In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the importance of not relying on our feelings but on the witness of the Holy Spirit in our lives. He references John Wesley's preaching on Romans 8:16, highlighting the need for a new life in Christ rather than just a change in behavior. The preacher also addresses the urgency of the gospel message, pointing out the reality of the second death and the need to rescue people from spiritual captivity. He calls for a holy crusade against sin and a stronger love for God, envisioning a place filled with holy fear and joy.

I'm not playing with words, but we're going to look at Luke. Luke chapter 17. Luke 17 and reading from verse 26. And as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of Man. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark and the flood came and destroyed them all. Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot, they did eat, they did drink, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built it. You know what I put the emphasis on all the days in those two verses? Let's go back and read the other one again. It was in the days of Noah, so shall it be in the days of the Son of Man. They did eat, they drank, they married, they were given in marriage until the day that Noah entered the ark. Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot, they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built it. In other words, God wasn't in the plan at all. They satisfied every desire that they had. And some of those things are good. It's not wrong to get married. It is if you marry the wrong person. If you get married to the right person, it's heaven, and if you don't, it's the other place. Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot, they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built it. But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom, it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all, as it was in the days of Noah. What was it like in the days of Noah? Chapter 6 of Genesis. Let me read you verse 3 from chapter 6. The Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man. I think that applies to individuals. I believe it applies with nations. This week I've been thinking of that scripture which I call a limitation to intercession. It says, There is a sin unto death, and ye shall not pray for it. I guess you think it's nice to preach. Well, it is sometimes. But I believe in every meeting, whether there's an altar call or not, if the Spirit of God is there, somebody's born or somebody's quickened. And by the same token, I think some people cross the deadline. God talks for the last time. As I say, What does God owe you? What does God owe America? Some of you have heard the gospel a hundred times. I doubt if one of us responded to Christ the first time He spoke to us. We would have to say, was it Theo Monod that wrote, I had long withstood His grace, long provoked Him to His face, would not hearken to His call, and grieved Him by a thousand falls. Depth of mercy, can there be mercy still reserved for me? I'm staggered every day. I think of the majesty of God, the love of God. But right now we're living on mercy. If we weren't, we'd be burning like Sodom and Gomorrah. Without sin, Sodom, without sin, Gomorrah. I'll tell you about that in a minute or two. My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he is also flesh, yet his days shall be a hundred and twenty years. There were giants in the earth in those days. And also after that, when the sons of God came unto the daughters of men and bared children to them, the same becoming mighty men that were of old, men of renown. And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth. Now look at this. Every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. Every thought without interruption. Every thought without mixture. Every thought without intermission. Every thought of his mind. If there's such a thing as pure sin, here it is. His heart meditated only on sin. And the Spirit of God ceases to strive. Verse 6. He repented the Lord, he had made man in the earth, and he grieved him at his heart. And the Lord said, I will destroy man who was created from the face of the earth, both man, beast and creeping things and the fowl of the air. And he repenteth me that I made them. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Let me find a scripture here a minute. I put markers in and I forget them. That one I've got. I think you've got the oven up a bit too hot tonight. As I say so often, I'm not losing my mind. I'm losing some of my memory. Look in the book of Proverbs, please. In chapter 1. Verse 20. Wisdom crieth without. She uttereth her voice in the streets. She crieth to the chief place or concourse in the openings of the gates. And the city she uttered her words saying, How long ye simple ones! Will ye love simplicity? And the scorners delight in their scorn. And the fools hate knowledge. Turn you to me at my reproof and I will pour out my spirit upon you. I will make you know my words known unto you. But here's the rebuke of God. Verse 24. Because I have called and ye refused. I have stretched out my hand and no man regarded. Ye have set at naught my counsel and would have none of my reproof. Now that's their side. Here's God's side. You see, we're toying with God in these days. We're toying with eternity. We're toying with salvation. As the people did before the flood. Now, people say sometimes, Wasn't God rather cruel to cut them off? No, He wasn't. For what reason? For this reason, before them there had been a prophet. The antediluvians, as we call the people, before the flood had been some of the most favored people that ever lived. They had had a man by the name of Enoch. And Jude goes on to say, Enoch the seventh from Adam, because there was another Enoch before that. And Enoch walked with God. And there at the beginning almost of creation, he prophesied, The Lord shall come with ten thousand of His... He must have had a revelation, a hole through the sky into eternity. And this man Enoch walked with God. He marched up and down the streets. He prophesied. This is a voice that we read about here in this chapter. He's calling to foolish. He's calling to people that stop their ears. Then right after that marvelous man Enoch, you have another man. If I say Noah to you, by the law of association, your mind says, Ark. But that's not what the Bible remembers him for. Except on one occasion. You know, the name of Noah was an amazing name. It occurs fifty-five times in the Bible. Forty-five of those times, I believe. I've had some notes which are on my desk. I can't see them right now. Forty-five times in Genesis. And three times, I believe, in the Gospels and once in the Epistle. What is he known on God's side? On man's side, he's known for building an ark. You get a little ark and you make little toy things for children to put in them. But on God's side, he's known, it says, what? Noah, a preacher of righteousness. Now, they had a man storming up and down the streets. Can you imagine him crying? It says he cried in the gates. You know, it says, the Scripture says, the gates of hell shall not prevail against God. I remember talking, Dave Wilkes and I had been talking with Miss Kuhlman. And she said, well, you know, one day, if you do happen to go past the gates of hell, go into heaven, at the bottom of the gates, it says, made in Pittsburgh. I don't know if she's right or not. Any Pittsburghians here? You won't unlock to it anyhow. But the gates of hell, it doesn't mean physical gates. It says of Lot, he sat in the gate. That's where the government officials sat. And it says, the gates of hell, all the councils of hell, all those who lifted up their voices against God will not prevail against God. Doesn't matter what breaks loose on the earth. If it gets a thousand times worse than it is, the gates of hell will not prevail against God. Well, they had Enoch walking. He lifted up his voice. He cried to the sons of men, in season and out of season. Then Noah comes up. The time is getting shorter and shorter and shorter. And we remember that Noah built an ark. We say, well, God, of course, cut these folk off. Sure he did. How long was he building the ark? Pardon? How many years? A hundred and twenty. A hundred and twenty years. Do you wonder that Peter talks about the long suffering of God when Noah built the ark? A hundred and twenty years. That's 43,800 days. God watched men rebel against him. He watched them do evil things for 43... You can do that with your children for 43,800 minutes. You'd skin them. Perhaps you'd put them on your lap and beat the daylights out of them nearly. Aren't you glad God isn't as short-tempered with you as you are with your children? Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, but so often we do. We rationalize on this level. I like what Paul's kept saying repeatedly during the last few weeks. By the way, he's away. He and his dear wife have some very serious things to decide this weekend, so pray much for them. By the way, Community Christian Church next Sunday. They don't sing as well as we do. But you could go. Betty's looking at me. I won't be preaching. The best preacher... Paul's going to preach there next Sunday morning, so pray for him. But they've some very critical things to decide, and I want you to pray for them. And don't phone them, don't talk to them, just pray for them. It's very, very critical in their lives right now. 43,000... I staggered. I got Martha to work this out for me today. Talks about those 120 years. 43,800 days? And God watched in patience. He didn't pull the switch on them. He let them go on and on and on, but then eventually He dropped the boom, as we would say. Now, what did Jesus say? As it was in the days of Noah... He's the teacher tonight, not me in one sense. As it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be in the days of coming of the Son of Man. I watch very little TV. I don't think you go to hell if you have one. I don't think you go to heaven if you don't have one. It's dangerous. It's dangerous to teach your children to read. They might get pornographic literature. It's not what you possess that concerns me. It's what possesses you. I wish... If you find one, let me know. You know we've got a birthday coming up next month, by the way. But anyhow... I'm looking for a clock with 28 hours every day. If you find one, let me know. I want a calendar with about 565 days in a year. I don't have enough time. It's running away from us as quickly as ever it can. I know these are the evil days in which we're living. As it was in the days of Noah, even so shall it be in the days of the coming of the Son of Man. I preached to some hundreds of preachers two weeks ago. At nights, I guess, we had about 1,200 there. And God did some real work. But one night, a big shot professional preacher... I won't give you his name. Anyhow, he said, Oh, here's a conference with about 2,000 people the first night. He said, There's only one hymn we can sing to start this revival. I thought, Oh, he'll sing, All hail the powers of Jesus' name. You know what he sang? America the beautiful. If he hadn't have been so big, I'd have pushed him off the platform, I think. What in God's name do you start a conference? A revival conference singing that? So I had to have my pennies worth, you know, next day. I said, What do you mean, America the beautiful? Our jails are packed. Our divorce courts are packed. We're broken in mind with drugs. We're broken in body with sex perversion. We're broken with drunkenness. Where's America beautiful? Where's England beautiful? None of them. I say, I don't watch TV much, but last Tuesday night, I think it was Tuesday or Monday, there was a play on TV called Samaritan. Any of you seen it? I think there's a book to that title. Mitch, Mitch Snyder was the fellow that it was all wrapped around. He lived in Washington. The second title to the book was Miracle on, I don't know, was it 2nd Street or 42nd Street? Anyhow, it's just a few weeks before Christmas. Here's an ordinary man going down the street. And he went round. He saw a little old lady squatting over those grids, you know, where the heat comes up. And he went night after night after them until he got such a burden, he couldn't sleep. And before long, he started fasting. I don't know, he fasted 52 or 53 days until his wife sat at his bedside, Darling, take something, take something. But he was determined to break down the boys in City Hall. Well, he gathered together 740 derelict characters. I don't know if you've seen Celia or Cecilia Tyson. She played last year in a play liberating the slaves going to Canada. She's a black woman. She was 103 last year. She knocked 78 years off that. But she's still an old woman. And she played the part of a little derelict old black woman. Nobody loved her, nobody cared. These were unloved, unsought. And dear God, in the distance you can see the spire of churches. Well, what in God's name are these people rescuing the perishing? What's the church doing for them? No good giving them a tract and say we'll be praying for you. Forget it. We could do something more than that. And he was determined to do it. He went to the city fathers and they said you can't do this, you can't do that, you can't do the other. He said there's a building there. It cost 10 million. He said what's 10 million compared to 740 perishing people? The weather's going to drop 20 degrees tonight. And some of the men eaten all of it. And they haven't been in a bed for months. And he really poured it on, you know. He told them just everything he could. Eventually those stony-hearted old boys broke down a bit. They wouldn't give him the 11 million dollar building. They gave him the disused railway station. It looked like, it looked like, what am I trying to say? Cathedral, Westminster Avenue. It had those big old arches in it, you know. And he crowded those people in. He got 500 beds, if I remember right. Got the blankets, got the food. And he set them up. But I tell you, Brother Dale, as I watched that, here are these derelicts, doctors that got on drink, people that got on drugs. Some were shaky. Mostly were old, over 50 if that's old. But anyhow, they got over that. That's to get some of you off the hook. But there they were in such awful conditions, shaky. One man is dying, the other guy has a bottle with whiskey, about so much. Take it. No, you take it. One crippled man is pushing another in a wheelchair across the road and he falls down, he collapses. The fellow in the wheelchair is half paralyzed, he's had no food. He dies. They give him a military funeral. Why? Because in Vietnam he went out on the shell fire and rescued so many dying men. And here he is, the man says, in God's name, what are we doing? The richest country in the world and we've hundreds of thousands of people through the nation dying. But I transferred that. Instead of seeing those old shaky black and white people and all the other people ragged and... I sat there and instead of watching that I was weeping, sure. I wasn't seeing old men and women who'd had their innings, who'd had their day. And somehow got into the devil's clutch and it stripped them and robbed them of manhood and womanhood and threw them mentality and virtue and everything. They were wrecks walking around on two legs. I wasn't seeing them, I was seeing... I was seeing Main Street in Tyler. Not with stacks of derelict folk but young smart kids. Many, many of them, scores of them from the schools, finished, maybe graduated this summer. They're well dressed, they've got these fancy, what do you call these, things you ladies like to wear with a badge on? Martha, come on, help me there. No, dear. Designer clothes. My wife doesn't wear them. We get our designer clothes that came out. But anyhow, I could see those young people going down the street, free, happy, they've pocket money, they've good homes, they've had education. They're not ragged, they're not dirty. What are you upset about? Because I was looking in their hearts, they're just as ragged as those people out outside. They're dark, they're polluted, they're in bondage, they're captives to drink, they're captives to sin, they're captives to every devilish thing there is. But the church doesn't care. As I've told you, we're broken in our minds through drugs, we're broken in our bodies through sin, we're broken in our divorce rate. Everything's broken except the church. The church isn't broken-hearted about it. Jesus is, but we're not. Well, here's some statistics for you. A brother down in El Paso phoned me tonight and I asked him for these statistics. They come from a paper, I think it's called, is it New Morning Ministries? And it's associated with the Assemblies of God, so it must be true. Come on now, this is America the Beautiful, forget my English tongue. Statistics. There are one million runaway teenagers every year in the US, but the majority of them are never reported by their parents. Thirty-five percent of the runaways leave home because of incest. Do you know what that is? Are you telling me America is a beautiful? Do you think God doesn't look down on every home where a man is fooling around and having sexuations with his daughter? Come on, it's the same in every country. Everybody saw the flood coming on Noah's day. What do you think they did? Sat down and waited for it? Forget it. As soon as the clouds darkened, the heavy thunder rolled. What did they do? I believe every man jumped on a horse and got out of town. They've been warned day after day after day, year after year. They've gone up and snared and scorned and ridiculed the man who was building the ark. And then when the heavens broke and the water came from beneath and water from above, I guess they jumped on every horse and camel and elephant they had to try and beat it out of the town. But they saw the water coming in. Noah had built an ark. What did he do? He cut himself off from the rest of the world. When he got in that ark, that ark had to be his entertainment, his joy, his peace, everything. Well, come on, if it's a type of Christ, why in God's name doesn't it satisfy people? Why isn't Christ your all in all tonight? As it says in Philippians, He is all and in all. Why isn't Christ all your joy? Why isn't Christ all your peace? Why isn't Christ all your happiness? I guess if you had a favorite aunt and she was wealthy and some of you young guys that like nice cars, she has two Rolls Royces and she said, you know dear, I'm going to leave them both to you. And of course, this mansion with all its antiques and my yacht that I anchor outside of New York somewhere, it's all going to be yours. Don't you think at times you'd have a little emotion and ecstasy? Well, come on, have we lost sight of eternity? Is it true you're going to prepare a mansion for us? It doesn't matter how poor you are. It doesn't matter how uneducated you are. It doesn't matter if you don't understand all the Bible. I don't know anybody that does. But if you know, if you can say blessed assurance, Jesus is mine, then you've got your name in the Lamb's book of life. You know, believers say, well, of course, in Revelation 20 it talks about the books being opened. But that's written to unbelievers. Sure it is. Oh, there are no books open for believers. Are you sure? What about Malachi, where it says a book of remembrance is written? There's another thing you've done today you've got away with. You've got away for now, it's judged up there. What about this book, as Paul has kept saying? We're going to face this book. I don't know how you'll get on. Maybe you feel pretty cocksure in your particular denomination of theology. Well, read Hebrews 11 and get your nose rubbed in the dust. No matter whether you talk about Finney or Wesley or Savnerola, a man that never claimed to be filled with the Holy Ghost. Savnerola shook a whole city from center to conference. He toppled the papacy. He toppled corruption. He toppled the leaders. He toppled the magistrates. He toppled the noblemen. He made the king in his castle to tremble. Just one man, one man. God doesn't raise up denominations, He raises up men. Then out of the men maybe something grows. God raised up Wesley, Charles and John. Before that He raised of course George Whitfield who was the torchbearer actually. But look what happened, they shook the world. Luther, he shook the world. Cary went to India when the Baptists stroked their beards and said, No young man, when God wants to save you He's omnipotent and sovereign. He'll save them without you. Don't believe that. God is sovereign but He works through human agencies. I believe if He told the angels, Gabriel tonight and the rest, you can go to earth just for two years and later I guess they'd dive over the parapets of heaven and be down here in five minutes. Paul says we're going and I keep telling you dear friend, I'm not going to heaven for the weekend and you're not going to go to hell for the weekend if you don't say. We're going forever and ever. And Paul says I want to tell you the things that motivate me. I have a home eternal in the heavens. I have a home. Can you imagine walking down the street one day and meeting the apostle Paul? Gold streets. You'll be able to tell the evangelist they'll be digging the streets up. Can you think of us in eternity? Everlasting bliss, everlasting joy? As the hymn says it will be worth it all when we see Jesus. Life's trials will seem so small. We will be we'll see that we fell over match stalks. We thought they were redwood trees when we bumped against them. We'll wish that we carried heavier burdens. We'll wish that we'd lived more sacrifices. It's too late. There's no U-turn before the throne of God. Remember that. Whether you're a sinner going to the judgment seat there's no U-turn. You'll wish to God there was but there won't be. There's no U-turn for the believers either. I'd better get on with this or I'll be here longer. The majority of this million have runaways. I never reported it by parents. Thirty times thirty-five percent of the runaways leave home because of incest. Thirty-three because of physical neglect. The rest are throwaways or abandoned by parents. This young man said to me tonight the police called us down to the airport. They found a little boy from South America retarded, very severely retarded. A little Mexican. He's dumped in a corner. His parents left him and fled. They don't know who he belongs to. There he is. He's a throwaway. And he says we're constantly facing this. Many of the runaways don't know A hundred and fifty thousand of them a year disappear. Disappear. We don't project that. People sit all night looking at junk on TV. What about the undercurrent? Not just the underworld. What about the undercurrent of sorrow and misery and tragedy and broken hearts and broken lives? We don't see it. And yet isn't it our business to bind up the brokenhearted, to let the oppressed go free and break every yoke? We're going to do something about it. I am by God's grace within a month or so do something about this youth business. Here in Thailand 250,000 teenagers attempt suicide each year which is nearly it's nearly a thousand a day a bit less. But look, these kids have the nicest homes, the nicest houses, the best education, they wear the best clothes, they ride the best cars. But what in God's name is missing? I don't like much that H.G. Wells said but one thing he did say speaks with me. He said this in 1912. He said, there is a God-shaped blank in everyone. You know, in 1912 he and a few other guys got together and formed what we call the Fabian Socialist Society. And they laughed at the church, they laughed at Christianity, they laughed at the Bible. They said, we can produce a new race of people who are talking about England mainly but they meant in the world. We can produce a new race of men by intellectual and biological processes. The idea of some of them was to squeeze out those who were born weak. They were singing Swinburne's story from the last century. Glory to man in the highest for man is the master of things. But right after they sung their song World War I came, followed by World War II, followed by the debacle of course of Vietnam. And man just gets more and more depraved and more and more wicked. 250,000 attempt suicide each year. 15 to 20,000 succeed. Well, how do you know that it wouldn't be the most promising scientists in the world? How do you know they wouldn't be the best surgeons but the devil stopped them? How do you know they wouldn't be the best Christians or preachers or something? Now you can hang over that some Calvinism and say, well, it's in God's order. OK. A man told me in my office, well, you see, everything is destined. I said, are you telling me that 100,000 babies when they were born, when they were in the mother's womb were destined to be flushed down the john as soon as they were born? Get out of the office. I don't believe that. I'm a little angry tonight. I've got a right to be. 15 to 20,000 young people. Didn't they have this trouble in Plano last year? Five or six or seven teenagers living in the best parts of Dallas with lovely homes. Didn't the boy stand behind the door when his daddy and mummy came from church? He was 14. He killed a pair of them because he hadn't been getting his own way. See, the breakdown is not in government, really. The breakdown is in the home. It's the home where the seeds are sown. In one year, one million teenage girls will become pregnant and of them, 200,000 will be aborted. I'm not reading about Sodom and Gomorrah. I'm reading about America where you can't get a prayer meeting going hardly in any churches. Young guys phone me and say, Mr. Rayleigh, I'm trying to get a prayer meeting in the church, but they don't want to come. They don't want to pray. Do you know why they don't come? Because they have no prayer life at home. If they had, they'd come with something kindling in their hearts and want to explore and then they'd go to a prayer meeting. You don't have to grind something up. I want to come every night with a burdened heart. I want to live with a burdened heart. I can't live otherwise. As I say, I'm sick of the mediocrity in the church. I'm looking for God to start a fire. You better hang on with me, Brother Farrar and his wife and bet he's dead. I believe God will do a new thing, something entirely different in the next six months, less than six months, here in the Tyler area. Two hundred, one million teenage girls will become pregnant. To that number, two hundred thousand will be aborted. Think of that. Two hundred thousand girls, teenagers, sixteen and under, aborting their babies. Why? Because many of them now at twelve years of age are getting pregnant. They're only girls. They're only children bringing to birth children. They've no qualifications to handle children. God didn't intend it that way. Now it says fifteen percent of all teens, well I don't quite know whether it's teens or what it is anyhow, I don't know the grades in America like England, but fifteen percent of all grades from ten to twelve and eleven percent of all others from seven to nine are classified as having a drinking problem. Notice there's nothing here. Eighty percent of all boys, seventy percent of all girls will have sexual relations before they leave the high school. Sod them. Approximately three hundred thousand female prostitutes in the country, teenagers. Do you think this doesn't make God sorry and angry? Do you just pass it on as statistics? Well that's not the worst. Two nights ago, I don't listen to much TV but I like to check where, because the boys are on three different continents so I want to know what's happening, riots, earthquakes, what. Two nights ago, or was it last night, I forget, when Peter Jennings, he was talking about the, what do you call them, contras, you know what the contras are? He was talking about the contras and he called a man handsome, well-dressed, smart, well-groomed, charming guy. I said that guy's well-educated, he's well-fed, he's well-clothed, he's got a well-stored mind. He said you were in it to see the contras, weren't you? Yes. What do you see? Now listen, this is horrifying and I couldn't sleep. It sounds pretty vulgar but come on, I'm telling you, we're back to Sodom. This well-dressed man sat in the street, he watched twenty men rape a twelve-year-old girl to death. Well what in God's name did he stand there for? I mean, I'm not a, I don't believe in shooting, in killing people. I couldn't, well one, if one man raped a little twelve-year-old girl, somebody should have gone and dragged him away and dragged the girl away. But he stood there and watched twenty do it. And he's educated. He's a product of an American university, of an English university. Otherwise he wouldn't be in that capacity that he was reporting there in that country. But Jennings wasn't moved when he read it and the guy wasn't embarrassed when he said it. Do we have hearts of flesh or stone or what? You see, if you only see people with a body, if you only see them on a social standing or an intellectual standing, you're missing it. I tell you, I just can't go down the street now in Tyler without seeing those teenagers. Some come from Christian homes. Many of them have been to church. They made a confession that the preacher got baptized and they're going to hell fire as much as they were before. Born again is a miracle. A man becomes a new creature if he doesn't, he isn't born again. He may go tithe. He may take sacrament. He may get baptized. But as he had changed heart, when he gets up from that altar he should have a changed heart, a changed mind, changed appetite, changed desires, changed vocabulary. A man is a new creation. God doesn't patch him up where he's leaking. He makes a new man. And the same spirit that put Jesus in the womb of the Virgin Mary, the same spirit creates us. We're regenerated. We're forgiven by the Father. We're cleansed through the blood. We're regenerated by the Holy Spirit. I don't know what's been taught in Bible schools today, but I tell you, we need to go back to basics. We need to stop people going out. I saw you kneeling there. What happened? Oh, I got saved. How do you know? I feel better. Well, you may feel in hell tomorrow morning. If you live by feelings, boy, you'll perish. John Wesley preached on Romans 8. I forget the verse. Is it 16? The spirit beareth witness with our spirit. He preached on that more than any other thing. The spirit bears witness. You can't depend on your feelings. You can't say, I've started a new leaf. It's not a new leaf you need. It's a new life you need. Christianity is not just a religion. It's a life. And let me tell you again, Christianity has not been weighed in the balances and found one thing. It's been tried, found difficult and rejected. When Jesus calls a man as Bonhoeffer, I was reading a bit of Bonhoeffer yesterday. You remember he was delivered in Germany. Three days after they hung him, the prison was released. Everybody was released. But Bonhoeffer said, remember, when Jesus calls a man, he calls him to die. We say, come and get a new life. He calls you to die. Die to the old life. Die to the old man. Die to your own old interest. Die to your old appetite. Cut yourself off. Again, Noah goes in the ark. And he's there for years. Up to that time, the preparation time, he's scorned, he's ridiculed, they laugh at him. And they'll do that with you. But what do you think happened five minutes after the door was shut? Remember, he put everything in the ark but one thing. God says, you put a light in the window, put the animals, but there's one thing you can't do. I shut the door. And when I shut the door, no man can open it. But once he got inside that ark, inside that door, he had no fellowship with the world. Nobody visited him. He didn't visit anybody else. Even before the flood came, he was shut up there. And then he lived for months after the flood had died down. We would get up and going and say, well, praise the Lord, he's delivered us. The flood's gone off, I'm going. The Lord says, stay here. Everybody's in a hurry to go nowhere. What are you in a hurry about? We're going straight ahead to eternity. God is wanting people that find in Jesus Christ everything he found in the ark. He found peace there, the world was rolling, the old ship was rolling. It had no sails, it had no motor. It wasn't made to sail. What was it made to do? Float. And science says it's the most amazing statistics. It's the most wonderful thing ever made to float. It was three stories high. Or was it, I forget the length, 450 feet long and 75 feet wide, three stories high. I don't know, about 50,000 cubic feet of space. Well, weren't there a few that got saved outside of the ark? No, there were a few that got saved. They were in the ark. And the only reason they were saved, they were in the ark. They'd heard Enoch, they'd heard Noah. A minute after, when the Lord pulled the plug as it were and the rains came down, the rain came, what did they do? They were screaming, screaming, screaming. Open unto us, open unto us, like the virgins. I say not all the church is going to the marriage supper. Why? Well, if they were, all the virgins would have gone in. But they didn't get in. Jesus says, they that overcome shall sit with me on my throne. Well, who sits with the king, the queen? Who's the queen? The overcomers. Who are the overcomers? Those who are pure. It's too late, dear friend, when you're gasping on your deathbed. You pull out of an automobile wreck, you can make all kinds of promises. But today, if he will hear his voice, Hebrews says, today, we've got to redeem the time every day. The old devil will cheat us. He'll get fascinated with something. We had a man in the church, I pass it, he's a brilliant Greek scholar. He lost his anointing, he lost his power with what? Nightclubs. No, collecting stamps. You say, what? Collecting stamps? Yes, he invested a fortune in them. He stayed up all night with a pair of tweezers, sticking them here and turning them, until he got volumes and volumes of stamps. He used to stay up till midnight and study the Word, but he got fascinated with the stamps. And he lost, it's a very simple thing. As I've said to you often, the good is often the enemy of the best. And you've got to keep on your alert. The days of evil we've got to be in the arc of safety. Christ has to be my full satisfaction. It's easy to sing, Jesus, you're a lover of my soul, isn't it? Until you realize what's in it. Is it the second stanza that says, Thou O Christ art all I want and more than all in thee I find? Is that true? Why do you prefer? I'll get my head in my hands and I'll say it anyhow. Going out for a horse ride, if you haven't spent time with God, you love the horse more than you love God. Playing racquetball, doing some other thing, which in itself may not be evil, but God is a jealous God. Why can you spend so much time with that hobby or that situation that you spend in His holy presence, contemplating eternity where we're going before long? Well, it says concerning Noah, he was a preacher of righteousness. You can preach anything today. Preach the second blessing, preach the second coming, preach the second death, no. We don't talk about the second death. But it's there in the book. And time is running out. And I'm sick to death, as I've said more than once, of the devil having monopoly of our young people. He's got them where he wants them. Otherwise, these statistics are a bunch of lies and they're not. They're being carefully filtered. They've come from a work which is very much like Teen Challenge. I'm going to get them printed out. I'm going to write an article and put some of these things in. You see, if we're not careful, we'll see as other men see. Remember the man in the Bible and God touched him, Jesus touched him, but he saw men as trees. You'll see people, oh, that girl, she's an honor student. That boy is a quarterback. Come on, forget it. That's how the world thinks. He's either saved or lost. He's either fuel for the flames of hell or he's a person that's going to wear a diadem in the presence of Jesus forever. And once we get eternity conscious, all our values change. All our interests change. We won't be seduced by trivia. We won't be occupied with trivia. We say, God, I want to live a hundred percent. As I've told you, I want to live so that without a minute's notice I could walk straight into heaven. I don't have to say, well, Lord, hold off. I have something to put right. I have some repentance to make. I had a grudge against somebody. I want to say, no, no, no, no, no. I want to walk in the light as he gives it to me. As I've told you, these guys write and ask me. In fact, a lady said this week to someone, I'd like to be in, I'd like to be in, where do we live, David? Linde. I'd like to be in Linde when Brother Ray Mill dies. She'd like to wear my mantle. Isn't that nice? Why are so many people wanting my mantle? I need it a few more years yet. When these guys say, Brother Ray Mill, ask the Lord if you'll let me have your mantle. I say, no. I can't send you my mantle. I'll send you some of my sackcloth. I never hear from them again. They don't want sackcloth. They don't want to carry the burden of Jesus. You say, you hear people say, I'm saved, I'm sanctified, I'm spirit-filled. When did you last hear somebody say, I've had my Gethsemane? Crucifixion in itself isn't death. I'm crucified with Christ. But did you die? Did you stay long enough? A man could hang on a cross for 12 hours without dying. But Paul says, I'm crucified, yet I live. Because he said, once sin dwells in me, now Christ lives in me. You know, once I start living like Christ, thinking like Christ, seeing the world in the eyes of Christ, seeing material things in the eyes of Christ, the world looks insane. It's a madhouse. I get up every day and say, dear God, this world's stark mad. It's breaking your laws and you hold your peace. But he said, as it was in the days of Noah, there's a vengeance coming. There's the day of vengeance of our God. The moon hasn't yet turned into blood. Or the sun turned into darkness. But darkness covers the earth even now. And God is wanting everyone of us to be living 100% for Him. Totally careless as to what we were, whether it's valuable or not. Only as we live in righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. You see, the trouble with the kids, I don't like to call them kids. You do, I don't. I wouldn't like to go behind my boys and hear them talking and someone say, the old goat's coming. Well, if they're kids, I must be an old goat. My children, your children, are you a role model? Are they seeing you totally consumed in the will of God? Saying, God, something has to happen in Tyler. I'm not responsible. It's easy to go up the Amazon. There's dear Spencer again, this full-blooded Indian from this country. Praised with brokenness for the two and a quarter million Indians in this country. And hardly anybody's reaching them except the Mormons. I have to be away next Friday night and Paul too, we're going to, up to Bethany. If you remember, Dick, Ray, what's his name? Ray Doss is going to come and give us another talk about India. I'm going to ask what we pray for three things. The Indians in America, the Indians in India, and if you take Reader's Digest, this month, there's an article there about the Jews. Thousands of them want to leave Russia and they can't. Why does God look down on Russia? Why does God look down on Afghanistan? Dear God, most of you haven't thought of either of them today. You're concerned about the biggest hamburger. Or your wife burned a bacon. Well, everybody has a cross. I'm trying to get you grown up too quickly, some people think. No, I don't want you to be walking around as cripples ten years from now. I want you to get some spiritual muscle, some spiritual strength, some spiritual vision, some spiritual intelligence. The devil's running away with the world because the young Christians aren't standing up as they should. So tonight, we're going to pray for these two. Pray for the Indians, pray for the Jews in captivity. We're told to pray for the peace of Jerusalem and pray for India with its... Stevens. This is the third day of this trial, so I think there's another to come, so let's pray for him tonight. Pray for those who are bound as being with them, the Word of God says. Well, are you glad you're free tonight? How free are you? Are you free from sin? Are you free from doubt? Are you free from fear? Are you free? You can say, my chains fell off, my heart was free. I like the hymn, and I'm through with this. The fellow that wrote the hymn of love that will not let me go, he also wrote a hymn, make me a captive Lord and then I shall be free. Like the railroad, while the train runs there, it's captive to the lines but it's free to go to speed. He says, make me a captive Lord and then I shall be free. Force me to render up my sword and I shall conquer thee. I sink in life's alarms when by myself I stand. Imprison me within thine arms and strong shall be my heart. Within thine arms and strong shall be my heart. And my heart is weak and poor until it must find. It has no spring of action, sure it trembles with the wind. It only stands unbent amid the clashing strife when on thy bosom it is lent and found in thee its life. God wants us to be a holy people. If we're not holy, we'll go to hell anyhow. He says, without holiness no man shall see the Lord. I say again, God doesn't know any of us, owe us anything. We've had this book, we've all the life, we've all the privileges and yet with all the mechanization we have we're not moving this generation to God. God wants men, He wants women full of the Holy Ghost purified until they've no will. Take my will and make it thine it shall be no longer mine. In perfect unison with Him. I want you to cry out to God, come on now, don't leave the praying just to three or four. And don't pray forever, pray and quit, don't go round and round. Say it and believe it. But somebody pray for these youth tonight. Can you think of a million girls this year that have run away and most of them have been lost, forgotten. Girls being sold to prostitution. You can see that on West 42nd Street in New York and the other great cities. And the devil just putting a bigger cancer in this country the whole world in what's called humanism and freedom and it's bondage and it's death and it's disease and it's damnation. And it should make us angry. And once we get really angry in the spirit there is a holy anger. Human anger, there's bitterness. Holy anger, there's sorrow. I see George here. Are you from Zimbabwe? Where? Pardon? Nigeria. Oh, Nigeria, good. Well, it's good to see you anyhow, George. Let's get some burden. Forget all about yourself. Lord, I'm weak, I'm this. Forget it. You should have come and got that straight before you came to church. This is where we plead. This is where we beg. This is where we come and implore God and ask that our faith may reach out to bless a dying world and begin at Jerusalem. I turn offers down to go to other countries and so, sure I do. Someone might ask me where I live. I live in Thailand. I have in revival. No. Why should I go to another city to try and get revival when my own city is dying? I want to see God Almighty do something in this community. And I believe He's going to do it. I write little aphorisms every few days. One I wrote this week was Love has blood on it. There's no true love without sacrifice. I'm not going to sing. Well, maybe we'll sing it without the book. Go to prayer. I hope you can stay. Well, nearly an hour. If you can't, it's okay. You can leave. But pour your heart out. Young guys, some of you have been drunk. Some of you have been on drugs. You know it. Pray for the captives that God will liberate them. That we'll have a holy crusade. We'll get a stronger hatred towards sin and we will if we get a stronger love toward God. I want this place to blaze on Friday nights. Blaze until we're full of holy fear, full of holy joy. Well, as we know, let's sing Draw Me Nearer, nearer, blessed Lord. Draw me nearer.