In this sermon, the preacher discusses the condemnation that comes when people choose darkness over light. He emphasizes the importance of taking action and not just giving advice. The preacher also mentions the concept of illusion and the need to revisit and apply the teachings of the Bible. He acknowledges that reading and learning can be tiresome, but suggests that there is a second word or deeper understanding that needs to be grasped. The sermon touches on various topics such as the sinfulness of man, the atonement, and the influence of the world. The preacher encourages listeners to live according to God's standards rather than conforming to worldly ways.

It can become worrisome, and I do not like to speak when I feel I have lost my congregation. And you can lose preachers. They get daydreaming just like everybody else. Something I have said, something from last lesson is engaging the attention, and while you're looking right at me and I'm looking at you, you aren't thinking about what I'm saying. You're thinking about why I say it, wondering how it's going to fit in with this. Well, I learned as a young man that reading can become very, very worrisome, particularly if you're reading to learn. I heard Brother Reese say one time that preachers should sweat, brain sweat. Well, as a lad, I was an avid reader. My father died when I was eight, and there were no restrictions on reading. And when I talk about these nickel novels that you could get back there, six for a quarter, you do not know maybe what they looked like. They were a little larger than your cognitor. And oh, nice pictorial outside, Nick Carter, Diamond Dick, Young Wild West, Buffalo Bill. Only the older ones would know. If anyone is old enough to know, then I know about where you are. Well, I could read any amount. Nobody gave me restrictions. I'd read those things and then have dreams all night. And then I'd go in and read again, nearly have nightmares. I wonder whether Buffalo Bill was going to accomplish that, or Young Wild West, or, well, just detective stories, many of them. As I came along, I read larger or different types. I was intrigued with all of that, but I was reading for pleasure. Just fun. It was real. When I was converted, I had given myself to that so long, going from this to a little higher echelon, the love stories of Bertha Ann Clay and Charles Guybus. You could buy those for ten cents a piece, or fifty cents for a half dozen. And I read that, and I got into Harold Bell Wright and all that type of reading, but all just for pleasure. When I started into the ministry, I was converted. I was converted once as a high school lad, oh, for maybe four or five weeks, not long. Very definite conversion. Somebody said, you can't lose it. I said, I know better than I did. I know where I did and why I did. What was the issue? I know that. And I know that the spirit that came to my heart with the illumination and light and peace departed. I found myself back going down farther, faster. I had no help in the home. I intimated the other day, in fact stated, that no preacher ever called in our home. We were not a religious family. We didn't go to church. Preachers didn't bother us. We didn't bother them. But in the middle of my 22nd year, I came to God with the proposition, if you'll help me, Lord, I'll do anything in the world you want me to do. But I've been trying from then till now to do that. But when I started to study, my mind had become flabby by foolish reading, sentimental reading. Just like your body, you can keep from hard labor, shuffle around, until when you have to use it and want to use it, it can't stand up under it. I know that too. I know a fellow that worked with me one time when I was real hard and brawny. And I didn't know. It's a wonder the guy didn't die. He told me he'd never done such a day's work in his life. And for ten years, all he'd done was push a pencil around scaling lumber. Well, he and I together unloaded 58 tons of pig iron and piled it in about seven hours. Well, the fellow near me, I don't know how he, later I wondered how on earth he did it. Well, I could only do it because I was working in an iron foundry at that time. My muscles were hard. I couldn't do it now. I couldn't begin to do that kind of thing. But your mind can become just like that, flabby, until when you start to read, you soon weary. And you'll have to drive yourself. You'll have to shake yourself. No, sir, you're going to find it. When I first started on a book on logic, logic and argument, logic inductive and deductive by heaven, I wasn't prepared for what I started into. I read the first chapter, and I blinked my eyes. I had no more idea what I'd read. I re-read it, and I blinked some more. I read it again. Suggestion, I'll go on. Maybe you can, maybe you can pick it up for me. I start, and then I said, no, if I can't get this first chapter, I'll not be able to get the rest of it. And if I read that chapter once, I believe I read it 25 times, but I wasn't set to get home. But finally it broke in. I got hold of what I was reading. So, and then I learned this. Do not read beyond the point that you