In this sermon, the preacher shares the story of a man who was called by God at a young age and had a burning passion to spread the gospel. This man traveled across Europe preaching about Jesus and had a powerful impact on people's lives. Towards the end of his life, his voice became weak, but his passion for God remained strong. The preacher emphasizes the need for believers today to have the same level of dedication and empowerment from God to proclaim the truth of the gospel to this generation.

Maybe you'd like to move down front. There are seats to my right and to my left. There's vacant seats, and if you'd like to move on up a little closer, we've got some of the $15 seats open up here. Amen? And they're free. I don't know about you, but I, I like to see the whites of their eyes. Amen. Amen. God's been good to us already this week, and we thank God for the services. We thank him for the Spirit of Heaven that we've already felt. I praise the Lord for the message that we just heard. We need to see him, don't we? We need to see him. I want you to turn in your Bible to Isaiah chapter 53. Isaiah 53 and verse number 3. Isaiah 53 and verse 3. And if you'd like to move on up a little closer now, you feel free to do so. Isaiah 53 and verse 3. He is despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid as it were our faces from him. He was despised and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned every one to his own way, and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, he was afflicted, and yet he opened not his mouth. And he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth. Verse 8 will be our text. He was taken from prison and from judgment. Who shall declare his generation? For he was cut all out of the land of living, and for the transgressions of my people was he stricken. I want you to think on this subject tonight. Who shall declare his generation? Who shall declare his generation? Shall we pray? Father, we thank you for your word. God, we thank you for the scripture. Lord, we realize tonight that all that is said here will be tinkling cymbal. It will be empty, it will be vain, it will be bouncing, sounding brass, unless you send the Holy Ghost of heaven. God, we are nothing but an old sinner saved by grace. God, I'm not worthy to stand in front of men, I'm not worthy to say the name of your Son, Jesus. God, if I got my just, if I got what I deserved, God, I'd already been cut off, I'd already been in the grave and in hell for all eternity. But God, you didn't give me that, you gave me mercy and grace. I'm thankful tonight, and I thank you, God, for the privilege to be here. I pray now, Father, that you'd come and touch these feeble lips and this stammering tongue, and God, somehow would you help me to show and declare his generation, and we'll praise you in Christ's name, amen and amen. You may be seated. I was thinking earlier today about a generation. A generation is anywhere from 30 to 40 years, as we read about it in the word of God, a generation of time, a generation as it appears. I thought about the generation that we're living in today, and has this generation that we are living in, has it ever seen the power of God? I thought about a few statistics today. I thought about how among teenagers in America that only to the common cold in America is venereal disease. Can you imagine that we are now treating in our country 10 and 11 year olds for alcoholism? We're setting up clinics on kids that have become drunkards. Do you realize in our nation last year we killed one and a half million babies, and yet we've got the audacity and the brass to mention the name of Adolf Hitler and call him a murderer? We've got a nation that's feeling its appetite on every debased form of debauchery that is available to the human imagination. We're making not millions, but billions of dollars off of kiddie porn, lolita sex, lollipop kids. You say, Brother Ralph, what are you talking about? I'm talking about the heart of America, and that's rotten. We're in desperate need, friends. We've got the divorce rate in our nation. We've got divorce across our land, and we've lost the stability of the home. And when you lose the stability of the home, then, my friend, you lose an entire generation of kids. We used to have mighty preachers come out of the homes. We used to have spiritual men, godly men and women come out of the homes. But, my friend, we've lost the spiritual home, and we're paying for it with this generation that's walking our streets tonight. The police chief of Los Angeles said that we're now producing a generation of criminal that the world has never known. He said we've got young people in America that'll step on you and kill you and destroy your life and say they'll think nothing more about it than they'd step on a cockroach and kill a cockroach. You know why, friends? It's because we've substituted positive thinking for powerful preaching. We've left what God told us would work for healing the land. Today's Newsweek magazine, August 9, today's edition that came on the stands today carries a lead article on child molestation. And it said in today's Newsweek magazine that hit the stands that one out of ten children in America this year will be sexually molested in the homes of America. Now, my friend, you