In this sermon, the preacher discusses the book of Revelation and the visions that John saw. He describes how John saw various apocalyptic events, such as the sun turning black, the moon turning into blood, and stars falling to the earth. The preacher also mentions the opening of the bottomless pit and the release of four angels and 200 million horsemen. He highlights the different appearances of God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit that John witnessed throughout the book. The sermon emphasizes the importance of reading and understanding the prophecies in the book of Revelation.

The book of Revelation. I'll just read the first three verses, and probably not any further than that tonight. The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to show unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass. And he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John, who bare record of the word of God, and of the testimony of Jesus Christ, and of all things that he saw. Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein, for the time is at hand. This book is called sometimes the Apocalypse, the book of Revelation, or the Apocalypse. The odd part about it is that both words mean the same thing. Apocalypse means an unveiling, a revealing, usually a revealing of something that was mysterious before. And this book of Revelation is the most comprehensive book in the entire Bible, without any doubt. That is, John saw further in all directions than any other writer of the Bible, Moses included, or David, or Isaiah, or any of the rest. He saw not only further forward, he saw further back, and he saw further up, and he saw further down. And he saw more in detail than any other man did. Now, that leads me to a remark here, although this is not really part of the sermon, that when the devil banished John the Beloved to the Isle of Patmos out in the Aegean Sea, he did what they say he does if he give enough rope. They say if he gives the devil enough rope, he hangs himself. And this is exactly what the devil did here when he took this man John, this good man who had lain in the bosom of Jesus and heard his heart beat. He got enough of John, he couldn't stand John's godliness and John's love, and so he worked on the Roman Empire to send John out to the Isle of Patmos, and they did. And history tells us, or rather I don't think it's authentic history, but it's come down to us, that John was put in a slave labor battalion and sent to a mine and forced to work under the ground in a dark mine. Right there was where the devil hanged himself, because John saw farther from that mine than any king has ever seen from his throne. And John saw farther from that mine, that deep hole in the ground where the devil had thought he had buried John. John saw farther than Uri Gagarin saw from his monkey cage up there, if he was up there. I personally doubt he ever was, but they say he was, and that would be my reason for doubting it, because if Communists said it, it's a lie. But he was up there looking down on the earth several hundred miles up, but he didn't see as much as John saw, because he didn't have what John had. You take a man, put him up there and orbit him around the earth, and he looks down and he'll say some dumb thing like, oh, it's beautiful, or something. But you take a man full of the Holy Ghost and bury him in a mine, and he'll be in the Spirit on the Lord's day, and he will see things that the mind of man has never known, or the heart of man has never understood. Now I just wonder if you've ever gone over this book of Revelation and noticed how many things John saw here. This book views the universe, and in it we see displayed the swift succession of everything from the highest heaven to the deepest hell. And my sermon tonight will chiefly be running over this, sort of taking a panoramic view. What we're going to do tonight is to take you around the place and show you a few things and say, now, here's what John saw, and here's what we'll see if we continue through the book over the next weeks. Well, John saw God, and he saw him sitting on a throne with a rainbow around the throne, and he saw Christ under several phases. He saw him once there in the first chapter, standing in the midst of the churches. He saw him in the fifth chapter, a lamb standing before the throne. He saw him in the nineteenth chapter riding down the sky to the marriage supper of the lamb. Then John saw the Holy Spirit, the seven Spirits of God which were before his throne. And we find in this book hell revealed, and we find in this book the earth seen from all sides. We find the sea here. In fact, this book of Revelation is like a storm at sea. And we see the sky arched overhead and the clouds floating through. We see the sun, and we see it turned into blood, and we see the moon, and we see the moon all red, and we see the stars shaken in the firmament, and we see the rocks, and we see great men and mighty men and politicians and big shots all down on their knees praying to the rocks and saying, O, cover us from the wrath of God. We see the rivers flowing and see them turned into blood. We see the mountains here in the book of Revelation, O, the fountains flowing up, and we see the mountains being torn down. And we see strange horses of red and black and white, and a pale-colored horse of no particular color which was death. We see lions here, and we see the nations of the earth, and they don't look