can digest. I feel there are places where men get off the track. They read, and their mind hasn't assimilated, and yet they keep on, and by and by, they're on the sidetrack there. They hardly know how they got there. So I, for myself, I've said I do not want to read more than my mind can assimilate. Just like overeating. You can eat more than you ought to. Maybe you preachers know about that. You can eat more than you ought to. And it isn't good for you. I have to take that a little to myself too. But you can do the same thing in the matter of reading. Now, I'm not going to deal with this now. I may later. But I've been asked several times about the matter of backsliding and the recovery. I have a little book here published by William Smith, the Quaker, who died a couple of years ago. And in the back of the little book, he gives you a chart. And you can see. I'll lay it down. You can look it over. And I would have you note the testimonials. Now, somebody branded me an heretic because they heard I followed this pattern of thinking. I do. But not on the exact premise that Brother Smith, he mentions my basic premise. But he approaches it from the legal eye, from the moral and spiritual. But before you start branding him a heretic or me, I suggest you read the testimonials. Such men as John Church, Dr. J. A. Huffman, C. W. Butler, I considered C. W. Butler the dean of theologians in the holiness movement in his day. Much of what I am, I owe to my contacts with C. W. Butler. He was not only a Bible teacher, he was a theologian. And he offers a strong testimonial, Dr. Brasher, J. L. Brasher, G. Arnold Hodgins. Now, I never met Brasher, and I never did meet Turbeville. Was Turbeville a Nazarene? Does anybody know? Any of you folks? Who was he? Methodist? Turbeville, I think it is. T-U-R-B-E-V-I-L-L-E. Turbeville. I never met him, though I've heard of him. But I knew Hodgins, I knew Butler, I knew Huffman, I knew Church. I know these men. I've worked with them. And when they put their stamp on a thing, to me, I'm not going to brand them heretics until I examine what they're talking about. And so I'll just leave this here. You brethren can look it over at your... Maybe I've already said something now that you won't be able to think with me if I continue down where I'm going. You'll be thinking back here. So I'll just drop this much. Here's my approach. He approaches it from the legal. Stating that if you backslide, you can never be justified on a lower plane than you fell from. That's his legal approach. My approach is that if you... Your second work of grace deals with something you inherited. Not what you did, but something you inherit. We call it original sin, native depravity. Whatever you want to call it, it's what children have. And if you ever get rid of that, my proposition is you can never get it back. You inherited that. It isn't acquired. You start with native depravity, to which you add acquired depravity. And once you're rid of native depravity, you can't get that back. You can acquire depravity. That'll do the same thing for you. But you've acquired it, and you're responsible for it. And your repentance will have to go as deep as that act. See, that'd be my approach. But I won't get into that now. Only just... Can you forget that now? And we'll come along a little farther. That's right. The only way you could get native depravity back would be to go back in your mother's womb and be born all over again. Start again. No, sir. No, sir. If your repentance doesn't reach as deeply as your conduct, you haven't come to being justified freely. Why do you have to go back for the second if you can't get native depravity back? Well... Your acquired depravity is done away with justification. Your acquired depravity is washed off by the washing of regeneration. Regeneration is more than just being justified. Justification is a legal thing. Regeneration is the purging of your conscience from dead works. And everything that's on your conscience you're responsible for. And your conscience is washed by regeneration. There are three things. There are four things. You're justified. You're regenerated. You're adopted. And you're initially sanctified concomitantly. Sure. They're concomitant. There are four aspects of what happens when you're justified before God. Is what? Acquired? The blood of Jesus Christ purges your conscience from dead works to serve the living God. Hebrews 9.14 The blood purges everything that's on your conscience. And the distinction is between native depravity and acquired depravity. I've had men, I could name one now, when he found out that I was... Now, mark you, I don't argue with anybody when you're at the altar. I do not know whether you ever were sanctified or not. But if you ever really got rid of native depravity, I argue you cannot get it back. The only way you could get it back would be to be reborn, inherited again. You acquire what you have. I don't see any conflict at all. A man drawn away of his lust, that could be a sinner. But it wouldn't have to be. No. Carnality is only an expression of depravity. To be carnally minded, there are not two minds