Leonard Ravenhill emphasizes the profound responsibility and privilege of being an ambassador for Christ, as articulated by the Apostle Paul. He highlights that this role is not self-appointed or self-supported, but rather a divine calling that requires boldness and reliance on God's resources. Ravenhill contrasts the worldly perception of ambassadors with the spiritual reality, where true ambassadors often face peril and rejection. He urges believers to recognize their identity in Christ and the importance of living out their ambassadorship with integrity and purpose. Ultimately, he calls for a deeper understanding of the spiritual authority and connection that comes with being an ambassador for the Kingdom of God.

We pray you in Christ's name, be ye reconciled to God. You may remember that Paul uses this same word, ambassador, when he finishes that marvellous 6th chapter in Ephesians, where he's been talking about putting on the whole armour of God, and this again is in the 6th chapter, the one we just had is the 5th chapter, verse 20, this is in the 6th chapter of Ephesians, and again verse 20, for which I am an ambassador in bonds. Now a verse before that he says, and it's for me, he's asking for prayer, the veterans may be given unto me that I may open my mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in bonds. I think this is the most unused expression of our privilege in the family of God. We're often told, I suppose, if it's not wearying, it's almost obnoxious to be told we're children of God by faith in our Jesus, and sometimes we're told we're servants, and occasionally we run round the ministry gifts and say, well we do have apostles and prophets and evangelists and teachers and so forth for the edifying of the saints. But I don't remember, maybe I've heard it, but I don't remember in my lifetime ever hearing a sermon on the fact that I'm an ambassador of Jesus Christ. As far as I know there are no schools to teach people to be ambassadors. They'll teach you to, you know, beautify the world, and they'll teach you to do this and teach you to do the other, but no schools where you teach people to be ambassadors. In an actual realm, the office of the ambassador is something which has got carried a great deal of prestige with it. I think the very opposite is the case in the spiritual life. It's not a, we have prestige, it's not a prestigious job, I think really to keep alliterating it, it's a perilous job really to be an ambassador of the Lord Jesus Christ. You know, it's very seldom a man will refuse to be an ambassador. It's almost a kingly office. And in our concept of things, the ambassador usually lives in security and a huge house and a tremendous income. And again, he's respected very, very highly. If, for instance, the Queen of England, their daughter's getting married, inevitably all the ambassadors, the American ambassador, the French ambassador, the ambassador from Vietnam if they have one, Africa, every one of them automatically gets a letter of invitation to the wedding. All the social standings, he's always included. The reverse is just about true in the spiritual realm, but if a man is a true ambassador of Jesus Christ, he's in another world. And I don't think that we stress this enough. There are two worlds, we say there are two hemispheres, there are two worlds. There's the natural, the world of men, and there's the spiritual world. And the Good Book itself says that friendship with the world is enmity against God. And friendship in God causes enmity by the world. Paul says that he was an ambassador of Jesus Christ. And you know, I keep saying this because I kind of get a kick out of it, but I think the greatest brain that the Lord ever had was the brain of the Apostle Paul. That's not necessarily why God used him, but no fool could have written the epistles that he wrote. I remember being in a pastor's office one day, and he was downgrading, learning, you know, these guys that study Greek and philosophy and Hebrew, and you know, they still don't eat that. You get the Holy Spirit, you've got to go. Well, he was about as empty-handed as anybody I knew, and if the Holy Ghost, he was an example of the Holy Ghost, well, the Holy Ghost must be bankrupt, that's all I can think. And then I turned, he had a very fine library. I said, you know, I had so much of those bookshelves. No, sure, they're fundamental, you can't find any rubbish on those shelves. I said, most of them are rubbish. No, sure, you're insulting me. I said, well, what do you mean? I said, they're all written. I said, there, Dr. Adam Clarke wrote that. He was brilliant in Hebrew and Greek. You can trust him. Well, I read Adam Clarke a lot, but he just dismissed a man with an intellect. Dr. David Livingstone, he was a doctor, split Africa open on the gospel. Dr. Hudson Taylor went to England, China. C.P. Sturge was a graduate of, I think, Oxford or Cambridge. And I went down the list of books, and I said, now, you can't find one man who is a great expositor. There is one exception, and this is Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones, who