very big to us the way John saw them. We talk now about the powerful nations of the earth. We say Russia is a powerful nation, the United States a powerful nation. When you see them from down here, they are powerful nations. But when you see them the way John saw them, they look awfully small indeed. Did you ever look down from about 37,000 feet in the air? I came in from Canby the other day, 37,000 feet up. That wasn't as high as Gagarin, but it was up further than I had been before. And when you look down, all those big things, you see little tiny spots down there, and that cost $230,000. And over here is another little tiny spot, that cost a million. That little spot over there took five years to build, and that cost two and a half million, and so it goes. But up there it just looks like another flyspeck down on a little piece of dirty paper, 37,000 feet down below you. So when John saw the nations of the earth, from his high place in the coal mine, where he was in the Spirit on the Lord's Day, the nations of the earth looked awfully small indeed. And John saw the church also, that wonderful church of which we are a part. And John saw Israel, 144,000, sealed with the shield of God. And he saw darkness, and he saw light, and he saw night, and he saw day, and he saw leopards, and he saw fire and lightning and earthquakes, and he saw soldiers marching, and he saw the birds eating the soldiers, and he saw kings, but they weren't very big kings, and their crowns weren't any bigger around than a small ring off your finger by the time John got through with them. And he saw scorpions coming up with a sting in their tail, and he saw the rich, but they weren't very rich, and he saw the poor, and they weren't very poor. And he saw the small, and they were great, and he saw the great, and they were small. And he saw the dead, and they came up, and he saw the living, and he saw saints, and he saw the damned, and the resurrection of the wicked dead. Now, I'm not putting any of this on. I just tell you what John saw here. All this is in the book of Revelation. Aren't you ashamed that you haven't been reading it lately? And then he saw also the prophets, and he saw martyrs, and he saw witnesses, and false teachers, and he saw merchants, and they were, as usual, complaining about sales falling off. And he saw idolaters down on their knees worshiping, and he saw kingdoms, and he saw virgins, and he saw a great whore. And he saw the temple, and he saw the altar there in the temple, and he saw them measuring the worshipers beside the temple. And he saw the sorcerers, and murderers, and viles, and he saw herd trumpets, and blasphemers, and he saw famine and war, and he saw books opened, and he saw cities, and he heard liars and saw them. He saw the synagogue of Satan, and heaven, and the throne of God, and the Lamb. And he saw the beasts, and the elders, and the waiting souls under the altar. John saw all this from that hole in the ground where the devil had put him. He wouldn't have seen that much if he'd been riding on top of a star somewhere. But when he was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, he saw it all. And he saw the sealing of the righteous, and he heard and saw the triumph of the multitude singing unto the Lamb. He saw hail and fire with blood falling upon the earth, and a blazing mountain hurled down. He saw candlesticks in the winepress of God's wrath, and he saw a unified world. He saw what you and I are now seeing the beginnings of. He saw the world unified. They've got the common market, and they have NATO, and they have CETO, and they have the United States of this and the United States of that, and one of these times there is going to be a world unified. Not only a world unified, but there is going to be a church unified. And that word we're hearing now, ecumenical and ecumenicity, is simply the fulfillment of what John saw, the unification of everything. And Papa John over there on the Tiber is now stretching his fat arms around the world and telling us that he wants all the churches to come my way and let's unite. To unite with the Roman Catholic Church is precisely the same as for a lamb to unite with a tiger. The lamb unites with the tiger, and then the tiger picks his teeth, lies down and sleeps it off. And if the church of Christ unites with the Roman Catholic Church, we'll unite by going their way. And John saw the sun turn to blackness, and the moon into blood, and the stars fall on the earth. And he saw the sky rolled up as a scroll, and he saw the opening of the terrible bottomless pit, and he saw the destroyer of fear. And he saw four angels released and 200 million horsemen coming out. And he saw the mighty angel that said he'd put one foot on the sea and the other foot on the land. That's a favorite passage of Scripture for some of our dear colored brethren. I used to listen to them preach almost every Sunday when I was in the city of Chicago. And some of them are really orators. They take off in a great and mighty imaginative flight. And one of their favorite passages is that mighty angel that said, one foot on the sea and the other on the land. And I want to see that angel. And then there was the woman clothed with the sun, and the red dragon that stood in front of her, and the man-child that was born. And the war in heaven when Michael and his angels fought against the devil and his angels. And then the devil appears on the earth. And there's the beast with seven