in you. You read your Romans 8, read your margin there. I was thinking of it today on my way here. Really, I wanted to deal with this later in the discussion. I simply propped it because I've been approached here by at least a dozen people. More than that, maybe, have gotten around me. That's the only reason I brought it up. But carnality is only a term we use to express depravity. But to be carnally minded, that's not an entity within you. The minding of the flesh, that's your margin, and that's what that means. Conception of sin. Well, right, just that. You can acquire depravity. And that depravity will do all that the other would do. The only thing is, you acquired it and you didn't inherit it. No. If you catch these words, inherited and acquired, those are the two terms. One, you inherited, you're not responsible for it. You're no more responsible for it than you are the color of your eyes, your hair. Neither will it cause you to go to hell. Now that's something that holiness preachers need to get a hold of. It will not take you to, if it will, then the Calvinist is right. I have a pair of twin babies, died one three hours, the other five. If carnality perceived would take men to hell, they went to hell. And the old Calvinist argued that there would be infants in hell a span long. You see, they could do that because they argue you inherit guilt as well as depravity. I don't believe that. But, oh, I'm farther down now. Well, that's what I'm here for, to help you. Make you think. I'm quite apt, quite adept at getting things stirred up. Right? Exactly, exactly. And this man approaches it from the legal, that you cannot be justified on a lower plane than you fell from. When a man backslides, he has to measure up to all the likes of that. Exactly, exactly. Well, that's true. Exactly. And you don't go to heaven because you're sanctified. I had a preacher, I was working with him in a camp meeting. I didn't know why he came to me. But he came to me one day and he said, Brother Emery, and I want to be in that chapter if I can get around to it, the eighth chapter of Newton, he said, Goodly call, then he also justified. And whom he justified, then he also glorified. Then why didn't he say whom he justified, then he also sanctified? Well, I said, why didn't he say whom he justified, then he also regenerated. For certainly the Bible teaches regeneration. Why didn't he say whom he justified, then he also adopted. For the Bible certainly teaches adoption. And he didn't answer me. Well, I went a little farther and told him the basis upon which you go to heaven and which I go to heaven will be that I'm justified before God. And something has to happen and continue to happen in order for me to become and remain. You do not continue to be justified unless you continue to walk in the light. But sometimes what we think is light may be as clear as wood. I told somebody this morning, I've listened to a lot of holiness preachers who would never have affected me at all because they were trying to tell me that I wasn't saved and wouldn't go to heaven. Though I knew and anybody who knew me knew that something had happened. From a very profane, wicked, reckless young man, I wasn't the same that I used to be and I didn't want to be. I knew that, in fact, I went to the army. I was a young preacher. I resigned, enlisted in the army, once unmarried, and went to the army, a year and a quarter of it, World War I, and never knew about being sanctified wholly. I've heard folks say, if you don't hurry up and get sanctified, you'll back. Well, if you come up against any light and you don't walk in it, you will not retain your position. This is the condemnation that light is come. And men love darkness rather than light. See, that's your basic thing. Well, I never heard. Well, I can tell you quite a few things. I discovered that it's easy to stand back here and tell the soldiers what they ought to do. It's another thing to go in there and do it. What would it be? Can we come away from this and leave it? I'm going to, the Lord willing. Now, I'm a bit of a quaker. I don't like to announce what I'm going to talk about. But while we're in a seminar, and if you will note, we've been following a line step by step. The God we worship, the atoning God, the sinfulness of man, and the atonement. Now, we've been coming right down a line. Now, I'd like to talk about today the atonement and its benefits, some of the benefits. In fact, the afternoon will be bearing upon this. As I said yesterday, the atonement is the very core of theology. Now, the benefits of the atonement are in two general categories. There are certain unconditional benefits, and then there are conditional benefits. The unconditional benefits are usually classified as life and opportunity. We pointed out to you that Adam lived, and you're born, and all of our children are born because Christ died. In him we live and move and have our being. But then there are conditional benefits that are ours, and if it were possible, I think maybe I have another one of these little books. I don't want to give them all away. I try to keep one around, but I'll make