In this sermon, the preacher discusses the concept of delay and waiting in the fulfillment of God's promises. He refers to a passage in the book of Revelation where John hears the voices of seven thunder, but is instructed not to write down what they say. The preacher emphasizes that we are currently in a period of waiting, but assures the listeners that the delay will not last forever. He reminds them of the many promises God has made throughout the Bible and encourages them to have faith and obedience, as the fulfillment of these promises is imminent.

Now, will you turn to Revelation, the 10th chapter? Revelation, the 10th chapter, and I'm going to ask you to read it with me. I'll read verse 1, and you'll read verse 2, and so on to the end, and we'll all read the last verse. And if what follows doesn't help us any, this is bound to help us if we'll believe it and obey it. Revelation 10, I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven clothed with a cloud, and a rainbow was upon his head. And his face was as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire. And he cried with a loud voice as when a lion roared. And when he had cried, seven thunders uttered their voice. And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth, lifted up his hand to heaven. But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God shall be finished, as he hath declared to his servants the prophets. And I went unto the angel and said unto him, Give me the little book. And he said unto me, Take it, and eat it up, and it shall make thy belly bitter, but it shall be in thy mouth sweet as honey. And he said unto me, Thou must prophesy again before many peoples and nations and towns and kings. Now I'll not be finished with this little book tonight, but we'll talk about the earlier part of the chapter. This book, as I've tried to say, this book of Revelation, is primarily the revelation of Jesus Christ. And it is impossible to look, as we know, at a bright star and see only that bright star. When we look at a bright star, we see all the other stars round about it that are large enough and bright enough to register on our optical nerves. And it's impossible to see a king or to look at a king without seeing other things that surround the king, the palace and the throne and the attendants and the scepter and the robe and the things that go to make the king a king. And so when we're reading the book of Revelation, we often do not for the moment see Jesus himself. This is, I say, primarily a revelation of Jesus Christ. And yet when we look at Jesus Christ and toward Jesus Christ, we see that which surrounds him. Jesus Christ is first. He is the word, the everlasting word. He is the Father of the Father's love of begotten. He is God incarnated in human flesh. I could spend all the evening telling about him, and I would yet be ashamed of how little I had said in praise of him who is the desire of nations, who is the wisdom and the righteousness and the sanctification and the redemption and the hope and the resurrection and the glory and the way and the truth and the life and all that the human spirit will need and all that we as human beings will need for all for the world to come. And yet when we look toward him and see him naturally, we see these other creatures, too. He is the one by whom the race is to be redeemed and the earth restored and evil vanquished and Satan defeated and justice established and human banishment ended and the veil taken away from the face of God. And yet when we gaze at him, we see also the sight of angels and hell and heaven and the bottomless pit and the throne of God and the souls of the righteous and the last judgment and the marriage of the Lamb and the new heaven and the new earth. So we're seeing all of this. I don't know what this does to you, but just reading it lifts me. Just reading it gets me off the dull earth where it cares about and gets me up into another world and onto another level, as they say now. And I like to read it, even if I don't altogether fully understand it. Now, the book is rich, this book of Revelation, rich with wonderful scenes, scenes that are noble and magnificent and terrible and awesome and attractive and frightening and rapturous and all this. And we come to Revelation 10, verse 1, and we hear these words, that John looked and behold I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven clothed with a cloud and a rainbow was about his head or upon his head and his face was as it were as the sun and his feet as pillars of fire. Now, this is a parenthesis, this 10th chapter here. It is parenthetical. That is, it does not advance the progress of events. You know what that means. It doesn't advance the progress of events. We are moving forward in the schedule of events, but here we do not find any forward motion at all. But we see a loud and lordly announcement coming from an angel, another mighty angel, and then follows the description of the angel. And the scripture says he is clothed with a cloud. You know that the Bible was written very considerably in figures of speech and symbolism abound throughout the word of God. This ought not to scare people and discourage them, as it does some. They