In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the importance of living a holy life in order to enter heaven. He mentions that God's people in glory will continue to serve Him and see His face. The preacher shares a personal story about struggling with sin and realizing the need for God's grace. He emphasizes that the truth about one's spiritual condition can only be revealed by the Holy Spirit, and not through worldly sources like newspapers or schools.

I believe that you are living in a nation that for a season has been given over to a reprobate mind by a holy God, amen. And believing that we seeking night after night can reach the people who are at the little leagues and everything else, summertime, ease in the winter, of course, it's a little difficult in the summer. I believe that you get to God in these days, you're going to have to agonize. You're going to have to summon candidate for mercy. I believe that. We're preaching this week, hoping that the anointing of the Holy Ghost might come so that Sunday morning, when your ship workers are here and the Sunday morning church members are here and the gather-bouts and everybody else, that praise every church, not so much this one, but still too much this one, that the anointing might come and we could speak on three marches of reprobation. You see, there's coming a time on the earth when there will just be two classes, there are three classes of people in Houston tonight, but there's coming a time when there will just be two, those who are reprobate and those who are in the faith. Those lines are converging now, and I think nothing but the real thing will get the job done today. How tragic it is that so few show an interest in their own welfare. He who would be saved must arouse himself to the supreme importance of spiritual things. He must face squarely the answer of the Lord to his disciples, having heard him as he went about teaching and preaching. How are we doing? All right? Brother Pastor? One of these things, conflict, I didn't know. He must arouse himself to faith, a question and the answer of the Lord. After hearing him for a while, the disciples had an impression. They said, Lord, are there few that be saved? Apparently evading their question, he made it head on and said, I deny us to enter in the straight way. For many there be that will seek to enter in. That's strange language, isn't it? But the Lord said it, and shall not be able. They'll not be able because they do not seek violently and because they wait too late. Mr. Bunyan, if you haven't read Pilgrim's Progress, next to the Bible, that's his. Mr. Bunyan has Pilgrim in his race book written, in Bedford jail, put in jail for preaching the gospel. He has Mr. Pilgrim awakened to his danger and realizing his awful burden of sin. Pilgrim! To heed the pleadings of his old companion and putting his fingers in his ears, he cried life, life, eternal life, as he fled from the city of destruction. It is true that whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. It is true that God is rich in mercy. Yes, plenty of it. There is no danger of exhausting the great heart's supply of the mercy of God. But it is also true that in Old Testament days and in New Testament days, the people suffered from two great calamities. And because they were victims of these two things, the lament of God's prophet in Old Testament days to a covenant people who had access to the blood of Christ yet to be shed, but never availed themselves of it. It always makes my spiritual blood pressure rise a little bit. To read of the elect nation, with all the blessings that God singled out and showered upon them, they crucified the Prince of Glory. And the prophets of God in Old Testament days will voice this terrible, terrible lament, describing the twofold calamity that has overtaken the covenant people of God, who in a little while are going to hell. For instance, they will say, My people, for my people, for my people. But my people in the Old Testament are not necessarily saved people. They are people that correspond to the membership of our churches, that have been exposed to the gospel. But they heard it, but it was not mixed with belief or faith, and thus it profited them nothing. My people are bent to backsliding, if that isn't saved people. My people go whoring after every God that comes to town, but not saved people. Here in Jeremiah 2, my people have committed two evils. One of them is bad enough, they have forsaken me, the fountain of living water. That's bad enough to be godless, to have turned you back on everything that you've ever felt from or experienced of or known about, or holy God. That's bad enough, but that isn't near as bad as the heat, the coals on the fires. These people do, for they are not only guilty of having forsaken God, but to make matters worse, they have hewed them out of systems, broken systems. They thought they could, but God says they hold no water. That's America today. Why do not men seek the Lord? They turn their back on everything they know about him. David Wilkerson tells us that a tremendous proportion of the dope addicts and homosexuals that he deals with in New York City came