Leonard Ravenhill emphasizes the profound truth that 'all things work together for good' as he reflects on the trials and tribulations faced by believers. He shares a poignant story of a pastor who, after experiencing personal tragedy, realizes the depth of this truth and the importance of faith amidst suffering. Ravenhill challenges the congregation to consider their own lives and the external circumstances that may shake their faith, urging them to find strength in God's unchanging nature. He illustrates that true wealth lies not in material possessions but in the eternal security of one's soul and relationship with God. Ultimately, he calls for a revival of faith and a deeper understanding of God's purpose in the midst of life's chaos.

I'm very happy and also very honoured to fill this pulpit during this week. One of the serious handicaps in travelling around the world preaching is that we have to combat the language barrier. And sometimes I've had to preach through interpreters. I prefer to call them interrupters, but... This can be really difficult. But I'm glad in America that while you don't speak English at least you understand it. In the second hour, in the next service, I want to speak on the greatest theme from what has been called the greatest chapter in the Bible. And tonight on, I think, on God's supermen. The text this morning is in the 18th chapter of the book of Judges, verse 24. And he said, you have taken away my gods and my priests, and ye are gone away, and what have I more? And what is this that ye say unto me, what ailest thee? You have taken away my God and my priest. And to reduce the text to the irreducible minimum, it would be I think this, you've taken away my God and what have I left? A few years ago in the First Methodist Church in Baltimore, Maryland. The congregation filed out of the church, silently. Many of them couldn't even concern to shake hands with the preacher. Many of them couldn't even see him, they had so many tears in their eyes. They said that morning that the one who walked in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks walked in their midst and they were subdued, almost terrified with the presence of God. The preacher had given them what they thought was his classic sermon, and the text was Romans 8.28. People just swallowed lumps and nodded their heads and out they went. Except one old lady. This little old lady waited until the foyer of the church was empty, and then she plunged and jumped onto the pastor, grabbed him by his lapels and said very bitterly, It's all right for you preaching on Romans 28. You've always had it good. You've a good home, had a good education, you've a home, you've a little place by the lake, you've a number of cars, you have a boat, you get a good vacation, you've good income, everything's been good. Now she said it's been the opposite with me. I've been married about two years, my husband died, we already have a child. Then the child took sick, then I was handicapped, and she related all the tribulations. In essence she said this to him as she finished her tarry, What would you do if the walls fell out and the roof fell in? What would you do if you looked for a face that wasn't there and listened for a voice you couldn't hear? What would you do then? Well, he said I've had it smooth I confess, I've had a very easy life. The little sour lady went away. The next Sunday when that great preacher came into the pulpit he had to be led by his hand, one of the deacons brought him in. On the Tuesday while he was cleaning his gun, it went off, put his eyes out. The church was more than full the second Sunday and they crowded the aisles and the pastor felt for the death that he knew so well. And then he said, if I could only preach to one person this morning it would be the little lady that stayed behind after last Sunday morning's service. You remember I preached on Romans 28, all things work together for good. But God has a pattern, you don't always understand it, but he has a pattern. And as you know last Tuesday I lost my eyesight. I haven't seen my darling wife, I have to feel for the books I love, I'm handicapped, I don't know what's going to happen, I can't drive, I can't do anything. The light has gone out. But I want to tell that little lady that Romans 8, 28 is more true this morning than it was then. That all things work together for good. Well this is really what this text is about. You see, it's my conviction, and I've shared this with you during the week, that humankind, the human race is moving down into a bottleneck. The bottleneck in the end of the twelfth chapter of Hebrews where it says that everything that can be shaken will be shaken, that the kingdom that cannot be shaken may remain. This great will of country yours has never been more sick than it is at this moment. Never been more despised. The dollar is sick. Politicians