In this sermon, the speaker shares a story about dogs trying to catch a rat to illustrate the desire to escape from a difficult situation. The main message is that no one can make us fit to live with God and take us to heaven except for Jesus. The speaker emphasizes that no human being can avoid encountering Jesus in this life and the next. The sermon also highlights two ways in which Jesus is great: he brings enlightenment to the mind and he is the only one who can make us fit for heaven.

The angel said four words to Mary that I want to talk about. It's found in Luke 1, verse 32. The angel said, He shall be great. He shall be great. Now he leaves a sentence for you to finish. You finish the sentence yourself. See, a sentence has to have a subject and a predicate and an object. Now you put in the rest of it. In what way is great in your heart and life? Do you know, beloved, that no human being can avoid the Lord Jesus in this life? And, of course, in the next it's the same way. No human being can avoid Him. When your father and mother were married, the preacher put down the date that you got married. You had to do it. It turns into the government. Then you came along, and the day you were born, the doctor put down on the birth certificate the date you were born, and that date refers back to the birth of the Lord Jesus. See, your father and mother had to acknowledge Him before you came. You can't avoid it. You've got to turn it in. I have at home on my desk quite a stack of certificates, that is, stubs from the certificate. Everyone has a date on when I bought that baby, way back in 1904, 1905, 1908, 1932, whatever the date was. I had to put it down there, because you can't be born without acknowledging the Lord Jesus. I don't care whether you're an atheist or an Inquisitor. It's got to go down that you were born so many years after the Lord Jesus was born to save you. You can't avoid it, and you can't evade it. And then, when you get married, it's put on that certificate, too, that you got married so many years after the Lord Jesus came to make your wedding a sweet, happy wedding. And then, when you die, it's put on your birth certificate. I've had to do that a good many times. Not my own patience, of course, the other fellow's patience. And then I had to put down the date, the date this person died, and that date refers back to the time the Savior came to make that life a useful life and take them into the glory land safely, and then for fear that people might forget it, they put it on your tombstone so that everybody knows how many years after the Savior came, you came and died. And then again, it's on every letter that you write. It's on every text that you write. 1960, 1960 years ago, the Savior came to save me, make me a happy Christian, take me to heaven. Every time you write a check, you put it on there. You know, Bob Ingersoll wrote some books against the Lord Jesus, and against God, and against the Bible, but right in the front of it, on the flyleaf, it says copyrighted 1888. Even that rascal couldn't get away with it. He had to put it down. How many years after the Savior came, he wrote that book against the Savior. Then you go up with a half a dollar to buy the book, and on the half a dollar it says 1896. Even the money used to buy the book has got the date on it. God didn't want to let you avoid the Lord Jesus. I have here two silver dollars that I carry with me. I have carried them a good many years. One of them says 1881. The other one says 1896. The 1881 used to remind me that's the year I was born. 1881 years after the Savior came to save me, I came along. And then this is the year of my second birth, 1896. And so I have that in my pocket. 1896 years before that was made, before I was saved, the Savior came to save me. It's on every coin in your pocket. If you've got any left after the offerings you've taken here at the Bible conference, every coin you have has a date on it. And when you buy the newspaper this morning, it's on the front page. Right on the front page. 1960. That 1,960 years ago the Savior came to be your Lord and your Savior and your Shepherd and your Redeemer and 223 other things. Right on the front page. And then you turn it over to read the advertisements, and it's on that page. It's on every page of the newspaper. And then if you make your will, you put that on there, too, whether it's a will or a relative's. And you can just write on there how many years after the Savior came you made your will, which you hope will be carried out and probably won't. What a blessed thing it is, beloved, that God has seen to it that you cannot avoid talking about the Savior. When I got these glasses, Dr. McKee put it down on the slip, on the prescription, 1900 and something or other, whenever it was, about three years ago I got these. When I went in to buy a glass eye, the girl pulled out a drawer and looked over these, and then she pulled out the next drawer and looked over and she picked out this one and stuck it in and said, Perfect fit, Dr. Wilson. How