This sermon focuses on the significance of the resurrection of Jesus as the most awesome event in history, contrasting it with the birth of Jesus. It emphasizes the inseparable connection between the incarnation and the resurrection, highlighting the work of God the Father, God the Son, and the Holy Spirit in this divine plan. The message calls for a revival in the church, urging believers to move beyond tradition and embrace the transformative power and life that Jesus offers.

The most awesome event in history, the resurrection of Jesus. Now some people dispute that and say the most awesome thing that ever happened was the birth of Jesus. It was country to all nature. He was born of the Virgin, and therefore the supreme event in history, Jesus divided history. History is AD, anno domini, the year of our Lord, or BC, before Christ. But I still hold my ground and say that the resurrection is the most amazing thing. Old Dr. Shepard was a great Baptist preacher, there used to be some great Baptist preachers, but anyhow, he was a great Baptist preacher and he said this, without the incarnation, that is a theological term for the birth of Christ, without the incarnation the resurrection is impossible, and without the resurrection the incarnation is incomplete. They're two sides of one coin. As Brother Chip reminded us in his prayer, Jesus died for our sins, but he rose again. The Apostle Paul gave us, I think, the most profound things ever written. And you remember he gives us 58 verses in 1 Corinthians 13, it's not as popular as 1 Corinthians 15, it's not as popular as 1 Corinthians 13, or 1 Corinthians 12 and 14. But it's a magnificent display, a magnificent reminder of the death and the miracle of the Lord Jesus Christ's resurrection. Now Paul, if you give him Hebrews, and I think he wrote Hebrews, he builds a pyramid of 14 epistles. And then when he's built that pyramid, if the pyramid is like this on a fine point, he turns the pyramid over and balances it all on one thing. All those 14 epistles sway, they stand or they crumble under the impact of one thing, the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. He's very plain about it, he says if there's no resurrection you're yet in your sins. We have a brother from, and his wife from Bethany tonight, and their present president or principal of the school wrote a book years ago, Saved by His Life. And if Jesus Christ is not living tonight, we're sunk. You know on this one thing, the resurrection of Jesus, billions and billions of people's eternity rests on that one fact. Now it's almost incredible to think that every rotten and lousy place, every war that's ever been instigated, every massacre, every unclean thing, every woman selling a body on the street, all the rottenness and corruption through drugs and so forth, all became because of one man. By one man's sin or disobedience, sin entered into the world. There's only one thing more amazing than that, isn't it? By one man's righteousness and one man's offering, that sin, for those who believe, can be canceled. We used to sing in Sunday school, there was no other good enough to pay the price for sin, he only could unlock the gates of heaven and let us in. I often wonder, and you've got to admit you've been in church services that were as dead as a funeral service. And I ask you in God's name, with all the power of being, how can the service be dead if we have a living Christ? By the same token, tell your preacher, I say a wet-eyed preacher will never produce dry sermons. That's a physical, it may not be a biological possibility, but surely it is a spiritual thing. Isaiah says very clearly, to those of us who preach the word to this man will he look the man that trembles at his word. And the reason that sinners don't tremble at the altar is because preachers don't tremble to deliver that word. Let's look at this marvelous twentieth chapter in the gospel recorded by John. I think we need to remember this again, that the gospel of John is the last thing written in the New Testament. You get John, and then one, two, three epistles, and the book of the Revelation. And you know, by the way the Bible is set up, we read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and then Acts and Romans follow on, as the children say, and we kind of think that that's a divine order, that they, you know, there's not too much about Matthew, Mark, and Luke, or even John, but oh, when you get to the epistles, boy, is there something. Do you know the epistles are only an extension of the four gospels, that's all? They're just an elaboration. They're shown to us in more detail. Now, I don't know more, I don't like to use the word exciting, you can get excited at a football match. But I don't know more inspiring, and that's what I think every service ought to be. I don't care if you're the weight of the world on you, all the in-laws, and your mother-in-law, and everybody else has pestered you all the week. I think that when you've really come into the sanctuary, and really touched the hem of His garment, and really received an infusion of divine life, we ought to leave every meeting electrified. There's a lot of criticism today about the electronic church. Well, the New Testament church wasn't electronic, but it surely was electrified. I'd like to