throw up their hands and say, I cannot understand the scriptures. I don't know when it's a literal thing and when it's a symbolic thing, and therefore I just quit and I don't read the word. That, of course, is the devil's neat trick to prevent us from reading the word. You have no such trouble as that when you are reading a letter from a relative or a letter from a loved one far away. That loved one may write you a letter and in it he or she may use brilliant figures of speech, and yet you know what every one of them means. And you also know that that person is using a symbol, a figure, and you're not at all, you don't say, I'll not read that letter because the fellow talks about things that I don't understand. You understand all right. So when we read of the angel clothed with the cloud, we know that this cloud, if we're Bible students, is not a rain cloud. It's not a cloud composed of water. It is some other kind of cloud. You go to the Bible and let the Bible interpret itself. And in the Bible you find that cloud. Way back there in the days of Israel there was a cloud and a fire glowing by night as a fire and appearing by day as a cloud. And that was the Shekinah presence, that was the glory of God. And when Jesus was taken away, a cloud received him out of their sight. And again it says, Behold, he cometh with clouds, and every eye that saw him, every one that pierced him shall see him when he cometh with clouds. Well, this is what the cloud means. It is the visible manifestation and the setting forth of the invisible glory of the invisible God. And when the creature comes out from the throne of God, there clings to him something of the glory that belongs to God, something of thee, the splendor and beauty that belongs to God. And the throne of God clings to the mighty angel as he moves down from his place by the throne of God to the place where he's coming on the earth. Now, Jesus is seen through all this. This angel is not Jesus Christ, our Lord. This angel is another mighty angel, let's get that straight. Our Lord is called the angel of the covenant in one place, but since the word angel means a messenger, this is another mighty messenger coming down from heaven, clothed with a cloud. And this is not Jesus Christ, our Lord. He had a book, and he took a book, and he began to open the book, but this is not the same one. The one we saw in the 5th chapter is the Son of God, the Lamb of God, and he taketh away the sins of the world, and he holds in his hand a little book. And they begin to open that book, but this is not the same little book, and it's not the same angel. Not the same one, I mean. This angel is not Christ. Now, I don't know about this little book, and I'm not going to emphasize it too much, but I believe that God keeps books, my friends. It seems like a little bit kindergartenish, perhaps, or childish, to believe that God keeps books, but I do believe that he keeps books. I believe that God keeps books on his people. I read of the book of life, and I read of the book of deeds in which are written the evil works of men, and I read here of a book, and I read in the 5th chapter of a book which is the title, Deed to the World, and so the great God of Heaven does keep books. And here is a little book which he has in his hand, we may notice a little later, and perhaps not until next week even, what it is. But he cries with a loud voice. Now, he lifted up his hand to Heaven. I like this. I like somebody or some creature that can do something with finality once. We nibble at things and experiment and try. We're weak and we try to do things and don't get them done. And our great men and our mighty men try to do things but don't get them done. We're such little men when the stars come out, said the poet. And here is someone who comes down and he lifts up his hand, and when he lifts up his hand he cried with a loud voice, that is, he shouted as when a lion roars. And when he had cried, seven thunders uttered their voices. Now, those seven thunders that uttered their voices, obviously they uttered something that was intelligible to John. And so John grabbed his quill pen and he started to write down what the seven thunders had uttered. And I was about to write and then I heard a voice from Heaven saying, now seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered and write them not. And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the land lifted up his hand to Heaven. He stood this great creature upon the sea and upon the land and he declared that time should be no more. Now we've made a great deal out of this time being no more. In our hymns and in our gospel songs we sing about time being no more and we're looking forward to the day or the period when time will be no more. But actually what the great angel said here, this mighty resplendent being, was that delay should be no longer. We could understand this if we were at a football game or a baseball game, or I suppose the same would be true of the average of most games, but I do happen to know it's true of these, too. All that somebody has to do is to call time and everything ends. Nobody can score, nobody can run, nobody can do anything, it's dead for the time being. Time has