can call us a Christian nation if you want to, but I think we're living off memories. I think we're living off a past heritage. I don't think that we're a Christian nation anymore. My friends, gone off of our land are the Billy Sundys and the Gypsy Smiths and the Bob Jones Seniors and the John R. Rises and the R. G. Lees and the Dr. James Stewart, the Missionary and the Edward Rogers and the Uncle Joe Parsons and the Oliver B. Greens. They're gone off our land. We've lost the men that had tears in their eyes and faithless in their message and had contact with another world and were not unembarrassed. They were not about preaching the whole counsel of God's word. But you know, the more frightening in that fact is, my friend, we've got a generation now that where our leaders are in their twilight years. Dr. Lee Robinson, Dr. B. R. Ligon, Dr. Harold Smith, Dr. Percy Ray, Dr. Harold Sightler, Dr. John Rollins, Dr. Ralph Dixon, Sr. My friend, we look at Dr. J. Bernard McGee all across this country. We see the men that have preached and touched this country, and they're down in their sunset years. They've come down to hoary hairs. And what frightens me to no end, if God permits this thing to carry, then my God, what are my children going to have for preaching? Hey, who's going to be the man that will stand and preach to this generation? Do you realize tonight, my friend, we're out of business? Do you realize tonight that our churches have become nothing more than orthodox rituals? And you say, well, Brother Ralph, we're fundamental. We're premillennial. We're independent. We think more of the signs in our front yard than we do the Holy Ghost of Heaven. We're more proud of our little labels than we are whether or not we've got the power of God on our pulpit. Listen, Isaiah 53, one of this same chapter says, Who hath believed our report, and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? I want to ask you tonight, where is the arm of the Lord? Where is the arm of the Lord being revealed? Who's declaring the generation of Jesus Christ to this generation that's on earth tonight? We're in sad trouble. We're in bad trouble. And the sad part of it is we're like old Samson. God's left off of us and we don't even know it. We think that if things get too bad, then we'll just shake ourselves and do like we've always done. There's an old song that was written. We have heard with our ears what our fathers have told us. We've had old-fashioned, heaven-sent, born of God, sin-healing, my friend, life-changing, Holy Ghost revival in past generations. But today, in this day and in this hour, what have we got? We've got little weekend meetings and when they end, we're all still weak. We've got a little program plan. We're going to have a revival in the spring, whether we need it or not. We've got to have a revival in the fall, whether we need it or not. And we've got it so organized. Listen, we're organized and agonized. You know I'm telling you the truth. And our kids have never seen the mighty power of a holy God on their mom and on their dad or on their Sunday school teacher or on their deacon or on their preacher. We've just got a little game we play and we've got a little motion we go through. But I don't know about you tonight, but I'm so sick of me, I could die. I'm so sick of me, I could die. I'm so tired of seeing my friend, my own children, my son Mark sitting here tonight and he's with me. I've got an eight-year-old boy at the house and a 15-year-old daughter at the house. But yet if they want to know about old times, Holy Ghost revival, they've got to go call up on their granddaddy's knee, who's been preaching 47 years, and say, Poppy, tell me what God used to do. My God, what's wrong with my day and my hour? What's wrong with the church today? What's wrong with the young people today? What's wrong with those that are willing to give their very soul and their very being for God to do it one more time, this time of eternity? Are we going to be the only class, the only generation that'll go in empty-handed? Are we going to have to go in off the power of history books and off the dust of memories? Oh, that God would give us a vision and a broken heart that we could one more time see God send revival. It's not in the might of a man's intellect. It's not in the power, my friend, of a man's lungs. But what we need is some men and women that'll find the power one more time of intercessory prayer and fasting. Lord, my friend, people that are willing to have some separation on their lives, people that are willing one more time to be laughed at and to mocked at and to be called holy joes and goody-two-shoes and fanatics because they're so in love with Jesus, it looks like they've lost their mind to the world. Miracles, my friend, have sounded out during the Puritan revivals. Jonathan Edwards preached. He preached the breath of God, and he preached the message, sinners in the hands of an angry God. And yet, my friend, we know that was not Jonathan Edwards that preached because Jonathan Edwards was not an orator. Jonathan Edwards was a tremendous mind, and God ignores him. But according to historical accounts and all probability, he wrote his message out verbatim. And the night he delivered sinners in the hands of an angry God, he turned his back almost to