heads and ten horns. What a terrible thing that is. I don't know what it is. There's a lot of things I don't know about this. If you expect me to get up here and tell you everything about this and explain it all, you're going to be deeply disappointed, because I don't know about this and what I do. But what I do is sufficient to keep me quite interested and expectant. And then the Son of Man appears on a cloud to reap the earth. And he puts in his sickle and reaps. And we see the rise and fall of the scarlet woman. And we see the fall of Babylon. And we see the mighty clash of armies at Armageddon. And we see the married supper of the Lamb. And all the beloved saints who have been washed in the blood of that Lamb come before the face of their bridegroom. And they are married in solemn nuptials to the one who had redeemed them. And then, of course, there's the chaining of Satan, for Satan is going to be chained. This would be a wonderful world if Satan was chained. Satan is not chained. He's busy. He's everywhere about, hustling here and there. He is not omnipresent, but he's ubiquitous. Which omnipresent means he's everywhere at once. Ubiquitous means he isn't everywhere at once, but he makes up for it by getting around fast. And so the devil makes up for all the fact that he isn't omnipresent by being ubiquitous. He gets around and he's here and there, walking up and down in the earth. And you're just as likely to run on to him on your way home as not. And there was the reign of Christ on the earth, which is a beautiful thing that has become a cause of contention among the people of God. And there's the great white throne judgment when the wicked dead are raised and stand before that great white throne and the books are opened and they give account of the deeds done in the body. And there's the new heaven and the new earth and there's a tearless, warless, deathless world emerging, established in full view of the throne of God and the holy city. And there's the river of life which bears, which flows out and beside it, there's the tree of life bearing its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nation. Now that's only just a little sketch. That's not by any means everything that John talked about here. But by going over that list and showing you this mighty panorama, I think I have proved what I said to begin with, that this man John wrote the most comprehensive book of the entire Bible. For there is not another book from Genesis right on down that takes it all in like this. Unless, of course, when the scripture says, God made the heaven and the earth and all things that are therein, that takes it in, but not in such detail as John saw it. Now, this isn't a very big book, this book of Revelation. It's a rather modest book. You can sit down and read it through in an hour's time if you're a good reader. It only has 22 chapters and they're not long. The last one's 21 and the 22nd is 27 long and the 20th is only 15 and the 19th is only 21 and so on. Some of them are even shorter than that. So it's not a very long book. The 15th is only 8 verses long. And there we have it. Now, it has been a cause of a good deal of contention, but that doesn't bother me because everything good has been a cause of contention. They told me about a brother one time, a godly man who was out with his master in those old days of the slaves, and the slave was trying to talk his master into being a Christian. He was a godly man and his master wasn't much interested. And he said to him, listen here, Tom, how is it you're a Christian and I'm not, yet you have all the troubles? And they were duck hunting. He said, you have the troubles and I don't have any. He said, your family gets sick and mine doesn't. You get sick and I don't. You're poor and I'm well to do. And I'm widely known and you're scarcely known off the plantation. How do you figure if the Lord is on your side, why is everything going my way and nothing going your way when I'm not on the Lord's side? Well, the dear old saint said, Matthew, he said, did you ever notice when you shoot a duck and shoot up and a lot of ducks come down? He said, do you know the ones you always hurry after and try to catch? He said, yes, the ones that are getting away. He said, the ones that I've already killed, I don't bother. I can pick them up anytime. And he said, well, that's the way with you and me. He said, you don't have any troubles and I do. He said, the reason of that is that I'm getting away. And the devil knows he's already got you. So he figures he's got you in the bag and he's not bothering you. But he's bothering me because I'm getting away. Now, I think he had some good theology there and a lot of good philosophy and some good sound reasons for things. And if you as a Christian find that you run into trouble and the fellow that gets up at five o'clock in the morning and mows his lawn the size of two postage stamps with a power motor and then goes fishing right after breakfast and doesn't go to church and you go to church and give and work and sweat and labor and he's well and you're sick and he had no trouble and you barely make ends meet, don't worry about it. The devil knows he's got him and has given him no trouble, but he knows he hasn't got you. And so he's after you. So it is with books of the Bible. They try to take the book of Revelation away from it. And they say that the book of Revelation was not written by John. Well, I don't believe it was written