from Godly homes where they'd been taught much of the things of God. And holding down everything they knew of God, pressing it down, keeping it down, they had to come to the moment of decision when they made a turn, absolutely right about forsaken God. It's bad enough to be in that shape, but a man's in a pretty bad shape if, having forsaken God, he hewed them out of systems of his own creation, gets his peace there, his satisfaction there, that which enables him to sleep well at night, be a good citizen, good church member, and apart from the disturbing presence of the Lord of glory and the fire of the Holy Spirit, sleep on, never have the slightest inkling that he's orphaned, that he's under God's wrath, that he's obnoxious to hell. In the New Testament, one of the saddest verses I've ever read, found the 5th chapter of John, verses 39 and 40, and this same group of people who were still the covenant people of God, the elect nation of God, some of them got saved, Paul said, a remnant there, a remnant according to election. But here they are, and they're confronted with Christ Jesus in person. They looked him over. He pronounced his interdiction upon them in these words. He said, you're constantly searching the scriptures, the good Bible students, you're constantly searching the scriptures. That's a rebuke to us today. We didn't have to urge that gang to read the Bible. They were diligent searchers of the scriptures. You're constantly searching the scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life. I expect hell to be full of people who come to believe in the doctrines of grace, the seed will be sticking out the window, for they think there's life in a doctrine, but there isn't. There isn't. There isn't. These folks were pretty well indoctrinated. They were searchers of the scriptures constantly. He said, you think that in the scriptures you have eternal life, but you don't. He said, you're constantly searching the scriptures, and you'll miss the one the scriptures talk about. For the scriptures, these are they which testify of me, and here I am. And the original language, verse 40, I think is the most pessimistic. I think maybe this is the most shocking, heartbreaking verse in the Bible. Here are these Bible students, constantly searching the scriptures, missing the one the scriptures point to. There is the four of them. Jesus Christ said, he desires not to desire. It's not just simply happiness. They've made up their minds not to make up their minds to come under me, that they might have life. If I had to go up and down the country preaching this so-called whosoever will gospel, I'd have been insane as hell a long time ago. All the folly of preaching and making salvation hang on the dark and corrupted, perverted wills of men. When you ever have before us diligent Bible students, people who spent their time searching the scriptures and for all their Bible readings, they haven't the slightest desire, and it's worse than that. They've got a desire not to desire to come to Jesus. Life's in him, and a man must come into vital contact with him, be a branch. Life comes from the mind. There's no life except the man's vital joy to him in whom is all life. Isn't that a sad picture? Saddened desire. Saddened desire. Satan has indoctrinated America. Men not only just do not much think they need to get to Christ, but whether they're satisfied with respectability or they're satisfied with church membership or they're satisfied with living in Christian America, anything will satisfy men and women who find peace and a sense of blindness anywhere short of being married, utterly, unreservedly married in forms of holy matrimony that all hell cannot keep to the Lord Jesus Christ. It is utterly heartbreaking how easy men and women are to satisfy the longings of the soul. I speak to you tonight again on the message that is most likely to rout somebody out of his determination not to determine to crawl on his knees if he must to get to Jesus. My text is Luke 16, verse 23. And being in torments, and being in torments, here's a man who went too late screaming out for mercy. Being in torments, the character of hell. Let me say quickly, but with all the unction the Holy Spirit will give me for things about the character of the doctrine of God's holy, righteous law, which is eternal hell. You desperately need to be able to close with Christ Jesus savingly. If I had you and I had lost, you wouldn't do it, because I didn't have any sense either when I had lost. But I wish you had more sense than I did. I'd do without free meals tomorrow and buy a gutless saving interest. And I'd begin to dig and strive and pray and cry and plead and try to repent. You desperately need a saving interest to become a stockholder in the blood bank of blood-stained deep, so that with assurance you could say, come on that cross for me. I'll tell you why you need that. For God's holy and his law is just and perfect and good and his nature is such that having you on his hand, if he cannot, doing the best that even God can do, if he cannot create within you a desire to desire whatever the cost, to get savingly into the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ, he's