now is writing a series of books on the epistles to the Romans. God doesn't despise intellect. After all, why did he make us all dumb? I know a lot of us think we are. I do, I mean, I don't think you are, but at times I think I am. I think I'm so terribly limited in my knowledge, in my understanding. But this thing on top of my shoulder isn't just to hang my hat on. I mean, I'm supposed to use it, and it isn't that I might have a different hairstyle or something else. It should be full of grey matter and brains. And you know what they say, the deeper the roots go, you know, they say you've got grey matter in your head, you know. And if the roots go deep and you love a bit, your hair turns grey. You've got a couple of samples here. And my wife, the wiser you are, the roots go deep, your hair goes grey. And if you have no brains, the hair falls out. But anyhow, that may not be a perfectly true analogy, I agree. I'll be yelling at you. No, you have just received it, you know. The man said, I used to love waves, now I'm only the beach. It's amazing when you think of the comprehension of the Apostle. If you include the Epistle to the Hades, he wrote 14 epistles. And you know, he never mentions anything about the Roman Empire. He never mentions anything about the art in Greece or anywhere else. And people have thrown this up to this great man and said, Well, why didn't he tell us anything about what was going on in the day in which he lived? Why didn't he tell us about, you know, the beauties of the creation round about? Well, they actually said the same thing about Calvin, you know. Calvin was writing his famous Institutes. And somebody said he never lifted his eyes up to see the glory of the Alps. You know, the sun setting on the snow and it goes pink and it takes your breath. You know, I gave him the Taj Mahal. People said to me, did you see the Taj Mahal? I said no, I passed right by it. Did you go see it? Oh, everybody goes and sees it in the moonlight. They're nearly faint when they see it. Well, even faint without seeing it too. But Paul, Calvin never was interested. He was so bound to the spiritual life. I think this is true of the Apostle Paul. They said St. Bernard, you know. Was it Bernard of Clairvaux that wrote for him, what did he write? He's up in the hymn right now. That beautiful hymn on the harp, anyhow. They said he went right round the shores of one of the most famous lakes in the whole world, Lake Geneva. And at the end of the day, he said, well, where's the famous lake I heard so much about? He had his cowl, you know, the monks used to wear a cowl over their head to keep the wind off. And he was meditating anyhow. He went on the back of a horse and he hardly ever saw anything. In other words, he was so preoccupied. Was it, it was an American writer, I think Lloyd Douglas, that used the phrase, the magnificent obsession. Didn't you find that phrase in that Roman book? And I think this is Paul's, his preoccupation is saturated, if you like, from his head to his toes. He's saturated with the things of God. He's no time to look at the mountains and say, look at, oh man, look what the Greeks did here. They said the same about Paschal, that he was so wrapped up in the internal world, maybe the eternal world, that he never saw the world outside. Well, Paul is exactly in the same condition. He has a job to do. And I think you can summarize the intensity of his life in one statement that he made. This one thing I do. He was never divided in his attention. He never got pushed onto a sideline. He kept on the main track. I want to say about this ambassadorship. We are ambassadors for Christ as though God did beseech you by us. Let's say this first of all, that the ambassador is not a self-appointed man. He can't choose his ambassadorship. He is selected. Usually it's considered a reward. Somebody said, I think, not long ago, that Tim Stone, that gives his millions away, was going to be appointed as an ambassador for giving money to the Nixon campaign. That may be wrong, it may be right, but men really covet this honor. But they can't choose it. And it should be that no man can bribe his way into it. He's supposed to be selected. For many reasons, but he is selected and he's appointed. He's not self-appointed. It's an appointment made by somebody else for him. And the Apostle Paul remembers the time when he says that he was apprehended of Jesus Christ. On the road of life he was suddenly seized by a hand that said, look I want you, you're my property. And again you remember that on that Damascus road he says, God revealed himself to me, and then God took him into the wilderness for about three and a half years. And he said, God revealed himself in me. Now I don't think there are many people that God has revealed himself inside. A lot of it is external. They remember a happy day that fixed my choice on me, my Savior and my God. They got inside the kingdom and they sat down on a camp stool and they haven't budged for 20 or 30 years, you know. That's not what God desires. This is not true of the Apostle