the audience and read his message by lamp to that crowd. It wasn't Jonathan. It wasn't what he had on that paper. It was the God that he'd been laying with, my friend. It was God that opened up the floor of that church and let them feel the heat of hell and hear the screams of agony. Am I afraid of a man going to hell without a holy God? Listen, Charles Whitfield preached, we must be born again. Old Peter Cartwright was an ignorant and unlearned man, yet he had enough sense to believe in the power of God and not the power of Peter Cartwright. Charles Finney was so Christlike, and he laid with God and prayed and fasted that his very presence in a place would cause conviction. They said more than one time Finney would walk into a factory or a plant to try to talk to the proprietor about a warehouse to have a gospel meeting in, and said he'd walk in. Maybe he'd been in the woods for three or four days, hadn't seen a human being, but he'd been seeing him, just what our brother was preaching about. He'd been seeing him. He hadn't been seeing the publicity committee. He hadn't been talking to reporters of the prayer. He hadn't been meeting with the ministerial assassination committee. He'd been meeting with the power of another world. My friend, when he'd walk into that warehouse and walk down those aisles, the power of God was so great upon him that they said he'd look back behind him and big grown men would be falling out between their plants, out between those factory machines, and laying in the aisle and scrying out, Oh God, be merciful unto me a sinner. It wasn't Finney. It's who Finney was walking with. My friend, G.L. Moody was a revival teacher, and my friend, he had that message and he had the burden. He could see the people. He had that vision in front of him. He'd never lost that. Oh, Billy Sunday, he left the fame and the fortune of the baseball diamond. He walked off the field and he began to follow in Jesus' steps. My friend, he had a burden. Dr. James Stewart, the missionary, God permitted it to be my fortune in life to be a personal friend of their family and to keep his home. I brought my first baby home to the home of Dr. Stewart, and we were the caretakers of his home. We walked over the library and my friend, God permitted me to see a little bit of this man, even though it's my life. I was rebelling and resisting the call to preach, even though I was 27 before I started preaching. God had me in a school and a university that I couldn't get away from. He had me rubbing elbows with men like Uncle Joe Parson. He had me around like Dr. James Stewart. He put me in a school, my friend, to know that there was something real. He had it where I had to hear men like Brother Ted McGarry stand and exhort and to lift up Jesus in a bloodstained manner. My friend, God put that place together, and yet there's little James Stewart, that little old bitty phrase, that small man. And my friend, Brother Taylor, he'd come to church even if he had Parkinson's disease and his body was racked and broken and he was sick and he would sit in church and the physical man was gone and dad would be up preaching and he would become so engrossed in the message and that volcano of fire would still be burning in his bosom. He'd sit there and he'd begin to rock and he'd begin to rock and he was sick. He'd wasted way to less than 100 pounds, but Sister Richard finally has to get him up and take him out of the church. You know why? Because when God called him, God called him and he'd place a fire inside of his bosom that would not go out. It would still burn and he saw him going to hell and he saw the mission that God gave him and at the age of 14, on a soccer field, God's amazing grace swung low to this earth and touched that 14-year-old boy with old-time conviction. He picked up his soccer ball and walked to the house and told his mom that he had just been saved and he was going to tell the world about Jesus. Amen! You know why? He got a vision of the Lord Jesus Christ, my friends, and by the time he was 21, he had walked across Europe preaching the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ. Listen, right before he died, I'd go by his home and he'd sit in that little rocker in the living room and his voice would be so weak you couldn't hear him and you'd say, Brother Stuart, how are you today? You'd see his lips moving, you couldn't hear him and finally you'd just have to get right down and put your ear to his mouth and he'd be sitting there, winging those little bitty hands, saying, I must preach, I must preach, I must preach, I must preach, I must preach. Inside of him was a giant dynamo. The flesh was gone, the strength was gone. My friends, inside of him was a volcano of God's amazing grace and just because the old tabernacle had fallen apart, the volcano was alive and well and he wanted to go tell men about the power of his Savior to save a lost son of God. But we've lost that off this age. We've lost that off this generation. Their mama called and daddy said and then the cemetery feels their doom with a godless preaching and an education that takes away the power of the Holy Ghost. David Brainerd was so filled with Jesus' love that he lost, my friends, his own self and laid before God in prayer. So they said that you could literally follow the