In this sermon, the preacher discusses the nature of God the Father, God the Father who is and who was and who is to come. He also talks about the sevenfold Holy Spirit who proceeded from the Father. The preacher emphasizes the importance of Christ the Son of the Father, describing who he is, what he did, and what he is currently doing. He highlights the belief that believers are made kings and priests under God. The sermon concludes with a declaration of a future triumph and a benediction of grace and peace.

Now, in the book of Revelation, 1st chapter, verse 4, down to 8. John, to the seven churches which are in Asia, Grace be unto you and peace from him which is and which was and which is to come, and from the seven spirits which are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ who is the faithful witness and the first begotten of the dead and the prince of the kings of the earth. Unto him that loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and has made us kings and priests unto God and his Father, to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen. Behold, he cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see him, and the also which pierced him. And all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so, amen. And I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end names of the Lord, which is and which was and which is to come, the Almighty, John. You didn't come here tonight to hear me, you came here to hear John. And you came to hear John only because John had a revelation given to him of Jesus Christ by the Lord Jesus Christ, which he was to give as a testimony to the people. John to the seven churches, which are in Asia, and to the seven churches which are in Canada, and to the seven churches which are extant in the world now, John to the seven churches. Here we are brought under the authority of the Holy Spirit. Here is a sweeping, comprehensive view of what Christianity is and what Christianity is about. Christianity is not what somebody said it was in Rome or Constantinople or Chicago or Toronto. Christianity is what the Holy Ghost said it is in his book. It is what his prophets and seers and sages and apostles and holy men who spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost said it is. So here is what Christianity is. Here is what we accept when we become Christians. Here is no narrow or peculiar sectarian interpretation of the word, but here is what the prophet and the apostle taught, and this accords with all that the New Testament teaches. Here is the beating heart of all the holy faith, and here is the interest and here is our future hope. What are these things that are mentioned here? It's so comprehensive that it would take a Spurgeon half a lifetime to do it just this. He talks about God the Father, God the Father who is and who was and who is to come, and the seven fold Holy Spirit who proceeded from the Father. He talks of Christ the Son of the Father who is and what he is and what he did and what he is doing and what he has made us, Kings and Priests, namely, unto God. And then ends with the declaration of a certain triumph to come. He pronounces a benediction to us, "'Grace be unto you and peace,' he says. And here sounding down to the churches through John the Apostle, John who calls himself your brother and companion in tribulation. And here sounding down from the glorified head of the church is this mighty declaration, "'Grace be unto you and peace.'" This is all-inclusive in that those who qualify are to receive it the servants of Christ who are washed in the blood of Christ and who hear and heed and keep the word, according to the previous words of the man of God. But it's not only an all-inclusive benediction, it is an all-exclusive benediction. I think I know a little bit, not much, but a tiny little trickle of what Paul knew when he said that he could wish himself accursed from Christ for his brethren's sake. And I can't go that far, for I am not within the thousand leagues of the great man of God, but I do feel deep and wish within my heart and feel a strong desire that this benediction could mean the world's total population. But it is not only, I have said, an all-inclusive benediction, but it's an all-exclusive benediction, too. Not everything good that God says about people in the Bible means everybody. The tendency is to try to stretch the sayings of the Lord to cover everybody, so that they become these sayings' umbrellas for the whole human race. The simple fact is that this benediction, these words of benediction, apply only to those who are within the fold, and they exclude those that are without. I say that I should like to take this benediction and stretch it to cover the whole human race, but scripture forbids me and reason forbids me, but it does mean the Lord's people, his servants. And you and each one must decide whether you come under this benediction or are excluded from it. Notice the authority of this declaration, the Eternal Father who is and who was and who is to come. I don't know how many of you remember when I preached last winter after the turn of the year on the attributes of God, and I talked about the eternity of