by John either. They said that once, you know, they've had an awful contention about who wrote Shakespeare's plays. One fellow said that after everybody lectured and argued and debated about who had written Shakespeare's plays, one fellow summed it up. He said he didn't think Shakespeare had written the plays, but a fellow named Shakespeare had written. And that's the way I think about John. If they say John didn't write it, I won't be nice. I'll say, okay, John didn't write it, but a fellow named John wrote it. And we'll settle at that and we won't fight. Personally, I think John the Beloved wrote it. And I can go through the book of Revelation and I can show you the same style as the 1 John, 2 John, 3 John, and the gospel according to John. Some of the same words come out. You ever notice this, that you ever listen very carefully to a man, a preacher or a politician? You would probably hear more preachers than politicians. I hope you would. You'll notice certain men get certain words and they write those words. I heard a man preaching not long ago, and I've heard him now for 25 years quite frequently. Every time I hear him, he uses the same words, the word articulate. He says when he means give forth or show forth or speak forth or anything, he says articulate. He says the Lord articulates the Bible and people articulate their testimony and all people are articulating. Now if I were blind or walking backwards in the Stygian darkness and I heard a man up preaching and he said you ought to articulate your Christianity, I'd smile and say I know that boy. I know who he is because he's got a pet word there. Now the writers of the Bible had pet words too. Just as sure as you live, there were men of like passion. They would speak as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, but they weren't wax saints and they weren't angels, they were men. So John used certain words in his gospel, and he used them again in his letters, and now we find him using them in the book of Revelation. So I think a man named John wrote the book of Revelation, the Apocalypse. Whether he did or not wouldn't make too much difference except for the fact that he said he did. If you get a letter and it isn't signed, it doesn't make much difference who wrote it. But if you get a letter and it says love John, and then you find John didn't write it, you might be in trouble. You'd say to yourself, well, I wonder who did write it and sign John's name. Or if John signed his name and then declared he didn't write it, you'd be worried. But if it was anonymous, why, you wouldn't mind. Now John said he wrote this book, and I'm going to string along with John myself. Now about the interpretations of this book of Revelation. I'd like to tell you to start with, and I'm going to disappoint 106 percent of you, for the reason that I'm not going to conform to your school of eschatological interpretation. That long expression means your view of prophecy. And I'm just going to teach what I see here and preach what I see in this book of Revelation. Certainly you've got a lot of material to work on, haven't you? A man that couldn't work on this book, he's not called to preach, and he ought to go doing something else. But all this hundred and some topics that I've given you here, that I have actually taken from the book of Revelation, certainly a man ought to have something to talk about. And it's here. Now there are three main schools of interpretation about this book of Revelation. One is called the preterist school, and one is called the historical school, and one is called the futurist school. Now I'll not mention this any more after tonight, because it isn't worth mentioning. But the preterist school says this, that all the revelation is past and fulfilled and period and finest has been written after. That everything I have talked about here tonight, God and Christ and the Holy Spirit and hell and earth and sea and sky and liars and cities and nations and thrones and horsemen, all this is past. It's all taken place. It is simply a colorful history of certain events that have had happened before John ever wrote the book of Revelation at all. And then there's the historical school of interpretation. And the historical school, I think Dr. A. B. Simpson belonged to the historical view. He held that it was in process of fulfillment, that some of it began to be fulfilled when it was written, and that it has been in process of fulfillment ever since. And then there's the futurist school, that it is still awaiting fulfillment. And outside of the first chapter, the rest of it all remains to be fulfilled. Now that's the futurist school. The historical school is that it's being fulfilled. The preterist school is that it was fulfilled before it ever was written. And it's simply a dramatic history of what had been. And the futurist school, that it is still awaiting fulfillment. Now this generation of Christians has been raised on the futurist view through the teaching of W.E. Blackstone, and C.I. Schofield, and James M. Gray, and Arnold Gableine, and William Pettengill, and many others. These were the great leaders of the teaching. We have been fed up and completely taught on the futurist view of the book of Revelation, so that we tend to look out to the future and believe that it's yet to be fulfilled. I remember that when the First World War started, that was back before some of you were born, a long time before some of you were born. The First