Paul. He says that God seized all of him. I was apprehended of Jesus Christ. So that this man is not a self-appointed man. Not only is he not only self-appointed, but he's not self-supported. When a man goes to a country, say again that Mr. Nixon called somebody this week and said you're the ambassador, for instance, if there was an ambassadorship to Turkey, he would say now you're going to Turkey and we have a book here, a protocol, and I want you to read it. You won't be going for six months now. You've got to study all the things, study their customs and that. Do get this in your mind that when you go to that country, you're not going at your own expense. You're going with the backing of the United States behind you. You know, when an ambassador goes to another country, say the ambassador now in England, we don't keep the 4th of July. We just gave you your liberty. But the 4th of July, we just function normally. But if you go to London and go to the American embassy, you think you're in Washington at the White House. Man alive, they live it up. Or a better day, you like to feed more. Thanksgiving. Well, nobody stops working in England on Thanksgiving. Oh, you do, sure. You go into the White House, they have a turkey this size and ham, and oh boy, do they live it up. Now, if you went to the embassy in London, you'd find it exactly. If somebody could drop you there, you know, magically take you out of America and drop you right there, you'd say, they'd say, where are you? Well, of course, I'm in America. It's Thanksgiving. See the flag? Look at all these things. In other words, the law of England has no jurisdiction inside the doors of the embassy. Inside that embassy, you can do as you like. You can be plotting a murder. You can be plotting the overthrow of England. You can be passing secret messages on to another country. And nobody can come inside unless, of course, we've got this famous thing now we call bugging. But normally, that doesn't exist. This is a little colony. And Paul, remember, he said, we're a colony of heaven. You know, this home, your home, my home, should be a little bit of heaven. The Irish sing a song, don't they? A little bit of heaven fell from out the skies one day. My wife's Irish. She's all bloody Irish, isn't she? So I've got to be very cautious here. And this little bit of heaven fell from out the skies one day. And the angels looked. And when they saw it, it looked so green and grand. And a tear fell from the eye. And they said, we'll leave it there, you know, and it's a little bit of heaven. Well, actually, Paul said that we are a colony of heaven. Now, if this doesn't apply in our individual houses, it should do. But it surely should in God's house. You know, it ought to be as thrilling to go to God's house on the Lord's Day, filled with the glory of God, as it is to slip out of time into eternity. It's only a minute or two ago about these men that, they used to anticipate heaven. Paul said he was itching to get there. You know, you say to somebody, man, I remember a man, a communist said to me one day, I used to work in a factory. I don't work now. I'm a preacher. But I used to work in a factory. And I remember this man saying to me in the factory one day, he said, you believe in heaven? What's it like? So I tried to tell him conventionally, out of what I knew of the word of God and the revelation. He said, it must be a pretty lousy place. What do you mean, a lousy place? Well, he said, I've got a neighbor. He's a deacon. Deacon, he called him? Yeah, he's a deacon. And he was taken sick on Wednesday. Got worse yesterday. And they were scared to death he was going to die. Do you know what they did? They got on bicycles. They ran to all the church members. And they prayed, oh, God, don't take him to heaven. Let him stay down here. It must be pretty lousy up there. If a guy wants to stay in this muddle hole, he said, why doesn't he want to stay? But you know, that's the attitude of many people. Oh, he thought he was going to die. Well, I called him. He says, you know, I like to serve you. I like to have revivals. I like to raise the dead. I like to put brains in stupid people that have gone off the rocker and all the rest of it, he said. But I'm longing to get there. But I may know him and the power of his resurrection. And it should be that the house of God is so filled with the presence and glory of God that it ought to be as exciting to go to the sanctuary. On the Lord's days, it will be to slip away. You know, we get excited about it in the meetings. They pray, oh, we're going to go to heaven, walk on streets of gold, wear crowns and hearts and everybody else. And as soon as you're going to die, they say, oh, pray, pray, he's going to die. You know, he's going to die. Wouldn't it be awful? You know, if he gets to heaven and starts wearing a crown before us. Now, I know what we like to do. We like to keep loved ones here. There's no question about it. But to a lot of people, heaven isn't exciting. It's almost inevitable. I mean, oh, yeah. It's pretty rough, isn't it? I mean, you know, we've worked all our lives for this. Just got wall-to-wall carpeting in the swimming pool and my husband died. I mean, that's shocking, isn't it? You know. And that's just about it, if we're really honest. It isn't as exciting as it ought to be. Have you got the swimming pool? Is that what I'm talking about? But the fact is, you know, that, in other words, whether you have a swimming pool or not, material things can so possess us and really blind our visions to the glory of the world at large. But it ought not to be that I, you know, we sing sometimes Blessed Assurance, Jesus is mine. Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine. I often feel like saying, you know, I've been in mass meetings of my own. I've been in some Billy Graham's meetings, thousands. It felt like, shut up. Now get up and tell me honestly. How often do you have a foretaste of glory divine? How often is the anointing of God so real to you that you feel, boy, you're spitting the stones out your mouth. You know, you're eating the grapes of Eskil and you're licking your lips with the honey and, boy, you've got into the promised land. It's marvelous. Boy, this is something. It doesn't come like that often. But if it did, what a difference it would make. You wouldn't have to whip people almost to get them to church if the glory of God was there. More than emotion. I'm not against hand clapping. I'm against it when you try and work God up and say, well, we've got to start the meeting this way because the glory never comes down unless you shout and sing in class. Oh, forget it. You can become as ritualistic. In fact, many of our churches, so-called, are not ritualistic, they're rutualistic. They got in a rut. You know what a rut is? It's a grave with the ends knocked out. That's all it is. You just get down in the trough and everything will start this way. Praise God. Oh, yeah, we used to go to the Presbyterians in the trough. Let's pray. We'll sing their hymn 127 times. Well, that's too bad, too, whether it's because of the Presbyterians. But the thing is that we get so set in our ways, don't we, that the glory and the beauty and the wonder, oh, and I said in a big church not long ago, a pastor said, now look, the Spirit has His way in our church, you know. There were a lot of preachers there one morning, so I said to them, do you let the Spirit have His way in your church? Yes, brother, yeah, we get out of the rut of the Baptists, you know, we're Baptists, but we're not in the rut. Oh, I said, can the Spirit have His way in your church? Yes. Why did you give me a grant last Wednesday? What do you have to do on Sunday morning? Because that's what they do usually. In the office, they mimeograph it, you know, the first thing will be so-and-so, then there'll be a prayer, then there'll be this, then there'll be something, and we mimeograph, we outline that the Spirit can have His way. I don't know what way it is, but anyhow, He can have His way if He follows a printed program, you see. But it should not be that. There's nothing more glorious. All right. So, it should be a foretaste of glory divine. It should be that the house of God is exciting with a... not something that merely tickles my fancy or stirs my emotion, but I don't know what you think about this, but, you know, I sometimes think we need a new Christology. In other things, we ought to start right at the virgin birth and forget gifts and forget miracles and deal with Christ Himself because He is the sum of the substance and the center and the circumference and the light and light of the gospel. Amen. You can say as much as you like about being filled with the Holy Ghost, but when you've done and said everything, as I said in this big church the other week, and there were all kinds of people there, and I said, now, if you go to the holiness people, you stand up and you say, and say, and say, Amen. And five years after, I found I'd been wandering in the wilderness and I got sanctified. Amen, Mother. That's right. That's right. Good old language. Canaan language. Now, that's what you say if you go to the Nazarenes and holiness people, you see. If you go to the Pentecostal, you say, I got saved, and six months after, hallelujah, I got the baptism of the Holy of Holies. Whoa, great, great. Oh, boy, He's my man. I don't go much for the sanctified business, but He's my man. You see, He said He got the gifts and so forth. Great. Now, I said, why don't you treat yourself? Everybody else is tired. You know, when you get up, you'll stand up and say, I was saved when I was 16 and filled with the Holy Ghost when I was 18. Why don't you get up one day and forget all about that kind of language and just stand up and say, very sweetly, Christ lives in me. I said, when you sit down, your wife may nudge you in the ribs and say, Jack, when did that happen? I didn't know. We never talked. What do you mean, I didn't know you were saved? Oh, I knew you were saved, but I mean, I never thought, you know, when you come in at the door, oh, Jesus is coming. I never woke up at night and looked and said, my, I'm sleeping