In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the importance of true worship and warns against engaging in empty rituals. He highlights the power of the Holy Spirit and recounts a personal experience of witnessing a woman who was truly blessed by the presence of the Holy Ghost. The preacher then shifts to discussing the impending judgment that every person will face before God. He emphasizes the magnitude of this judgment, mentioning the countless individuals who will be present and the absence of anyone to help or intercede on behalf of the judged. The sermon concludes with a reflection on the apostle Paul's experiences and the vision of heaven described in the book of Revelation. The preacher emphasizes the need for repentance and warns against relying on worldly governments or optimism to escape judgment.

Is that the Christ that goes to the office with you every day and you don't testify to him? Is that the Christ that you love and you don't say grace publicly? Is that the Christ in your home and when folk come you take cocktails or something just to be convenient? Listen, Jesus Christ is the blessed and only portrait that you say. No, there have been kings in England, kings in France, tsars in Russia, caliphs in Baghdad, maharajas in... There are millions of kings and rulers. No, no, no, wait a minute. He is the blessed and only potentate. What do you mean the only potentate? He's the only potentate who lived before he was born. He's the only potentate who lived after he died. He's the only potentate before whom every king shall bow. I'll tell you what, Hollywood up the road there, they made all kinds of films. They made the kings of films of David and Bathsheba. They could do that without rehearsing. They know enough about adultery. They made other films. I'll tell you what, all Hollywood will never make a film of the judgment seat of Christ. You talk about bowing the knee to Jesus. What does it say? His head and his hairs were white like wool, white as snow, his eyes were the flame of fire, his feet like burnished brass, his face like the sun in its strength. Can you imagine that? His voice like the sound of many waters. You talk about the voice of Whitefield. They said he could say to a congregation of 10,000 people, Mesopotamia. He said it like the Welsh people talk and people would weep. Even when he said that. What do you think the voice of the Son of God is going to be there when there's a thousand billion people there? Friends, I'm going to heaven. I don't know where you're going to heaven. It's your business. I'm going to heaven. I don't want to go to heaven. I mean, not just to heaven, that's the first stop. I want to do better than that. I want to go to marriage, supper of the Lamb. I want to do better than that. I want to go be part of the bride. Anybody going with me? You know, I love that music of Handel's. I can play. I play everything by Handel. But I like Handel's music. I like his water music, but boy do I like his, what do you call it, his oratorio. You know, King of Kings, them other sopranos go up and I think they're going to burst their lungs. King of Kings and Lord of Lords and he'll reign for 10 years. Oh no, sorry, 10,000. No? What a bunch of unbelievers you are. Oh no, he's going to reign for 10,000. No, no, well you sang it in church Sunday, didn't you? Well, we've been there 10,000 years. A silly Englishman wrote that. I'm not going to heaven for the weekend. A man asked me once in a meeting, he said, have you read my wife's book? I said, yeah, I didn't know she wrote one, didn't have a wife even. Oh, she wrote a book. She went to heaven for seven days. When she came back, we had to pull the bed from the wall and she tripped all round. I can't do it because my legs are weak, but she tripped all round the bed for seven days. I said, what a terrible thing. He said, what? I said, listen brother, once I get inside those pearly gates, all the angels in heaven are not going to kick me back. Do you think I'm coming back to this dump? You think you've got oranges in orange state. You've never seen it. Oranges in heaven are bigger than footballs. Well, that's evangelistically speaking. But we're too earthbound. We live on earth too much. We see too much TV. By God, you ought to be living in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. When we see him, his air is white as snow. Why? A token of his passion. I say we'd rather sing John Wesley's little hymn. Gentle Jesus, meek and mild. And the other hymn that he wrote, all the tokens of his passion, knowing glory still he bears. And then he goes and stands and says, and every eye shall see him. And then what else does he say? Robed in dreadful majesty. Can you think of Christ with eyes like a flame of fire? With feet like burnished brass? With face like the sun that's straight? Mary Antoinette had a problem most of you women don't have. You guys need to be patient with your wives. Oh, it takes a half an hour to get ready. I'm in bed when she comes. Sure, she used to fill all those cracks up in her face. She spent 25 years doing it. She's no better off now. She fills all the cracks in her face. Then she gets up in the morning and washes it all off and fills them all with powder. Then dabs her ears and dabs her nose and pencils her eyelashes and sticks her eyelashes on, pencils her eyebrows, clips her nails on. Poor soul. What a mess these women are in. Do you know what I think