been called, delay. They say, wait a minute, there's a delay in the game so that the sequence of the game ends for a while and there's a parenthesis, a period of waiting there. And this is what we have now, we're in a period of waiting and suddenly this great angel appears from Heaven above and he cries to the earth and to all here that the time is not called now, that the delay should be no longer. Now the great test of faith for the world and it's been a great stumbling block, too, when God has promised so much and God has promised so much. Read your Bible, go back to Genesis and read it on through and see how much God has promised. Sibyl and prophet and saint and sage and seer and apostle and our Lord himself promised so very much. But time has been called and the great test of faith is that if we can wait on God and not push it and not expect immediate results and immediate action, you know that we live in the push-button age now, that's not a new thought and certainly isn't news, but we live in that period when we want things done immediately and now they said that a man used to be able to wait for a day or two or maybe a week on a stagecoach and now he's impatient if he misses one section of a swinging door, of a revolving door. And that is quite literally true, we want what we want immediately, we want it now and we don't want anybody fooling about it. But God doesn't move like that and faith doesn't always get things immediately. You see the difference between faith as it's found in the scriptures and faith as we conceive it and is it to us. Faith is a kind of magic, I want something and I pray and I exercise faith and I reach out and I have that right now and immediately, I get it at once. Now that's true, you can pray and some things do come now, but there is another kind of long-range telescopic faith that sees the ages and that can wait on God. And the church has had to wait a long, long time, God has promised so many things and his people have waited so very long and their cry has gone up, how long O Lord, how long? And now the lordly angel proclaims with the voices of the lion and three worlds hear him, heaven hears him and agrees and hell hears him and is frightened and earth hears him and is glad. You won't have to wait any longer now, says this mighty angel, because time is no more, delay is no more, we're lifting the time signal from the game and from here on we go forward to the end without any more delay. God promised Abraham an awful lot of things that he hasn't yet fulfilled, we might as well face up to this, that God told Abraham a number of things that Abraham hasn't seen yet. Abraham died without having seen it, was buried in the cave of Machpelah and laid away to rest beside the wizard body of his old wife Sarah. And the dust of Abraham and Sarah still blows about over there somewhere, perhaps in the Asia Minor, in the land which God gave to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. But God has a lot of promises standing out and a lot of notes that are waiting to mature. And a lot of things he told Abraham he would do. He said, Abraham, I'll bless the whole earth through you and through your seed. I will give you all this land from way up here at the top, clear down and from the river, from the sea clear out beyond the river, I'll give it all to you. And there never has been a time when the descendants of Abraham had all that. They never have had it all. They've had some of it and they have had less of it and more of it, but they've never had all of it. So Abraham is still waiting. God has said, Abraham, we'll have to call time a little here and delay a bit. Things are, I'm going to let the tree ripen. And so Abraham has been waiting, but Abraham couldn't afford to wait. A man who, when he's a hundred years old, could quietly look up to God and believe that his wife, who was ninety, could have a child. Abraham had no trouble with faith. And Isaac was born in faith, in the will of God. Then there was David. God loved David. David did some things he shouldn't have done, there's no question about that. And a lot of people have tramped all over the poor man ever since. We've written him and preached about him, but David was a human being and he acted like a human being under pressure. But David knew one art that the average human being doesn't know. David knew the glorious art of repentance. He could repent as few men have ever been able to repent since the world began. David could sin in a robust fashion, but David could also weep as few men have been able to weep. And so God promised Abraham a lot of things. Well, most of those Messianic, I won't say all, but most of those Messianic psalms that tell us about the King in his glory coming to set up his throne and the people of the world gathering up to the King and peace being throughout all the earth, that's not simply poetry. That's history pre-written. God has said that would be. Take that 45th Psalm, I mean, when David sang his song of loves. Well, it says here, Now, this is a picture of the marriage supper when the man who never married on the earth, but who adopted all the children of the world as his children and who lived a single life and died his glorious