with Jesus. He's lovely. No, I never thought that. Was that Jesus blasting the kids the other day in the yard? Was that Jesus yelling on the phone? He didn't seem very much like Jesus to me. But, you see, it's a game. We get used to terminology. We get used to phrases. You get by with those people because you're saved and sanctified. You get by with these people because you're saved and filled with the Holy Ghost. But change is, and I don't care, and I defy anybody under heaven only, there is nothing higher this side of eternity than to say, Christ lives in me. When the Virgin Mary was pregnant with Jesus Christ, she could have said to the world, Christ lives in me. She knew it because of what God had said to her. Wasn't she the most favored woman that ever lived? That Christ could be actually in the matrix of the Virgin Mary? Well, in the same way, not physical, but spiritually, Christ lives in me. And then I'm the most favored person in the whole world. Come hell or high water, come governments or governments, anything, Christ lives in me. Alright? Then it's a foretaste of glory divine. Again in Ephesians 2 at the end it says, Ye are the habitation of God by the Spirit. Christ dwelling in your, it doesn't dwell in a temple, you can make it out of sword, you can make it out of plywood if you like, you can make it like the poor old tabernacle in the wilderness of few crops and badger skins and all the other crazy looking things. Or you can put a steeple on top if you want and stained glass windows, that won't bring the Holy Ghost and it won't necessarily keep him out. But the thing is this, that we must realize that he dwells in us, he doesn't dwell in the atmosphere. You know, when we say let thy spirit fall on me, but the Holy Spirit isn't atmosphere, isn't breath, he isn't person. When he is come, he, he, he, Jesus says he all the time. So then, a man who is an ambassador is a, is not self-appointed. He's apprehended and you and I have been apprehended with Jesus Christ. We've been born of his spirit and by the grace of God we've been filled with his spirit. Not only is he not apprehended, I say again, not only is he not self-appointed, he's not self-supported. You know, this is an area you could not only take a night, good night, you could take weeks in this. Look at, look at the text like this. All things are yours and he has Christ and Christ is God. Or again, God has given Jesus Christ and with him he has freely given us, now if it said things it would be alright, but he has freely given us all things. Hmm? There it is again. All things are yours and he has Christ and Christ is God. Or, again, God has given Jesus Christ and with him he has freely given us all things. Now, now, this is the satisfaction that we have in knowing that the Lord Jesus Christ and all the resources of God are at our disposal. If any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God. Now, you need an awful lot of wisdom to be an ambassador. Well, you couldn't go in there and not know your ABCs and not know protocol and not know what's going on. You need to know an awful lot of things if you're going to represent your country in another country. So he's not self-supported. My God shall supply all your needs according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus. Or, Matthew 6.33, one of the great texts I've hung on to all my life, Matthew 6.33 is what? Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things You, you read sometimes for your own interest how many times Paul talks about these things, that all things are yours. None of these things move me. It's fantastic how he plays on that word. He rings the changes all the time on and yet God has said that all things because I put him right in the center I give him priority. You see, once a man is seized as an ambassador he can't have any interest in other things. This is his sole job. He's got a huge job. He's representing the United States in a foreign country and everything he does is monitored by the nation that he's in and by the nation that he's working for. Now, he's not self-supported, alright, he's got all of his resources. He's not self-anointed, he's not self-seeking, he's not self-appointed, he's not self-supported, he's not self-anointed. The authority he has isn't his own authority. You see, he might say, oh, Mr. Nixon, but you're sending me to Russia as the ambassador. Do you know how many millions Russia has? Do you know this? Do you know that? And Mr. Nixon says, look here, I want to tell you this. Number one, I want to tell you now America has the most powerful army in the world, the most powerful navy, the most powerful air force, and he goes down there and he says, now all these things are behind you. When you stand there in front of the Russians, you can know that all the resources of America are behind you. Now, this authority that he has is invested in him as long as he's pleasing to that one who appointed him there. Should he for some reason make some transgression, that authority is taken from him. I think sometimes when I see Mr. Nixon on TV, supposing