have gone to a service, wouldn't you? Couldn't think of anything better than going to a service and the preacher killing a couple of deacons to start the meeting. Wouldn't that be wonderful? Well, that's what Peter did, anyhow, he killed one, and he killed one big shot, and his wife. I think the most wonderful thing about the New Testament church was, it was totally unpredictable. You never knew what was going to happen. You know now, they mimeograph what the Holy Ghost has to do Wednesday morning in the church office. And they had me coming in the church, we're going to sing this hymn, we're going to do that, and we're going to finish at twelve o'clock, because lunch is waiting and God can go. Get out of here Lord, but be back by seven tonight, and certainly turn up Wednesday. You say that's almost blasphemous to say it, well it's more blasphemous to do it. The New Testament church went everywhere. What did they go preaching? They went preaching the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Again the most astounding miracle. Remember in the second chapter of Acts where Peter gets up, you know he's always boiling over, he's volatile and vocal, and as we'd say, shoots his mouth off. If you read carefully you'll discover that Jesus spoke to Peter, not only more than he spoke to any other individual apostle, but more than all the other apostles put together. And conversely, Peter spoke to Jesus more than all the other apostles put together. He's always on the ball, he's always something to say. One day he ran away from a woman's finger, boy, boy, he's not the first man to do that. After all Elijah stood up to eight hundred prophets, but he ran away from one woman, smart guy. He managed to put her finger up, and off he went. This woman said, you're with him, you speak his language, no one ever heard about him. Don't know him. Oh, it must have been an awful experience for Peter when Jesus finally did turn up. But on the day of Pentecost, Peter points the finger and he says, you crucified the Lord of glory by wicked hands, but him hath God raised up. Now I want to emphasize that, him hath God raised up, meaning God the Father. We sing, we sing it before the meetings over, it wouldn't be a Friday night meeting if we didn't sing holy, holy, holy. God in three persons, blessed Trinity. Him hath God raised up. Remember that worm of a man saying to Jesus, you better watch your step, I'll put you to death and Jesus says, not possible. No man's going to take my life from me. I will lay it down and I will take it up again. So it's the work of God the Father, it's the work of God the Son, and Romans 8 says what? The spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead. Have you ever realized the Holy Ghost can't do anything that's small? He breathed on the world when it was chaos and he brought causeless out of it. He just brooded over it, that's what the Word of God says. And then one day that same mighty Holy Spirit brooded over the bare, empty matrix of the Virgin Mary and he conceived Jesus Christ in it. And that same Holy Spirit came up a bunch of men, they were all failures. They'd all deserted, they'd broken their vows. And yet as they waited on the upper room, the Holy Spirit came upon them. And a bunch of unlearned, so-called ignorant men, they had no financial backing, they had no great system like we have, they had no electronic media, but they turned the world upside down. And I love that phrase of the Apostle Paul where he says, having nothing and yet possessing all things. My God, now we possess everything and do nothing. It will cost millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars to preach TV and radio messages around the world. We've been doing it for 30 years, is the world any better? Not that I know of. You'll never make up for the living agency. After all, if God wanted, he could have made donkey stock. Don't say he does that tonight, then I'll be after you. But anyhow, he made Balaam's ass talk. He could make the trees to talk. He could have sent angels in thousands if he'd said, you dive over the parapets of heaven and go to earth. They'd have been to earth in five minutes evangelizing the world, but he didn't let angels do it. And the hymn writer is right when he says, angels never felt the joy that our salvation brings. Why did they do it? Well, Paul believed that God so loved the world, and not only that, he wrote in Ephesians that Christ loved the church, but he says he did something infinitely more than love the world. And he did something infinitely more than love the church. He loved me and gave himself for me. And he wasn't a drunkard. He wasn't a man with a prison record a mile long. He wasn't a man whose brain was half shattered with drugs. He was a scholar, an English gentleman, one of the finest men that maybe ever trod the English soil. And he had been trained in the ministry. His grandfather wrote hymns, his father wrote hymns, his mother was an amazing woman. And Charles Wesley, in that lovely hymn, Aunt Can It Be, he says, long my imprisoned spirit lay fast bound in sin and nature's night. Thine eye diffused a quickening ray, I woke the dungeon's flame with light, my chains fell off. What do you mean your chains fell off? You've no chains of smoking, you've no chains of drunkenness, you've