much? Thirty-two dollars. So I had her make me a receipt so I could turn it in to the government, you know. I bought an eye, and they put it on there, 1957. You can't even get a glass eye without acknowledging the Lord Jesus. Then I went in to see my friend over in Cleveland to buy some new teeth. And didn't he put it right down on there? Dr. Wilson got these teeth in 1960. Nineteen hundred and sixty years after the Savior came, I got some teeth. You can't even buy a pair of shoes without acknowledging the Lord Jesus. And then when you graduate from grade school, they put it on your certificate. Then when you graduate from high school, they put it on your certificate. When you graduate from college, they put it on your certificate. And when you got your divorce, they put that down too. So many years after the Savior came to keep you from it, you did it. You can't avoid it. You can't evade it. It's on everything you do, this wonderful, unavoidable Christ Jesus. And it's all over the world. Even the Russians have to put it down. And they do put it down. You look at the date lines. Even the fellows over there that say there's no God, they have to acknowledge that Jesus Christ came to save them and make them what they ought to be. And there's some lovely ones. God has got some wonderful Christians among the Russian people. Everywhere you go, if you buy, I have a ticket, a railroad ticket. And the stamp's right on there. But nineteen hundred and sixty years after the Savior came, I made that trip. Don't you see, beloved? God won't let you get away from Jesus Christ. And you shouldn't want to get away from Jesus Christ. I'm glad that God's fixed it so that it's in the front of everybody's eyes. Anywhere you go and everywhere you go, that lovely person is always and constantly before you. You pick out seven cents for the paper this morning, and it's on the nickel, and it's on the two pennies. So many years after the Savior came, those pennies were made and that nickel was made, and you used it to buy a paper that has 1960 on it. Even the man that hates our lovely Lord has to write it down. And then when you go and buy a prepaid funeral expense, you know, they put it on there. That the Savior came to make you his own. Beloved, I thank God he has made Christ preeminent. Anywhere you go, it might be a steamship ticket. It might be an airplane ticket. It's right on there. And when you go and buy some groceries, you pay for it with the money. If you have a charge to put down 1960, everything, beloved, in your life is surrounded by Jesus Christ. I love that. Why shouldn't it be? Everything you and I have we owe to the Lord Jesus. Everything. In him shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, and it's only where our Lord Jesus gone, a Jew, only there do we have the blessed inventions of blessing for our hearts and lives. Everything we have we owe to Jesus Christ. The heathen have no spectacles. The heathen have no heat in the wintertime, and no ice in the summertime. They know nothing about electronics, electric lights. They know nothing about the radar, or safety in transportation, or methods of irrigation, or illumination, or education. They don't have anything. Then when Christ goes, this lovely one that came from through Abraham, our lovely Lord Jesus, then we get homes for the aged, homes for the poor, homes for children, educational process, and salt, and sugar, and canned goods, and all sorts of things that make life so pleasant for us. Only when Christ is gone do you have that. Nowhere else. And the missionary goes to see the heathen, and pretty soon they put on clothes, and pretty soon they have dental work done, pretty soon they have education, because the Savior, that great, precious, wonderful Jew, the descendant of Abraham, humanly speaking, in his wonderful grace, brings enlightenment to the mind. That's one way in which he's great. God has made him great, so that every human being must acknowledge him. The second thing is, he's the only one that can make us fit for heaven. Now, you think about that. Folks think, oh, well, I can just, I'll do the best I can, which they never do, and I'll go right sailing into heaven. You can't jump out of Delilah's lamp into Abraham's bosom. It doesn't work. There isn't a person in this room that's fit to go into the operating room. Not one of us. I keep myself clean all the time. I wash my hands over and over again, keep myself clean, but I couldn't go into the operating room. I can go into any operating room in the world, I suppose. I have access to almost anything, medical line. But I couldn't go in. I'd have to go and scrub my hands for minutes with antiseptic soap, and then put on rubber gloves on top of that, and then soak the gloves in antiseptic solution in addition to that, and put on an entirely different suit of clothes, cover my face, cover my mouth, cover my hair with antiseptics and with sterilized gloves, because we have to keep dirt out of there, and every one of us is dirty. We're all right for ordinary living with one