for argument he was thrown out of the White House, well, let's put it in a, not because of the Watergate, but let's say Mr. Johnson. Well, the day after Mr. Johnson stepped out of the White House, he was an ordinary man on the street. He couldn't sign a document, he couldn't bring a brochure and say I'm representing, he represents nobody, he's lost his authority. Well, it's true he's still a millionaire, it's true that he's made his place in history, but the fact is that that authority that he had when he was inside of that White House, and he had the title of a president, it invested him with the most awesome power maybe in the whole world. But let him lose that authority, he's out there on the street, he's just nobody, he's just Mr. Johnson owns a ranch and not a few cattle and his wife owns a radio, TV station and whatnot, but he's no good diplomatically. He can't go over and say I'm troubled about Israel and I want Air Force Jet number one to take me to Israel tomorrow, oh forget it, brother you lost your authority yesterday. And you know this is equally true in the life of the individual, the unction that he has, that God gives us that unction, that anointing can be lost. And I know men who are derelict on the road, I remember preaching in Australia there was a man, a certain man on the right rather distinguished looking and the preacher said to me you see the man on the right there, I said yes, he said you know 25 years ago that man was shaking every area he went to in this country and he said no longer, he lost that anointing, he lost that authority. In the very context of that verse where Paul says in Ephesians 6 19 he says pray for me that utterance may be given to me. That I may speak with boldness. Now he's very conscious, he needs that boldness, he needs that authority, he needs that power because words are one thing when I say them but if an ambassador said the same words that I might say in an ambassadorial office he could create a war, he could bring fraction and division and enmity and set a nation up against another nation. But again if that anointing has gone those words have no power at all. Now also let's say this, this man, this ambassador is not self-promoting. You can't think of a man going as an ambassador from here to another country and the first thing he does is get in and say well, they say have you credentials? He said, oh yes, I have my high school diploma and I got my BA here and I got something else somewhere else. He is not there, he is not self-promoting at all. He just forgets everything. He is an ambassador and the moment he is an ambassador his individual responsibilities it might take him away from wives, children, business interests and other things but the honor of being an ambassador that eclipses all the other offices he ever had. So when he gets into this position he is not promoting himself and he is not defending himself. He doesn't go there with a sense of being an ambassador. He has all the rights of being in America. You can't invade his privacy. One thing he has, he has direct communication. For instance, let's do it again, the ambassador of America to Russia. He has a private line, I guess he has a private diplomatic bag. And you know, the men that would take, I don't know how they do it now, but in the old days they used to take a man and he had a bag and he had a chain around him. In fact, they put a hand on him and he put diplomatic letters in that leather bag. And he'd sleep with it on the train. He'd take it off while he undressed and then he had to put it there on his cuff and lock it before he went to sleep. Of course, they found ways of doing that. They took a knife and slit the bottom of the bag and got letters out on certain occasions and sewed them up while the fellow was asleep. But by and large, he had definite private communication from Washington's White House to Russia if he's an ambassador there. Now, isn't that beautifully carried out in us? Because we're ambassadors for Jesus Christ. We have direct communication with the Father. You see, this is why Paul says that when he swaggers at the end of Romans 8, he almost puts his shoulders back and says, well, you know, get off here, it makes me laugh. He says, well, what's going to separate me from the love of Christ? Things present, things to come, things again, he's on. Neither things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall separate me from the love of God which is in Jesus Christ. Now, to me, he's saying this, look, you can wall me in. Sure, you can cut me off, you can put me in prison, and handcuff me to the wall, and put a man there with a club ready to trouble me if I break away, you can do all that. You can take me from my friends, you can take me from my church, you can take my Bible away from me, you can shut me up in a dirty, rotten prison, and they used to be dirty, they weren't like these modern hotels that we put our prisoners in, where they go and strike if they can't have colour TV. Some of the poor guys in prison still wear black and white, isn't that awful? The prison he was in