God, and I said then, and I'll repeat now, that there are no tenses in the great God Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth. The tenses are in you and me. When we say that God was and is and is to come, we do not mean that there are tenses in God, as though God moved from one period of time to another period of time and on into another period of time. All that would be to think God down to the level of we can never do. It is not my was, it is not God's was, it's mine and yours. When it says that he that was, it doesn't mean he that was once, but it means that you and I have a was. We have a once, we have a past, and because we have a past, God is in that past. And we have a present, and God is in that present and is to come, and God is in that is to come. But it's our is to come and it's our was and it's our is, but God Almighty dwells in the eternal now, unaffected by the passing of time. The sun that rises in the east does not make God the day older, and when it sets in the west at night, it does not affect the infinite perfection of the timeless, eternal God. But here we have the eternal Father who was, and who is, and who is to come. And the seven spirits, the sevenfold spirit, if anybody wonders about that, let me read to you from the book of Isaiah, and there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord. And if you will break these down and count them, you will find that the man of God with the voice like the organ, Isaiah, was speaking in the spirit, and he said that the Holy Spirit was a sevenfold spirit. He was the spirit of the Lord, and he is the spirit of wisdom, and he is the spirit of understanding, and he is the spirit of counsel. This isn't the time to say it, but I thought I'd just say it anyhow. If we were to place less emphasis upon scholastic education and more upon the illumination of the Holy Ghost, we would be a wiser, holier, more powerful church than we are now. Here is the way it works. Now, this will cause some of you to go back and follow me no more, and if you do, two others will take your place. But anyhow, here is the way all churches start. They start with a few people groaning in the Spirit, yearning and longing in the Holy Ghost to have revival. Revival comes and the church breaks out of its cocoon and spreads its beautiful wings, and in the Spirit flies away. And then a generation goes by, and the old Saints who prayed the church into existence die and sleep with the Fathers to await the resurrection from the dead. And then another generation that knew not Joseph, they rise and they look around for power, and they don't have it because they haven't paid the price their fathers paid. So they say, Well, there's only one thing to do, and that is to establish some schools and get some education. We're going to have to have some intellectual acumen. That's a good word which doesn't mean much. Intellectual acumen to meet the challenge of the world. And so they build themselves up schools and colleges and seminaries and universities, and for the first generation they're Christian, the second generation they're quasi-Christian, the third generation they go to the dogs and become liberal. And that church, God turns from it and starts another one. That's the way the church has come down the years. Brethren, what we need in Avenue Road Church and what we need in the Christian and Missionary Alliance is an enduement of the Spirit of the Lord and the Spirit of wisdom and understanding and counsel and might and knowledge and fear. And if we have this enduement of this one Holy Ghost in his sevenfold perfection, we'd have less need for other things. Psychologists and psychiatrists and anthropologists and sociologists and all theseologists that have come in to take the place of the Holy Ghost. And people may think I'm old-fashioned and dumb. Somebody came to this church just since I've been here. It's not been long ago, right during the summer, and I was preaching on the first part of Hebrews. And I said that he was the image of the invisible God, that he is God's shining forth, God's deity in emanation. And I said, Now it's absolutely necessary that we should believe that Jesus Christ is God's Son. Some woman went out of here and told me afterwards, they said, Can you imagine that ignorant man standing up there and saying that to be a Christian you have to believe that Jesus Christ is divine? I never met the gal, I don't know her name, but I do know this, my brethren, that this ignorant boy said it, and this ignorant boy sticks to his guns. If he believeth not that I am he, he shall die in your sins. And we glory in Jesus Christ and worship in the Spirit and have no confidence in the flesh, said Paul about a Christian. Well, a sevenfold spirit, anyway. I tried to talk about it, and I stopped aside far enough to say that we need the Holy Spirit in the church. We need him tremendously. We need him in power, we need him here. We need him with his wisdom and his might and his fear and his worship and his counsel. We need him, and we need other things less. And then there is the authority of the Eternal Son. These three things are said about the Eternal Son. He is the faithful witness, which