criticized everywhere. The world order for the Watergate. The dollar has gone down to its lowest this week. Tuesday night, if you're home in time, I doubt it, but if you're home by 10 o'clock Tuesday night, there's a program on the third of a million illegitimate babies left in Vietnam by American soldiers. We went to release the country and tied it up with 300,000 bastards. It isn't good. We have more divorces than any other nation in the world. We have more drug addicts. We have more drunkards. What are you going to do about it? Sit back, twiddle your thumbs. And are we going to get down to business and really repent and seek God and make this nation the nation God designed it to be. If that sounds pessimistic, let me say this, that I am convinced that God is going to pour out his spirit. He's going to make one church in America the shop window through which he displays his power and authority. And I'm ambitious that God would do it here in this church. I don't care whether he does it while I'm here or not, but that he'll do it here. Because the only hope for America is not a restored dollar. The only hope for America is a Holy Ghost revival. Now I'm a pretty long-winded preacher, I'll admit that. I've been preaching over 50 years, so you have to be long when you preach so long. But I know too, there's another meeting to come after this. So let me try and telescope some of the things I'm thinking about here in this story. It's a story of a woman who lived in the hills of Ephraim. She had a son by the name of Micah, she was a widow. Now Micah is not the prophet Micah, he's not related to him at all. Now I don't understand how she did this, but she gathered together a fortune of 1100 pieces of silver. And she buried this money, there were no banks. Maybe she buried it at the end of a rafter in the home, or like Achan in the ground in the house. They used to have water all built in those days. And maybe she buried it there. But when she needed the money, it had gone. And so she did like lots of people, she found God a very pleasant help in time of trouble. And I don't think God ever gets more advice than when we pray. And she told God what to do with the thief. Oh she wanted God to send judgment down, and even while she was praying there was a knock at the door. And her son stood there when she opened the door, and he said, Mother the money which was stolen, behold here it is. And she said, The Lord bless thee my son, not for stealing it, but for admitting he had stolen it. And then she took it down the street to a silversmith, and he put that money in a crucible, and out of it he brought her an image. She already had a graven image, now she had a molten image. She came off the top of the house. There was just her and her son in the congregation. They already had two gods, they had a preacher. And as a young man went down the street she asked him, would he like to be a pastor in the church? And he said he would. Do you know why? Do you know how she bribed him? She said she'd give him plenty of clothes and lots of food. If you offer a preacher's double knits and alligator shoes and plenty of food you can get them. And so she offered him food and clothing and all he needed, and he said all right I'll be the pastor. So now you've got a strange house, you've got two gods, two people in the congregation, two pastors, and he fought a tariff in. He don't need anything else. And when everything in the garden was lovely, there was an invasion of the children of Dan, one of the type of the children of the devil. They came and spied out the land. There was going to be an invasion. And these men went back to their masters and they said, we can take this country very easily. Do you know what they said? It sounds as modern as today. Everybody does that which is right in their own eyes. That's today isn't it? The law of averages, everybody does that which is right. I noticed in the office there it said, go make disciples. Now we don't have many disciples. The Lord has a lot of followers. They're following so far off he can hardly see them. But disciples are people with discipline. They live under discipline. Disciples, discipline. How many of us, I don't find many preachers live disciplined lives. Missionaries don't live disciplined lives. Get up when they want, get to bed when they want, talk when they want, spend what they want. But that's not discipline. You know if you joined a church a few years ago, they gave you in one hand the Bible, and they gave you a book of discipline in the other hand. You don't do that today. First thing they do with the Bible, they say you know that's worth about 5.75 wholesale. And the book of discipline, they'd most likely hit the preacher on the head with it anyhow. So who do you think you're pushing around? Now if that same person went to the doctor instead of the pastor, and said to the doctor, I've got a