about Jackie? She's gone now. She sat in our house last year and I kept looking at her feet. Beautiful are the what? The feet. Has any woman ever had better feet? When I sat at the side of her, I was remembering when I sat with another famous woman and her name was Marichal, which is French for Marshall. She went to France and had revival. I stood on a platform with her in 1940. No, wait a minute, 35, 36. And she was at the side of me and the tears were spilling down. Boy, was she ugly. She's as wrinkled as a prune. And the tears were bouncing down her face and she's singing about vision that we heard this morning. I can't remember the first verse of the hymn she wrote, but I remember the second one. There is a love constraining me to go and seek the last. I yield, O Lord, by all to thee to save at any cost. There is a fire that falls on me as in the upper room, destroying all carnality, dispelling fear and gloom. There is a life to have given me, a life divine and strong. And I remember that woman went to the underworld of Paris and had revival. I got the whole book on the thing. The Spirit of God moved on her. It's true as Jackie said this morning, revival doesn't begin with comfort and creature comfort, you have two cars and two refrigerators and you don't know what to eat when you go in a restaurant. It comes when we're starving. But if you got hungry, you'd run here. If you hadn't eaten for a month, you'd go out there, you'd think potato chips were made of gold. But you see with all the creature comfort. It's the same, we go to service, we know when to start, we know when to sit down. We laugh at some people, they're full of ritual. You're full of ritual. The first 10 minutes you clap, the second minute you dance, the third 10 minutes you do something else, and you come out stoned at the end of it. But not when the Holy Ghost is there. I say I saw that blessed woman, let me go back a moment. At the voice of the Son of God, every man is going to rise. Julius Caesar, every other Caesar, every other Tsar, every other king that ever lived, every criminal that ever lived. They're all going to come forward at the voice of the Son of God. Last year in this enlightened country, 10,000 teenagers perished driving cars while they were drunk. But the brewers are going to have to answer for that, for supplying that liquor. Every person that is going to stand there, at the judgment seat of Christ. And the books were opened. What kind of books? The book of memory. You say I don't have a very good memory. You will when the finger of Almighty God touches it, your mind is suddenly will go back to everything you ever did in your lifestyle. And if you carry your sins there, you'll be judged for them. You can get rid of the burden now, you can't get rid of the bondage now, you get rid of the failure now. But can you understand millions and millions and millions of people? Gabriel suddenly says, listen attentively. Maybe Teddy Kennedy comes and has to explain why that girl died in that thing. She didn't drown because there's no water in the lands. What's the problem? It's going to be uncovered then. There's no secret we've gone. Every knee shall bow and every sin shall be opened up for exposure. And every commandment we've ever broken, we'll have to pay the price for it. If our sins are unforgiven, there are 12 books or 10 books. The 10 commandments we have to give an answer for. As I said on Sunday night, this is the darkest period in history. Why? Because we've turned out the lamp of witness in the streets. The darkness of this day is the church's gift to the world when she needs light. The brother mentioned yesterday, for the foster they have street meetings. I gave 50 years of my life to street preaching in England. Preaching at midday, preaching at midnight. There they'd sell them at a meeting that people didn't kneel in the street. We waited for people to come out of movie houses. And there they stood in hundreds at night. And we stood in the rain sometimes. We took off our coats and said, if you want to confess Christ, come and kneel with us. And we didn't say, just say, I'm sorry. We stayed a half an hour or an hour with them until they were really born again of the Spirit of God. The people outside don't know that there's deliverance from sin. After all, most of you go back to your old ways. Doesn't Paul writing, was it to Colossians says, we are his workmanship. Are we? Did people see a change in your life when you're back? I mean, it's all right seeing blessed assurance here. But do we have assurance we can go into the world and stand against the world and the flesh and the devil? You know, we say some very silly things, don't we? You know, you hear people say, well, you only live once. Forget it, we live twice. We live once on this planet, and then we're going to live in the presence of God. Are we going to be judged before we get there? I don't know all the great hymns. I think I know hundreds of them, and I like them. But you know, one of the most rollicking hymns that I ever learned in my life was written in America. I'll tell you how it begins. My eyes have seen what? Okay, when did you see it? You're singing to a football match or something. My eyes have seen the coming of the glory of the Lord. Did you see him coming with ten thousand of his saints to revenge his death on the cross? Do you see him calling to account all the bankers, calling to bank all the guys