was rat infested and slimy walls and filth, and he said well, so what have you done? If ever you go to Scotland, off the coast of Scotland there's a tower, maybe half as wide as this house, it goes high in the sky, and they put a man called Samuel Rutherford, I don't know if you've ever read his letters, if you haven't you'll miss one of the greatest things of a predatory husband about that. Samuel Rutherford's letters, and in the back of the book, there's a hymn of, I think it has twenty-seven stanzas, and it begins with the sands of time are sinking, the dawn of heaven breaks, the summer morn, I strive for that fair sweet morn awakes. Dark, dark has been the midnight, but day spring is at hand, and glory, glory, dwelleth in Emmanuel's land. He says a strange thing in that hymn by the way, he says the bride eyes not her garments, but her dear bridegroom's face. I married lots and lots, I've never seen it happen, but anyhow that's what it says. It says in the hymn that the bride eyes not her garments, but her dear bridegroom's face. Then he says I will not gaze on glory, but on the king of grace, not on the crown he giveth, but on his pierced hands, when thrown where glory dwelleth in Emmanuel's land. Now, they put him in that prison, why? Because he wouldn't bow to the king, he wouldn't bow to the king, and he wouldn't bow and he wouldn't bow to the and he wouldn't bow to the king, and he wouldn't bow to the to the king, and he wouldn't to the king, and wouldn't bow to the king, and he wouldn't to the king, and he to the king, and he bow to the king, to the king, and he to the king, and he wouldn't bow to the and he wouldn't bow and wouldn't bow to the king, and he wouldn't bow to the and he wouldn't bow to the king, he wouldn't bow to the king, and he wouldn't bow to the king, and he wouldn't bow to the king, and he wouldn't bow to the king, and he wouldn't bow to the king, and he wouldn't to the king, he wouldn't bow to the king, wouldn't bow to the and he wouldn't bow to the king, and he wouldn't bow to the king, and he wouldn't bow to the king, and he and he wouldn't bow to the king, and he wouldn't bow to the king, and he to the king, and he wouldn't bow to the and he wouldn't bow to the and he wouldn't to the and he wouldn't bow to the and he wouldn't bow to the king, and he wouldn't bow to the king, and he wouldn't bow Well, nobody's going to doubt that. But by the same token, that can become a greater menace to me than some failure, because some failure, I'm going to get up and apologize to the Lord and fight my way back again. You see. But, but, unless there's real death, you can't die to self. You're a personality. God made you a personality. But you can die to selfishness, self-seeking, self-pity, self-worrying, hyphenated sins, as I call them. You can die to both. But you can't die to yourself. God never made you for that reason. He made you to be a personality. There are no two people like you in the world, isn't that a comfort? But anyhow, you're, you're just one of a kind. Just one of a kind. God's never going to make, you know, as somebody said, we're all made in the same mold. Only some are moldier than others, but the fact is, what are we? We're all spirit and soul and body. That's all we are. Spirit, soul, body, brain, mind, will, affections, emotions, nerves, sinews, everything. We're all the same composite. The only thing is we develop so different in so many areas. Now, in the same way, in the spiritual life, um, I, I, I don't think, I disagree against that. I don't need a greater hazard in the world than bringing a baby into the world. I mean, look at, look what you can have. Look at the deficiencies, the abnormalities. I, I used to go to a house where two old maids, bless their dear hearts, they had no children of their own, but they had about, I think about 24 to 25 mongoloid children that they looked after. And they worked shifts. You've got 25 mongoloid babies, you've got something. And these two old ladies looked after them. And I used to go see them because they could, very seldom they could get to church. So I'd go and they'd say, well, Mary's upstairs in that room and Susie's over in the other. And you'd go chase up and see all these. Now, the hazard again of bringing children into the world, they can be born blind, they can be born lame, they can be born retarded, they can be born with a thousand deficiencies. But you know, that is never, never, never, never true spiritually. God never brings anybody to birth spiritually blind, or spiritually lame, or spiritually retarded. It's not true that all people are born equal, they're not in any way. They may be born with equal rights, but they're not born equal. Because again, with degrees of mentality, you know, you, what's a little guy in Japan, they show him on TV a while ago, don't know if he's fine, he goes to Tokyo University. And in the highest, amongst the highest intellectuals with the highest IQs, up 135, 535 IQs and higher. And they worked, they had a blackboard, just about as long as this wall. And the professor started at that end and