World War started, they immediately got up a scare about the Lord's return. And all during the First World War, prophetic teachers were going about everywhere teaching that this was Armageddon and that the coming of the Lord was drawing nigh. And I heard a southern preacher say at that time, I'm afraid of this, he said. He was a man who believed in the coming of Christ, as we all do. But he said, I'm afraid of this, because I am afraid that Satan is going to use this excitement. He's going to get everybody steamed up about the coming of the Lord, and then if the Lord doesn't come, he's going to disappoint us all, and we're all going to have a sense of letdown. Well, he was a prophet for that exactly what happened. And then during and after the First World War, we had prophecy fed to us constantly, and there were men running about everywhere with their scrolls, their rolls, and their long charts. And in those days, if you wrote a book, a little different interpretation of some point of prophecy, you were sure to have a big sale. I remember that one fellow wrote a book stating that things were going to be in a certain way. And then one morning when the newspapers came out, he saw that he had been sold downriver, so he raced to the printer and said, Stop the press, stop the press. So they stopped the press. And the last I heard of his books, they were all in his basement getting mildew. The movement of fulfillment and of history had proved that the fellow was wrong. Now, the trouble with the Brethren was that they knew more than Daniel, they were wiser than Isaiah, and they saw further than John. But of course they didn't see as far as John, and they weren't as wise as Daniel, and they'd got a lot to learn from Isaiah. But we did hear about it an awful lot. And then when the Second World War, you see, they said the Roman Empire is going to be established, and they even said that they already had the materials to build a temple, and Babylon was going to be rebuilt. And they had the materials all waiting around. And Mussolini was going to be either the Antichrist, or he was going to be the sponsor, as we say now, of the Antichrist. And the Roman Empire was rising, and the West was in decline and on its way down. And one man wrote a book called The Decline of the West. And then the Second World War broke out, and you know what happened to that fellow Mussolini. We won't have to go into that sticky bit of history, because everybody knows about that. You either were present, and that is, you were living on the earth and heard about it from the newspapers, you read about it since. And when the Roman Empire wasn't fulfilled, and instead of Rome becoming once more the great center and the Antichrist sitting there, when it turned out otherwise, people got awfully discouraged. And you know what's happened from the Second World War to this hour? The doctrine of the return of Christ has gone into decline, amounting almost to a total eclipse. And there's scarcely anybody who preaches about it anymore. It used to be the preached about of these conventions. And I've been to convention after convention where it was never as much as mentioned in recent years. The burnt child read the fire, and we were burnt by knowing more than the Bible knew. And the result is there was an awful lot of discouragement among the children of God, and they were worried a great deal. But you know, there's this, friends. We don't make this the test of orthodoxy. We don't in any way make it the test of orthodoxy. Whether you belong to the preterist school that says that John wrote history, whether you belong to the historical school that says the book of Revelation is in process of fulfillment, or whether you belong to the futurist school which says the book of Revelation is yet to be fulfilled, that doesn't mean that you and I are to build three churches and call them the first church of the preterites and the first church of the historic lights and the first church of the futurites. We can love each other and serve God together and send the gospel to the ends of the earth and pray together and sing together and shake hands together and love each other, even if we don't have the same views about the coming of Christ. Now, there are those who feel otherwise about it. And the very fact that I've said as much as I've said tonight would rule me completely out of some churches. I'd never get back in there again. Our brother Camfield here would be interested in this, over on your side of Chicago, incidentally. It wasn't a Midwest church, I'll tell you that now. But it was over there in one of the big, well-known churches, and it wasn't Moody's either. I've never been kicked out of Moody's yet. But I've been thrown out of some interesting places, but not Moody's. Well, anyhow, this church, they had me over there to preach, and I went and I took from a text, that passage in the book of Peter that says that we are to look for a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness and we're to be holy. And then I made the mistake of making this statement. I said, We are supposed to live as though Christ were coming tonight and work as though he were not coming for a thousand years. And then they all stood up, and I saw that I'd thrown cold water in the baby's face, all right. And they stood up and they said, Brother Carlson, will you dismiss us? I don't know, Brother Carlson, he's probably dead and in heaven now, I hope. But he stood up and