pain, oh I've got a pain, I've had it three or four nights now, doctor tell me the worst. We have a history of cancer in our family, and don't hide anything if you think I'm going to die in three days. Now let me have it straight. And the doctor takes a check up, and you go back in three days, and he said no it's not cancer, it's cabbage. And you feel relieved and that's it. But he says don't eat this, do do that, don't do this, do something else, and you say write it down, I may forget. So this perishing body will do exactly what the doctor says. We'll obey the doctor, not the pastor. The pastor is after our eternal souls. He wants us to stand straight at the judgment seat of Christ, if any of us can. But oh when it comes to this perishing body. I mean why do some of us hang around, we've been no good for the last few years, why stay around longer and come to the earth. Either let's get saved and get out of it, let's get really anointed with God, or quit living even. Or everybody does that which is right in their own eyes. The children of Dan came and invaded the country. They took all that this poor woman had. I don't know why they took the preachers, they can't work anyhow. So they took the preachers, and they took the two images, and they took the ephod, and they took the teraphim, and there was nothing left. And somebody ran after Micah and said, they've taken away your God and your priest. And he ran after the thieves and said, you've taken away my God and my priest, what have I left? Now if I say to you this morning, that all of you are millionaires, you'll laugh and say that's ridiculous. I can prove it. I said a few years ago, when they started doing transplants you know, that soon in the newspaper, instead of looking for a used washing machine, or a used something else, you'll be looking for a used eye, and a used kidney, and a used transplants. I heard the other day of a lady trying to get a, a brain transplant for her husband. But, they can just about transplant anything these days. And you know that the leading medical journal in the world, said recently what I said about five years ago, that soon there'll be a column in the newspaper, a blonde lady wants to sell a right eye for a hundred thousand dollars. A man at thirty-five would like to sell his left kidney for eighty-five thousand dollars. One man is prepared to sell this, or sell that, or sell the other. Sounds ridiculous? No it doesn't. It's going to happen. So what? So just this, that you got something this morning, you wouldn't sell for a quarter of a million dollars. Now make a safe guess, you didn't thank God for it, not only this morning, but once this week. Hmm? What about your eyesight, to start with? When did you last thank God for your sight? There's half a million blind people in America, you're not one of them thank God. When did you sit down and thank God for sight? To see the beauty of the earth, the beauty of the sky, the lovely sea, the flowers, and everything else. Have you thanked God for it? Number one sight, so precious you can't buy eyes. I won't sell mine, however broke I get. You may want to, that's your business. But you could lose your sight. I remember a girl in a church I pastored, looking through the window, a boy outside was angry with another boy, picked up a rock and threw it at the boy, but kept it a second too long, and that rock came through the window, put that girl's eyes out like, blowing a lamp up. Your sight, your senses, maybe people don't think you have much, but anyhow, you've got some senses, you can understand, you draw here, you can read, you can write, you can, you may not have a very high IQ, thank God you've got one at all. When did you last thank God for your sight? When did you last thank God for your senses? You've got some youngsters, you say they drive me up the wall. Well, the chips off the old block, what do you expect? But apart from that, when did you thank God they're not retarded? When did you last thank God for your senses? I remember W.P. Nicholson, the Irish evangelist, going to see a man in an institution, the man had mental trouble, and as he went through the gates of the institution, there was a man up in the window, three stories high, and he was hollering at the preacher, hi, hi! Nicholson smiled and said, I'm not an idiot, he's the idiot. But the man so insisted, he went back and said, what do you want? He said, I want to ask you a simple question. When did you last thank God for your sanity? I can't remember that I ever did. Oh, the man said, if I were you, I would. You see, I get mentally unbalanced, and I tear my hair, and I beat my head against the wall, and when I come round, I'm bloody and bruised and exhausted. And, of course, this was before they gave people shots, when they get in this state. If I were you, I'd thank God every day for my sanity. You see, there are a lot of things we can