another one available so you can be browsing around in this. So when you come back this afternoon, if we get into this area, why, you'll at least know in a general way. It won't take long for you to read it. But now, where does predestination come in? The benefits of the atonement, are they universal, or are they limited? And here, you come up against what we suggested the other day. If Jesus Christ paid penalty when he died, you're immediately driven to universalism or limited atonement. You can't escape one or the other logically. If he paid penalty, Daniel Steele would say, whose penalty did he pay? And when you find that man whose penalty he has paid, you'll find a man who will never have to suffer because of his sin. Christ was punished for him, he cannot be punished. For in justice, you can't punish sin twice. You punished it in one man, you can't punish it in another. You cannot, in justice, punish sin twice. So if Jesus, in his death, paid penalty, everyone for whom he died is free. That will drive you either to universalism, for he tasted death for every man, by the grace of God, he tasted death for every man. We have in Hebrews 2. And if you take that every man to mean universal humanity, universal humanity, every man is free from ever having to suffer the consequences of having sinned. But if you don't take it that way, then you're going to have to say every man is every one of the elect. And our Calvinistic brethren have a way of limiting those words. Sometimes they limit it in the matter of the call. They have what they, what they call a general call to repentance. Everybody's called in a general call, but nobody can really repent who is not effectually called. When you run onto that word effectually called, effectual calling, you look around and see what's around it. I'll venture you that it's either somebody using it who didn't know what it meant, or else it's a Calvinist talking about effectually called this man. And in that effectual call, you're regenerated. For their concept is that you are dead in trespasses and in sin, and mine is too. But their idea of death is that it inactivates the soul. Just like physical death inactivates the body, your soul is inactivated, it can't act. They would tell you that, they might tell you that to tell a dead man to repent is like talking to a post. He can't do anything, he couldn't repent because he's dead. First thing has to happen, he has to come to life. You bring him to life, then you can tell him to repent. So their steps into salvation is first, regeneration. Second, faith. You believe because you come alive. And repent because you believe. I went over this one time in a general board meeting in the Pilgrim Church, I was on the general board a few years, and sitting right in front of me was a very good brother of mine and a good Bible student. He had never taken any extensive theological work, getting out into the philosophical areas, but he was one of the keenest Bible students and Bible teachers that I think I ever knew. He wrote for Sunday school literature, I do not know how many years, 24, 25 years or more, and that led him into a broad, deep, broad study of the Word of God. But when I went over it, I said, our brethren need to be aware of the difference between the Calvinist and the Arminian, and then I went over it, that you are regenerated, you believe, and you repent. He sat there and listened, and I heard him grunt. He just, he said, got things just backwards. Well, he did if the Arminian is true. We believe you repent, you believe you are regenerated. But upon what premise can a dead man repent? First of all, their concept of death is not accurate, it's not scriptural. Would you turn if you want to turn? And I'd like you to turn, if you don't have your Bible with you, then oh, the Lord help you. I tell them no matter what I would be teaching, if it would be mathematics, which I couldn't get very far in, forgotten much of what I did learn back there, but I'd want them to have a Bible. So you turn to Ephesians chapter 1, where you have that, you have he quickened who were dead in trespasses and in sins. But don't stop there. Wherein in time past ye walked, walking dead men. How did you walk? According to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience. Ephesians 2, I've gone over verse 1 and 2 now. And often do I have students, and sometimes congregations, read that backwards, take those propositions. The spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience is the prince of the power of the air, who controls the course of this world, in which we walked when we were dead. Now if you're a grammarian, I don't profess grammar either, I'm like Bud Robinson there. Maybe not twice, far over the hill, but you grammarians, look that over. Have I done that any violence? Go backwards over it again and you will get your connection. The spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience, your last proposition of verse 2, is the prince of the powers of the air, who controls the course of this world, in which you walked. Brother, you weren't inactivated by death. To me that's a flat