he waited quite a little while, and I wondered why he wasn't going to pray. And then here's the way he prayed. He said, Oh, Father, we'll have to confess we didn't get much out of this sermon. And he went on and laid me out to know, and his nice Swedish prayer was all right. He was a dear old man. But the pastor was too humiliated even to come around and say, Excuse me, Brother Tozer, but we have this treasure in earthen vessels, and some vessels get cracked, and I'm not responsible. I'm not responsible for my brother's conduct. But he said he didn't get much out of the sermon. Well, he was honest. You'll have to say that for him anyhow. He was honest. But my trouble was that I had suggested that maybe Christ might not come yet for a while, but I had said we ought to live as if he was coming tonight. And I think that's the important part myself, really. I think the coming of Christ, the very fact that he's coming, has taught us in order that we might become holy and perfect, even as he is perfect, and that we might be watchful and waiting for our Lord's return. When he returns isn't so important as the fact that we're ready for him when he does. And I was naive enough to say that, and I stayed in that city for about 15 years after that, and I never got invited back to that church by them. I was invited to a convention once, and I stood in that holy place and preached, but it was never but the invitation of the church. They didn't want any of that heresy. You either had to be exactly what they were and believe exactly what they believed down to the crossing of the T, the dotting of the I, or else you couldn't be in their church. Well, I consider that a terrible way to live, my brethren. I won't live that way myself if I can help it, and I don't want you to. Well, anyhow, I'd like to say this to you, that most of the great saints, though they believed in Christ's return, didn't believe in what we call the futuristic school. They believed he would come back in one way or another, and they wrote some wonderful hymns about his coming. We sing some of the hymns, Ten Thousand Times Ten Thousand in Shining Garments, the Army of the Ransomed Saints, Move Up the Steeps of Light, and all such songs. They were written by people who didn't hold to the futuristic view, but they did believe that Christ was coming back again. You know, there's a doctrine. I just got some magazines from England yesterday, some dear friend sent me from London, and I find they're still harping on that same old doctrine, that we have more light in these last days than the saints had. That is, we have more light than John Wesley had, and we have more light than Phinney had, and we have more light than Luther had, and we have more light than Ter Stegen had, and we have more light than Madame Guion had. We have a lot of light, they say. Well, but we've got more light. What I'd like to know is, why were they such good saints, and why are we such poor, wretched examples of Christians, if we have the light and they didn't? I'd settle for less light if I could get more holiness, wouldn't you? I don't believe that doctrine at all. I believe these boys that went around with their charts and pulled the blind down on the coming of Christ and made everybody ashamed to preach it, and made every preacher ashamed to announce he's going to preach from the Book of Revelation. I don't believe they did as good, but they did as harm. And they justified it on the grounds of the latter-day light. Everybody has more light now than they had then. Well, I might say again, I don't believe it. But what do I hold? What do I believe? Do I believe that this is all past? Do I believe that everything in this Book of Revelation is all past? Well, now I'm not going to run over this long list here again. But I wonder if the sun has yet been turned into blackness, and the moon into blood, and the stars have fallen from heaven, and the mountains have moved out into their place in the sea, and the sky has been rolled up as a scroll, and the bottomless pit has been opened, and the devil has come forth, and there are any strange poisonous locusts killing a third of the inhabitants of the earth. I wonder if the destroyer has appeared, and the four angels have been released from the four quarters of the earth, and two hundred million horsemen have come. I wonder if the mighty angel has appeared to set one foot on the sea and one on the land. Where are those two witnesses that lived a while and then were martyred? Where is that woman clothed with the sun and that red dragon and that war in heaven and the devil appearing on earth? Where is that Antichrist? Somebody says he's over in Rome. Well, if he's who you say he is, well, he's been over there a long time. Where is the unity of politics? And where is the Son of Man appearing on a cloud and wreathing the earth, and the rise and fall of the scarlet woman, and the fall of Babylon, and the battle of Armageddon, and the marriage supper of the Lamb? No, my brother, I don't believe it's all happened at all. I think that it will yet happen, and I believe that we stand on the verge of one of the most dramatic and colorful and wonderful and far-reaching and mighty and horrendous and terrible and glorious developments that ever has been known since Adam stood up on the earth and Eve stood by his side. I believe that. I don't know all the details, and if you have a different view from mine, I want you to love me still. But I believe