do, you know, simple things, like putting men on the moon. That's easy enough. What we don't understand is the moon. We don't understand how it's a magnet, it draws the waters of the earth. If you want to know how deep the tide will be in New York Harbor three years from now, you can find it. Just go to a certain area, they'll open a book and tell you the tide, say, on the 4th of July. Not a good day for an Englishman to come, but the 4th of July, 1978, say. And they'll tell you the tide will be 39 feet three and a half inches deep. Want to know how deep it will be a month later? They'll give you exactly the depth of the ocean. Why? Because they know the power of the moon, and they know where it moves the waters. It not only moves waters, it moves people's minds. We don't understand it. When did you last thank God for your sight, Mr. Grumbler? When did you last thank God for your senses? When did you last thank him for a healthy body? I know you're the best driver in the world, but the other guy coming up the road is the biggest lunatic in America. If you don't watch him, he'll come about three inches over that white line, you'll be minus a leg, or minus an arm, or just minus. You see, we've got so many things this morning. We don't count our blessings. We don't always feel, as we sang in that lovely hymn, that every joy or trial falleth from above, traced upon our dial by the sun of love. We get a little rebellious if we don't keep up with the Joneses or somebody else. I say you're a millionaire this morning, you've got your sight, and you wouldn't sell your eyes, would you? You've got your senses, would you agree to be insane for the next ten years if somebody gave you ten million dollars? You've got your freedom, would you thank God for it? You've got a lovely church, you've got one of the most admired men in America, as far as I'm concerned, Peter Lord is a man I pray for continually, a great man of God. He may not be very tall, but I notice the rest of the staff aren't either. But by the same token, he's pretty tall spiritually when it comes to the issue. You thank God for your blessings? You see you have something this morning, they're yours, they're not yours. You say we've got a lovely home, hurricane could shift it like that overnight, or a mere tornado. I've got good investments, but you better have them the way the dollar's going. You've got a lot of things are yours this morning, they're not yours, your health. I know a girl her daddy took around the world for her 21st birthday. Six years after, when the maid knocked at her bedroom door in the morning, that girl was as stiff as this desk, and from her shoulders to her feet, she's never done a thing since. Before that, she could sing like Gully Gertie. She can paint pictures like Raphael almost, play the violin like Yehudi Menuhin, one of those most super brilliant people. Everything she touches, she's genius about it. From that day to this, she's never taken the horse's tail over the catgut. She's never woven any pictures, she's never been able to do a thing. She needs the attention of a newborn babe, has to be lifted in and out of bed, bathed, to wear diapers. One of the greatest surgeon in the world said that somewhere in the world, she took a drink of water, and got a germ somewhere in her mind, and that germ lay dormant to sleep for years, and then suddenly asserted its power and paralyzed her. And her daddy has a deep pocket. But all the king's horses and all the king's men can't put umpty dumpty together again. They can't find the answer to the problem. There are times when money runs out, and brains run out. You can't do a thing. What do you do? Sit down and cry? You've got things this morning, they're yours, they're not yours. You could lose them all the night, a germ could knock you out. A hurricane could destroy all that you have, a failure of bank, and you've lost everything. I have a friend who was over here just a few days last week, he has a lovely yacht. I've been on it many times, and fish, when I've had an odd day. They told us just last night, while he was away from the Bahamas, the boat sank. It's there at the bottom of the ocean. Don't know how he'll get it out, just went over now. You see there are things you have, they're yours, they're not yours. They hang on the stuff that gossamer, that gossamer threads. You can hold them as furniture, you can hold a spider's web, and that's all there is to it. But there are some things that are mine. You see everything external, all my property, possessions, positions, anything else, right up to the edge of my skin, I've no power over them. They're subject to change, and decay, and wars, and wicked politics, and everything else. But when they go from the skin inward, they're mine. I can shake my fist at calamity, and tragedy, and adversity, and the will of the flesh, and the devil will defy them. What did