no chains of thievery, you've no chains of uncleanness. My chains of tradition. I was fast bound in sin and nature's night. And he strode forth with his brother and they helped emancipate the whole world. I don't know how many people sing, pardon me, how many people will preach Wesley's sermons. Thousands of preachers preach Spurgeons every week. But all around the world everybody sings Charles Wesley's wonderful hymns. Love divine, all love excelling, Jesus, lover of my soul, he wrote a mere 3,000. And it's a shame if you don't know a lot of them, you're very ignorant, you'd better get a hymn book and memorize them. Because some of you young people may have the joy of finishing up in prison. Did I hear an amen? Oh, sorry. Why not? That's what the early church did. They hardly got going, they put them in prison. The early church was married to poverty, prisons, and persecution. Now we're trying to marry the church to prosperity, personalities, and what? I need another P there. Pardon? Popularity. My wife got it, you see, she's heard it so often. Oh, we were going to read this chapter, let's look at it. John 20. This raises a lot of questions but it answers an awful lot too. It's a lovely summary. The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early when it was yet dark to the sepulcher and seeth the stone taken away from the sepulcher. Now who moved the stone? There's a book on that, I wish you'd buy it, every one of you, it's called Who Moved the Stone? It's written by a man by the name of Morrison. He set off to prove the fallacy of the resurrection and halfway through it the stone fell on him and he got saved. You know what the scripture says, if you fall on the stone it will break you to pieces but if it falls on you it will grind you to powder. Well that's what happened. Who moved the stone? Did Jesus just speak and it rolled away? Did the angels who were sitting on it move it? It doesn't matter but get this quite clear, the stone was not moved to let Jesus out of the sepulcher. You say what was it, what in the world was it open for? It was rolled away to let the disciples in. He didn't need the stone rolled away because later he goes into this room as it says in this chapter, and the door was shut and the implication of the Greek word there, the doors were barred, they were fearing, they were terrified. But the stone was rolled away. Then she runneth and she came to Simon Peter. Okay let's look a bit further, verse 6, I'll have to skip down this chapter. Then cometh Simon Peter following him and went into the sepulcher and he saw the linen clothes lie and the napkin that was about his head. What does that do for you? Anything? Well I'll tell you what it does for me, it tears the shroud of Turin to shreds. Why? Because the shroud of Turin, you have Jesus like this and you have a crown on his head. But it says distinctly elsewhere that Jesus took the wrapping on his head and he laid it on one side, he folded it up. I remember Chadwick, Miss Doctor Chadwick saying, Jesus was always very tidy. When I lived in England we never saw paper, we used to call them serviettes, you call them napkins. In England napkins are things you put on babies. But anyhow, at our house we never saw paper napkins. Most civilized countries don't have them. But you know what? Everybody at the table folded their napkin in a different way. My father folded his one way, I had a ring with my L on for Leonard and I rolled mine up one way, my sister folded hers another way. My father used to make a bishop's mitre out of his and then you put a donut in there, not a donut, one of those hard nuts in there. What do you call it? No, no, no, no. A what? A roll, a roll, that's right. Not a bagel, we're not Jewish. Though I like bagels. You see our scripture shatters all the silly idea of the Shroud of Turin. It was found in a Catholic 13th century monastery. There's not a bit of truth in it, because it has Jesus with a crown of thorns on his head, he could not be laid to rest like that, his arms couldn't be out like this. And he definitely took the, he'd have hurt his fingers, he'd have put the crown on one side or something. No sirree, he took that napkin that was on his head and he folded it the way he always folded his napkin when he was at the table. And they identified him by that, I'm sure of that. The napkin that was about his head, lying, not with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself. You know and I think, I think he just came out of that sheath that they wrapped him in, he just came out, and then he took this as he was walking out of the sepulchre and he laid it in a separate place by itself as a proof that he was risen. There was no crown there at all. The napkin was about his head, okay, verse 8, then went in also that other disciple which came first to the sepulchre, and he saw and believed. For as yet they knew not the scripture that he must rise again from the dead. They knew it, but they didn't know it with understanding. The disciples went away unto their own home, but Mary stood without at the sepulchre weeping. Let's go down the chapter. Verse 17, Jesus said unto her, Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to my Father, but go to my brethren. Do you know that's the first time he ever used that word? They