footsteps of Brainerd out of the woods there where he had been in the snow till his feet had frozen and his knees had frozen and cracked open and his own blood would be a trail out of the snow where he had a burden for those Indians and he agonized with God for hours. Oh my friends, we need to be men and women of God. The only way that we're going to be able to declare to this generation about our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is to be empowered from another world. We need to preach thus saith the Lord. We need to preach your sins will find you out. We need to preach once again that heaven's sweet and hell's hot. Sin is black and salvation's free and that Jesus died for you and for me. I heard a man not many months ago say he had preached to 55,000 people and in his audience that day was young men that had on cut off jeans and no shirt and had women in short shorts and halter tops sitting astride of their necks. And my friends, every conglomeration of humanity you can imagine. And yet that so-called preacher preached that day on God loves lovers. God loves lovers. I was just in New Hampshire a few months ago in revival service and I was in the only church in that city that was open. My friend, seven other churches that had the doors nailed shut going out of business, nobody interested, nobody wanting it. The only church open in a radius of 31 miles in seven villages in that area. And the only church that was open 31 miles away was a congregationalist church. And you know what the preacher preached that morning? Fox hunting in New Hampshire. He stood and said, we ought to thank God for Fox hunting and what it's done for tourism and to provide jobs in our neighborhood. Then we wonder, we've gotten to the core and our kids have no God to believe in. We need a revival, my friend, and the kind of revival and renewal we need is going to have to begin here among God's people. It's going to have to begin in the heart of God's men, men that have said I'll die in the service for you, Jesus. It's going to have to start with us fellas who will say, Oh God, I know you call me and I know you've brought me and I know you brought me this far, but God, I know there's more power for me and there's more that you want me to do if I'll just give it to you. My friend, today's generation has never seen revival. We're strangers to the Holy Ghost conviction. We've convinced ourselves that we have to do it ourselves. We, we have to promote it up or blow it up or truck it in. My friend, we've got people that are starring on programs like a solid goal, which propagates the hellish doctrine and religion of rock music and Christian homes and all the homes of America. And they'll co-host there during the week on the weekends. And yet there'll be on religious talk shows on Monday through Friday. We've got churches so desperate for a crowd that they'll bring in stars that sing during the week in Hollywood and in Vegas, and then they'll bring them to the house of God on Sunday. We don't need to sell our birthright for a little bowl of popularity pottage. We are never supposed to be a popular crowd. We're supposed to be a peculiar crowd. My friend, we've got religious puppeteers instead of prayer warriors. Listen, you say, Brother Ralph, I can't be as eloquent in the pulpit as R.G. Lee. I can't paint wide pictures like B.R. Lakin. I can't quote scripture like Brother Sammy Allen. I can't exhort like some of these brothers do. Yeah, but you can go in your prayer closet and you nail the door shut on this old world and you can agonize for a host of the dying world to see revival. There's a place of service for every man and woman that wants to be used by a holy God. This generation today has only seen topless bars and bare bottoms. We're living on the lust of the flesh, and we've tossed this generation to lust instead of to love. We've, my friend, we've got situation ethics being propagated as the way to live, and we've got even men of God, quote unquote, propagating a gospel of living and doing anything you want to do. We've got a church being organized in Florida that's got a section that's supposed to be there for those that like to commit adultery, one section for those that like to drink, one section for those that like to gamble, because God's a God of love and he made us like we are. We've got high school young people that have totally cut themselves off from any kind of moral restraint. We've got kids in your church and in my church that has to go live in that hellhole when the school year is going on. High school newspaper in Michigan City, Indiana, not many months ago, featured five nude men and women on the front page of that school newspaper, and they dared the school officials to do anything about it. Did you know we had more kids killed in our public schools last year than was killed in Vietnam in the years 1972 and 73? Killed in the public schools. We've had the philosophy brought out that God is dead by our actions. It used to be that you could label a place a porno shop or a dirty bookstore, but now because of our liberalized thinking and because we don't want to offend anyone from the pulpit or over our radio program preacher, we've got Playboy and Penthouse and Hustler Magazine and every drug store, every 7-Eleven, every little corner