Jesus say? What is she who will profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul. And we stack all the wealth of the world up, and say there's the wealth of the world, here is the soul of a man, and the soul of a man is worth more than all the wealth of the world. Well I'm not arguing that that's right, I'm arguing that maybe Jesus didn't mean it that way anyhow. But what way did he mean it? He's talking about control. He says what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world. You see everything outside of you, is subject again to governments, and change, and decay, and wars, and everything else. But on the inside, it all belongs to me. Do you remember the haughty Henley? The proud pagan who defied deity. And in one of his poems he says, out of the night that troubles me, black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods there be, for my unconquerable soul. It matters not how straight the gate, how charged with punishment, the strong, I'm the master of my fate, I'm the captain of my soul. Exactly. The day may come when they put us in prison for Christ's sake, I wouldn't wonder about that in the next 20 years in America, as well as any other country. We have no control over external things, but I'm the master of my fate, I'm the captain of my, it's your soul. Men can send you to prison, they can't send you to hell. Men can take away everything that feeds your body, feeds your mind, feeds you emotionally, but they cannot take away the inner sustenance that comes from God. I'm the master, I'm the captain of my soul. If you go to hell, you go because you will to go to hell. God has made a way by which you need not go there. You're the master of your fate, you're the captain of your soul. You set it, stick by it, God will hold you to it anyhow. I'm the master of my fate, I'm the captain of my soul. There are times when I think there are only two sides of the street. You live on this side of this. You live over here with Jacob. You remember he had trouble, trouble, trouble, just three of them. And I go to his tent, and he's shaking the tears out of his beard, and I say well Jacob how are you getting, how am I getting on, haven't you heard about my problem, this thing and that and the other. I say what's your philosophy of life? My philosophy of life is this, all things are against me. I say oh. I go here, knock at the door, and I say to a little fellow, and he gets up and says excuse me, I'm a bit stiff. And I say oh boy what was that? Oh just one of the friendly rats that comes along every day to see me. I notice the walls, they're beautifully draped with dirt, filth, slime. And he says well hallelujah, isn't it great? I say well isn't what great? He didn't hear the news? No. Well praise the Lord it's wonderful. I say maybe it is, what is it? Oh he said I can't wait for tomorrow. It's going to be wonderful. I've been waiting for this for 35 years. Glory to God. For what? Well what's going to happen tomorrow? Well what is going to happen tomorrow? Oh the greatest thing that ever happened in my life. Well what is it? Oh it's exciting, it's thrilling, it's marvelous, it's, I just can't wait. I say neither can I, why don't you tell me what's going to happen? He says well praise the Lord, tomorrow they're going to chop my head off. They're going to what? He says they're going to chop my head off tomorrow. They're going to take me out to the block, and like that. It's going to be great. It's going to be great. Sure, I've been living for 35 years. I've been sick. And this is what he says, and he has more miracles behind him than any man that ever lived. He did everything Jesus did, and he says that I may know him and the power of his resurrection. I want to see him, I want to be part and be with Christ, which is far better than even the most exciting ministry in the whole world. It's going to be wonderful to be there. Well I was just reading about Jacob. He said that he wanted to, well just tell me this, that all things are against us. Do you think all things are against you? Have you ever had it rough? He says no not really. I've had tribulation, distress, famine, peril, nakedness, sword, perils of the deep, perils of my own countrymen. I was tied to a whipping post and lashed 195 times. I hung on a piece of wood in the Mediterranean for 36 hours. Were you thinking of some of those things? Yeah, yeah I was. Not so many, but. Don't you think all things are against you? He says no sir. Not at all. Now what's your philosophy of life? If all things aren't against you, what's your philosophy? He says all things work together for good. Now which side of the street do you live on? The grumblers? Or the other side, where there's gladness continually? I'm convinced of this, that God has a design for every life. When I was preaching in Ireland some years ago, it was a street meeting. The country boys came down