if there ever was a time in my life when my faith is on the verge of failing, this is it. And he said, I feel there's only one thing to do. I claim the soul of this heathen for thee, transform his life that my faith may not falter. He said he abided his time, and after a while he got an opportunity, and he got Capuchalia along, having picked up sufficient language of the tribe to get across the message to him. He told him the story of John 3, 16. This great white father in heaven that you worship, unto whom you sacrifice chickens and cut off the heads of human beings to appease him, and his wrath against your sin had a sound. And he told him the story of Jesus, how he came in the world and how he died for all of your sins. He said, Capuchalia, if you'll believe that he died for you and received him by faith in your heart as your Lord and Savior, he'll forgive you of all of your sins and he'll transform your life and he'll change you from a man that's going around cutting off the heads of his fellow creatures. So he explained this as patiently as he could, like a little child, to this man the story of the gospel of Jesus Christ. How did Christ die for his sins? He was buried and raised again. He said a week passed, two weeks and three, one morning before day, he heard somebody knocking on the door of his little shack where he was staying there in this camp, and he said he went to the door with a little rush light, he looked up like this, and there stood that great big giant of a Negro, Capuchalia, with his hands behind his back and his head down upon his chest, looked like some schoolboy that had got caught stealing his teacher's apple, and he said, yes, Capuchalia, what can I do for you? He said, this great big giant of a Negro, all he could see was the blood streaming down his legs. In his mind, nothing but the heads tied around his waist, and he said, uh, uh, go on a talk, he said to Capuchalia, uh, it's time to tell you I want to be a Jesus man. You know anything about that kind of power? Heh, bless God, I'll tell you. When the Holy Spirit speaks to your soul like it did to Capuchalia in the middle of the day, when you see that it was your sins that nailed the Christ of God to a Roman cross, and caused him to shed his blood in order that you might be saved from eternal hell. He said, uh, uh, that was the most joyful moment, he said, of my whole life at that present time. And again, I explained the message of salvation to him, and he, right there at the door of my little hut, he received Lord Jesus Christ as his Savior, and he said, I'll tell you, I've never felt so good in all my life. But you know, something happened. Now, there's nothing in the world that an evangelist is more concerned about than the welfare of his converts, but that he would have real fruit that abides the judgment seat of Christ. And I want to tell you here and now, no matter how badly I want to see you saved, don't make one move down this way to Christ, unless you mean it with all of your heart and are willing to yield your life to him as well as your soul. But in a month or so, Captain Cayley disappeared. Oh, he said, I prayed frantically. Lord, where is he? Has he gone back into heathendom, Lord? Has he gone out in the jungle in search of other wives? A month passed, two and three. Then he said one day, along about dusk, he looked up over the mountain as the sun was going down. His heart was heavy and burned. He was praying for Captain Cayley. Oh, Lord, where is he? Preserve him. Lord, you know how important his profession is. He said, I looked along about sundown and silhouetted in the sunlight. I saw a familiar looking figure making his way slowly down the side of the hill. And he said, sure enough, it was Captain Cayley. And I went running as madly as I could go to meet him. And I met him at the foot of the mountain. I said, Captain Cayley, Captain Cayley, where in the world have you been? I've been working this thing out, and he had nothing. I'm not there. Second night, you see, there's not one guy that's not. Known down the line, this is my sister. She's a Jesus woman. See this? This is my brother, the Jesus man. In less than six months time transformed from a heathen that cut the heads of his fellow beings off to a man who was burdened with the need of the soul. And you mean to tell me that the gospel of Jesus Christ is not the power of God and the salvation to everyone that believes it? It can do that for you. Now, bless your heart, you've never cut anybody's head off. I don't doubt that you felt like it, and maybe would have if you'd had the right opportunity. Nobody would have found it out. I don't doubt that at all. But I'm not accusing you of being a headhunter. But you need to have your life changed, sinner, just like Captain Cayley. And the Lord Jesus Christ is the only one who can do it, and he does it because he died for you, and he rose again for your justification. And so it's a transforming power. Well, I'll tell you right now, sometimes when I get thinking about the glory of being transformed, I want to fly away, I'll be honest with you. Goodbye, old world. When you remember, oh my God, you need to be saved most likely. See? It's a transforming power. And then another thing, it's a triumphant power, you see. It gives you the victory over sin in your life. One of the first things that appealed to me in connection with the gospel was, it didn't offer me heaven, but someday I'm going to be there with the feet, holding to the feet and worshiping like the women. He can take care of all of that. When I became a Christian, I used to look at a man that didn't smoke, and I said, I wonder what kind of human being he is that can live without smoking. Now, this man doesn't drink. What makes him change if he doesn't drink? And there's a man that doesn't play stud poker. I knew deep down in my heart that the greatest blessing that a man could possibly have was something that would change his life and give him a victory over the things that killed him. So you see, he not only died for me, he gave me victory over sin. The story I heard of a man once standing on the street corner who had been saved from a life of drunkenness, had a little girl who was ten or eight years old sitting on a track. He stopped the person and said, let's see if you can drive. Could have seen what Jesus had done for me. You know how people are in the city. Don't wake him up. But was it worth it to beat him up, you know? Don't wake him up. Then finally, it's not only transforming the triumphant power, but you know, here's what I like. It's a transporting power. It's going to transport you right on the very gates and the very streets of heaven someday. If we believe that Jesus died and rose again, the apostle said, we also believe that those that are asleep in Jesus will God bring with him when he comes. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain shall not precede them that are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven. For the shout of the voice of the archangel and the trump of God, the dear and cursed shall rise first. And we that are alive and remain shall be caught up together to meet the Lord in the air and some shall over you. The very most wonderful, Father, give me the best transportation you could ever have. There it is, all yours. Not even for the asking. Will you do it today? I'm going to ask our brother Dick if he'll come and lead us in a verse or two of the closing song. And while he's coming, may I remind you of these booklets we're going to be giving these away. I'll be waiting right here. And this meeting is dismissed. Our brother Mateo will be at the back door. As you go out, if you have a spiritual father in you, speak to him if you'd like to talk to me. He can tell you the same thing. If you come down here and I'll take the Bible and show you.