contradiction of the Calvinistic concept that sin inactivates the soul. My brother, you're walking. Permanent. But they are walking how? According to the course of the world. You don't have to be a harlot or a whoremonger or a robber or a murderer. I think that the spirit that controls the course of this world could wear an evening gown or a tuxedo suit and adapt himself to any level of society. He isn't interested in whether you wallow in the gutter, unless that would serve his purpose. He just as soon would be in a bank cage, cashier's cage, and be morally upright, he might use you better. He can appear as an angel of light and he could get in the pulpit and you could wear a clerical garb. You could even fill up a holiness pulpit and preach doctrinal holiness. I think he knows the doctrine. You see what I'm trying to say, there's no level that this spirit of the world could not get to and work on, if it will accomplish his objective. He, I think he wants to damn as many people as he can, whether they're high or low, whether they're in the gutter or whether they're up there. And you know, there are times when I wonder if we don't bypass some people we could get to. I wouldn't know how many times I have made contact with doctors and, well I, I don't, in fact I was preaching just before I came down here. But as a pastor of one, I started to work in West Michigan. One time there were 19 school teachers that were attending our service more or less regularly. And maybe that's why I got the teaching. I, I was involved in the business of dealing with teachers. But I'm thinking now of, in the state of Ohio, a friend of mine who was a cultured man. He, he was a humble man but he was refined and cultured. And he was the, he was the district superintendent in Ohio just years ago. Bozy's dead. I haven't heard about him in years but Bozy's dead. But he went to the attorney who took care of their district business to have something taken care of. And in the inner room with the attorney the business was taken care of. And he said something to the attorney about his soul. He, he just opened up about your soul. And the attorney was very attentive and listened to him carefully. And then he had prayer with him there in his office. And when he left the attorney said, you are the first man that ever spoke to me about my soul. Maybe we think those fellows are, they're out of reach. But brother they may be just waiting for somebody that knows how to get to them. Yes sir. They may be. And the brother who, who did it said every time he went back, that fellow would take him in the inner office. And when there would be a lot of people out there waiting, his, his clients were out there. And that brother would, would tell him, now I do not wish to take your time. But the lawyer wanted him to. He said, I, I want you to, I want you to talk. Well, sometimes we bypass that. I often refer to one little, in back to the years I say often, I have many, I don't know what the difference is between few and many and several. Maybe some of you folk can tell me. What's the difference between few and many and several? Well, I don't know what to say. But there have been times when I have referred to an experience that I had. I was serving as chaplain of one of our penal institutions. And I'd come downstairs from the hospital. I'd been there talking to and dealing with men about their soul. And stepped down on the landing at the foot of the stairs. And the landing was kind of a broad circular affair and about six inches above the floor. And as I did the iron briefing, clanged shut and a little group of men came in. Head orderly was there and probably eight or ten hospital orderlies and maybe thirty, forty men on sick call. And then the, the chief surgeon and the doctor, the two inmate doctors I know was with him. But the head orderly stepped up and asked me, have you met our chief surgeon? I said, no. Turning to him he said, have you met our new chaplain? And he said, no. We were introduced. And we shook hands and the doctor had what I call an attitude of professional courtesy. You know what I mean there. I'm glad to meet you and so on. Well, it's conventional I suppose. But he wanted to say something nice. And he said, I'm looking after the boys physical interest. You're looking after their spiritual interest. Well, it wasn't what he said, but the way he said it that left the impression that what he meant, you're wasting your time. There's no place for a preacher. And I, it cross-grained me and I said while still holding his hand, yes sir. And we both think we're doing the biggest job. Well, he caught the meaning as I thought I'd caught his. He had started to turn away, but he turned back. And he said, and a smile was gone, courtesy now, he was himself. He said, if you can prove to me that there is a God. Well, he was steel. He waited for it to soak. Then he said again, if you can prove to me that there is a God, you're doing the biggest job. What proof do you have? Well, here we are now in a prison corridor. I'm up on the, on the little landing at the foot of the stairs. He's a shorter man than I, and he's six inches