to the crossroads every Saturday night. We used to go and sing as best we could, and speak. One night after speaking, an old man came up and he said, would you come to my house and drink some tea on Friday? Eat some good Irish cakes. Well if there's anything free, I'm usually there. So I went along. When I got there, this big buxom wife met me. She was an odd looking creature. And as I went in she said, I don't know why he asked you this afternoon. She said, I want to tell you something, he's a bit odd. Now that's what I just thought about her, as a matter of fact. And she said, you know my husband, he sits up all night looking through telescopes, and all day looking through microscopes. She didn't say when he slept. As we sat there, he said to me by the raven head, did you ever look through the eye of a fly? Well I've been asked some stupid questions in my life, but I thought that took the bun really. Did I ever look through the eye of a fly? I don't know. Would you like to? I said, well yeah, I don't want to be a fly, but I'd like to look through the eye of a fly. He bought a little piece of glass, and he'd had on it a little thing about as big as the end of that ballpoint pencil. He put it under a microscope. I adjusted it. What can you see? I don't know, salt bubbles, tapioca pudding, frog spawn, I don't know what it is. Bubbles, bubbles, bubbles. I had a watch like this, a flat watch. I put it there underneath when he told me, and I remember it was 25 minutes before 6 o'clock. You can see your watch? I said I can see 300. He said you're wrong, you can see 500. 500? Why can I see 500? Because the eye of a fly, which is only as big as a pinhead, has 500 lenses on it, all at a slightly different angle. And you can see that watch 500 different ways. Isn't that wonderful? I said yes. He said did it help you? I said yes. Oh, good. How did it help you? Helped me to see how stupid I am. Because a fly's got two eyes, and when I go try to catch the thing, it can see me coming a thousand different ways. No wonder I can't catch it. And then he said, if you take a butterfly's wing and cut half an inch off the end, that butterfly's ring has 3,000 triangles. You put triangles for strength. You say, what's that got to do with me this morning? Oh, I think it's got a lot to do with you. I am suggesting God designs the eye of a fly with 500 different angles on that little tiny thing. He designed that, but your precious life he redeemed has no pattern to it. Now the devil can kick you that way if he wants, or circumstances can blow you that way if they like, or there can be a subtraction or an addition, and God's just sitting somewhere on the circle of the earth not a bit concerned about you. Let me hurry, say this. Do you remember the challenge of God? Remember it was not the challenge of Satan to God. It was a challenge of God to Satan. Hast thou considered my servant Job? Satan say, yeah, I consider him all right. I've considered him this way, that there's Job, and there you put a fence round about him, and I can't get to him. That's quite an admission, isn't it? You think Satan can come in on your life just when he wants without a permit from God? I don't. I don't care how crushed and baffled and bruised and bleeding you are this morning. He works everything after the counsel of his own will. Here is Job, and there's a fence, and Satan says, take the fence away. Don't you realize this man is pious, his piety is tied up with his prosperity? And if you take away his prosperity, his piety will perish. You take that fence away and let me get to him. And God never takes advice from Satan. And God says, I'll just pull the fence in a little and you can destroy what's round. All right, hurriedly. What did he do? Job went to bed a multimillionaire, he woke up bankrupt. Everything had gone. Did he curse God? No, he didn't. You take that fence away and let me get at him. And the Lord says, no, I'll bring it in a bit nearer, destroy what's outside. The first destruction was bankruptcy, the first operation was bankruptcy, the second was bereavement. He killed all his children. Would you like to bury all your children in one day, seven children in one afternoon? Did he curse God? No. What did he do? Job says, I can't get, Satan says, I can't get in on this man. All he did, he said this, the Lord gave. What do we say? We were successful in business, we had a lovely home, we had this, we had the other. The Lord gave it and the devil took it all away. If God gives, God takes away. He says, the Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Well why don't you let me get at him, you see. He can always maybe have more children, or maybe he can get back into business and restore his losses. But let me get at his body and he'll curse you. God says, finally all right. He takes away the barrier. The first stroke was bankruptcy, the second was bereavement, the