death and rose again, takes to himself a bride not composed of another person, another single person, but of the church of Christ. And we see it here, and we see it ahead of time. It's history pre-written. Now, David did not ascend up to heaven, said Peter, but David sleeps in the 2nd chapter of Acts, we're told that. David ascended not into the heavens, but he saith unto my Lord, saith himself, the Lord said unto my Lord, sit on my right hand until I make thy foes thy footstool, and so on. Now, he said, my brethren, know that David died and sleeps now, that all the house of Israel knows that David sleeps and has God forgotten David? You put your baby to bed at night, and before his little eyelids fall shut, you promise him something. Do you think for a minute that you're going to forget what you promised your child? No, no. Your love for your child will not allow you to forget. The father leaves, and he's making a long journey. And he says, now when I come back, I will have certain something for you. And the little child doesn't forget that. They say babies do not remember very long, but you'd be surprised how long. Some of them have memories like elephants. And if you're gone for three weeks and come back, the first thing they will do will not be to welcome you, but to ask whether you got that or not. Now, I personally know that. Our little girl was growing up, she had a grown-up brother, and everybody called him Bud. He had another name, but he was Bud to the family. And when Bud would come home, she'd come dancing up to him with her brown curls flying, and she would say, Have you got goom? And she was glad to see Bud, too. But she remembered the promises, you see. And when God said to David, Now, David, the day will be. Here it is, the day will come when you'll see all this, and the glory will be seen. And then David died, and they laid David away. He got so old and cold. And they finally died, and they laid him away in a tomb. Do you suppose for a minute that the God who promised his boy when he put him to sleep and laid him there in his little bed to sleep in the cave of the earth, do you suppose God's forgotten David? Do you suppose those psalms through which God poured his promises to the human race and to Israel and to the church, do you think for a second that God's forgotten David? No. And there was Isaiah, that man with the organ voice, that man who could pull out the stops and make the heavens hear the great tones, as he told of him who was wonderful counselor, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace, and that he should come, and that the law should go out from Jerusalem, and the word of the Lord should go out from Zion, and that the nations of the earth should come to Israel, do you think that God has forgotten these promises that he made through Isaiah? Do you think that when God, when this grieving prophet Daniel, this man who prayed his way through and fasted and sought the will of God and knowledge of God, do you think that this man Daniel, to whom God promised that there would be a stone come out of heaven and strike the earth and that that stone should grow until it should fill the whole mountain, do you suppose God has forgotten all this? We've forgotten it. We've got our minds made up on something else. Russia sent up a man, and the United States sent up monkeys. We've got our minds made up on monkeys. I don't know how you felt about little old Enos, but I pitied him. I was on his side as soon as I saw his picture there. I thought, poor boy, you may not be back. Did you see his picture in the newspaper? I did, and I pitied him. I have no particular friends among the chimpanzees, but I saw the picture of Enos there looking so much like a rather homely half-grown boy. And I pitied Enos, and I was real delighted when they reported that they'd brought him back a little bit excited but entirely all right and all smiles. That was Enos. Well, we're more concerned now with sending monkeys into the heavens above than we are with the prophecies of Daniel. But I don't think God is too much concerned as man throws the little snowballs up and watches them come down and gets excited about it. I don't think God is so excited as man at all. People are just playing with rubber balls made out of steel, throwing them up in the air and bringing them back. But God said, Let Daniel see a rock that fell out of heaven, a great stone that fell out of heaven and that smashed the image and filled all the mountains. And men are forgetting that. If I were to get up before the United Nations and start to explain what Daniel had taught, I'd be hooted out. And I'd be hooted out not only by the Asians and the Russians and the Africans, I'd be hooted out by the Canadians and the Americans and the British and the Germans. I'd be hooted out of that place, believe me. The Germans aren't there, but the rest of them are that I've named. And I'd be hooted out that Daniel is still there. He said, O rest you, man of God. When Daniel was old and tired, God said to him, Rest, man of God. The day will be in that last chapter, said the time will be when go thy way till the end be. For thou shalt rest and stand in thy lot at the end of the days. Blessed