that are manipulating this oil situation right now, calling to judgment every wicked man, whether he lived on the devil's island, Alcatraz, or wherever he lived, that every man is coming to judgment. Nobody's going to escape. The kings of will come. The prime ministers will come. Everybody will come. One of the most notorious of all the trials in history was the trial of Warren Hastings. He got into India at the time when, and when England invaded it made millions of dollars. And he twisted all the money and he was brought to England for trial. Do you know how long his trial lasted? Seven years. He sat there on the wool sack. Edmund Burke, the greatest orator since Demosthenes was there. And there's a man sitting, of course with no TV cameras. There were reporters there. And here is a man, one of the greatest brains in the world, a colossal brain. And he twisted it and went to the devil. And his trial took seven years. Edmund Burke stood in front of him every day and recited the crime. And Edmund Burke never had a note. He could stand there day after day like reading a page out of that man's life. You did this on a certain day. You did that on a certain day. You did something else. Here's a man who's had the world at his feet. And he said, when Burke was speaking and pointing to me, it seemed as though his finger was like an arrow going into my heart. It seemed as though fire was burning. I was humiliated. He said, that was the most horrible thing I've ever had. I felt the most culpable man in the world. In other words, I felt the biggest devil. He uncovered my lust. He uncovered everything. Come on, would you like to go now, unforgiven as you are, or even as a Christian, would you like to go and bow the knee to one whose eyes are a flame of fire? Every time I went to see Dr. Tozer, to walk into his presence was an event. I just wished he'd live longer. He died at 66 years of age in 1963. Why didn't God take me and let him live? He would have been more useful to God than I am. But I remember walking in one day and he stopped me as he often did on the track. He said, Leonard, I want to tell you something. You talked about the judgment seat last time you were here. And he said, I've been thinking about it ever since. And he said, Leonard look, I want to tell you, I'm going to be judged not for what I've done, but why I did it. Did you ever realize that? Not for what I didn't do, but why didn't I do it? Who gagged me? Who bound me? No one let me do it. The fear of man, the fear of losing a job, the fear of the deacons kicking me out in God's name. But going back to Edmund Burke, he sat there, he wriggled, he screamed. The men in the gallery looked down and saw that's the man that's been representing us in India. He's been feeding himself, he's been stealing, he's been lying, he's been cheating for seven whole years. Friend, what are you going to do when you stand before a thousand billion people at the judgment seat? There'll be nobody there to help you. The women you lusted with, the men you drank with, the fellows you cheated with, it's all going to be, the lid is going to be taken off. It's going to be one awesome, awesome judgment. I remind you again of the lovely hymn. I remember the first time I heard this played in England. I'm sitting in a pew. I had a very wonderful mother. She was very beautiful, I suppose you can see that, but anyhow. The Apostle Paul says God separated him from his mother's womb. I think I hold a record nobody else in the world holds. It wasn't two months after I was born, it wasn't two days after, it wasn't two, no it wasn't two months, it wasn't two weeks, it wasn't two hours after I was born I was in a prayer meeting. Isn't that something? My mother didn't tell me till 20 years after. Good Lord, I'm glad she didn't. The first day I came home from a little Bible college, she put her arms around me, she said Len this is a great day. She said you know that two hours after you were born, the midwife tripped her out of the room. I was born properly and I wasn't born in one of these baby factories that they call hospitals. I was born properly. I was born, I didn't have some big fat doctor that never knew anything about children. I had a midwife delivered me, that's biblical. Be born at home and a midwife. So you ladies who are pregnant know what to do now. You can put that in the offering when you come tonight. But two hours after I was born, when the midwife slipped out of the room, my mother put her hand on me in bed and prayed this prayer, Lord. She prayed for me every day for nine months when I was protected, but now I'm in the world. And two hours after I'm born, on the bed of the side my mother laid her hand out and prayed, God make this boy a preacher or not let him live. Well if I'd heard that I'd be terrified. I'm even terrified now when I think about it. What a wonderful prevalence. Listen to what you've sung, you've forgotten about it. My eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. He's trampling out the vintage where is what? Grapes of wrath are. No we're going to sit down and eat them. That's how we live. Where the grapes of wrath are stored, he hath sounded forth the trumpet that should never found retreat. Oh sorry I should have gone in the same verse. He's trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored. He hath loosed the fateful lightning of his what? Terrible swift sword. He's not gentle Jesus, meek