means he is the prophet. He is the first begotten of the dead, which means he is the priest. He is the Prince of the kings of the earth, which means he is the King. Back in the days before we backslid and started preaching whatever everybody else was preaching, in the Christian Missionary Alliance we used to preach on Jesus Christ as prophet, priest and King. I cut my first baby Christian teeth on Jesus Christ as prophet, priest and King. Old fellows would come in with little beards. I don't know if the beard had anything to do with it, really. But they would come in and stand and preach on Jesus Christ as prophet, priest and King. And that's what he is, my brethren. He is here. He is the faithful witness, that is, he is the prophet. When he came to the world, he came as a prophet, a faithful witness. And he brought information to the world nobody could have if they had not been in heaven. He said, I am a reporter, I have come down from heaven, and the things that I saw there I speak unto you, and you do not receive it. He came from heaven just as we send men to far countries, and they come back with reports of what they saw and heard. So God sent him down from where he had been from eternity, and he came bringing us news. He was the prophet. He was the prophet of all prophets. He was the summation of all prophets. I believe it proper to say that Jesus Christ, not only in things that he uttered, had a twofold meaning, and you can find prophecy in his simplest utterance, but I believe his very deeds have prophetic meaning in them. I'll not go into it nor prove it, but I give you that statement that Jesus Christ was the prophet in word and the prophet in deed, but he was more, he was the first begotten from the dead, that is, he was the priest. He offered himself, he was the only priest of all time who offered himself to God. All other priests offered lambs or pigeons or goats or sheep or bulls, but this one offered himself. It says in Hebrew that he through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot unto God. The only cross ever erected on any hill in all history that was turned into an altar was the cross on which Jesus Christ died. It was a Roman gibbet, a Roman cross, and they nailed him on it and God in his majesty and mystery turned it into an altar. And the lamb that was there dying in the mystery and wonder of God was turned into the priest, and he offered himself. No one was worthy to offer him. Who could offer him, I ask you? Was there anybody living in the day that Jesus died that could have offered Jesus? No. There were those in the days of Abraham that would offer a lamb, there were those all through the history of Israel that would offer lambs. Priests and high priests had that right, that's what they were supposed to do. The priest was superior to the lamb, and so he took the lamb, cut its throat, caught its blood in the basin, sprinkled the people, sprinkled the book, and thus the lamb's blood became efficacious for the people. But who was worthy to offer this last lamb, this lamb that was above all priests and above all high priests and above all lambs and above all goats and above all humans, above Melchizedek and above Moses and above Isaiah and David? Who could offer him? Nobody. Nobody. If they had said, Come, come, who can offer the lamb? John or somebody else might have wept copiously because there was no one found worthy to offer Jesus Christ as the lamb that was to be slain for our redemption. So not being able to find anyone in heaven or earth or sea, he offered himself. The only one worthy to offer such a lamb as he was the lamb himself. So he is the saving victim who offered himself, and thus he became the priest. God raised him from the dead, and he is now the priest at the right hand of God. For high the heavenly temple stands, the house of God not made with hands, the great high priest our nature wears, the guardian of mankind appears. My brethren, I believe with everything inside of me that a human being is at the right hand of God. A man is there, a glorified man, not a spirit but a man. One of the old Puritan preachers said, Mankind hath received a great dignity, in that one of our number has been exalted to the right hand of the majesty on high. One of our number has been exalted. I say that if my brother or my son were to be exalted to the place of the presidency or whatever he might have in his country, I suppose I would be very happy about it, and I would say I have received a great dignity in that one of my boys has become President of the United States. If one of your sons should be Prime Minister, you would say we have received a great dignity in our home. One of our boys has been counted worthy to take the high and noble position of Prime Minister of all the dominion of Canada. You would be very happy about it. We have received a dignity infinitely greater than the dignity of Presidents and Kings. We have received a dignity in that one of our number has gone to a higher place than a President's chair or a Prime Minister's chair. I'm a Yankee man, no question about it. We honor these men, but there is something above it in that place Jesus Christ has found. God has taken him