is he that waiteth and cometh. So we're waiting and we're coming by the grace of God. And I think of the Church. The only way we'll know where we are is to know Church history a little bit. Everybody ought to read Church history. Everybody ought to go downtown somewhere to a good bookstore, say evangelical publishers, and buy themselves a Church history, if only a synopsis of Church history. And then I recommend the reading of the biographies of the Saints. It's a good cure for any new ideas that pop up. But he comes along and he has a new idea, and he takes the Scripture and begins to expound them, he thinks, and makes you think that he suddenly has found a secret nobody else has known since the Apostle Paul. And if you know Church history, you smile to yourself and you say, There were only 45 other people down the century who said that same thing, and it didn't happen. And so we know he's wrong, too. So the Church, it's good to study and see how the Church, and particularly the martyrs, how they died in calm belief that everything would be all right in their father's house. They're still waiting. God says, Time! And he calls time! And they're waiting. And they're bereaved and oppressed. I'll tell you, I've seen some, I've never ever told a graveyard story here, nor a deathbed story. I don't go much for that. But I've seen some heart-wrenching things in my time. I've seen, I saw one mother when her little baby boy died. She was a young mother, oh, I'd say in her early twenties. And she went over in her paroxysm of uncontrolled, irrational grief. She scolded him. She said, Why could you do it? Why did you do it, Junior? Why did you do it? You left Mama, you left Mama. Why did you do it, Junior? You left Mama. And she scolded the little white form in her awful grief. And though I was a preacher and supposed to be in charge of the service, I walked to a window and looked out to hide my tears. I couldn't help it. I hadn't known them. I only had the service. But I've seen things like this. Now, that mother was a Christian. And if she ever became a Christian, she knows she will meet that babe somewhere there in the glory. She knows it. Suzanne Wesley, that brilliant and holy woman, had 17 children. And, of course, two of them were John and Charles Wesley. But she lost. I've forgotten how many died. Was it nine that died? And she led every one of them away in full confidence that Jesus Christ, when he died, died for her babes. And that she would meet them in that day, and they would know her, and she would know them in the great day of our Lord. But she's dead now, and they're all gone. The whole family is gone, and their descendants have gone. You suppose the God who lives in his heaven and waits and looks down upon the poor, frightened tribe of men, do you think that God's forgotten, my brother? No, God says, Wait a minute, I've called time. But one of these times, I'm going to release the wheels and we'll roll along. And now it comes. Now in the 10th chapter it comes. And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth lifted up his hand to heaven and swore by him that liveth forever and ever who created heaven and the things that are therein and the earth and the things that are therein and the sea and the things that are therein, he swore that there should be time no more. Delay was over, and now the wheels of God's justice rolls on. Once the cup of wrath was filling up, do you know that happens? It happens to human beings. We sin and we sin and we sin and perhaps or possibly God doesn't notice much or at least he doesn't seem to. And then the sin becomes accumulative. That's the terrible thing about sin. It's accumulative. It becomes accumulative and piles up within us. And when it piles up to the place where it overflows, then the judgment of God falls. And the nations of the earth have been accumulating their sins. And there was a day when the cup of wrath was filling up for the world and the just judgment of God was about to fall and then the saving victim who opened wide the gates of heaven, crucified, gave himself to die and offered himself on a cross and God called time and said, While my Son pleads at my right hand and while grace is operative, there will be no end to the human race, there will be no final judgment. And you and I are living now in a period of time, a period when time has been called. But the great angel is coming. I don't know how soon he'll come, but he will come and he will say, That's over now. Time is no more. The delay has ended and the wheels will begin to roll on. And then during this time, this period, God has taken out of the world a people for his name. Why do we believe in nations? Somebody wrote me a letter here in the city. She may be here tonight, I don't know. And if she is, she will understand that this is said, as her letter was kindly, this is meant to be kindly too, but she rather took us to task a little for pledging to missions and said that the Spirit would lead about it and so on. I have no apology to make for being interested in the work of world missions, none whatsoever. For it is written in the 15th chapter of Acts, these wonderful words, spoken by the man of God as he stood up in a council and he said that, was it, it was the man who preached and said, Men and brethren, hearken unto me. Simeon, that's Peter, has declared how God at the first did visit the Gentiles to take out of them a people for his name and to disagree the words of the prophets as it is written, After this I will return and will build again the tabernacle of David which is fallen down and I will build again the ruins thereof and I will set it up that the residue of men might seek after the Lord and all the Gentiles upon whom my name is called saith the Lord who doeth all these things. Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world. So God is taking out of the world a people for his name. This church isn't a religious theater. This church isn't a place where paid men perform for the religious amusement of the people who pay them. This is an assembly of redeemed people who have been called out and called unto and who are part of the church which he's called by his own name, the church of God. He's taking out of the world a people for his name and time waits while grace operates. So I have no apology to make for missions we can overdo or appeals, I know that, and I'm ready to admit that. And I think maybe we have here sometimes taught too many things and made too many appeals. But I have no hesitation in saying that one of the most important works that any church can do is to get the gospel out as far as they can, as soon as they can, because he will take out of the Gentiles a people for his name and afterward he will return, he says. Now that's there. I know that many have tried to explain that away, but I die hard. I don't die easy. I don't kill easy. When somebody comes, he's determined he's not going to believe that Christ is coming back again. He's just not going to believe it. And so he starts explaining, telling me what all this means. He can't explain it to me, or it's already been explained. I wrote something one time and I quoted Paul. And a professor in college wrote me and told me that I had it all wrong, that Paul didn't mean that. And I wrote back and said, Well, Paul's batting average has been pretty good up to now. Paul's ability to say what he means has been pretty good, and so I'll string along with Paul. He never replied. I thought that would fix him. And I'm not sure whether it did or not, because when a professor decides that the Bible doesn't say what it says, then I don't know what a little fella like I can do with him or anybody else. But when the Lord says he will call out of the nations a people for his name, and his name is Christ, and those people are Christians, and the Church, and after that I will return, I'm going to believe that. I'm not going to let anybody argue me out of that, sir. I believe that's true, sir. So, soon time will be no more, and when it's no more, then our Lord will come back. And when he comes back again, the big question will be, Are we ready for his coming? Now, that is the big question. We have just gone through a period when almost everybody taught the same thing. They taught that every Christian who was born again was prepared for the coming of the Lord automatically. That all he had to do was take out his air card, say, Here, Lord, here it is. There it is. And it's all set. I don't believe that, my brother. I don't believe that. If that had been true, that all you had to do was be born again and you were automatically ready for the coming of the Lord, then I want to ask you, how is it that Paul and Peter and John and our Lord himself exhorted and pleaded and besought us that we should live so as to be ready for the coming of the Lord? If we're automatically ready, why is it then that the Lord tells us to get ready and to be ready and to watch lest any man take our crown? No, I do not believe that we're automatically ready. I believe that our Lord is waiting and that one of these times that mighty angel with a loud voice is going to come down from God's heaven above with a rainbow upon his head and his face as the sun and his feet as pillars of fire. And he's going to stand on the sea and on the land and lift up his hand to heaven and swear that the delay is over. And then God is going to begin to judge a world that's ill-prepared for judgment, a world that's all bogged down in iniquity, a world that's more concerned with games and pleasures than with getting ready to meet God. There was a day when our serious forefathers on this continent, here in Canada down in the States, the sons and daughters of Scots and German and English and Irish forebears, believed as they said and said so quaintly that earth is a dressing room to get us ready for heaven. When a wedding is being held, there's usually a room backstage somewhere and there's somebody smilingly standing outside of that room. We had a little room down in Nutty Pine and that was the bride's getting-ready room. And she came up and came with her whatever it is they had and came up the stairs and came down to get married. And I married many of them. But I'd be all over the place but there was one place I didn't go. Somebody outside smiling, they don't come in here. They were getting the bride ready. She's sit at all glorious within in garments of