and mild. He's robed in majesty. He's so blinding that if God didn't screen our eyes, we wouldn't even be able to look at him. I was saying about Mary Antoinette, the most beautiful woman I ever was in France. She grieved the king. What did he do? He put her in the Bastille. You've never seen the Bastille. When you go to see the home of another Englishman, he's partly English, George Washington. When you go to his old home, you come out of the kitchen, go around the corner and across to the right, there's a model of the Bastille. The walls were 30 feet thick. They put this little French lady in there. She grieved the king. When she went in, she was the most beautiful woman in the world. Her face looked like enamel. It was so gorgeous. She had a hairstyle that she made famous. And there she is. She's led into prison at night. She's put in a dark prison cell, lonely in the Bastille. She heard the clock strike midnight, strike one, two, three, four. She's going to die at eight o'clock in the morning. At eight o'clock, a man comes in and there's a little gorgeous lady, the most beautiful woman in the world. She no longer has gorgeous black hair. She no longer has a flawless skin. Her hair is as white as snow. Her skin is all wrinkled. She went to be a hundred years old in a night. Why? Because she knew she's going to lay that pretty head on the guillotine. He's going to cut down up it goes and a bloody head goes down on the floor. When I see Jesus Christ, his hair is as white as snow. Why? Lo, the tokens of his passion, though inglorious, still he bears. Cause of endless exultation to his ransomed worshippers. When I see Jesus Christ, he's going to look a million years old. His hair will be as white as snow, his eyes like flames of fire, his feet like burnished brass, his face like the sun that's trenched. Do you wonder, it says in this same chapter that the heavens and the earth fled away from him. What a terrifying aspect. But he's pulling out his terrible swift sword. He has sounded forth a trumpet that shall never call retreat. Listen, I want to tell you something. There's not a thousand sudden Hussains can keep Jesus Christ from coming. A thousand divorces today, every hour on the hour won't do it. A thousand bastards born won't do it. A thousand drunkards won't do it. There's one thing keeps Jesus Christ from coming back. That is the bride is not ready. Come on, would you like Jesus Christ to come now, five minutes from now, just as you are, without repairing your prayer life? Without putting straight some of those things that are wrong in your life? Without apologizing to some of those people whose hearts you know you've broken? He's not going to give us a day's notice. He's coming in a moment in the kingdom. When we see him we should be like him. Not when we see him we have an hour to get ready to be like him. He's going to come with his terrible swift sword. He is sifting out the hearts of men before his judgment seat. This is a judgment seat today. This is your privilege to get away from your condemnation. Get away from your failure. Get away from your unbelief. Get away from your selfishness. Get away from your pride. There are people in hell that died multimillionaires and give every blessed penny they have to sit in your seat this morning. Just have one more chance. Oh I know it's popular to preach a second chance. Don't believe it. Did Adam get a second chance? You sin every day, thought, word and deed. How many times did Adam sin? He only sinned once and he got kicked out of the garden. And God put flaming cherubim there. Not seraphim, cherubim. Cherubim are always there to guard. We sin with impunity every day. That's not God's will. That's Romanism, Buddhism, any other ism. It's not Christianity. Christianity is victory over sin. Christianity is not that I cannot sin. It's that I don't want to sin. Do you think I want some other woman in my life? I've crossed the Atlantic at least maybe 18 times in that big old ship you've got stuck up there, the Queen Elizabeth. And women come and say, would you like to walk the deck with me or shall we have a drink together? I've never, I think I've crossed the Atlantic about 20 times. I've never had a woman in my room even if they want counsel, no siree. I've kept my vows by the grace of God. My neighbor, the father of my neighbor died last year. He and his wife have been married 72 years. Isn't that wonderful? 72 years and that old man never had a girlfriend. I mean, never had another girlfriend. If I can be true to my precious wife, can't I be true to God? I don't care how beautiful and rich other women have been. I've stayed in castles, I've stayed in all kinds of places and that doesn't trouble me at all. I gave my heart, my life to a precious woman I've kept faithful. Well, can't I do that for the King of kings and the Lord of lords? I was on the edge of hell. Oh to grace, how great a debtor daily I'm constrained to be. Let that grace, Lord, like a fetter, bind my yielding heart to thee. Prone to wonder, Lord, I, it's rubbish. Oh, you stand in church and sing without a tear. It was written by an Englishman to, it was written by the guy that wrote, uh, what's his name, John Newton. He wrote Amazing Grace, which is wonderful. He writes a silly thing like that. Prone to wonder, Lord, I feel it. You stand in church so piously. Prone to wonder, Lord. You know, you're coming on the stage. I don't like choirs. I see