got to send you to him. One of the dearest friends I have on earth had three children, little child, 16 years old, made a profession of faith, but nothing happened. And he showed up at Sunday school in the church where his father was pastor. One morning laid out his six-point record system and went down to Darlington, South Carolina, entered a motorcycle race on the Lord's Day. About six o'clock that Lord's Day afternoon, an ambulance brought his butchered, mangled, bleeding, dead body to the parsonage. His parents had already been notified. My preacher's friend said, Brother Barnum, for three years I didn't mention hell in my poetry. He said, I've searched the scriptures to find some hope for my voice. He said, I heard of some people Baptist out in Kansas City that had got some new light on the subject, and they made a very fine case that after people died, a merciful God would give them a second chance. I don't know how you feel about it, but I'm so little like God, and I can't see sin as black as God does. It'd be perfectly all right with me. I wouldn't object if poor old sinners had a second chance. He said, I wanted to believe that somewhere out under a loving God would face my boy again, give him another chance. He said, I wrestled with it. I got bitter in my heart. I couldn't stand the thought of my boy in hell. It gets awful close when it gets that close. Finally, with a bleeding, broken heart, he said, I went in my stud and locked the door, got down on my knees, begged God to give me grace to do what all of God's people will do, which is judgment. Praise God for the damnation of their own loved ones. Boy, that's what we're going to be asked to do. God sends people to hell. He has to. There is no way you can divorce what I'm talking about from the blood of Jesus Christ. They go together. He poured out his life because God's a holy, and heaven's a holy place, and nobody but holy people are going to walk the streets of glory. God sends people to hell. I'll say a second thing tonight. Hell is the very death that a loving God can do for the people he sends there. Hell won't be near as terrible, as bad as it is. The torments of hell wouldn't be as bad as the torments of heaven for an unholy person. Imagine how miserable you'd be if you hate holiness, to have to live forever in a holy place. Suppose you was the only unregenerated person. God went to sleep one night and you slipped into glory without a holy nature, without having been made a person who pants at the holiness and enjoys holiness and delights in holiness. How miserable you'd be. Have you ever been around somebody that gave many indications that he actually knew the Lord? Don't sort of make you shame yourself. I've been around a few people like that. I tell you, I get greatly uncomfortable. I do. I tell you, this is the judgment that life is coming to the world and men love darkness rather than light because their need to hold are easier than women who hate holiness and rather be in a pit of utter darkness than fly and be more comfortable there than the world where the lights turned on. I come now and tell you, these people going up and down the land and take on talking about God, the God of love, he's the right, he loves, he will not be too much to condemn them to heaven. He'll send them to hell. They'll get along better there than the world in glory. Ladies and gentlemen, we all face it. I know you're busy, but if you haven't got time for God to make you holy, he said you're not going to enforce a holy habitation forever upon you. The best thing that God can do, the most loving thing that God can do for an unregenerate man who instead of love and righteousness hates it, is to send him to hell. Eddie Lieberman, the Jewish evangelist, great gospel preacher, was converted to death row in Eastern Penitentiary in Philadelphia. He had a Negro cellmate that had a copy of the gospel of John. He had many appeals and while he was waiting to kill the man, while he was waiting for the sinner to be executed, he laid his pardon. But that Jew, he got so desperate and lonesome that he listened to the Negro read the gospel of John. And God in mercy saved him. And a rich plantation owner, not many of them left, but one of them, at least down in South Carolina, heard about this Jewish lad from the Bronx streets of New York City being converted. He went to see him, made arrangements and began to exercise his influence. And they got him a pardon. And he sent him the money and wanted him to take the money when he got out and come down to see him in South Carolina. He was going to send it through school and all of that he did. Young Eddie Lieberman got out of jail, bought him a suit, got on the train, journeyed from Philadelphia to South Carolina, finally came to that mansion, went up on the front and had one of these knockers or whatever you call it, that that knocked exactly a butler came in and said, Yes, sir. He said, I'm Eddie Lieberman. I believe I'm expected. Oh, yes, Mr. Lieberman. Come right in, sir. He got in. He said, Would you be seated? He led him into the library. He said, I'll tell the master and the missus you're here. And Eddie