another, but you can't go in the operating room that way. Yet we think we can just pop right into heaven. Yes, sir. I gave a dollar to the poor, and I put in 30 cents when they wanted to raise the fund for the William Nolan O'Reilly building. Yes, sir. And I sat and listened for an hour until it fell out. I ought to go to heaven for that. Well, that's pretty worth it to listen to some of us. But, you know, when it comes to being fit for heaven, there's only one person in the world can make us fit to go in or give us a right to go in. I think I mentioned once to you, I stood in front of Buckingham Palace and wished I could go in and see the king and queen. The flag was flying, so I knew they were there, but I couldn't go in. And I went to the guard at the gate, and I said, Ms. Wilson, I would like to go in and see His Majesty and Her Majesty the Queen, and he said, Who are you? I said, Oh, I'm Walter Wilson from Kansas City. This ain't no museum. We didn't go in. But if the Prince of Wales had been there, and he'd come up and say, Well, Walter, I'm glad to see you. Who do you want to see? I want to see your dad. Come along. I'll take you in. I could walk right in. The Prince of Wales would take me right in. You see, beloved, the only one that can take us in is the king's son, the Prince of Peace. You saw that in the Old Testament. He's called the King of Peace in the New Testament because he's on the throne. And I'll bless him because God has a son, and if you're right with him, he'll take you right in. And he's the only person in the world that can take us in. Nobody else can take us in. No man cometh unto the Father but by me. That's from Christians. But in 1 Peter 3.18, Christ also has once suffered for sins the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God as sinners. Neither saint nor sinner can get to God except by Jesus Christ. I'm glad it's that way. That makes it easy and simple. One of my problems in driving through the country, when I was able to drive, I can't drive anymore. My wife drives me by night, and my secretary drives me by day, and I have two women driving me all the time. But you know, it's one of the things, when we get to a crossroads, I wonder which road is the right road. And sometimes I come to a place where there are three roads. I wonder which is the right one. Beloved, you can just rest satisfied, there's only one road to glory, that's Jesus Christ. He has no competition. Nobody else can interfere with that. That's his business. I'm glad. That makes it so simple, so easy. And you read about the simplicity that's in Christ. Do you remember, in the 11th chapter, 2nd Corinthians, the simplicity that's in Christ? Oh, taste and see that the Lord is gracious. What is more simple and sweet than tasting? You stick your tongue into an orange, you know very well it isn't catfish. And I couldn't describe the taste of strawberries to you, but you stick your tongue in them, and you got it right away. Oh, taste and see that the Lord is gracious. Then he says, Look unto me, and be ye saved. What can be more simple than looking? Not look at, look unto. My patients, I'd go in a sick room, they'd look unto me. I'd go in the operating room with them, they'd look unto me. Or when I was lost in the woods, and a guide came and found me, I looked unto the guide. I turned my case over to him, he took me out safely. Looking unto me. What's easier, what's more simple? The simplicity of seeing Christ. Isaiah 55, Hear, and your soul shall live. Now, you tell me anything more simple than hearing. Just listen, and you'll hear those wonderful words, Neither do I condemn thee, go in peace. Son, thy sins be forgiven thee. Hear, and your soul shall live. What's more simple than hearing? Oh, he says, If thou shalt confess with thy mouth that Jesus is thy Lord, and breathe in thine heart that God hath redeemed the dead, thou shalt be saved. Tell me anything that's easier than seeing. We go to a wedding, and I marry a couple, and I announce on the platform, this is Mr. and Mrs. Metzger. And she takes his name, and she confesses. All the rest of the evening, I'm Mrs. Metzger. Then she goes down to the store, I'm Mrs. Metzger. And then she pays the bill, I'm Mrs. Metzger. And she calls up on the phone, that's Mrs. Metzger. She just takes his name, and is tickled pink to do it. That's confessing him. Much more easy. I belong to Jesus Christ. He's my Lord. He gave me eternal life. He saved me by his grace. He washed me in his precious blood. Thou shalt confess with thy mouth that Jesus is thy Lord. Much more easily done than that. Or in Acts 17, feel after him, if haply you might find him. Now much more easily done than that. I went out to a orphanage once, and I had some fruit, some wax fruit that somebody had given to us, half of the dust on the sideboard. And I took it into a fruit stand, and I asked this fellow in the fruit stand to match it. I said, I'm going to leave it here all day, and I want you to match it. An orange, and a banana, and an apple, and some grapes, and forget