below me on the floor. So I could look over the crowd. I've often said, I think God gave me as much help there as I have ever received any time, any place in my presentation of the word. I don't know what all I said to him, but I know all other things I came down, Doc. I know there's a God. I know because I know him personally. And here you come to what is knowledge. How do you obtain knowledge? I said, you can take the organ of sight out of my anatomy, and you can run the nerves down to the brain, but you can't touch the sense of sight. That's out of your realm. You can take the organ of hearing off my anatomy. You can run the nerves down to the brain, but you can't touch the sense of hearing. That's in the soul. It's the soul that hears, and the soul that sees, but it uses an organ. I was in that the other day. I said, God is a spirit, and man is essentially a spiritual being. He doesn't need your voice box, nor my eardrums. He can reach right over. Tell me I'm his son. He's my father, and I cannot as well as I know you're there. Well, no, it isn't your argument, brother. It's good to be able to give a reason to every man that asks of you, but that isn't the point. It's whether the Holy Ghost is there, and he was there. When we were through, stop, the doctor looked around. Everybody was quiet. Father, we didn't have any whispering or talking there. They were all listening. He looked around just kind of like a little boy, helpless, and he said to the head orderly, I never heard anything like that. Well, I don't know. Maybe he didn't go to church anywhere. If he did, I don't know where he went, but I know this. Three medical men, he and two doctors, inmate doctors, three medical men were in the prison chapel every Sunday morning. They sat right on the front seat. Well, I could go on and tell you they called me in. But we don't need to be afraid of men. We don't need to be bombastic. On the other hand, I don't want them to try to ride me down. Now, I was not, there was no animosity. There was no antagonism, no vindictiveness. I don't want that. Brother, I don't want that. But on the other hand, I do want to stand up when I ought to stand up. I want to sit down when I ought to sit down, too. Whether it's standing or sitting, I want to be dead sure. Now, we've been in the opponent here, and we've been all over this morning. Now, what about the matter of predestination? Let's take a look now. I'll pick it up to you, and maybe I can get started in any way, in Ephesians 1, at verse 5. Ephesians 1. Often when I'm reading this, or working from it, I like to read verses 4 and 5 in reverse order. I do that because chronologically they are reversed. The verse 5 starts with the word, having. He chose us, in verse 4, having predestinated us. Having predestinated us, he chose us. But what is it, this predestination? Where does it come in? I say right here, and I'm very glad it's in the book of God. I don't follow the Calvinistic concept at all. In fact, I think I ran onto it here in the back of my Bible the other day, was looking here for something. And I had copied down the statement from the credo statement, or part of the credo statement, of the Calvinist Westminster Confession of Faith. If I can pick it up here, you'll see what I say. My wife's purse looks like my Bible. There it is. If you haven't read it, I believe you'll find it in the second volume of H.R. and Wye's Theology, Volume 2. I kind of believe that in a footnote at the bottom of page 250 or 350, I'm at a loss there, I'd have to go back. But he's dealing with the matter of the Calvinistic position, and hears it, "...by the decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory, some men and angels are predestinated to everlasting life, and others foreordained to everlasting death. These men and angels, thus predestinated and foreordained, are particularly and unchangeably designated." I'd like you to get those words, particularly and unchangeably. It isn't so many men, but it's so many particular men. And they're unchangeably designated. We couldn't trade places. If he's ordained to go to heaven and I'm predestined to go to hell, we couldn't trade places. And they go on here, and their number is so certain and definite that it cannot be either increased or diminished. Now, brother, you have the Westminster Confession of Faith, this only little item taken out of it. How'd you like to live under that? Buddy Robinson had a unique way of getting at things, and he was talking about fear. Everybody has an element of fear, and you should have. He said the Armenians know they can get it, but he's afraid he'll lose it. He said the Calvinists know that if he gets it, he can't lose it, but he's afraid he ain't got it. This idea that fear is there. And whether you have it, the Calvinists know that if you have it, you can't lose it. But I tell you, I dread living under that, wondering if I did, if I didn't. Then they go on to tell you how all of this is attained or achieved. But I'd like you to look now at predestination as it is here in verse 5 of Ephesians 1. Having predestinated us unto what? Heaven? Hell? No, sir. He's predestinated us unto the adoption of children. Isn't that it? Predestinated us unto the adoption of children. How? By Jesus Christ. How can you become a child of God? By Jesus Christ. No other way. It's in him that you're, through him you're taken in. By Jesus Christ, to himself. You aren't adopted from one family to another, but you're taken into the family of God. God predestinated you to the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself according to the good pleasure of his will. First thing then, the conditional cause, according to the good pleasure of his will. Where do you go to find what God's will is concerning this? Well, I'll give you a couple places if you don't know where. You go to 2 Peter chapter 1, verse 9. No, pardon, chapter 3. 