there, and he is there as our High Priest. Do I believe in the security of the Saints? Brother, I don't know. How could I help it? How could I help but believe that I'm secure? I don't like to beat my breast as one man did and swear he couldn't go to hell. If he wanted to, I'd bet him a dime on that. But I will say that if Jesus Christ is at the right hand of God, then he has invested himself with full, charged himself with all full authority. God has given him that authority. My name is on his shoulder and on his breast, and I can say that I am safe. Somebody asked Graham Scrooge, Dr. Scrooge, are you a Calvinist or an Arminian? He said, I'm on the knees, I'm a Calvinist, but when I get in the pulpit, I'm an Arminian. I feel that way myself, but I have no doubt that the High Priest up there will keep me. Why have you been kept? You've been kept because you were good. No, you've been kept because there was somebody up there praying for you. He said one time to one of his followers, Satan has desired to have you, Peter, that he might sift you like wheat. Don't worry too much about it, because I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail thee not. We give Peter the credit, and we say, Peter was such a tenderhearted fellow, he went out and wept copiously. Peter never would have wept one salty tear if Jesus Christ, the High Priest, had not prayed for him and saved him and kept him by praying for him. Then he is the Prince of the Kings of the earth, it says here too, which means that he is to be king over all the kings of the earth. Here is the benediction and the doxology. Anglican one time told me that I would make a good ritualist. I don't know what he meant exactly by it, but I couldn't go along with everything that I hear and see in the ritualistic churches. But I do like some of the words we use. We've borrowed some of them. I do like them. The word benediction and the word doxology, I like those words. Grace and peace be unto you, he says. That's the benediction. Glory and dominion be unto him. That's the doxology. That's the word of blessing, that's what the Latin and the Greek mean. The word of blessing and the word of praise. I don't often quote Latin and Greek. My dear friend, Brother Parris says he knows a little Latin and a little Greek. The little Greek runs a restaurant and the little Hebrew, or a little Hebrew and a little Greek, and the little Hebrew runs a pressing shop. Well, anyhow, the word benediction means the good word, and the word doxology means the word of praise. This puts things in their right position. Grace and peace be unto you, and glory and dominion be unto you. What a terrible and grotesque and frightful situation we'd be in if God needed grace and we got the glory and the dominion, and never can it be. Grace and peace be unto you, that's for you and me. And what do we need more than grace? What do we need for our wretched sinfulness than the grace of God? And what do we need for our poor, uprooted, alienated, distraught souls more than peace? Well, who was unto him who loved us, and this was the reason for all else. Yet love is not a thing of a reason, really. Love isn't a thing of a reason. Love tries to be reasonable, but very seldom succeeds. There is a sweet wisdom in love that is above reason, that rises beyond it. It doesn't go contrary to it, but rises beyond it. Who could imagine that the God who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all things that are therein, who could imagine this God condensing himself to the form of a man out of his love and dying for his people? It looks like an unreasonable thing to do, but it was reasonable in that it was the wise wisdom of the mighty God. Lady Julianne, who I often quote, encourages us, she says that God made us out of his goodness and he kept us out of his goodness. And when men sinned, he redeemed us again out of his goodness, and now, says she, don't you suppose that God will give us the rest of everything if he made us and didn't have any burden of obligation lying on him? And then he kept the human and the world together and does keep it. And then when man sinned by his hard dying and bloody groans and tears, he redeemed us back to the Father again. She said, don't you think he'll give us everything else? And of course she was only echoing Paul in the fifth of Romans. Yes, I do believe it. Well, now he washed us from our sins in his own blood, and where is the mother who would wash their children? I know they couldn't come in the evening and have their evening meal without being washed and sometimes dunked altogether, because they get so frightfully dirty playing around. But a mother is happy to do that. But where is the mother who would wash the one in her blood, that he washed us in his blood, took his own blood which he drew from his own veins and washed us and made us kings and priests unto God? Now, here's the doctrine of the dominion of the Saints. You know, there's so much appearing here that I ought to preach a dozen series of sermons on these different things, but the doctrine of the dominion of the Saints. I believe in the dominion of the Saints. I believe that we have greater dominion than we know. I