store, it's popped all over your town. And friend, it ain't like it used to be. It's rotten, raw, explicit sex, and every kind of deranged kind of ungodliness, and my friend, demonism that you can imagine, and it's being pumped in. I walked into a mall just a few days ago. I was in Gate City, Virginia, in Revival, and walked in a mall, and I turned around the corner, and there was a drug store, and the first thing that I walked into that drug store was a six-year-old boy and an eight-year-old boy, and they had a Hustler Magazine apiece, and my friend, and there they were laughing, and I thought, what kind of man would I be today if I had grown up without that kind of images in my mind? What kind of man would I have been as a teenager if I'd have had my hands on that kind of filth and ungodliness to plant the seeds of absolute abandonment of any restraint on my body? And yet we've got a nation that's been cut loose to its own self, and unless we have revival from another world, Romans 1 shall be our portion. There's no hope outside of a holy God. My friend, listen, we've got the one-world philosophy being preached. We've got one world being given out. We've told the kids it's okay to support the gay rights movement. We've tried to take any taste of sin out of the mouth of people. We've got free contraceptives being distributed in our junior high school without parental knowledge. We've got preachers in the pulpit that fear the church boards more than they do the Holy Ghost of Heaven. You know what we need tonight? We need some old-fashioned militant men of God one more time. My friend, you need to throw away your little peace button and your little anti-nuke button, and you need to get you a war button, and you need to declare war tonight on the devil in his town. We need to get back a holy hatred of sin. We need to one more time stand with a clarion voice and beg God to let us stand in the gap these last few minutes before Jesus comes and warns this generation that there's a judgment day coming. There is a payday on the way. You know, it's all right to hate some things, friends. They'd like you to say today it's wrong to hate anything, but it's all right to hate a few things. I hate the devil, and I've got scriptural grounds to hate him. I hate sin. It's all right to hate sin. Bless God. I hate the Antichrist. I hate the spirit of the Antichrist. I hate the false prophet and his spirit. I hate compromise, and my friend, I hate rattlesnakes. I hate cancer. There's some things you don't have to love. There's nothing wrong with taking a stand. Listen, you don't need to get around this all night and say, oh God, let me be Moody. God, let me be Cartwright. God, let me be R.G. Lee. That's not what we need to pray for him. We don't need to pray to be like these men that have blazed the trail before us, but we do need to get around this altar and say, almighty God, father in heaven, I'm just sick of me and my little ways and my flesh and my weakness. God, would you come tonight with a burying party from the third world, oh God, and bury my old flesh. Bury my waltz and bury my will and bury my desire, God, and let me die out to everything around me. Let me die out to men and what men think and the praise and the platitudes of men. And God, let me see you high and holy and lift it up, God. And then God, would you give me what those old boys had? Would you give me a vision of a lost and a dying world? Would you give me a heart, God? Would you give me zeal? Would you give me anointing? Would you give me tears? And then God, would you wind me up like a toy soldier and shit me on the devil so that when I die, I can leave a happy devil behind? Hey, listen, if there's anybody shouting at my funeral, I want the devil to be in there. I want him to be shouting at old Ralph's gone. Hey, listen, you ought to be a thorn in his flesh. You ought to declare war on him and his crowd. He's a liar, deceiver, a damner, destroyer, deluder. He doesn't play fair. And he'll take you and he'll mess you up and he'll mess your wife up and your youngins up and your family up and he'll catch up. He's a destroyer. We need the war. Well then, Brother Ralph, what are we going to do if we preach? What are we going to preach? Listen, our brother just talked a moment ago about seeing Jesus in Hebrews 2.9, but we see Jesus who is made a little lower than the angels. Why? For the suffering of death, power, glory, and honor that by the grace of God should what? Taste death for every man. In other words, I've got one that's tasted for me. I've got one that's paid the price for me. Now, listen, in Luke 4.20, and he closed the book and he gave it again to the minister and sat down and all the eyes and the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him. Who'd they see? They saw Jesus. My friend, if you only had one word in your vocabulary tonight, if you had a stroke and had to learn to speak all over and you could only learn one word when that nurse, when that therapist came in and said, you're only going to have, be able to learn one word. And what do you want to learn? And yet we're going to teach you to say one word. Jesus, Jesus. My friend, if your heart could only have one desire, it should be Jesus, my friend. If your body could only have one hunger, it ought to be