must have suddenly been startled. Did you hear what he said? He called us his brethren. And then he puts them inside the ring and he says, I ascend to my Father and your Father, my God and your God. Mary Magdalene came and told the disciples that she had seen the Lord and he had spoken these things, the same day at evening being the first day of the week when the doors were shut. Or again, as the Greek implies, when the doors were barred. The disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews. And the implication is that all the disciples were there except two. One was Thomas, who was away doing something, and the other was Judas, who of course had sold out to Jesus. They were assembled for fear of the Jews. Then came Jesus and stood in the midst and said, what do you think he should have said? Don't you think he should have come and stood and put his hands up and said, shame on the whole lot of you. You traitors, you cowards. Shame on you. But he doesn't come to condemn. Oh look, let me put this back a minute. Jesus stood in the midst. Can you remember the hymn you sang tonight, Hail thou once despised Jesus, Hail thou Galilean King. He's king of kings, he's lord of lords, and he stands there in the midst of a bunch of frightened, terrified men who'd gone through some traumatic experiences and they didn't know where their world was. And all I could do was stand back as I read that text over and over, and I said it nearly every hour of the night during the past week. And I said to myself, there he is, meek in all his majesty. The first thing he said was, I am meek and lowly of heart, and here he is, not with a halo around his head, not with angels singing, he stands in the midst of those disciples, he stood in their midst. The older I get, the more I realize how dumb the disciples were, and I say that with respect. The only thing that startles me more is how dumb you and I are. Because they hadn't seen it. You and I have read the last chapter of the story, God help us. They didn't know what was going to happen now. They're out of favor with everybody, everybody points the finger at them, they're the most ridiculed men. Two of them had already been pressing their noses to the gate, they were despised and distressed and disappointed and disgusted and dissatisfied, and they were rushing as fast as they could to Emmaus. And every reason to believe all their disciples were like that too. Oh, what they used to say about Princess Grace, I don't know why, but anyhow, they used to say Princess Grace, Her Serene Highness. I used to think the name was out of place, but I'll tell you what, I can look at Jesus and say, His Serene Majesty, lo the tokens of his passion, though in glory still he bears. He had been through something that had no precedent, it was unprecedented, and it will be unrepeated to the end of the ages. He alone did it. There used to be a great preacher in England by the name of Dr. Jowett, read some of his books, they're very good, and he said whenever he could get a weekend off he would go to London and Spurgeon was preaching at that time, and Dr. F. B. Meyer was preaching at that time, but I think the king of the pulpit as regards the type of preacher that Chip mentioned on Sunday who got all his homiletics straight and he had a colossal vocabulary and so forth, I think that the king of the whole bunch, but Jowett said whenever I needed a spiritual refresher I'd slip down to London and if I could get in I would hear Dr. F. Meyer, Dr. Joseph Parker, and he said of all things I got there one Easter day. And he said Joseph Parker buried Jesus like only Parker could bury him. He got Jesus in the tomb, they put the stone over the tomb, they put wax over the stone, they put soldiers over the wax, and over the seals, and over the stone, and there he was a prisoner. You see, oh mercy, I was reading the other day where a preacher said he'd been in England of all places, and he'd been to about twenty churches and I was impressed with one thing in every church I went that every meeting was totally flat. Again, in God's name, how can you have a dead service with a risen Christ? Do you realize that at this moment when Jesus is there in the tomb, every demon in hell is looking on that tomb, every angel in heaven is looking on it, the disciples are all bewildered and confused and nobody knows what's happened, and even the high priests are terrified, this is a morsel thing, it would have been better if they had an earthquake, they'd split the earth in two. But I see more than the stone, and the wax, and the seal, and the soldiers. I see Satan saying on that resurrection morning, just a few more minutes, and if we can trap this man, he is the Son of God, I know that, I witnessed, I witnessed his incarnation. And God knows I've wondered many times how these disciples, how did they lose contact with Jesus? Three of them at least had seen his miraculous transfiguration. How could you see the glory of eternity on him? Because the light wasn't shining on him like a spotlight. The light was on the inside, he's the light of the world, it was shining out. And there's a testimony from heaven, this is my beloved son, and he was transfigured before them. And yet a vision like that got blurred, and even those men who had such visions betrayed