needlework. I believe that there is a bride being prepared now for our Lord. And she's being prepared in this secret place. The idea that there is an automatic legal aspect that if you have your citizenship in heaven you're all ready, I don't believe it for a second. I don't believe that even though you have a family of five or six children and they've played all day and you're going to have company for dinner in the evening, I don't believe that you're going to allow the company to see your children the way they come in out of the backyard or off of the playing field. I don't think so. I think you're going to thumb them upstairs to the little room with the running water and the soap and say, Now don't you come back down here until you're presentable. I believe that God is not going to allow his carnal children, his lustful children, his money-loving children, his pleasure-loving children to go rushing pell, male, singing gospel boogie into the presence of a holy God. I don't believe it for a second. I believe that the God who is holy under and said, Be ye holy for I am holy, I believe that that God is going to prepare his people and he's going to say to them, Take a bath, not with soap and detergent and water, but in the blood of Jesus Christ as of a lamb without spot and without blemish. No matter how much of a racketeer a man is, he can push his way into religious circles these days, Protestant circles, and he can make good and succeed, even though he's a racketeer, he can do it. We can shed our jaw and push our way in, but there's one place where you won't push your way in, brothers and sisters, one place. And I'm glad for it. I'm glad there's one clean place in the universe, aren't you? I'm glad there's one clean place in the universe. I'm glad there's one holy place we can look into. And I'm glad there's one place where you can't be permitted to get away with things. When you're in school, if you've been a nuisance in a grade too long, they'll pass you. Just to get you through. A doctor examining you for, when I was about 60 years old, I took a physical examination for certain insurance. The doctor said, I don't see why you won't pass. Why, it just felt me between my chin and my knees, and I was warm. And he said, You're all right. That's what they used to say during the days of the army. They said they took a young fellow and felt him, and if he was warm, they put a uniform on him. And you can get away with anything here, but there's a place where you can't. And you'd better consider that. I'm interested in all this. I'm interested in this. Don't ask me what the seven thunders uttered. Because they were sealed up. Nobody knows what the seven thunders said. But you can know one thing, whatever they said, they didn't say anything in favor of the devil, or in favor of sin, or in favor of hell, or in favor of the proud man. And you can be sure whatever they said, it was said in favor of God and Christ and righteousness and holiness. So I'm willing to wait for God to unloose the seven seals, or the seal, and when John comes, John will say, Now, here's what the seven thunders uttered. It was 66 books of the Bible. I'm not too much worried about what the seven thunders uttered. But I'm very much concerned that I should be prepared when the wheels of judgment start to grind again, and the cup of iniquity is so full, God can't abide it. And he pours it out in judgment. Oh, my brother and sister, how is it with you? Are you ready? Is everything all right between you and everybody? Is everything all right between you and yourself? Have you got any habits you shouldn't have? Have you fussed with somebody or lied about somebody or gossiped about somebody and not made it right? Have you forgotten a debt? The statute of limitations has ruled the debt out and they can't collect. One preacher I heard about, a young fellow, he bought on time from everybody that would sell him anything, I guess, radios and all sorts of gadgets. Then he got called to another place and he moved down in the south, southern part of the United States. And these companies, these companies that he owed, finally found him and wrote him. He said, Come, pay up. He wrote back and said, Collect. Go ahead, collect. He had nothing. Collect, he said. Oh, you can get away with that. You can't hear. Dear brother Thomas, who sung here, preached here many a time, went to those creditors, every one of them, and said, I'll be personally responsible for this man's debts. He was my man. And he went back. And I'm personally responsible. That was Thomas. He sold a little piece of property that the church had owned. He went around from store to store and paid every debt. He walked out of that little town with his chin up. And every store man and every creditor said, There's a man of God. If you get any unpaid debts that you haven't made any effort to do anything about, my friends, are you ready? That's all I'm asking. Are you ready for the hour when the Lord returns and God begins his program of bringing the earth to its knees, of restoring an earth, vanquishing evil, defeating Satan, establishing justice, vindicating righteousness, bringing human beings back again into the presence of God. Let's pray.