Lieberman said, The rugs were about that thick. He raised on the sidewalks of New York and just got out of penitentiary. And he said, He looked about. He'd never been in any place like that. He said, Directly, a very nicely appointed cultured gentleman came in, came and said, Oh, we're so honored to have you in our home. And they sat down and directly that fine cultured southern woman came in and she just showered her graciousness on this little Jewish boy from the sidewalks of New York. And after a while the butler came and said, Dinner is served. It's about seven o'clock. Eddie said he thought they had dinner at twelve o'clock, but he went in and said the master sat there and the madam there said, I sat over there. He said, I'd never seen anything like it. He said they had five, six different forks and five, six different spoons and knives and richly appointed silver and I'd never seen anything like that. And he said, They brought out things and I didn't know which spoon to use and I didn't know which fork to use and he said, I watched the man and said I saw him pick that up so I did. And I got along pretty well. And he said, Finally they served the main course and that was a quail. Each one had a quail. And he said, I wondered what on earth to do with that quail. There it sat. He said, I watched and I got the right fork and I got the right knife. And then he said, I started trying to eat. And he said, I grabbed my fork in and I tried to cut it. I'd never seen anything like that. He said, I scared to death already and miserable. How miserable I was. He said, I was out of my element. I wasn't used to that way of doing. I didn't know how to act. He said, Finally I jabbed hard and I sliced and that quail slipped and fell in my lap. He said, I picked it up and put it back and wiped my britches and I sucked and I jabbed and it slipped again. I got up and said, Excuse me. And I ran out of that house. He said, I was out of place. Ladies and gentlemen, I know we've been taught that we switch out you and them, one drops the other. We take Jesus and that settles everything and nothing happens. But I tell you right now, I tell you right now, that a loving Holy God, if he can't make you where you would enjoy holy, he's not going to take you to him. The best that God could do for you would be to send you to him. And that's exactly where this generation of church members are going, ladies and gentlemen. They make no conscience of sin. They know nothing of panting at the holiness. They bear no marks of that for which God chose. He has chosen us in him that we should be holy. And you'll feel of your election unless the marks of holiness are stamped on your soul. The torments of hate. What are some of the characteristics of this place? Hell is a place where you continue to do just like you do now. You youngsters better listen to me now. You men and women better listen to me now. What's begun in this life will continue in the next. Grandpa who said, Save us in heaven at last, he was wrong, dear one. Unless God can give you a holy disposition in this life, you'll not have one in the life to come. Nothing will be changed by death in this respect. Hell will be a place where you continue what you started down here. This is awful. Men tell me that they don't believe in the hell out yonder. They say they believe we'll get all the hell we'll ever get down here. I sometimes say, Well, brother, there's one dead thing certain. There's lots of hell on the road to hell. Brother, it's true. You're getting plenty of hell down here. You know, there's a lot of heaven on the way to heaven, too. Bless God. If you haven't got heaven in your soul before you die, you'll never have it after you die. Heaven is a place, but it's more than a place where Jesus is. It's heaven. My old mother raised seven children, didn't have a vacuum cleaner, nothing, electric fan, radio, television, washing machine, nothing way back then. I'd hear her going about the duties of the house. She'd be unconscious. She'd be singing, I'm going home. I'm going home. I'm going home to sin. Oh, she's singing. She's telling the truth. Yeah. There's a lot of heaven on the road to heaven. The last chapter of the Bible tells us two things. God's people will do in glory, and by strange coincidence, it's the only thing to do down here on earth, is just keep on doing what they've been doing. Verses 3 and 4, his servants shall serve him, and they shall see his face. Do you know anything else? That's it, isn't it? And they'll just keep on serving him, and looking at his glory with an undimmed view. Oh, boy. But there's a lot of hell on the road to hell. In the last chapter of the Bible, when the last battle's been fought, the last decision's been made, at last, everything's settled now. God's people in the Holy City, and without the sorcerers and the dogs, we have a picture of blood-stained Jesus putting his hands to his lips and leaning over a hill of ramparts and pronouncing eternal, the most terrible judgment of all hell. He says, He that doeth unjustly, let him do unjustly still, but keep on doing like you've been doing throughout eternal hell. Oh, boy. Oh, won't that be awful? Keep