him. Now every demon in hell is looking, Satan says if we can keep him there, we've trapped the whole human race, we can damn it, we can damn it forever and ever. It's not enough for Jesus to shed his blood. Again we're not saved by his death, we're saved by his resurrection, he's got to pull the pillars of the wall down as it were. He's got to do as Ephesians 2 says, lead captivity captive and give gifts unto men. The eternity of every body that ever lived from Adam to the end of the age hangs on whether he'll get out of that prison house or not. And Satan says just about 10 more minutes, and he says I've tried to beat him all my life, I fought him for 40 days in the wilderness, I lost every round. I fought him with death and he raised the dead, I fought him with fevers and he cast out the fevers, he cast out devils. I've never once been able to score, but if I can do it now, it will make up for every failure in my life. A demon raises his hand and says your majesty to Satan, if you can get the sin of the world and roll it against that stone, even the sin of all these so-called disciples, and the sin of the high priest, and the sin of the Roman empire that's been against him, and all the sin right back to the beginning of the ages, if you can get all the sin against that stone, he'll never move it. And Satan says that's a great idea, why don't you roll all the sin of the world against the stone? And I absolutely believe in my heart they did that. If they didn't do it, by implication it was there anyhow. Well, I think he still might get out. What do you suggest? Your majesty, I suggest you rally every demon in hell. Now you've got the stone, the wax, the seal, the soldiers, all the sin of the world, and every demon with his shoulder against that stone. They have supernatural strength. One of the latest things I read is, we wonder for centuries, millenniums, how those amazing pyramids were built. Some of the stones weigh, I don't know, a hundred tons or more. How did they get there? And somebody said by demon power. Very possibly. So you've got the stone, the wax, the seal, the soldiers, the sin of the world, and every demon, and Satan says, now hold it, hold it now. We've just ten more seconds to go, and he says 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, he's just going to say one, and the Holy Ghost beat him to it. How do you know? Because the Word says the spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead did it. The Holy Ghost can't do anything small. In case you don't know, he wrote this book, and it still baffles the wise men. Everything depends on his resurrection. If there's no resurrection, I have no hope for the future. There's no coming Christ. There's nobody at the right hand of the Father to make perfect my imperfect praying. And the do you see the point that he's there with these terrified people in the upper room, and it says, Jesus came and stood in the midst. I wonder if Peter could hold his tongue. What does it say? It says in John's version, he showed them his hands and his side. If you read the 24th chapter of Luke, it says, he showed them his hands and his feet. What's the difference? It says he came when the doors were shut to the disciples. Do you know not once in all his writings and all these, what, twenty-two chapters in John, twenty-one chapters in John, he never refers to the apostles as apostles. He always calls them disciples. And then in Luke 24 he says, he showed them his hands and his feet. Because you see, Luke is showing us the Son of Man. And he suggests, go get hold of him. But John is showing us the Son of God. He says that he showed his side where they cut through near to his heart and water came out as a sign of the eternal love of God. Isn't it easy to sing, O the whole realm of nature mine? Isn't it easy to sing, when I survey the wondrous cross and originally it was written this way, where the young prince of glory died. Ever wondered what the angels looked down from heaven and saw him when men pulled his beard and spat a big clot of rotten, dirty phlegm in his face? And when they tried to push him over the precipice, he never retaliates. He showed them his hands and his side. I can imagine Peter on the inside is boiling and he's saying, ridiculous, preposterous. Man, you've got a chance to convert. You've got a chance to take all the shame out of us. You can vindicate us right now within half an hour if you walk down the main street in Jerusalem and do some miracles. Turn the water into wine again. Turn the sea of Galilee into blood. Turn the moon into blood. Call those legions of angels you wouldn't call. Let them come and sing a hallelujah chorus round here. Oh yes, everything depends on whether he writes. But remember he says, because I live, ye shall live also. Now the resurrection is not a part of my theology. The resurrection is a personality. Jesus says, I am the resurrection. And whatever the old Pope will say, he's going to broadcast on Sunday. A silly old guy, I don't know why. But, don't you believe for a minute he has the keys of the kingdom as they say. What did Jesus say? I have the keys of what? Hell and death. The Pope doesn't have them. The Lord would never trust them to a bachelor anyhow. Jesus has the key of death. He has the keys of hell and death. Why? They