third was boils. He couldn't sit and stand with any comfort. There he was in his misery. And when everything had gone, bereavement, bankruptcy, boils, Eliphaz the Temanite built up the shoe height and his other friends came in. Because just like the devil, he took all he had and left him with a nagging wife. But his wife came in as well and she says, curse God and die. Do you know what the real Hebrew is there? Blaspheme God and go commit suicide. Are you suggesting there's a God up there that has a pattern and you're bankrupt and broken and bereaved and baffled and bruised? Forget it. Curse God. There is no God. Commit suicide. What are you going to do? The walls have gone down. The roof has come in. There's no pattern, no design, no hope. Little Job gets up and scratched where he was itching the most and he pointed his finger. I want to tell you something. I'm broken, I'm bereaved, I'm baffled, I'm bruised. I don't understand it all, but I want to tell you this, that if God allows things work, I don't care. Even if worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God. I know that my Redeemer lives. The best things in life, in the Christian life, come out of the worst. A little woman on the west coast of America, one of the greatest saints of the last 50 years, in my judgment. Beautiful, petite, like some of you, sweet 17 year old girls. And suddenly her hands began to get painful and then they began to go this way and one arm twisted that way and the other went that way and then the legs started and before long she was literally a human pretzel. She had to be lifted in and out of bed. I don't know why, don't tell me, but as I heard the story, a few years after this, she went blind. A few years after that she got cancer. Oh, she was a sweet Christian. Oh yes, she'd anticipated marriage and having children and a lovely life, but here she is twisted and blind and screaming with agonizing pain at times in cancer. And when she needed her most, the lady that cared for her died. One day she said to the lady who was looking after her, could you write this down quickly and did not she wrote, He giveth more grace when the burdens grow greater. He giveth more strength when the labors increase. To added affliction he addeth his mercy, to multiplied trial his multiplied peace. His love has no limit, his grace has no measure. His power has no boundary known unto men. And out of the fullness of blessing in Jesus, he giveth and giveth and giveth again. He said, it's all right. You and your dear wife, you have it easy. Yeah, we have a nice life, sure we do. You travel. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I traveled to Chicago in 1951 and the hotel caught fire and I jumped out of a fourth story building about as high as that funnel up there. At three o'clock in the morning and hit the deck and broke my back in three places and broke my left leg in three places and broke both my feet. And I told other people how to keep their chin up in the storm and that Romans 8 28 works in any circumstance. But when you're 4,000 miles away from home with a broken body and hotel, pardon me, hospital bills 60 to $100 a day and you don't work for anybody and you're not insured and then what do you do? Well, you just prove him. He giveth more grace as the burdens grow greater. He giveth more strength as the labors increase. They've taken away my God. Yes, you can take some things. But you see, it's possible to have a joy that's unspeakable and a faith that's unshakeable and a peace that's indestructible. After all, your counterpart in Russia this morning will need it, won't he? Won't she? Your counterpart in the Church of God in China where it's underground. And why Mr. Nixon would want friends like the Chinese and Russians is beyond me. Particularly when he could have had the English and the French and the Japanese who would have been a solid block against the rest of the world both financially and politically in my mind and economically. But we've chosen communists and we'll pay the price. We've got two new wives. We went through two bloodiest, horriblest wars in history with England and France supporting America and America supporting them. And we've done so well that we ditched them both and now we've decided that Russia's our best friend. Brezhnev is in Camp David this morning. I wish he was listening in. But there he is. And we're going to make, we're going to have new allies with China. But we've got tribulation coming up as well as a great tribulation. And you'd be smart to think about it. But still the pattern is in God's hands. It's time to quit. How much could you lose this morning without losing your faith in God? Is your piety tied up with your prosperity? What if we have to go underground? What if we get to concentration camps? Do we have what will hold up in circumstances like that? When I was at school as a little boy