don't know whether you're afraid of the devil or not, but I, for one, do not have much fear of old Clutie. I realize he's a devil, all right. I realize that he's a true, real devil and that he is not simply a santic clause, a figment of human imagination. I believe in the personality of the devil. I believe in the historicity of the devil. I believe the devil is an individual being. But I do not fear him, because I believe in the dominion of the Saints, and I believe in the authority of the Saints. I believe that God's people have authority in heaven. One of our number has been exalted to the right hand of power. Just as Joseph, when he went down to Egypt and got second on the throne, and when his brethren came down, he could get anything he wanted for his brethren. They had authority because he had authority. They only had to go to Joseph and say, Joseph, we'd like a chunk of this land over here. He went to Pharaoh and said, my brethren would like a piece of land. He said, give it to them, it's up to you. He said, here is my ring. He said, that's my seal. Anything your brethren want, give it to them. Only in this throne am I above you. You are next to me. Anything your brethren ask for, you give them. That's my decree. So when Jesus Christ our Lord went to the right hand of God, he went as one of the brethren. He sang among his brethren, and he said goodbye to them and went away to the right hand of God. And there he sits among his brethren, and he says to his brethren, now anything you want, ask me. Anything you want, you ask, and you can have it. But he said, no, wait a minute, suppose that God doesn't agree. And the answer is, God agrees, because Jesus Christ is God as well as man. So Joseph could get anything from Pharaoh for his brethren, Christ can get anything for his people. And that gave tremendous authority to Joseph and tremendous authority to Joseph's brethren. I don't think there is any reason for you and me hiding and slinking about as though we were asking leave to exist and apologizing for walking around on God's earth. I believe the boldest people in the world should be Christians. I believe there should be the boldest people in the world, not talking, not sure of themselves, but sure of Him. I believe in the dominion of the Saints, and I believe in the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. Them as brethren in the Pentecostal Friends make a great deal out of this, and the Baptists, the priesthood of believers. And I believe it, too, not because they teach it, but because it's here in the Bible. We're all priests now. Just because I don't have my collar around wrong doesn't mean I'm not a priest. And just because you don't have vestments doesn't mean you're not a priest. You are a priest. You'll have a perfect right as a priest to go to the high priest and make your wants and wishes known. And when you do, you get what you want, because we have a great dignity, one of our numbers at the right hand of God. Well, now, verse 7, notice it. Behold, he cometh, with clouds, and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him, and all the families of the earth shall wail because of him even so. Amen. Behold, he cometh. Now, I believe this. I say again that I regret that over the last 10 or 12 or 15 years the cry, Behold, he cometh, has ceased to be heard in the Church of Christ, scarcely at all anymore. We have been frightened out, we have been scared out by missiles, we've been frightened out by Sputniks, and we've been scared out by the ecumenical brethren who want to make us all love each other. But behold, he cometh, is the cry that's going to be heard over the world one of these days. You're here tonight not to hear me repeat, but because there was a man once who heard a voice, and he saw a revelation, and he came and said, Behold, he cometh. Behold, he cometh with clouds. Now, in the book of Acts, the first chapter of verses 10 and 11, you remember that when he went, he went in clouds. That's worthy of the study in itself. When he went away, he went away in the clouds. You imagine the cloud he went away in was the cirrus and the cumulus and the rest of them that many meteorologists talk about. No, the Lord would never hide himself in this or in water. The Lord went away in another kind of cloud. You remember when Israel came out of Egypt and went across the Red Sea into the wilderness, that she had a cloud hovering over her, and in that cloud there dwelt the mighty Shekinah, the presence of God. Then after she had built her tabernacle and moved for 40 years in circular motion, round and round, that cloud hovered over her as a visible cloud by day and as a cloud of fire by night. You'll remember that when Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration, there was a cloud there and received him. When he went away, it says that when he spake these things, they looked, and behold, he went from them into heaven, and a cloud received him out of their sight. The same cloud. It was not a rain cloud, but the cloud of the Shekinah, the cloud of the presence, the awesome, wonderful cloud of God. And while they stood looking at that awesome cloud, two men stood by them in white array, which