2 Peter chapter 3, verse 9. God is not slack concerning his promises, as some men count slackness, but longsuffering to usward, not willing that any should perish. Here's the good pleasure of his will negatively. He is not willing. Man goes to hell, he goes there against the will of God. He goes there because he asserts his will against God's will. God isn't willing that. And how could a man say then that God predestinated certain men to be damned, when Peter is so explicit in saying he doesn't want anybody lost? But you have it again from the positive, in 1 Timothy chapter 2, about verse 4 or 5. There is one God, one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, who would have all men to be saved. Brother, I can't understand how anybody would read that and then say God predestinated some men to go to hell. I can't understand that. To me it's just beyond me that God should ever will that men should go to hell for the praise of his glory, of his justice. Now you go to hell for the glory of his justice. You go to hell for the glory, pardon me, you go to hell for the glory of his grace. You go to hell for the glory of his justice. I do declare, however, that every man and woman that is finally damned, God will be glorified in that. So I put it this way, you can rob God, any man can rob God of all that he owes him. You can rob God of worship, you can rob God of service, you can rob God of love, you can rob God of fellowship, but you can't rob God of his glory. My glory I will not give to another. And when men are sinking under the judgment of God, you get a little picture of it, Revelation 18 and 19. Revelation 18, they go down, the harlot city goes down. And then in chapter 19, after these things, I heard a great voice of much people in heaven saying, Amen, Alleluia. True and righteous are thy judgments. For thou hast judged the very poor which did corrupt the earth with her fornication. And again they said, Alleluia. Holiness is manifested in justice. The justice of God is as holy as Calvary. Don't forget that. I do not believe that God predestinated men to be damned to show the glory of his justice. And I do believe that when men are damned, the justice of God will shine forth in all of its holy splendor until the hosts of heaven will be rejoicing and joined in singing praises to God. But now note, will you, you're predestinated. And when everything is predestined, when the conditions are set up. I mean to say that if you want to become a child of God, God predestinated that you could become one through Jesus Christ in spite of people, in spite of the devil, in spite of any power that can be exerted against you. If you want to become God's child, God predestinated you to sonship. I'm like, I'm like Brother Sullivan. I like that. You've heard him say it a good many times. I like that. Don't you? Well, I like that whether you do or not. Alleluia. I can hurriedly get to it now. Romans chapter 8, he talks about predestination as he does in this first chapter of Ephesians. A little farther on, you're predestinated to sonship and to the glory of his grace. You get that a little farther, but I'd like to go back to Romans 8, where predestination is again taken up. In the 8th of Romans at, oh, you can begin anywhere here. I like to begin at verse 9, but often I start at verse 14. As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. And we have not received again the Spirit of bondage again unto fear, but the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit itself, or the same Spirit, beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God. If children and heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Jesus Christ, if so be that we suffer with him, we shall be glorified together. Now, oftentimes we think about that. Brother, you're an heir that was suffering down here. And you're willing to suffer with him here, we'll be glorified with him there. We often look just at that one side of being an heir and think of what's in heaven, but there's something right down here. You take your stand with Jesus and marvel not, if the world hate you, said Jesus, you know it hated me before it hated you. And if he were of the world, the world would love his own because you're not of the world, but I've chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hated you. So if you take your stand here, there'll be some