what all. And he did a perfect job. I couldn't tell myself which was the right thing. So I took all these out, and I laid them on the table in front of this orphanage. I said, children, part of this fruit is real, and part of it is wax. How would you tell which is real and which isn't? And a dear kid, he raised his hand and said, Mister, I feel him. Isn't that right? Feel after him, if after you might find him. I came home one night, and the light was out in the rear hall. I'd been out fishing. Got a baby girl. And when I came back, I opened the back door. I rang the bell, and my sweetheart came down to let me in. And we had a chain on the door, you know, in these little short chains. And she said, she hollered through the window, who is it? And I said, it's me, whatever that meant. And she said, well, she opened the door then, and left the chain on, you see. She said, stick your nose up here in the crack. So I stuck my nose up in the crack. She fell in, said, come on in. Nobody feels like I did, you see. We had an old blind woman in Kansas City. She'd been blind 85 years. She was about 103 years old, if I remember rightly, when she died. She'd been blind 85 years. She'd never seen a telephone, never saw a gun, never saw a railroad train, never saw an automobile, never saw an electric light. And I used to take her out riding, my wife would take her out riding, and she'd feel everything. We took her down to the monument that's right in front of the Union Station, and she says, I want to feel it. And she felt all around, felt the letters that were in there, so she could read them as she felt them. Then we took her up to the top in the elevator, and she felt all around the top of it. Said, all right, I know what it looks like. And when I first went in to see her, the first day I went in to see her, she said, let me feel your face. And she felt my glasses and said, take them off, please. So I removed my glasses, and she felt my face, felt my head. She said, well, you're bald, I can see that, and you have blue eyes. And I did. Then 20 days later, I took Miss Wilson down to get her some, she was a very poor old buddy, we had to furnish her clothes and things. And I said, I want you to know Miss Wilson. And my wife leaned over, and she felt her glasses, and said, take them off. And she felt her head, felt her face, said, dear, you have brown eyes and brown hair. I don't know how she could tell, my wife does have brown eyes. Actually, most of our children have brown eyes. She's the dominant one in our family. What a blessing it is, beloved, to feel after him. If happily you might find him. What's more simple than feeling? You can tell when you feel an apple, or an orange, or a radish, or anything else, you know what it is. What's more simple than that? Or will you come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Tell me what's more simple than coming. Just come, that's all. My patients, when I'm in the office, they come to me, and I try to take care of them. And the children come for help, and I love to help them. And mothers come for help, and I love to help them. What's easier done than coming? You just come. Like this little fellow in Chicago, I was preaching there, and a little Swede came up. He said, Dr. Wilson, you think that Jesus would save a Swede? I said, yes, he's an expert, he saved many ones. Well, he said, you think he would save a drunken Swede? I said, yes, sir. He knows how to do that, because he's done that too. Well, you think he would save me? I said, I don't know. Come on, we'll ask him. So we went over and kneeled down, and I said, Lord Jesus, here's a dear little fellow, a Swede. He's wondering if you'll save him. And I don't know whether you will or not, so I'm going to let him ask you. So I poked him, and I said, ask him. You know what he said? He said, yes. Dr. Wilson, he said, maybe you would save me, pal. Well, here I am. That's all he said. Isn't that Lord and sweet? And I whispered in his ear, the blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanseth us from all sin. Then I bobbed my head again and was praying the Holy Spirit would reveal Christ to his heart. And after a while I looked around, he wasn't saying anything. He was kneeling up and smiling at me. I said, Mr. Swede, why did you quit praying? He said, I think he already saved me. Isn't that sweet? Here I am. Come unto me. And then believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead. What's more simple than believing what God says? Now look, beloved. It was our sins that took him down. How you tell me how he could ever go from down there up to the right hand of God with our sins still on him? Why, you know very well he couldn't. He couldn't go back up there with our sins still on him. And when he went back up there, he was saying to me, Walter Wilson, I put them away. What reason I can go back to the Father? I bled them out. They're gone. In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins. According to the riches of his grace. And, beloved, he went back to glory. And