said unto them, The men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing idly up into heaven? I want you to hear this, my brethren, I want you to hear it. This same Jesus which is taken from you into heaven shall come as you have seen him go into heaven. Now, if you don't believe anything else, and if the prophetic teachers with their charts have confused you, you can at least believe this, that behold, he cometh. And this same Jesus which went from you into heaven will so come as you have seen him go into heaven. This same Jesus. That does not mean, as some have said, that the second coming of Christ is death. That would make Christ come every time a Christian died, and that isn't possible at all and isn't so. This same Jesus. You've been at the bedside of Christians who died, you've seen them breathe their last and go happily off to their Heavenly Father's home. Was there anybody there coming with a cloud visible to the eyes of men? No. He took them quietly and slipped them away in silence to his presence in the Father's house. Then some say that the second coming of Christ was when the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost. Why, my brethren, that was at the confusion of persons. And whoever teaches that is guilty of breaking the rules laid down in the Creed of Adam and Eve, which says that we are not to confound the persons nor divide the substance. We dare not say that Jesus Christ is the Spirit. And this same Jesus did not come when some saint went away to be with the Lord. This same Jesus is yet to come. He has not yet come, he is yet to come. And every eye shall see him, and they that pierced him. Every eye shall see him. People are inquiring now. I don't know whether it's stupidity that keeps me up, whether I am what our Brother this morning called naive, or whether it's faith. But those things have never bothered me. Some people have wondered how the Lord could come to the world and be seen by everybody, because the earth is round and you can't see through the earth, and if the Lord came down at this angle, the people on the other side of the earth wouldn't see him. It confuses and bothers him. It doesn't bother me in the slightest. My Brother, grant me God, and I'll grant you any miracle that you want to name. Grant me God, grant that Jesus Christ is God and everything else is taken care of instantly. Somebody said to me the other day, rather questioningly, said, Brother Closer, do you think that these two men are said to have gone around the earth one of them 17 times around the earth? Doesn't that indicate that it would be easy for the Lord? Now, you want me to believe that Jesus Christ is going to come down and go into orbit and go around the earth so everybody can get a look at him? How ridiculous can we get? No. It just means that he can call everybody to his feet at a moment's notice. He could call Lazarus from the grave when he said, Lazarus, come forth! And if he hadn't said, Lazarus, everybody in the graveyard would have jumped up and stood around him. Because when he said, come forth, he meant come forth. And when he wants the world to appear before him, he'll call them before him, and every eye shall see him in the day that pierced him. That's why I believe in the future of Israel. There are good men and my brethren and my loved brethren in this city, in pulpits, who do not believe in the future of Israel. I believe in the future of Israel. I do not believe that the 6 million Jews who were killed in gas chambers in Germany, if that's an accurate number, I do not believe in any wise change of anything. Jews have a way of multiplying, they'll multiply. In the nation of Israel, I don't know what the relation of the present Israeli nation has to the final return of Israel. There are some things I don't know, which will disappoint you, because we like our prophetic teachers to know everything that John knew and just a little bit of what Daniel knew. But I only know a tiny fraction of what anybody knows. But I say, I do not know about that. But I do know the day will be when the ten lost tribes, along with the three tribes, shall be united, and they shall, the day that pierced him, shall see him. That's Israel. And the families of the earth. I look this up to see what kindreds meant. It just means the families, the peoples of the earth, all the peoples of the earth shall see him. And they shall wail because of him. Now, the Soviets say that there aren't any angels. And they said, we didn't believe there were, but now we know there are not. You say, just why don't you know, Mr. Ugly-O-Bitch? Well, the reason we know there are no angels is because we've had men up there, and we've gone out into space and we've had our hardware floating around up there, and we've never found an angel. How crazy can you be and still remember your own home address? Like that undertaker that said, I have led many a man out, I have helped perform optopsins, I've seen the inside of people, I've seen them cut up, and I no longer believe in the soul of man. I've seen men chopped all up and I've never found a soul. That man, he chopped up, loved his wife, but he didn't find love for his wife in there. That man, he