he worked the thing out, you know, x, g, y, x, a line, something, something. And he got right to the end, I thought, well, so what? I don't know, the lady said when she saw some monuments in England and she couldn't read them, they got them in Latin. And she asked the guy what they were, and he said Latin. She says, she called her husband, she said, Alma, you know, this Latin's Greek to me. Well, it's like looking at those things on the wall. You see this fella go on the wall and he does this, this. And when he got to the end, he said to this class, the most elite class in the University of Tokyo, he said, now, gentlemen, you could work this out, not on paper, work it out mentally. And raise your hand when you've worked it out. So you could see them there. Here's a little guy, literally in his high chair, three years of age, put his hand up. Professor said, you know the answer? Yes, sir. He brought the high chair, stood him on it, and the little guy put so many digits down like this. And he was correct. Now, all children not born like that, and you're glad, wouldn't they cut you out so often? As I say, when it comes to the natural realm, it's a serious thing. You can't guess what's going to happen. So many things are hereditary. I worked for two years with Dave Wilkerson in the subculture of New York amongst the drug addicts. And I saw some of the most beautiful girls I think I've seen in my life, prostitutes with drug addiction. And you know, when the baby is born, that baby is born with a habit. It's born with drug addiction. Now, there are these hazards in the physical, in the physical sense. You don't know what's going to happen to the child. Again, this is never true in the spiritual realm. Nobody's born handicapped, nobody's born blind, nobody's born lame, nobody's born deficient spiritually. God does a perfect job. Wasn't it true that everything that God made, he saw that it was good and he pronounced it good? Well, if he did that in his creation, what does he do then in his new creation? You remember what John, not John, Charles Wesley says in his hymn, Love Divine or Love Excelling, finish then thy new creation, pure and spotless let us be. And you know, every day in our lives it should be that there's some, there's some addition in our Christian life, there's some promotion in our Christian life. We gain more stature in our Christian life. Because after all, you don't send the boy from the lowest class or the lowest fellow in the university to be an ambassador. He has something whereby he merits, though he can't select it, he can put himself into a position where, you know, it didn't used to be so in England, pardon me, in America. It's always been true in England, I think, that if a man will go into a foreign country, he must master the language before he got there. Now one of the weaknesses of American international diplomacy until a few years ago was that a man would go on as ambassador to Russia and he would have to depend on a Russian interpreter to tell him what the Russians were saying and they didn't always tell the truth. So a man must know the language. In other words, he must be pretty well stocked up here in his mind to be eligible to be an ambassador to another country. Now when Paul says we're ambassadors for Christ, I'm sure, I'm quite sure of this, that while it is true that we're all born normally, we don't, normally in the spiritual life, we don't have to stay there and we shouldn't stay there. There shouldn't be that promotion. Again, so the ambassador is, first of all, he's not self-appointed, he's not self-supported, he has resources from his country and here he's a, he's not self-defended, he has all the resources of his country behind him. Another thing, he's not self-directed. You see, he can't sit down and say to Mr. Brezhnev or somebody, well I never saw it your way, sure I'll alter that, just a minute, let me, let me alter this. This is what Nixon said, that doesn't matter what Nixon said, cross this out and I'll say Mr. Brezhnev wants this corrected and so on and so on. Somebody else speaks out and he says, well of course, this is what Kissinger said, but I'll cross that out and I'll tell them what you want. No sir, he goes there with a, with a, a set of rules and he cannot in any way, vary those rules. Now what is Paul saying? He says I'm an ambassador and I've come with a set of rules, here they are, take them or leave them. And I'm sorry I can't accommodate you, but God does say the wicked should be turned into hell and if you're wicked, you've got to repent or else go to the other place, that's all there is to it. I'm sorry I can't change it for you. You're such a nice looking lady and sir, you look so handsome in that uniform, man, you must be one of the great men in this country. Sure, I'm the chief of the air force in my country. I'm sorry, but God has conditions for the whole bunch of you. Excuse me lady, you look very wealthy with those great big things on knuckle dusters you've got on, those big jewels and everything. Oh, my husband knows the greatest jewels girl, I'm so sorry.