that's a proof to us that he did a good work, a complete work, when he was there in the grave. No man comes unto the Father but by me. Then again, he has to take us to God, and he has an exclusive in that, too. No one else can take us into the Father's presence but our lovely Lord Jesus. Nobody else. He doesn't say that he might send us to God. You notice that? Christ also has once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, not send us. It must be a wonderful day when he takes folks like we are. And nobody knows the plague of his own heart like each person does. We come here and we put on a big front, you know, and we look so nice and sweet, and we're all powdered up and perfumed up. But, you know, we know very well a lot of things that we're glad the other folks don't know. Or at least we think they don't. And so the Savior comes and falls in love with us and gives us his own nature. And then, when it's time to go, he takes us into his Father's presence as introduces us to the Father as one that he transformed and saved by his grace. That's what he gets out of it. And nobody can do that but himself. And no one can give us a nature that loves heaven and loves heavenly things except our Lord. Remember I told you one time about my dog Gwendolyn. She was a beautiful dog, as beautiful as dogs are. But I couldn't get her interested in my books or in my music or in anything in my home except to grub on the plate in the kitchen. That's all she was interested in. Now, why? She was a nice dog. She was a pedigreed animal. And we took good care of her. But she didn't care one thing about what was going on in our house. Do you know why? I'll tell you why. She didn't have a human spirit. She was just a nice dog. It's an awful thing to live a dog's life, lie in front of the sofa all day long and have a good time. But our Lord Jesus saves us and gives us a nature that loves heaven's things and understands heaven's things. We know that the Son of God has come and has given us an understanding that we may know him that is true. And I say to you without any hesitation, an unsaved person cannot know God and understand the things of God. He can get a lot of theology. He can get a lot of religion. He can get a lot of churchianity. And he can talk solemnly and sing sweetly, but he doesn't know God. Not until that new, strange, peculiar, unusual thing takes place of giving the gift of eternal life to a soul. Then we have a capacity to understand God. And no one can do that but Christ Jesus. He lives all alone in the heavens. No one else can do it. There isn't any substitute. No one's trying to find one. And you can join all the churches you want. It won't give you eternal life. And we have to have that life in order to be at home in heaven. That's the reason I mentioned yesterday the rich man in hell never asked to get out. I want you to notice that. He prayed for a drop of water. The reason he asked for a drop was because Lazarus asked him for a crumb of bread. He didn't get it. Now, he asked for a drop of water, and he didn't get it either. And he wanted to get out? No, he didn't want to get out. He just asked for a little relief. Why would he go if he got out? Why would he go? He'd have to go to be with God. And he didn't want God, and had no capacity to enjoy God, and had no knowledge of God at all. Why should he go to live with God? He didn't want to. I caught a rat one time in a wire cage, and I set it out in the backyard on the driveway while I ate breakfast. I thought, after breakfast I'll kill the thing. Great big rat. And while I was eating breakfast, I heard Mrs. Carlyle's dog barking next door neighbor. And it was just barking like everything, and I looked out the window, and here it was around this cage trying to get at this rat. And pretty soon two more dogs came. They heard the noise. And here were three of them wanting to get at that rat. You know what that rat wanted worse than anything in the world? Wanting to get out of there. So I let her out. Pretty soon it was in. Three dogs. Where would people go that are lost if they got out? No one can make us fit to live with God and then take us there except the Lord Jesus. He has the exclusive. Beloved, you might as well get to him now. Give your life to him now. You can't evade him or avoid him. You might as well let him have all you are and all you have and sell out to him and say, My Jesus, I love thee. Asaph, David's psalm leader, said a beautiful thing in the 73rd Psalm. Whom have I in heaven but thee? And there is none I desire on earth beside thee. And beloved, I say to you, when you get there, nobody can hurt your feelings. When you get there, you won't care whether you have a dollar, ten dollars, or a thousand dollars. You don't care a thing about it. You don't care what the clock says. You don't care about the weather. You just abandon yourself to that lovely Lord and sing and worship and rejoice because you're his and won't be long until we're going to see him face to face and tell the story. Save the grace. Let us pray.