said, did you see him yesterday? What did he do? Oh, he opened his blind eye. I've seen him do that a dozen times. He touched a lunatic man. I've seen him do that many times. He unplugged somebody's deaf ears. He stubbed somebody's stammering tongue. You didn't hear the news? Oh, where were you yesterday? The Hall of Jerusalem in every cafe. The Pool of Siloam where they sell, you know, the fairies on and they're selling precious jewels from all over the world. And there was gossip. Everybody was saying, do you hear the news? Do you hear the news? You know that wonderful man called Lazarus? Jesus went to his tomb yesterday. He did? What did he do? Well, I'll tell you what he did. He said, you roll away the stone. You know what we want? We want Jesus to do everything without us shifting the stone. That's our problem. Do you remember when he turned the water into wine? Why didn't he say, bring the water pots. Watch this. There you are, full of wine. No. He said, you bring the water pots and you fill them with water and I will turn them into wine. There's a human side, a human responsibility. And he says, roll away the stone. Can you imagine them all peeping over the wall? The high priest and all the others that went after him, the Roman soldiers, and there they are looking over the water. I wonder what he's going to do now. I wonder what he's going to do now. And he says, roll away the stone and they rolled the stone away. And then he said with a loud voice, only twice I think he talked with a loud voice, here and on the cross. And also when he said, I am the water of life. Do you know what he said? He said, Lazarus come forth. Why did he say Lazarus come forth? Because if he said come forth all the cemetery would have come and it wasn't time for them to come yet. It must have been that way because I am the resurrection. He demonstrated he was a resurrection. Oh mercy, how could these disciples fail to understand he was going to rise from the dead when he'd raised Jairus his daughter and he'd raised Lazarus and he says, look if you steal my body and if you kill me I'll still rise from the dead. And they forgot it. But I tell you in God's name you and I have forgotten a lot more than that. You've read the last chapter in the story. You know he is the resurrection. You know he is the life. You know he's coming in clouds of glory with ten thousand of his saints and a multitude of angels. You know he's going to sit and rule the world. But does it excite you? Does it stir you? No, Jesus doesn't do any spectacular thing. He just stands in their midst. Lord couldn't you just go down, just give us a sample, just go down the street and lean over the wall and some of the old saints are buried there and say rise and we'd like to see everybody run out of the cemetery. Why should he do it? He's already done it once. Why prove it again? What does he have to prove? Why didn't you bring Elijah back from the dead? Why not bring Isaiah and Jeremiah? Let's see some of these great marvelous Old Testament heroes and kings. He showed them his hands. Can you think of anything more prosaic than that? Anything more unsensational? We love the sensation, we love the miraculous, we love the showmanship. As I said before I wish, and I do, I really wish he'd gone right from that room where they were and gone into the bedroom of Pontius Pilate and just tapped him on the cheek and woke him up and said, well, now what do you do? Wouldn't that have been something? Then go down a bit further down the street to Caiaphas and pull his beard, useful to have a beard, he could pull his beard, you know, I can nearly get yours there Bob, Bill. And the high priest wake up and look with terror, he says, well I told you I could live, no man takes my life from me. Surely again it's the best attested fact in history, Sir Ambrose Fleming said. Again Paul builds fourteen epistles and balances them all on this one thing, that if Jesus Christ is not risen you're yet in your sins. Yes, you and I know the end of the story. We know that he died, we know that he rose again, but he's something else to do, he's yet to ascend to his father, and he says to Mary here don't, it says that when he said, he showed them his hands and his feet, the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. Again he didn't rush into the building and scold them. He didn't say you had three of the most amazing years you'll ever live, and you've seen every miracle and you've seen me raise the dead and you're a bunch of no-goods. I wonder how many times the Lord could have pulled you up dead in your tracks, or me in my tracks and say look you've seen this over the years and you've seen God manifest himself and yet some days there's hardly a hallelujah comes out of your heart, there's hardly a song of praise and adoration, it's so prosaic, you accept it, don't grumble about the Catholics they've no joy. Where is your joy in the Lord? Where is your authority? What did they do? It says they were glad. Oh mercy, mercy. Weren't you glad the day you saw the Lord? Chip mentioned that last Sunday. I was thinking of the hymn, O happy day that fixed my choice on thee my Saviour and my God. Well may this glowing heart rejoice and tell its raptures all abroad. And the last sentence says, now rest my long divided