suffering with Christ. But as you go along here in chapter 8, and I'll try to just jump, if we were to jump from verse 18, for I reckon that the sufferings of the present time are not worthy to be compared to the glory that shall be revealed in us, and jump down to verse 22. There's some little debate among interpreters whether verse 20 and 21 refer to the body of men, bodies of men, which I rather do not believe, but to the whole creation, the animal kingdom. And I don't want to get into that, other than to tell you that I've long wondered if the connection between man and the animal kingdom was not much closer before the fall. I've wondered if Adam couldn't look into the spirit world on one hand, and see angels, and see God, and commune with God, communicate with God. On the other hand, if he couldn't talk to the animal kingdom, and they could communicate together. I know that when the serpent came to eat, she wasn't excited at all. I wouldn't take a serpent, because some women I know to do all kinds of calisthenics. A little four-legged animal, come out from under the curtain somewhere, and I've seen them. But she wasn't excited at all. The serpent came and talked to her, she talked to him. I wonder if that wasn't how he got them into the ark. The real distinction came after the flood. Man was not a meat-eater prior to the flood. He was dramaniferous, or herbiferous. But after the flood, the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the field, the fowl of the air, the fish of the sea. Into your hands are they delivered. And it was so. Everything that liveth upon the earth wherein there is a life, I have given you. And for me, as the green herb, have I given you all things. That's what you have in chapter 9 of Genesis. Well, I'm of the opinion, personally, that I wouldn't tenaciously hang on, I'd just let you speak your piece and still keep believing what I do. But I'm of the opinion that it means the whole creation of the animal kingdom. But now in verse 22, we know that the whole creation, animal and man, groweth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves. See, that seems to separate humanity or mankind from the animal creation. We ourselves, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption to which the redemption of the body. We're saved by hope, he goes on to tell you. And this hope is in the face of tribulation and suffering. I have this hope, no matter what I'm going through by way of suffering down here. People may be against me, and the world may be against me, but I have hope. I heard a couple of Nazarenes sing years ago, better days coming by and by. Well, wasn't anything very deep theologically about it, and yet there was. But there's a day ahead when it won't be like it is now. We don't know how to pray as we ought, beginning at verse 26. The Spirit helpeth our infirmities. We don't know how to pray in the midst of this, as we ought to pray. But the Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be uttered, and he which knoweth the mind of the Spirit. For the Spirit maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God, and he that knoweth the mind, what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God. And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them that are called according to his purpose. For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate. Predestinate to what? Predestinate to heaven or hell? No, sir. Overruling your suffering. God's overruling your hard places, and every one of them will work in you a conformity to the Son of God. Now, predestination is there. I'm running now, trying to run. He goes on to tell you why all this, because if God spared not his own Son, he's not going to turn against that Son. He spared him not in order that he might redeem us. He isn't going to toss us over the hill, the first little difficulty that comes. Then there are two clusters of things here that I call your attention to. Verse 35 first. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Now, somebody and the Calvinists seem to make that, who can separate me or keep me from loving Christ? Well, let me change it. Who shall separate me from the love of money? We understand immediately that it isn't money loving me, it's me loving money. And that's what it is here. But who shall separate me from the love of Christ? Shall? Note now, tribulation, distress, persecution. What effect would all of that have upon him loving me? None. But it has some effect upon us loving him. You will find a good many people go back right here, and here's what he's saying. I'm difficult places. Why? Why should I? I'm not good. Well, tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword. I said it's written that for his sake we're killed all the day long, counted as cheap for the slaughter. Nay, I'm not going to let all of this. Nay, in all of these things, we are more than conquerors to him that loved us. Why? For I am persuaded. What persuades me? Hope. The hope that I have back there, I'm saved by hope, and I'm persuaded that there isn't anything up. I'm not going to let anything down here keep me from loving him.