on saying it! For the accident, that's the most terrible thing, to be sealed by the pronounced judgment of God, so on, and to stand eternally standing. That's what you'll do in hell. Somebody says, How long will God punish sin? He'll punish sin as long as men commit it. Since that's all men will do in the next life, God'll punish sin throughout eternity. My soul, that's what hell is. Hell! Well, men and women have the same minds, the same desires, but their desires are without fulfillment. Same cravings, but no satisfaction. The same wrongs that make men sell their soul's hope for a two-bit sin now without attainment in hell. The same lust, no accomplishment. Brother, hell is a place where men hate one another. Oh, there's nothing there ever to have contempt. It's a place of what? Everlasting contempt. There's nobody in hell that's got a friend. Sin on. Sin on! That's the eternal judgment of the Son of God. That's what men and women are condemned to do. Just keep on. Just keep on. Sin on. Feel crushed by God's turn pronouncing this judgment on them. Let him that joys unjustly keep on doing unjustly. That's hell. That's hell. You need to be vitally joined to the Lord. Hell is a place of enforced idleness and dreadful loneliness. Gemini, in hell there's no hope. And if I could rob you of all hope, physical, spiritual, and mental tonight, I'd have to come and get you, take you to the insane sun. Night after night I come and say, I hope maybe this is the night when God will break through. I'm not strong enough to keep coming here night after night if you rob me of that hope. You see what we're talking about? But there's no hope in hell. And because what is hope? It's a form of moral responsibility. I'm going to do my dead level best to get a good message on my heart tomorrow night if I'm living, because I've still got some hope. It's a form of moral responsibility. But in hell there isn't any hope. There aren't any beauties to perform in hell. Hell in short, there's no work to do, no use of praying, nothing to do great. Hell in short is a place where you have nothing to do but amuse yourself. If you go to Hollywood as I have been, those poor moving picture actors and actresses, they've been in hell most of them for thirty, twenty, fifteen years. They're already in hell. Nothing to do, this place you might arrange, nothing to do but amuse yourself. Until there's nothing but amusism in the dens of New York City. Thousands of people today take time out. Tonight, brother brother, I get to whip you. Lacerate your body. And tomorrow night you whip me, and the one who gets the kick out of it is the one that's getting the whipping. Even normal sexual satisfaction, they do not have it. The only satisfaction those poor people who are already in hell get is laceration. The hurt and the suffering that they affect on one another. And don't argue. Oh, not so. In hell you'll have nothing to do but play with a yo-yo. No work to accomplish. No goals to try to reach. Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. Utterly abandoned. Idle. To be utterly separated from God. But to be so separated from him, that one is compelled to sin as a thirsty man sees water. For if I make my bed in hell, what could you say? I can't get away from God. There's a man down the door that's been eternally looking at the artesian frame, but unable to get to it. I'm telling you, hell ain't going to be a Sunday afternoon piece. Hell is to be forced to see the glory of God. Have no access to it. Everything forces it. The man will spend the first quarter hour of silence, of silence of hell. Then he'll hear a voice. I am the door locked forever. The road which leads nowhere. The everlasting line written on the walls of hell will be the letters that all who enter here abandon all hope. That's hell. There are the two things in hell that are different. I've been talking about how things will be just the same, but there are two things that are different. First, on earth you can hide yourself and refuse to face your true condition. You can pull the blanket over. You can stuff your ears. You see, men are dead and trespassing sin, but they're terribly active in their opposition to holiness. And a man can stuff his ears and refuse to hear. A man can refuse to hear. Some days of my ministry when things have been happening people have said, I'm dead sure not going down there. No, sir. They sure can be an ostrich hide their head in the sand while the juggernaut of God's wrath runs over their soul. A man can hide from his true condition down here, but in hell he can't. As the tree's fallen, so it stays. What are we trying to do? What are we trying to do? Try the witness of tears and prayers and longings of God to bring truth. Pray God to take it. Do what men cannot do for another. Pierce inside of men and show them the true condition. Men run from it. And the tragedy of it is they can do it. And most folks are going to be successful. And they're going to run right straight into hell. Oh, to face the truth. Why, let it do some good to face it. That's what we're crying for. The preacher as he stands and looks in your faces is just a sinner saved by grace. I can't get