Jesus. If the deacon in your churches could only have one duty, that duty ought to be Jesus and nothing else, my friend. And if a man or a woman, a boy, a girl or a teenager came across this old earth and had to live a few years and they realized they could only have one friend in a lifetime, it ought to be Jesus, the Lamb of God. What more could a man want than Jesus? And preachers, if he could only have one message, it ought to be Jesus. Hey, Jesus, who is he? He's altogether lovely. No one ever cared for me like Jesus. What a friend we have in Jesus. Oh, hail the power of Jesus' name. There is no friend like Jesus. Jesus is the sweetest name I know. Jesus, love of my soul. From Genesis to Revelation, we see Jesus. He is the only answer. Jesus tonight, he is the lily of the valley. Jesus is the rose of Sharon. Jesus is the light of the world. Jesus is the bread of life. Jesus is the resurrection and the life. Jesus is the great physician. Jesus is the rock of ages. Jesus is the solid rock. Hey, Jesus, he is the great provider. He is the great physician. Jesus, if a man only had one book in his library, it ought to be the book Jesus. Yeah, Jesus is my pastor where I go to feed. Jesus is my spring where I go to drink. Jesus is my haven where I go to hide. Jesus is my refuge. He is my hiding place. He's my deliverer in the storm. Jesus, my friend, is in the tabernacle of the Old Testament. He's unbounded. He's abiding. Listen, everything you look at in the word of God, if you go far enough, if you look, you'll find Jesus from Genesis to Revelation. It's Jesus. It's woven in. The blood's all around us. It's under the solid cover. It's Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. Everywhere you look, it's Jesus. Yet we want to play church, but it's Jesus. Hey, when you come home, Peter, and your wife says, did you hit her just right there? Say, I don't know, but I just saw Jesus. Hey, who are you preaching for? You ought to be preaching for Jesus. Did they receive it? Did they hear it? Did they reject it? I don't know. I was too busy looking at Jesus. Did they like it or did they love it? Don't know. I was looking at Jesus. Hey, look at him tonight. Who's the lamb? Listen, Isaiah 42.1 says, behold my servant whom I behold. Listen, in whom my soul delighteth, I put my spirit upon him. He shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles. He's the one that'll carry it out. I won't stand before the judgment bar of God, but I'll send the judgment seat of Christ. I'll give my accountability to this same lovely lamb. Lord, listen, when I look at Jesus, when I look at him, when I look in the tabernacle, and I see that lamb sacrificed, what is that? That's the lamb of God. When I look in there and I see that veil, that's Jesus. That's the way to God. When I see that candlestick, I see Jesus as the light of God. When I see that showbread, I see Jesus as the bread of life. Everywhere you look, you're going to see him. And for that reason, we have a high degree of accountability to him tonight. Isaiah described Jesus as Immanuel in Isaiah 7.14. He described him as the mighty God in Isaiah 9.6. He described him as the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace, a righteous King. He said in Isaiah 32.1, a King shall reign in righteousness and a Prince shall rule in judgment. He called him a divine servant. He called him the army of the Lord in Isaiah 53.1. That's the verse we just read. And then he called him the anointed preacher in Isaiah 61.1. The spirit of the Lord God is upon me. Because the Lord has anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek, he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prisons of them that are bound. Who's bound down tonight? Who's the captives? Those that don't know Jesus. They're slaves of Satan and don't even realize it. They're bound up. They can't do anything. Nothing ever goes right. They're bound down. They're captives. And their master, Satan, Lucifer, he never wants them to do anything except go to hell. Amen. Jesus said, I came to take care of that. Aren't you glad the word of God? Aren't you glad Jesus said, whosoever will, may come. Hey! Hey! If he hadn't said that, I wouldn't have got in. He didn't say when you got enough money. He didn't say when you got enough smarts. He didn't say when you got a PhD in theology. He didn't say when you had any degree, any approval, any membership. What if you didn't have the right pedigree? What if you wasn't born in the right family? What if your skin wasn't the right color? You couldn't have got in. But he didn't say that. He just said, show up and I'll handle it from there. Whosoever will, may come. That's what Jesus wants us to say. Isaiah 63, 1 talks about Jesus not only as the anointed preacher, but Isaiah called him the anointed traveler, the mighty traveler. Isaiah described the mission of Jesus. He called him that his mission was the illuminator. In Isaiah 9 and 2, the people that walk in darkness have seen a little light. No, Isaiah said a great light. They that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined. He said, those of you that are living down there in the valley of the shadow of death, there's a light that will lead you out. There's a light at the end of the tunnel. There's a light at the end of the