heart, fixed on this blissful centre rest, nor ever from thy Lord depart with him of every good possessed. High heaven that heard that solemn vow, that vow renewed, shall daily hear, till in life's latest hour I bow and bless in death a bond so dear. Again Paul says he not only loved the world, he loved the church. He not only loved the church, he loved me. And when he gives his list there he says he was seen of Cephas, he was seen of James, he was seen of the twelve, he was seen of five hundred. But do you know the most amazing thing? Last of all he was seen of me also. I think one of the most awesome texts in the whole of the word of God, and there are many that shatter me, is the fact that God said one day, he said to Ananias, go to the street called Straight, ask in the house of a man called Judas, and there is a man called Saul of Tarsus, he was a bloody man. He had murdered, he had split up homes, he had driven people from their right countries, he had done every vile thing that was possible. And God in heaven forgets the universe. He doesn't look at angels, and he doesn't send Gabriel or somebody else. He says there's a man on the Damascus road, he was going to liquidate the church that I love so much, he was going to kill my bride. Isn't it amazing that God stopped all the business of the universe to look at one man? You look at secular history, the world's been ravaged and brutally assaulted and raped, because one man like Hitler, or one man like Napoleon, or one man like Alexander the Great. Science has broken through into new areas because of one man. Do you think sometimes we got it a bit too easily? I guess everybody knows something about Henry VIII and all his wicked lives and wives, but Henry IV was quite a character too. And he did something that was wrong, and his priest told him that he had to go into the courtyard of a lady called Countess Matilda. She lived in a great castle, it was winter, and he said you're to go in that courtyard and stand there for three days in bare feet in the snow, you can have a wool wrap around you, and do three days of penance, penitence. Just stand deep in the snow in your bare feet. And he stood there for three days, trying to please the guy that put the penalty on him. And at the end of the days, his feet frostbitten, they carried him into the place, and the priest pronounced his, you know, absolvo deus, you're free. You know, I don't think he'd ever forget, if anybody ever mentioned the castle of Countess Matilda, I guess he'd think, yeah, I remember I nearly froze to death there. Three days doing penance, boy, I won't do that thing again. You know, these days particularly there's so much cheap grace about, my God, it doesn't take much to get to the cross. You don't have to be sixty years of age, I had kids at Teen Challenge twenty years ago that came out of the gutter, and they'd almost be boasting around the dinner table, well, when did you first murder somebody? One boy said, I carried a thirty-eight when I was eight years of age, I shot a man. I murdered a man before I was ten, I was in a double murder when I was twelve. And they were counting the list of crimes they'd had. One boy at fifteen had lived, slept with three different women, one in the Bronx, and one in Queens, and one somewhere else, at sixteen years of age. Warped, wicked, corrupted. And yet such is the miracle of God's mercy that a man can kneel down with a broken heart, and a broken life, and a broken will, with no more ambition than an animal. But they had something that's missing these days, they got real definite Holy Ghost conviction. You see, the devil has two major tricks with people. One is, you're so good you don't need to be saved, and the other is, so bad you can't be saved, and he's a liar on both counts. Again I say, let's finish this, every demon in hell is looking on, Jesus is there in the tomb, will he get out? The stone, the wax, the seal, the soldiers, the sin of the world, every demon there, and suddenly! Do you know, I kind of think that that physical thing had something to do, do you remember he says there was a great earthquake? I guess there was. Who was that, who was that heathen? There were two men, Diogenes, there was a Greek Diogenes and there was a Diogenes who was, I was going to say Italian, no he wasn't Italian, he was an Egyptian. And the very day that Jesus died, do you remember what happened? He became as black as night at midday. I say God pulled a blind down over the sun. I've been round the world a couple of times, I like to go to art galleries, certain types, and I've looked at pictures of the crucifixion, and you know, nobody got it straight. Number one, I don't believe Jesus had a loin cloth on, I believe he was stark naked as part of his humiliation. And how can a man depict what even God never saw? It was too terrible for God to see his own son, and he turned his head away. And in that moment, Jesus says, My God, why hast thou forsaken me? And for those seconds he was forsaken of God, so that you and I wouldn't be forsaken of God forever and ever and ever, world without end and eternity. Do you know that hymn, Man of Sorrows, what a name, how many of you know that? Wonderful hymn, I don't know if it's in our book. Bearing shame and scoffing rude, in my place condemned he stood. