In this sermon, the speaker shares a personal story about meeting a 94-year-old lady who lived to be 108. He reflects on the brevity of life and asks the audience to consider what their own lives mean. He contrasts the fleeting pleasures of the world with the eternal significance of following Jesus. The speaker also mentions the example of Stephen Greiligt, who faced death and hardship in order to spread the message of Christ. The sermon concludes with a question about how to explain eternity to others.

I said that the government of the United States pays the bankers five hundred million dollars a second, which is obviously wrong. It's five hundred dollars, which is just terrible anyhow. Dr. Van Fadener, a very gifted man of God, has been asked very often to classify his preaching, and he's been asked if he's a preacher, and he says no. And he's been asked if he's a Bible teacher, and he said, no I'm not. So then people say, what are you? And he said, I'm an exhorter. The Methodists used to talk about that quite a bit. And this message this morning is just an exhortation. The text is a question from the epistle of James. Martin Luther called this epistle an epistle of straw. I never understood why, because I'm quite sure that it's quite piercing, quite penetrating. And this is one of those questions which is not very easy to answer. It's just this, what is your life? Mr. Spurgeon once said, talking to students, he was a great preacher, though he never went to Bible school. Isn't that interesting? Maybe you'd be better if you'd never gone. But anyhow, Mr. Spurgeon said, more than once to his students, sometimes the best way to find out what a text says, is to find out what it doesn't say. So this text says what? What is your life? It does not say, what is life? Because nobody has found the answer to that. The poet sings of course, with poetic license, so sweet mystery of life, at last I found thee. But that is not true. There's a famous book written a few years ago, and the title of it was, Life Begins at Forty. What is your life? And the Bible gives 17 answers to the question. And every time it answers the question, it speaks of life in a very relative way. It speaks of life in some ephemeral way, something that passes very quickly. A life, it says, is like the tent of the Arab. It's here, and then you look in the morning, it's gone. Job says that life is like a weaver's shuttle, it just dances across the machine of the weaver. I used to go in factories in England, other places, and watch the weaving, and there's the shuttle there, it goes across and it's gone. Life, well the life of man today, he's like the grass of the field, which is today, looks good, and tomorrow it's cast into the oven. And in this particular text, the answer is given. What is your life? It is even a vapor, it's like that stuff that comes off the kettle, it looks as though you could grasp it and you can't. It's gone when you try to get after it. The poets have been very interesting, in my judgment, in the way they've spoken about this. One of them said life at its best is very brief, like the falling of a leaf, like the binding of a sheath. Be in time. Francis Henry Light wrote that wonderful hymn, Abide With Me, Fast Falls, Even Tight. And you may remember that in it he says, swift to its close, ebbs out life's little day. I was preaching in Ireland and stayed in a beautiful castle with a friend of mine. When I came home my wife said, where did you stay? And I told her, who were there? And I told her of the folk that were there. And I said, there was a lovely blonde there, and she said, oh. I said, I sat in the garden with her every day and we quoted poetry to each other, and the last day I held her hand and I said, you know, you're really beautiful, and I plucked a rose and gave it to her, and I gave her a kiss and a hug. My wife said, how old was she? I said, 94. She said, that's okay. If she'd been 24, it might have been another story, but this dear old lady, at 94 years of age, she could remember the time when she sat at the base of the windmill and watched the first funeral that she could remember come down the street. And I said to her, well, what is it like to live nearly a century? Incidentally, she lived to be 108, I think. And she said, it seems only yesterday. And she quoted again, the light. Life is very brief, like the falling of a leaf, like the binding of a sheath. The end time. Now this text says, what is your life? Could you answer it? Oh, you could answer it in a word, maybe failure, success, disappointing. Maybe everyone could give almost a different answer to the question, but again it is, what is your life? Again, to use the argument of Mr. Spurgeon, not, not, to find out what the text says. It does not say what it's like. It does not say, what is our life? It says, what is your life? Well, there's one thing for sure, it's your life. You were never here before, and you won't be here again. We don't believe in the transmigration of soul or reincarnation. And you've just little span of life to live. My concept is that life is a tiny ocean surrounded, pardon me, a tiny island surrounded by the ocean of eternity. And it doesn't matter which way you get off, you just step into, into eternity. And there was a time when you didn't exist, but there'll never be a time when you do not exist. A thousand billion, trillion, quadrillion years from this morning, you'll be either in eternal bliss or eternal darkness, eternal hell. There's a part of you, a part of me, which is indestructible. What is your life? You've got many lives. We say sometimes a cat has nine lives. I don't know how many they have. You've got life, physical life, otherwise you wouldn't be here. You feed your body. Some of you have done good at that, I see. And, and then some of you feed your minds, and some of you not done so good. But anyhow, you've got physical life, you've got mental life, you have your social life, business life, emotional life, you laugh, you cry. Yeah, you can feed your body. I, I remember being in a street meeting when a man said to me, and I don't think there's anything more educating than street meetings. I had a church in my twenties in England where we had a congregation of six to seven hundred every Sunday night. They lined up outside of the church like a movie house if we announced anything special. And I had a street meeting Saturday night for the drunks and prostitutes in town. We got hundreds of them. And it was very educating, from ten o'clock till midnight. And I remember one day a man got pretty angry as I talked to him about the things that belong to the Spirit, about eternity. He said, eternity. Soul. You talk about me having a soul. Where is it? The back of my head? I said, as a matter of fact, he said, you know, I've got, well you say, I've got a soul. I've got three souls. You got three souls? Yeah, I've got one on each foot he said. And I've got one somewhere in here. You say, where is it? Is it in my back, my kidneys, or my back of my head? Where is it? Can the x-ray find it? No, science doesn't know where it is. Well then it doesn't exist. Well I said, that's very interesting. Well he said, I'm not interested. I just want to live my own life and I'm not concerned that I have a soul or not. I said, are you married? He said, yes. I said, do you love your wife? He said, sure I love my wife. Don't get angry. I said, I'll just ask you a question. And he said, I said, you really love her? Sure I love my, you should see my wife. I love my wife. Oh, another thing he had said to me that I omitted. He said, in any case, you talk about my soul. What shape is it? Is it square? Is it oblong? Is it diamond shape? Is it round? Is it flat? Does it smell? And of course the crowd laughed. They always like to see you, you know, ridiculed. And I said, well I can't answer your questions really. But then I applied it to him. I said, you told me that you love your wife. Yes I do love my wife. All right. I said, now hold your horses while I get through. Tell me this, what shape is your love? Is it oblong or square or round? Is it a sphere? Is it flat? How much does it weigh? And where is it? In your feet? Back of your head? Between your ears? Down here? Where is it? And finally, does it smell? And you know, he, he, he got really disturbed. He got really angry. All the lot of things that you have in your personality that you obviously you can't locate them. But there is something in us, there is something at least in, in, in our being different from the animal. We, we have a spirit. God is a spirit. We're a spirit. Spirit to spirit. Now the poet says, and so I have life, mental life, so I can think. I've got to feed my mind. I've got to feed my body. Emotional life, other areas of life, we look after them very well. But this area of the spiritual life, we seem to neglect considerably. You know, it's a very wonderful thing. I say sometimes to people, you know, when you're in a certain type of church, you stand up and you say, I'm saved, and well that's great. You go to another church, you say, if you're a Nazarene, holiness people, you say, I'm saved and sanctified. And everybody says, great. If you're a Pentecostal, you say, I'm saved and had my baptism. Everybody says, whoopee, that's, that's, that's great, great stuff, you know. Well those are maybe illegitimate, but I say this very often to people. Look, instead of using all that jargon, why don't you stand up very sweetly, and uh, just uh, when they have a testimony meeting, just look around and say, uh, Christ liveth in me. When you sit down, your wife may say, uh, George, when did that happen? I knew you were a deacon, but I never suspected that, uh, I, I know you've been a pastor for a long while, but uh, I, I never suspected that Christ lives in you. Well if he doesn't, you're not a Christian. Because it's easy to go down the aisle and in the tank and out and pay your tithe. That's, that's not difficult. I heard when they were at that advertising, you know, advertising you need a tiger in your tank, that one pastor insisted that people before they got in the tank, they signed on the line that they would tithe before he baptized them, because he wanted a tither in the tank. But uh, thank you, thank you for not throwing anything. But, but isn't this really the thing? We say the supreme miracle of the ages was the incarnation, as I said last night, the same spirit that brooded over chaos and brought chaos among us. That same Holy Spirit brooded over the matrix of the Virgin Mary and conceived Jesus Christ. Well then, if I'm born again, that same amazing Holy Spirit can conceive Christ in me, because he says, Christ in you, the hope of glory. Then it doesn't matter what else we have, if you cannot honestly say this morning, Christ lives in me, then obviously you're not a Christian. And Paul says, the life which I now live by the faith of the Son of God. He was very obvious of life in many dimensions. Now this morning of course we're talking about, in some ways, the blending of our physical and moral and spiritual and intellectual and spiritual life. What is your life? Something entrusted to you. It's never going to happen again. Maybe that's fortunate for humanity, but anyhow. God isn't going to make another copy of you. He made one and that's it. What is your life? It is even a little vapor that, it is even a vapor that appeareth for a little time. But how deceptive it is. The word of God talks about a broad way. There is a way that seemeth right unto man. And if you went to Las Vegas or down the strip last night, lots of people indulging in all kinds of hideous things say, you know, this is life. And the word of God says it's a broad way and it's a crowded way. But it leadeth to destruction. A way that seemeth right unto man to, in these days, deliberated and do everything you like. But I happen to live two years in the subculture of New York amongst those folk that just did everything that defied God and man. And I've seen intellectuals with a stream of degrees come in broken under drugs and sex and every other devilish thing and almost crawl into that area where we were working before David Wilkerson became so famous. I remember a girl came in and we talked with her and David said to her, No I don't. I come from Vassau. And my mother is very outstanding in society and she mentioned where they lived up in the rich part of Long Island. David said to her, how do you live? Live as I want. She admitted she was a bisexual, lived an obscene life, lived with who she wanted, shacked up with anybody, any color, anywhere, any time. And just turned us off. One day I was sitting at breakfast and one of the boys said to the boy, Hey you know that kid that they interviewed the other week when they were making a film? She went crazy in a coffeehouse last night. Started pulling her clothes off and climbing the wall and the cops came and strapped her up and took her away. A few months after they said, Hey we were out down in 111th street of Broadway somewhere. We saw that kid last night. Boy she looks good again. Got out of the nut house as they said. A few weeks afterwards they were talking again. One boy said to the other, You know that kid that went to the nut house and got out? They pulled her body out of the East River last night. She was only about 18, very beautiful creature. Had all the privileges of society, had a good education. Just said she couldn't go mother's way because she was old-fashioned. As for the Bible and other things, well she did not have very much interest at all. But the one thing that she pursued she said, she wanted life. We had a man in England many years ago and he became one of the outstanding characters of the day. He went to all the royal houses in Europe. He was tall and dark and handsome in the language of the novelist and there wasn't a door shut against him. There was hardly a royal home that he didn't visit, but he left a slimy trail of immorality. He's a genius. He could point to the offspring of his intellect and say, I gave birth to all those books and I publish more poetry than anyone else and ask for blue blood, I'm an aristocrat. Ask for money, I've more than I can spend. But at 37 years of age Lord Byron was withering on a beach in Greece. Snatched his pen for the last time and wrote, not a glorious epitaph of life, not that I snatched at these fruits and I've taken off all the chains and I've been liberated. And I've been where other men haven't been. I've lived with the most beautiful women in the world, drunk the richest wines and so forth. He didn't give us a summary like that. Do you remember that moment when Jesus was really needing recruits and they came running up and said, Lord we're ready to go with you. He said, just a minute sit down and count the cost. You ever know a man sit down and count the cost of going to hell? Men go there blindly. Life has yielded all he could yield to this amazing man and he sits down and he takes his pen and writes for the last time in his moral and spiritual bankruptcy and despair and this is what he wrote. Life, my life is in the yellow leaf. The flowers and fruit of love are gone. The worm, the canker and the grief are mine alone. Isn't the devil a cheat? Isn't life deceptive that this man has drunk to the full the cup of wine and made his name in society and we still read his books and read his stories and poems and yet there when he's dying alone, not crowded with the beautiful society people, that there he is in anguish, facing death and hell. His life has all withered and he says, my life is in the yellow leaf. The flowers and fruit of love are gone. The worm, the canker and the grief are mine alone. And Shakespeare didn't get it much better did he? Didn't he talk about life being a some little thing that comes on the stage for a fleeting hour and and it's a tale told by idiots full of sound and fury? Oh the devil's a bad taskmaster. The opposite of Lord Byron is to me again the Apostle Paul where he's finishing his journey and it hasn't been very rewarding, not materially. And yet at the end of the journey before they chop his head off he's prepared to say about life, I fought a good fight. I like his humility, he never said he was a good fighter. But he said it's the best fight you could ever be in. I fought a good fight, I finished my course and I've kept the faith. With his battered body, with no bank account, with not a material possession that he could put his name on. And he fought against wind and storm and tide as Samuel Rutherford would say. And he's lived so intensely for God that even other men who were intense gave up. His revival party broke up, Demas has forsaken me, somebody else has gone in it. But he says thank God here I am. And the thrill of the whole thing is this, that when all the props go away he said nevertheless the Lord stood by me. And if you're telling God you want the best out of his out of life, well you better be careful because again he may pull all the props away. But you prove him in all his fullness. What is your life? Is the quest for these things that perish when you grasp them, the perishing things of clay as A.B. Simpson says, born but for one brief day? I think one of the tragedies of modern life is this. We're not eternity conscious people, not even preachers. I went to a famous conference not too long ago to speak, we were there five days. The city council gave us free bus service from the hotel to the auditorium about five miles away. We packed into those buses in the morning and then went home for lunch, some of us, and went back in the evening or afternoon. And there were three trips a day, six trips a day, there and back for five days, thirty trips. I never heard a preacher or an evangelist and you know them, they were big shots, not one of them ever mentioned God or revival or the things of the spirit. It was all golf or sport or do you think they're going to do it? I mean you know it'll be hard for them next week and I think they'll win by a touchdown maybe. Sport, nonsense, not a thing. Well if the shepherds are so stupid what do you expect the sheep to be? We're not eternity conscious. We're time conscious, money conscious, position conscious, possession conscious, personality conscious. We get rated even as evangelists or preachers and say you know that guy, oh he's got it made, he's got a bigger home and now he's got a Lincoln Continental and he's got this, because you don't have a car now if you're a big evangelist you have an airplane. No this thing that our fathers knew something about. To me Spurgeon was a very eternity conscious man. The material things, the ratings that men gave him did not matter. Wasn't it John Wesley who one day watched a man shoot an arrow into space and as it began to fall he turned and said to someone, say you see, did you see that? Sure that happens every day. Yes but that arrow going up and it fell down into that canyon. What about it? He said I'm that arrow. I was shot off at my birth. I began to make the arc like that and suddenly I, I lose momentum and I fall into eternity. He was an unsaved man. But I got problems with Wesley. You see he was more spiritual when he wasn't spiritual than I am when I am spiritual. He got up at four o'clock in the morning to pray before he was saved. He fasted two days a week and he wasn't born again. He said how can you spend money in luxury with all the poor people that are here? 35 years of age you, life? Oh there's a great deal of truth in life is what you make it. It's your life. Nobody ever had a bigger truck than you have. Nobody ever had a bigger bible than you have. Spurgeon used it better. Finney used it better. What an embarrassment when we again, and I remind you of this continually, when you stand alone, whether you're a professor or a president or a preacher or a pauper, and you stand there before the presence of the eternal God, with all the angels, archangels, and billions and billions of people looking on, and you've no husband to lean on and no pastor to plead with, and nobody to plead your cause, you're going to give an account that God ever entrusted you with his holy word. What a day it's going to be. Wesley got this concept. He was converted at 35. If you turn that around it's 53 and add 33. 35 to 53 makes 88 the time he died. He lived on $100 a year for 53 years. Like to try that? $100 a year. He traveled more than any other man in history on horseback except Asbury. He made a lot of money. Turned it all into buildings and printing bibles and printing hymn books. And when he died he left a request that they bury him where they lie. But he said, I left six English pound notes. They were at that time worth about five dollars each I suppose. And he said, I want you to find six poor men and carry me to my resting place. Give them a pound each. And besides the six pound notes he left six silver spoons. I don't know where he got them. And he left a faded Geneva gown he used to preach in and he left a handful of books. And that's all he left. No no let me see there's something else he left. Oh yeah I know the Methodist Church. I knew there was something that he left behind. He could have died the prime minister of England. He could have been the Archbishop of Canterbury if he'd stayed under his original ordination. He could have asked Edison Edison because he loved to invent things and and he loved languages. And he did what the hymn writer says, give every flying minute. Why you and I waste hours and days. Give every flying minute something to keep in store. And at night on horseback when he was riding in the moonlight he was he would be reading a Latin primer or something. Well David Brainerd didn't die at 88. David Brainerd died at 28. But he could say the same as John Wesley, I finished the work that thou gave us me to do and that's the whole success of life. It's not how long you live. Would have been better for some of us if we died years ago. Some of you being cumbering the earth long enough. If I'd have been God I'd have cut you off but you see he's more patient than I have. And I wonder at times he didn't cut me off for time I wasted. But here it is time you're living on a little island and whichever way you dive off it you dive off into eternity. What is your life? You see this book is the whole story of life isn't it? I notice some people around here they go to San Diego Zoo every weekend to see their relatives but that theory of course is exploding. Darwin never put that forward anyhow anything substantial and he repented of it before he died anyhow. And to say that men come from monkeys where related is certainly an insult to the monkeys. Monkeys don't make atom bombs. Monkeys don't get drunk. I've never seen a drunk monkey in my life. I've seen some silly ones. Then I've seen a lot of silly human beings too as far as that goes but we're not related to monkeys. No this book is about life. How it began in the garden. How it ends. Talks about the tree of life. There's a tree of life in the garden. There's a tree of life in the garden in paradise. There's a tree of God and where they crucified him on a tree it was in a garden Luke says. It wasn't the gripe if I can use that of Jesus that people are so stupid they get lost in religion and wearing phylacteries and going through ordinances and he says don't he will not come to me that I may have life. Buddha died seeking life and truth. Jesus says I am the way the truth and the life. He wasn't seeking it he was it. People say sometimes don't you don't you think you might be on the wrong track? No I know Jesus Christ was too honorable and wonderful to deceive me in any way and he says I am the way the truth and the life. Not only that he said there were degrees of life. Not only is there spiritual life eternal life and I remind you again the gift of God it's not a gift from God. It's not as I said here you take this that God breaks something off something he has called eternal life and he breaks a bit off for everybody who gets saved that's not it. It's the gift of God himself. The gift of God is eternal life. If he isn't indwelling you you do not have eternal life. You may have theological life and religious life and formal life. But spiritual life no. And Jesus says I'm come not that you may have life I have life. You may not think it but I do right now. I jumped out of a burning hotel a few years ago and dropped my back my feet my legs and I was lying in hospital bloody and smoke on me and and they threw a sheet over me and the doctor said and I remember I had my hands like this you know and I was laid back and I guess they thought I was sleeping or dying and the doctor said leave him he won't live long and I knocked the sheet down I said did you mean me oh he said he thought I was going to die. Well I'm not dead in case you think I am. I want to just make that very clear to you I'm not dead. It was a pretty painful experience. I had life. I still have it. That I it's limited. My body still reacts from uh from the horrible experience of leaping from three and a half stories of a burning hotel onto a sidewalk in New York in sub sub-zero weather. Mark Spitz has life. The athlete has life. A man in a wheelchair has life. But what grades there are in physical life what grades there are in mental life what grades there are in grades there are in spiritual life. You know some of us are looking for a book you keep looking on the book table how to become a saint in six easy lessons. When you find it send me a copy and I'll make you a promise I won't read it. I think of a boy I'm told in a California everything strange in California and he was in a California college I'm told and suddenly he said well I can't go through to earn a doctorate that's going to eat too much of my time up. So he went to the president whom he knew and he said uh say I'd like to cut some corners I'd like to uh well I'd like to do this seven-year course in four at the very most. And the president said well sit down John I want to talk to you. You want to make a short cut? Yeah yeah I want to I want to get maturity and all the knowledge you know and quickest way possible. So I said oh have you been out to see those redwood trees? He said yes sir aren't they marvelous aren't they fantastic three hundred and something. Do you know John the seed God planted it before Jesus Christ was born there it is it it's taken over three thousand years to develop. Yeah I believe that. As I came up the road he said they were loading a truck with watermelons about this that one was so big the man was kind of staggering under it and put it on the truck. And he said you know the Lord made that watermelon in six months. Now he said John what do you want to be a watermelon or a redwood tree? Hmm? Oh if I could only find it out. Oh no no reading the bible won't make you a saint. Putting it into practice will. And the only way for me to develop my spiritual life is for me to develop it. There's a man and he says Raymond you're not very muscular no and he says here read this book. Man it put inches on my biceps and I'm tough you know. I said great. Now he says I'm going to Australia and uh I'll be back in two years look after the book and he said yeah you'll be a different man. He comes back and uh he says boy I don't see any difference in you. What about the book? The book? I've read it every night. I put my feet up in the chair and I take a bottle of coke and a bag of Fritos and and uh I've read the thing through. I can quote chapters. You want to hear the third chapter? This is how it begins. You know the fifth chapter? You know the seventh chapter? It hasn't done anything for your muscles. No. As a matter of fact after just a year ago I abandoned the book. I said that book's no good. But look what he did for me. You mean to say you read the book and you did all the exercises? Oh you didn't tell me to do the exercises. You said read the book. It'll change you. And I've been reading it every day and my wife says turn the light out let's go to sleep. I've got to read this book. I want some muscles you know. And then get to sleep. No. And yet some of us think you know when I get out of CBC and I've got all my professor's notes tucked away. I mean all my notes tucked away. And uh when I get out to that big world boy they're going to see something. I'll tell you when they see how spiritual I am and how much I know. Well I've got news for you. Do you know the devil knows everything that's in that book and every professor's note as well? It hasn't done a thing for him. The devil believes in the virgin birth. He witnessed it. There isn't a thing that the modernists and the liberals disagree. The devil doesn't. He believes he knows it because he witnessed it. What has it done? You see this thing has to get down into my bloodstream. There are degrees of life. Jesus says I'm come that you might have life and that you might have it more abundantly. Or as it says in Romans 8 37 you know that you can you can be more than conqueror. I think so often of Jesus when he was obviously born of the Spirit. And surely he walked in the Spirit. And then you remember that he was baptized or anointed with the Spirit at Jordan. And immediately he was taken not by the devil but he was led of the Spirit into the wilderness. And tempted on all points. That means sex as well. Because he was a man. And from A to Z he was tempted for 40 days. Lonely. Exposed to all the batterings of the devil. Physically, mentally, socially, psychologically, bunched it all up. Nobody knows what went on. Oh you say I know what went on. He was led of the Spirit and he was tempted to turn stones in. No no no that was after the 40 days. You better do some checking up. Afterwards when he was a hungered. The other 40 days was that fearful exposure. But I like the uh there's no mystery of how he came out of the wilderness. After that most grueling experience maybe that any man ever had anywhere at any time. And Jesus it says he returned in the power of the Spirit. He didn't return on the edge of a nervous breakdown. He didn't say well I'm gonna have to have a rest after this. Boy the devil's been after me for 40 days. He returned in the power of the Spirit. Why? Because he had that abundant life. And this is what he desires that you and I should have. I'm come that they might have life and that they might have it more abundantly. And this book is merely the story of life. Physical life, spiritual life. One of the poets said the lives of great men should remind us that we may or may be sublime and departing leave behind us footprints in the sands of time. Sure God has given you the material. Give me the material. I'm staggered honestly when I think of that again whether it's Wesley or Finney or anybody else they never had a bigger Bible than I have. They didn't merely explore it and divide it and dispensationalize it and do all the other things. They believed it. They operated in faith on these exceeding great and precious promises of God. I'm not despising learning of theology or anything else but heaven knows we've enough theological books to build a four-lane highway from the Gulf to Canada and America goes to hell while we're doing it. There has to be a manifestation, the proof of life. The Word of God says in Genesis is there that everything that has life brought forth its kind. And you say well we've got a pastor you know he's not very lively no nobody's walked down the aisle for weeks. I could go to a church for 20 years and nobody walked down the aisle it wouldn't worry me. Why? Because it's not the pastor's job to bring forth life. When I was in Australia, New Zealand rather one day, I asked a man there I said well tell me this does the shepherd give birth to lambs? He said what? I said I'm asking a simple question does a shepherd give birth to a lamb? He said where do you live? I said America. Oh well he said that explains it of course. Why he said of course the sheep give birth to the lambs. I said well why don't you? You're the sheep this is the shepherd it isn't his business to bring people to birth. A condition of being a member of the Presbyterian church after the revival of 1903-4 in Korea one of the great revivals in history. About 1905 you see there's a fire a fire in Wales and somebody carried a life call from that to India to the cyclot revival and somebody carried it from there over to China and then when in China this man said I'm going to Korea and they said oh they're too phlegmatic you can't move those people and there were bigger revivals in Korea but it became a condition of membership that you before you were accepted as a member of the Presbyterian church must say I led this man to Jesus Christ. Not that you prayed with him at an altar when he came out but that you personally had prayed and brought to birth that individual spiritually because that's a law of life reproduction. Now again what is your life it is even a vapor we're not here for long it seems to drag at times doesn't it but when I look back on my life it doesn't seem long since I was a just a youngster at school and I went to college too Bible college stayed six months and uh I went out to preach and forgot to go back I guess that shows up but anyhow life is very brief. Now let's take this for a here right in the immediate text what is it your life what is your life it is even a vapor that appears for a little time. Now if you speak of life obviously you've got to speak of death it's the opposite isn't it? How many millions of people or hundreds of thousands will die before the sun sets tonight? How many of them will know Christ? I was raised in a small church and in one room in the church they had pictures one was a waterfall and instead of water going over there were bodies depicted by the artist and there they were going over and it gave a the rate of death that was over 50 years back. There was another one of South America and and somebody sketched and you know where that that tail is on South America down in Argentina Tierra del Fuego so forth that was a chain on on the back and there was an Indian and it described the awful conditions I remember that I remember the other countries I remember statistics and I'm glad they were there. We were constantly being crowded by the fact we're here to be servants of the Lord Jesus Christ we're here with an obligation and this generation of Christians is responsible for this generation of heathens make no mistake about that. How quickly they die all right the opposite of life is death the opposite of time eternity eternity. I say again that this was a great secret of men like Robert Murray McShane you know when he was dying at 28 with a right brilliant intellect the languages he knew and he's an expert in Hebrew and he'd already been a missionary there to Israel or Palestine as it was then and and you know that young man's sweet and glorious personality he wrote lovely hymns like Jehovah said can you and so forth and at 28 28 29 years of age he looked up into the face of the Lord and he could say triumphantly we might say Lord can't a little bit longer be useful but no he says a great thing I'm going to see him and at 29 years of age he died and he said farewell mortality welcome eternity. Eternity well the computer can't tell anything about that people say computers are smart they're not they can't think they normally feed back to you what you feed in anyhow. Eternity how do you visualize eternity? I think of one of the great forgotten men in the history of America he had come in the in the in the time when the Huguenots had to escape out of France he came and he got in with a society away there in Philadelphia and he went to a party came out of the party and walked through the trees and he said those tall trees were moving in the breeze and he suddenly noticed that the leaves were all bending in the wind and and suddenly he said every leaf became a tongue and every tongue began to sing eternity eternity eternity I was a godless man I live for wine and women and song and excitement and his lovely velvet suit and his nice cravats and his silk stockings and silver-buttled shoes and he was a Don Juan he said I I lived for it until that moment those trees began to preach and say eternity and it went down every corridor of my mind and it entered my being eternity where is it what is it what do I do and he said I fell like Saul of Tarsus on the floor and just cried out eternity eternity oh god I don't know what it means but please condition me for eternity and there he was born again of the spirit of God and he vowed a vow and said if this is really true this concept is really true that men fall into eternal darkness I'll talk about that tonight most likely what does it matter where I live wasn't that the slogan of David Brainerd does it matter how I live where I live was it the slogan of John Wesley doesn't he say in Georgia I woke up and I was frozen to the ground and I struggled to get one arm free and and then I I pulled the other one free and then I reached up and my hair was already frozen into the mud and I released my body and and I shook off the white snow the white frost and I stood up and sang praise God from side two passes home and I spoke at the largest military camp in England in World War II look over the shoulder of the hill see that vast mansion see the private race course they had and remember the man had 35 racehorses packed it all up threw it away seat he stood and he said if Jesus Christ be God and died for me no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for him tossed rotting these days might be millions of dollars away that's why they have Moody Bible Institute he gave money to Moody he gave money to the Salvation Army go back to Stephen Grellet a minute here he is facing death why facing famine why half star baking in the sun dying of a fever apparently God raising him up going into a slave camp going into a hellhole going into a diseased area sitting in the gutter and playing with children in order that he might pick up the language that he didn't know a word of and he stayed there for two or three days and played a little boys and get enough language learned as many languages nearly as I have fingers and toes why because one day in a forest in Philadelphia he became eternity conscious all right let me wrap it up with this how would you explain eternity to anybody do you remember the old Greeks had a symbol that there was a block of of granite and it was a mile this way and a mile this way and a mile this way and a mile in every dimension and a sparrow came and wiped his beak on the corner and flew away for a thousand years and came back and wiped his beak on the corner and flew away for a thousand years and by the time that sparrow had worn that block of granite a mile by mile by mile by the time the sparrow had worn it away just about one second of eternity had gone I was praying about this one day I visualized it another way supposing you gather all the waters of the world together the Atlantic the Indian Ocean the mighty Mississippi that flows not far from where we're living right now the great Amazon the river Rhine the Thames the Congo the Volga the Red Sea the Dead Sea the Black Sea 10,000 lakes in Minnesota a hundred thousand lakes over the border in Manitoba those vast stretches of all those oceans all those rivers all those lakes you could suspend them up there in the sky and you could have a little true rubber tube like this with a little switch on and I turn one thing like that and one drop comes out and I rest for a thousand years and I come back and turn and let that drop out can you in any way conceive how many millions or billions or trillions or quadrillions of years it would take for for all that vast amount of water to seep through that little thing Webster if I remember right defines eternity as ages and cycles of ages and then he says duration without end the word of God says that God has set eternity in the heart of man and the biggest job you'll ever have is not to be president of the United States or the king of England or a famous inventor or a brilliant surgeon and skillful and wonderful as they are I believe the greatest thing that almighty God has entrusted to men is that he can take that life you know that life we sing about you know how you say it