a choir coming in. I think it's a church clan coming. We sing so piously as though we're humbled to sing prone to wonder. Supposing I go to my wife and say, darling, you're very lovely. I mean, I just, is it your birthday today, Martha? When, tomorrow? She's waving me down. That, that's her deaf and dumb language to me. She always does that when she's over. When I'm getting too hot to voice to, she goes, I think, I think it's either today or tomorrow. She'll be 80. Isn't that wonderful? She's sweet and lovely. We've been married 52 years. People ask me what's the secret of marriage. I say, being of one mind, hers. Would you believe in 52 years, we've only had two little quarrels. They weren't real quarrels. In 52 years, we've lived in peace and joy. Dear Lord, when I see Jesus, his hair is white as snow, his feet like burnished. Nobody, Paul never saw him like that, no one else. Do you wonder this man endured all he did on the Isle of Patmos? It's a devil's island, the rottenest, corruptest people in the world were there. What happens, the compensation is God opens heaven. He saw into eternity what nobody else had ever seen. Read the book of Revelation. Yes, sir, he, he's getting his sword ready to thrust in our generation. There isn't a government in the world can help us. Mr. Bush can have all the optimism he needs. We're not getting out of this. We're going in for judgment. We've had more privilege. We eat more food than anybody. We drink more food than anybody. I don't go in a, I don't go in a store to buy groceries. No, I've, how can I? There's 30 kinds of brown bread. There's 30 kinds of other bread. There's 30 kinds of fish. There's 30 kinds of food. And as our sister said this morning, the rest of the world is starving and we're not even thankful for it. The time will come, the word of God said, when people will do wicked things, but also there'll be unthankful and unholy. Okay. Noah Webster gave us a dictionary. Remember that you've got Noah Webster's dictionary. What did Daniel Webster give us? Daniel Webster was a statesman in America. He was an orator. He's a brilliant man. One day he was sitting there with his peers, some of the greatest brains in America. And one of them said, Dan, tell us what is the greatest thought that ever went over your mind? And immediately he answered, the greatest thought that ever came over my mind is my personal accountability to my maker. My personal accountability to my God. Yes, sir, everybody, everybody, no matter whether kings of the earth, I can't wait. He is the blessed and only potentate. I remind you of that. No king in history has had every king in the world bow their knee to him, but Jesus Christ will have it. Have you realized that every judgment that's ever been passed in America anywhere, every judge is going to bow before the greatest judge in history. Every king is going to bow before the greatest king in history. Every genius is going to bow before the genius that ever lived. Jesus Christ is the essence of wisdom and power. We sing all come, let us adore him. We don't know much about it. What does John say? This is a silly teaching going around now, that Jesus is kind of whimpering, he's sorry for himself. And he comes along to you and says, you know, I'd like somewhere to lay my head, Buncombe. He's said that before the cross. He isn't talking to a young, if he, if Jesus Christ said to Nicodemus or Jesus Christ said to the rich young ruler, I'm looking somewhere to lay my head. They say, oh, it's okay. Come and live with me, boss. I have a lovely place. You can do it. But Jesus didn't say that to the rich young man. And there's another interpretation that was beautiful that Jackie gave this morning. It doesn't say he had money. He was very rich in possessions. Maybe he's rich in his social life. Maybe he's rich. I'm sure materially he was. Jesus didn't say, I'm looking somewhere to lay my head. He said, come and live at my place. I live like a king. Jesus said to him, sell all you have and not only that, but take up your cross and follow me. And he didn't want to do that. It's too humiliating. No, sorry. Jesus Christ is not looking for somewhere to lay his head. I'll tell you what he's looking for. I noticed that notice there's a lot outside and it says the Marines are looking for a few what? Good men. Jesus is looking for, he's looking for a few dead men and men that have been to the cross. He's not looking for somewhere to lay his head. He's looking for somewhere where somebody will die and rise and live in resurrection life now. That's what he says. If ye be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above. What Paul saying, I told you the other night, speaking on Galatians, Paul says the world is crucified to me. You can do anything to a man once he's nailed to a cross. You could throw a bucket of filth on him. You could pull his beard. You could spit on him. You could do anything. And people did that. It was a public exhibition when a man went to a cross at six in the night. But you go at six in the morning. He's a bloody horrible spectacle. Those big vultures come and rest on the cross. They pick out his eyes. They tear open his belly. His blood runs out. The dogs come to lick up the blood. No woman ever ran to her husband on a cross at six o'clock in the morning. That's the most repulsive thing. I tell you what, there's one thing as cruel as the Romans were. They never crucified children.