inside of you. I do not know the spiritual condition of a single person to whom I'm preaching. And the tragedy of it is that most folks today don't know the truth about their condition themselves. And the only safe demand between you making a successful touchdown and splitting hell wide open is the truth of God in the hands of the Holy Ghost who alone alone can penetrate the spirits of men who have spirits. And thus we preach and pray and say, oh God, get inside of that boy. Get inside of that man. Show them the truth about themselves. They can't learn it in newspapers. They can't learn it at school. They can't learn it down at the games. God help us, they can't learn it in some churches. O Spirit of God, you who alone have the power to penetrate inside the resisting wills of men and women, conquer them, thrust through, show them the truth. Men can hide from the truth today, but you can't in hell. There's one last word. Here's another difference between the way you do it now and how it will be in hell. In hell all the decisions have been made. Nobody making decisions of any kind whether God enables or fleshly directed. Nobody makes decisions in hell. There's nothing to decide about. The war is over. Everything's closed. I heard a beloved preacher love God, love so more than this poor old preacher. He said, I wish I could go to hell and hold a revival campaign. He said, when I preached that one sermon, he said, I'd preach about the Lord. Then I'd start singing just as I am, without one thing, but that thy blood was shed for me. He said, every soul in hell would get saved. He was right, except he was wrong. You could go to hell now, you could get there, and you could preach as no man ever preached. You could exalt the blood of Christ in his throne, and you could sing the old songs of invitation, and nobody would have the slightest desire to come to Jesus, for the only one who gives men that desire won't be there, the Holy Spirit. Oh, whatever decisions you intend to make, they'll be made in this life, not in the life to come. Decisions are just decisions. And yet, God demands, God demands, not only that a man decide to do something, but that he do it. A man who's going to be saved, he's going to be saved, but he must be saved. Christ was as a lamb slain from before the foundation of the world, but he must go to Jerusalem and be crucified. All who ever be saved are going to repent, but they must repent! All who ever are going to believe are dead sure going to do it, but they must believe! Whether you're ever saving the believer or not is one thing dead certain. Whatever your reaction and response to the call of God in the gospel is, it'll be made in this life, not in hell. People aren't deciding for Christ. I tremble in this closing moment. In yourself, your decision's no good. But you live in a world where God's not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. Next Sunday night, God willing, I'm going to tell about a young woman who died, looking me in the face, saying, preacher, I can't with him. The last word she said, oh God, I can't, I can't. You'll do no repenting in hell, the scriptures say, you'll blaspheme the Lord. I don't know whether you'll ever be able to repent in this life or not, but there's one thing I know, you'll never repent. Oh, how vital decisions are for all that we'll ever make are made in this life. Two young men started an infidel's club in the state of Texas, in a school. One of them's in hell tonight, and the other's preaching. Five months after, my buddy said, Rob, you used to be a smart cookie. Now you've gone nuts. Don't talk to me about this Jesus thing. Five months later, a man shot him five times. He's been in hell these thirty-odd years, more than that. Yeah, I spent to God be the glory. I can't explain it, but God was merciful to this man. Until one time, I could resist him no longer, and I yielded. He gets all the glory. He wouldn't leave me alone. Praise his name, he pursued me. And I trust by his marvelous grace, he saved me. I was brought to the decision of commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ. My buddy, we were both just as guilty. We were both organized in a Christian Baptist college, an infidel's club. Somewhere, I was able to make the right. He made the wrong. And I still got decisions. I'll make some tomorrow. Some I guess will be good and some bad. But for these over forty years, my buddy hadn't made a single decision. Nothing to decide about in hell. Oh, my, whatever decisions you make, they'll be made in this life. How so? How so? May God enable you in my prayer, to bow to King Jesus right now. Lord, take charge as it pleases you. You alone know what's going on inside of people. You alone know exactly where every person in this building is in relation to your well-beloved and only begotten Son. Oh, God. These people aren't at the ballgame. They're not out frolicking. They're in the house of God. Oh, God. I covet them. Every last person for the Lord. I bring them to you. Thou God of all grace, enable men and women, boys and girls tonight to savingly close with the Lord Jesus Christ as he's presented in the gospel. I say it in faith with me.