valley. Who is he? His name is Jesus. He's a lamb of God. He's the judge in Isaiah 11 and 3. He's the reprover in Isaiah 11 and 4. He's the lawgiver in Isaiah 42 and 4. He's the liberator in Isaiah 42 and 7. He's the burden bearer in Isaiah 53 and verse 4. He's the sin bearer in Isaiah 53 and verse 6. My friend, he is the intercessor in Isaiah 53 and verse number 12. My friend, in Isaiah 53 and verse number 5, he's referred to as the only savior. John said in the New Testament that this same Jesus that Isaiah saw, John said that Jesus was the son of God. He said he's the son of man, divine teacher, soul winner, bread of life, great physician, water of life, defender of the weak, good shepherd, prince of life, light of the world, the controller of the servant. My friend, John knew about him too, and he described him. He said that he's the king. He's the crucifier. He's the giver of the Holy Spirit, the uplifted savior, the conqueror of death, the great intercessor. Paul said, listen, old Paul knew Jesus. He said in the book of Romans, he said Jesus was the peacemaker in 1 Corinthians. Jesus was the Lord of Glory in 1 Corinthians. He also said that Jesus was the only foundation in 1 Corinthians. He also said Jesus was the sacrificial lamb in 1 Corinthians. Paul said that Jesus was the conqueror of death. He also said in 2 Corinthians that he was the image of God. In Galatians, Paul said that Jesus was the liberator. In Ephesians, he said Jesus was the goal of all character. In Philippians, he said Jesus is the supreme prize. My friend, in Colossians, he said that Jesus is the head of the church. In Colossians, he said that Jesus is the head of the church. In 1 Thessalonians, he said Jesus is the coming Lord. I want you to know it. In 1 Timothy, he said that Jesus is the blessed and only potentate. In 2 Timothy, he's the judge of all things and all beings. In Titus, Jesus is the redeemer. In Hebrews, he's the captain of our salvation. In Hebrews, he's the great high priest. My friend, in Hebrews, he's the author and the finisher of our faith. Peter said Jesus was the shepherd and the bishop of our souls. Listen, I want you to know these guys in the New Testament, they knew about Jesus and they knew how to honor him. They wasn't splitting hairs and cutting a fella across town. They wasn't dissecting the boy down the road. They wasn't choosing up sides and smelling armpits. They was preaching Jesus. Hey, a lot of your critics won't have much to criticize if all you've got is Jesus to preach. Amen? Praise Jesus. Lift up Jesus. Listen, in the book of Revelation, Jesus is the Alpha and Omega. He's the faithful witness. He's the Lion of the tribe of Judah. He's the Lamb. He's the Word of God. He's the King of Kings and he's Lord of Lords. In the first verse of Matthew, what do we see? Jesus. Matthew 1.1, the book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. In the first verse of Mark, we see Jesus. In Mark 1.1, the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ. In the first verse of Acts, we see Jesus. In the first verse of Romans, we see Jesus. In the first verse of 1 Corinthians, we see Jesus. 1 Corinthians 1.1, Paul called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ. Listen, in the first verse of 2 Corinthians, we see Jesus. Paul an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God. Out of the 27 books of the New Testament, 24 of those books start with Jesus. Jesus is in every book of the Bible. His message is there. His work is there. My friends, the thing that we're going to have to ask ourselves tonight, we're going to have to look around. We're going to have to think how many times we've had opportunity in our churches. We're going to think how many times we've heard the gospel preached. We're going to think how many times we've gone through the motion. We're going to think how many times we've been to camp meetings and jubilees and, my friend, had revivals. And we're going to have to answer ourselves, what have I done with Jesus? I ask you the question again, who is going to declare his generation? What hope does this generation have? What hope does your own blood relatives have? Some of you sitting here tonight, you've got brothers and sisters that if they died tonight, they'd die and go to hell. Some of you sitting here tonight, you've got mamas and daddies that if you get a phone call tonight, they're going to be dead and in hell before you get home. Some of you sitting here have got a lost wife or a lost husband. Some of you parents have got lost sons and lost daughters. Some of you grandparents have got grandchildren that all they've got to look forward to is an eternity without God. Falling in total darkness forever and ever and ever. Screaming, my God save me, but it's too late. Hey, you know why? You know why? Because this world, this generation has not seen Jesus in us. They haven't seen Jesus in us. If they'd seen Jesus in us, then we'd be the light of the world. If they'd seen Jesus in us, we'd be the salt to keep this thing from rotting. We can't blame, we can't blame the drug heads and the pimps and the pushers and the prostitutes and the dopers tonight. We can't blame them for what's going on out there. You know who we're going to have to blame? We're going to have to blame church members. We're