so easily you've got it in a little thing on the wall of your room maybe only one life will soon be passed only what's done for God will last that isn't what the poet wrote the poet said only one life will soon be passed only what's done for God will last and when I am dying how glad I shall be that the lamp of my life has been burned out for thee you know we hate to think of death we ought to be the most excited people in the world one of the great Scotsmen only 24 years of age was condemned to die the British had been battering them in 1665 and Hugh McGill six foot two 24 years of age the most handsome princely man in Scotland the apostle Paul to those persecuted people when they brought him down main street in Edinburgh thousands of people lined the streets and you couldn't see anything but waving handkerchiefs and sobbing heads and Hughie put his shoulders back and he marched like the great Highlander or Healander that he was marched down the street he had to make a swift right turn and as he did there was another man another Hughie and Hughie looked at him and he bent his head and left and Hughie had two armed men at the side of him he was unarmed and he looked across and he said Hughie! Ah Hughie did you hear the news yes he's terrible I heard the news I look at the people they're sobbing the heart of Scotland is broken ah he says men don't greet that's a Scottish dialect word for cry ah he says men don't greet you heard the news only three days man only three days and I'm gonna see the king in his beauty huh if if somebody served notice on you that before three more days you're gonna shuffle off this mortal coil as weary willy Shakespeare says would would you be so excited you'll phone home and say mother I've only three days in this rotten old world to live and I'm gonna see Jesus and you know I've been living a full stretch for him ever since I came to CBC life has been different I've disciplined it I've prayed more than I've ever prayed I've wept for lost men and when time has become very dim and eternity has become very real and I feel if I had a thousand lives I'd lay them at the feet of Jesus you don't have a thousand you've only got one and it won't last long and don't let anybody fool you that all Christians die happy some Christians die as miserable as drunks died you know why because just before they die they say you know pastor asked the lord to lengthen my life if he would I wouldn't miss any more prayer meetings and I'd certainly give out more tracks and I'd do this no no you've had it you've had it you've had it you've had it only one life what is your life this morning I living it to the full I have feeding on this book of life isn't this this is chapel called word of life or something it's good good title anyhow your life no not not your girlfriend not your wife not your your life come on mr professor this morning are you really at full stretch do you impart something to those students that they feel the throb of eternity going through you to them and say well of course the other professor doesn't move me but this man always has he has some anointing I think we might bow our heads when we're in eternity at the judgment seat and say god I wish I'd never gone to cbc for you gave me so much light I never used so many privileges only one life what are you doing with it is it his this morning can he honestly say not to me or to your dear president can you look up straight up there and say christ liveth in me this morning and you ask my roommate if I don't live like christ I'm gentle and meek got the spirit of love no interest in myself jesus had not takes that kind of living the only kind of living move this generation to god what is your life will you answer the question wasted fruitful dry dry thrilled not because you preach better than others or get out to more meetings than others but deep in your heart knowing that you're doing the perfect will of god and his spirit bears witness with your spirit this morning and he does bear witness that you're right in the center of his world maybe some of you're not even saved at all maybe you say but dragging your feet because you haven't had that anointing that god gave us that we might have fullness of life what is your life shall we pray our father this morning in the midst of the turmoil of this modern world as we heard again last night another nation toppling over where there's so much insecurity and unreality where there's more darkness than light where there are more lies than truth where there's more uncleanness than purity where there's more evident power at least of the devil than there is of the church of the living god i think at this moment of 120 in an upper room surely not as well educated as these folk they didn't have a bible anyhow and they didn't have a lot of things we have but we don't have a lot of things they had look upon us in mercy this morning save us from excusing ourselves save us from trying to shake it off and say in a few days i'll be home and i'll be forgetting so many things lord i pray make me each one of us here this morning more eternity conscious people bring us to a realization that it's a one-way road there are no u-turns we're just going on we can't turn back and that jesus came that we might have life and then that through that we might give life we might bring life this may not be according to protocol i don't know but and i don't know what lectures there are after but i'm quite sure if your spiritual condition demands that you shake off a lecture or something that won't matter this front row is almost empty and if you say this morning brother rayfield i got business to do with god and i don't want to go a step further until i do it you could come and kneel here and stay here and pray through