we had a teacher very fond of poetry and she made us learn poetry. We learned one by an American poet, James Whitcomb Riley. Do you remember him? He's most famous maybe for his poem Little Orphan Annie, which some of you university people know. Little Orphan Annie came to our house. But do you remember he had a poem about the robber? The night was dark, the night was late when the robbers came to rob him. They picked the lock of the palace gate, those robbers that came to rob him. They picked the lock of the palace gate, they stole his jewels, his gems of state, his coffers of gold, his priceless plates, when the robbers came to rob him. But loud laughed he in the morning red when the robbers came to rob him, for hidden safe as he slept in bed when the robbers came to rob him. They robbed him not of a single shred of the childish dreams in his wise old head. And they're welcome to all things else, he said, when the robbers came to rob him. Do you get the point? They stole his jewels, his gems of state, his coffers of gold, his priceless plates. But he laughed, because they were all external. You can't take the treasures of my mind, my memory, there's nothing can take those. Maybe you prefer it in real good English poetry, better than American always. But Charles Wesley sums the whole thing up when he says, Though waves and storms go o'er my head, Though wealth and health and strength are gone, Though joys be withered all and dead, And every comfort be withdrawn, On this my steadfast soul relies. Father, thy mercy never dies. One minute. I say the best things come out of brokenness, trial, the furnace. A man is standing at the harbour there, I've thought of it many times, I've come in on the Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth, United States, I suppose, 20 or more times in New York. And often as I've seen people waiting, I thought of the time when H.G. Spafford, American millionaire, was saying goodbye to his wife, four beautiful, well-trained, well-educated daughters. The ship, the Le Havre, never got to England, it sank off the English coast. He was in his office, the phone rang, he answered, H.G. Spafford, and somebody said, Did you have some folk on the Le Havre? He said, Yes, my darling daughters, my beautiful wife, they've gone on the Grand Tour of Europe for five weeks. I'm sorry to tell you the ship sank last night, your four daughters perished. Your wife was rescued in a night attire and a coat, she's no money. She asked that you telegraph some money and get to Wales as quickly as you can. Thank you. He knelt down to pray. The phone rang, H.G. Spafford, I'm sorry to give you the bad news. Yes, I heard about the boat going down. The boat? What boat? Aren't you telling me about the boat? No, I have to tell you, the bank in which you have your money has failed. Two rings of the phone can change your life very drastically. He caught a boat some days after, got near to England, said to an officer, Could you tell me where the ship sank, the Le Havre? And he said, I'll tell you tomorrow morning. And the sea was tossing its billows and the ship was rocking. He held on to the handrail and he looked over the edge and the officer said, Down there somewhere your four daughters are. He began to think about the ocean and he began to think about the devil and he said, Goodbye, officer. Rushed down into his cabin and he snatched a piece of paper and without any corrections he wrote a hymn that I asked them to sing the morning that I had my tribulation too. Do you know what he wrote? With his four children there, with his millions of dollars gone, with his wife heartbroken, there was nothing, nothing that had any pattern, design. It was chaos and blackness, bewildered, baffling, blinding situations. And there in that rocking ship he wrote this, When peace like a river attendeth my way, When sorrows like sea billows roll, Whatever, my lord, thou hast taught me to say, It is well, it is well with my soul. It wasn't well with his feelings. It wasn't well with his family. It wasn't well with his bank account. It wasn't well with his emotions. It wasn't well with his future. There was a point where David says, My heart is fixed. And there are times when nothing else is fixed. Change and decay, chaos. Politically, in the pattern of your life, in the pattern of your home, in the pattern of business. But you can stand there and say triumphantly, It is well. It's well with my soul. My faith looks up to thee. I have a joy unspeakable. I have a peace that's indestructible. I have a faith that's unshakable. You can take away everything, but you can't take away God. What shall separate us from the love of God? Tribulation, distress, famine, peril, nakedness. No, sort them all out. Some are for the body. Some attack the mind. Some attack the spirit. But in all these things, we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.