going to have to blame preachers. You know why? Because God said you're supposed to keep this thing from rotting. And you know what I did this afternoon when I read that one out of 10 children in America will be sexually molested this year? I said, where's Jesus? Where's Jesus to that little boy that doesn't understand that man who's satisfying his sexual desires on an innocent child? Hey, they look at the TV, they see the devil. They see power in the occult. They see the force being propagated. They see the glory and the glamor of the rock industry. They see the satisfying of the sensual flesh. And if there's a religious program on, it's nothing more than a Christian Johnny Carson show. Some good entertainment, but no preaching. No Jesus. What? Well, who's going to declare it? So what are we waiting for? Every time God has sent revival, he sent it through me. I can't explain this to you. I don't have the vocabulary and I don't have the knowledge of some of the great men that are sitting here in the thought of tourism, but I have understood this much. God said, I hate sin, but yet he loves sinners. I got that much. And I finally figured out that he said, there's going to have to be a sacrifice. And he sent the lamb and he let his own son be nailed to that tree. And then I finally got a little glimpse. He stepped over fallen angels and said, you'll never have another opportunity. You're cut off for time and eternity. But he got down on one knee to follow me and said, come on to me. I haven't gotten much of this, but I finally did understand. He said, I'll take the weak things and the beggarly things and I'll compound the mind. And he said, he said, I want you all fallen wretched sinner boys that have saved the grace to go tell a lost world that Jesus saved. He is the mighty God. If he had wanted to today, every pine I've been through it. Every lamb could have preached. Jesus saves, Jesus saves, Jesus saves. If it had wanted to, every bird that song today, instead of melody, it could have been a message. Jesus saves, Jesus saves, Jesus saves. If he had wanted to, every rock and every stone on this ground could have preached today. Jesus saves. He's got the power to make a preach, but he didn't do that. He said, no, you stay solid unless he's on fallen, broken vessels of clay to tell a world that Jesus saved. Oh, does anybody, does anybody here tonight sick of yourself? Are you sick of your up and down? Are you sick of your in and out? Are you sick of your own and all? Are you sick of your hit and miss? Are you sick of your gossip? Are you sick of your long tongue? Are you sick of your false thing? To criticize and see Jesus, the lamb of God, that we could declare his generation to a generation that has no hope. Let's stand and bow our heads. Oh, may God help us. Listen, without any singing, without any playing, but just by the harmony of a great trio in heaven, God, the father, God, the son, and God, the holy ghost. Would there be a preacher tonight? Renew a holy vow. Would there be a preacher's wife? Crawl into Calvary tonight and say, God, forgive me for playing preacher's wife. Would there be a deacon or a layman? Would there be a young man or a young boy, a teenage girl, maybe a young lady that would come up to Calvary tonight and say, oh, father, I may not can go and preach. I can't go down with Joshua on the battlefield, but let me get up there on the hill with Moses and hold up his hand. Hey, we need some prayer help tonight. We need some men and women of God. Are we sick of ourselves? Are we sick of our own insides? Do you want to see God do it one more time? This side of eternity, my friend, who will stand and who will be found faithful? Are you sick of playing church? Are you sick of playing religion? Are you sick of going through the motions? Are you sick of having a burden one week and losing your burden the next week? Have your tears during camp meeting, dry sockets at the house? Tonight, the world has been brought together, my friend. We're seeing the closing hours of a closing day. And if you feel a need to pray, then you come and join me with heads bowed and eyes closed, men and women that are praying. Now, folks, there's people already in the altar, but there's some of you standing back there. You don't even have your head bowed. You're not even praying for God to search your heart. This is not a game. This is not pretend. This is for eternity. My friend, you need to get in tonight while there's still time. This may be the last gospel service you'll ever be in. This may be the last time the Holy Ghost will ever tiptoe around where you've been sitting. Today is the day of salvation. This is the hour that's been appointed unto man, that you'll face the mighty power of the Holy God. And if you grieve the spirit tonight, sir, ma'am, if you play church tonight, I fear for your very physical safety. Today is the day of salvation. This is the hour. It's repent or perish. It is revival or removal. We need to make restitution for the Holy God for our lawless living. We need to make restitution with God for our prayerless lives, because we won't push away from the table and not fast a meal for a lost or a dying world. We need to make restitution for our wicked, doubting, unbelieving hearts, that God can do it again. Today is the day.