chopped up, was loyal to his wife, but he didn't find loyalty there. That man, that he chopped up, loved music, but he didn't find the love of music there. That man, that he chopped up, had worshiped God and prayed, and he didn't find worship there. No, there are a lot of things you can't find in the human body. They are there, they are not in the body, they are in that spirit, that which is new. When a man dies, we say the remains can be seen at such-and-such a funeral parlor, and it's just exactly accurate. Emerson said the human race is marvelously accurate when they make their language. When the human race makes its language, the various nations make their languages. He's right about that. And when we call the body, the remains were as accurate as can be, because that's all. Some dear old Saint of God goes off, some dear sister left us here the other day, and she went off to be with the Lord, and they buried the remains. That's all. There's nothing in there in the remains of love and worship and faith and joy, nothing there. That's something else altogether. When the body of Jesus was in Joseph's new tomb, the spirit of Jesus was preaching to the souls in prison, and that body was for the time being the remains. But after the third day he came back and re-inhabited that body and was glorified and rose and stood a man alive forever more. So I'm not listening to these boys with Ovitch on the end of their names. Lecture 14 The Resurrection And The Three Degrees Of Glory 2 Illyich and Ivan and all the rest, as far as I'm concerned, they can just throw up hardware and keep right on doing it until the heavens are cluttered with it. It won't bother me. I believe in God the Father Almighty, and I believe in Jesus Christ his Son, who is the faithful witness and the first begotten from the dead and the Prince of the Kings of the earth, and I believe there will be a crag go up that will circle the earth, holy comet, and when that crag goes up, every isle will see him and David Piercing, and all the families of the earth shall give up their expositions and they'll give up their vacations and their holidays and they'll give up their split-level houses and they'll give up their books and they'll give up their theaters and they'll give up their dances and they'll give up their fun and they'll give up their fears, little earthly fears, and they'll have the one great fear and the kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him." My friend, you can't tell the world that, they won't believe it. But I'm telling you that, you ought to believe it. He's coming. That same Jesus is coming, and he's coming in like man. He went away in a cloud, a man. He's coming back in a cloud, a man, exactly as they saw him go. Those that knew him will recognize him. And all the kindreds of the earth will recognize him because he's a man. He's a glorified man, not a spirit, not an angel, not some strange creature out of the fire, but the man who walked around on this earth and ate fish and drank the sweet waters of Galilee, and said, Marry her to his disciple, and said, Peter. Peter jumped and ran out where he was. The same Jesus is coming again. The book of Revelation teaches it, Daniel teaches it, Isaiah teaches it, Jeremiah teaches it. It's taught in Luke, it's taught in Mark, it's taught in John, it's taught in Matthew, it's taught in Acts, it's taught in Romans, it's taught in 1 Peter and 2 Peter, it's taught in 1 John, it's taught in Jude, and it's taught in Revelation. It's taught in the Psalms. He's going to make two trips to earth, one to die and the other to live. One to go down under the steamroller of man's hate, and the other to renovate the earth and redeem his people. They that sleep in the dust of the earth shall rise. With this I'm finished. Do you know what they'll do when they rise? Isaiah tells us, Awake and sing ye that dwell in dust. They're going to sing. Sometimes when I'm off at these camp meetings, I see flocks of what they call the American goldfinch, it is simply a goldfinch, sometimes called a wild canary. They have one little habit that I love. As long as they're around feeding, they're quiet. But stir them up, and as they go they sing. Make little undulating motions as they fly through the air, pure yellow gold, beautiful to look at, yellow and black. I saw them at Ben Rocks two weeks ago, and a whole flocks of them in the fall will gather together, and they will come upon them suddenly and they don't know it, and they're frightened, and away they go, singing as they go. That's what we're going to do. Rise and sing ye that dwell in dust, for the earth shall give forth her day. So all those that sleep in Christ will God bring with him. I'm expecting that time. I look forward with a lot of pleasure to further talks on Revelation as we go on into it and see further hypothetic truths that are there. I hope you will enjoy it and like it and want to come and hear it. I believe we need to hear this. I believe Toronto needs to hear it again. Not my private ideas about it, but what's here. I believe we need to hear it again. If we hear it, we'll have less worry about news and wars and Berlin and Laos and the rest of it. Let's pray.