that we are in and not very far from the time when our Lord shall be back again, and we shall see him appear on the earth. And when there won't be too long until there will be a tearless and a warless and a deathless world that will emerge and be established in full view of the throne of God, and the holy city will come down out of heaven clothed as the bride adorned for her husband. I believe it. And I believe, therefore, that you and I ought to be prepared and ought to be ready, and we ought to do everything possible to live not for this world but for that world above. So remember that there is an old world and old heavens and old stars and an old sun, old mountains and old seas and old earth, and it's all going to have to pass away with a great noise. And in its place there will be a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. And I cannot close any better than to remind you of these words of the man of God who said he wrote that we might stir up our pure minds, looking for and hastening unto the coming of the day of God wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved and the elements shall melt with fervent heat. Nevertheless, we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. That was the passage that got me thrown out. Peter and I got thrown out on the same year. Wherefore, beloved, seeing that ye look for such things, be diligent that ye may be found of him in peace without spot and blameless, and account that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation, even as our beloved Paul also wrote. He says, Therefore, beloved, seeing ye know these things before, beware, lest ye also be led away with the air of the wicked fall from your own steadfastness. So there is a time coming when the new heaven and the new earth shall be established. You see, you and I live for that time. We don't live for the time when the new party will have a prime minister in Ottawa. We don't live for the time when the Republicans will be able to elect another president in the United States. I don't know whether that will ever be. But we don't live for that time. We don't live for the time when any political party shall forge to the front and rule the world. We live for the time when there shall be a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness, and when we shall look upon the face of him who loved us and gave himself for us, and we shall go forth leaning upon the arm of our beloved, and he shall present us to the Father with exceeding joy, and all things under the earth and on the earth and above the earth and around the earth and all creatures heard I say, glory and honor and power and dominion and might be unto him that sitteth upon the throne forever and forever. I live for that time. My heart looks to that time. I'm writing my books with that in view. I'm preaching my sermons with that in view. I'm living my life with that expectation. I'm waiting and looking to that hour. If I can't figure out all the details, I'll do the best I can. But one thing I will be able to do as we go along, and that is decipher some things and show maybe that they were, but show that how many more were not yet, and that the coming of the Lord draweth nigh. And if the coming of the Lord is drawing near, Israel is yet to be restored, and the Church is yet to be glorified, and Antichrist is yet to appear, it's time we Christians do something about it. Not that, for we can't help that. That's out of our hands. But I mean do something about preparation and readiness for the coming of Christ. Somebody said to John Wesley, Mr. Wesley, if you knew that Christ was coming tonight at midnight, what would you do? He thought a moment and said, I don't think I'd alter my plans any. His plans were so in the will of God that the coming of Christ wouldn't change them for him. One of the great leaders of Europe, the Kaiser, who was blamed for the First World War, who had mighty Teutonic ambitions to rule the world, he had a great Lutheran preacher who was a kind of, I don't know what you'd call him, but he was the man who preached to the big shots. And one day to the surprise and chagrin of everybody, he arose and preached on the coming of Christ. And the Kaiser said to him, he didn't want to hear any more of that, he said it would spoil my plans. If your plans are in the will of God, the coming of Christ will not spoil your plans. If you have plans that the coming of Christ would destroy, then you have plans that God has never given you. I want to write at least one more book. That series on the attributes will be out. It's out now, and I have eleven copies, and there's one downstairs, but it's not out yet, you see. But the way they do down there, they keep it for you and say it's released on such a date, so it's going to be released August 30th in the attributes. And I want to write one on the worship of God. But if I don't succeed in getting the next one written, it'll be all right. I'd rather see Jesus Christ come than to write my book. And if he comes before they release it on August 30th and take the wraps off of it, I'm happy about that, too. I had the fun of writing it. And a few people read it, editors and copy readers and copy editors and proofreaders and typesetters. Maybe it did somebody some good. If you've got any plans that the coming of Christ would disturb or upset, you ought to get immediately on your knees and get straightened out. Even so, come quickly. Come, Lord Jesus. Let's pray.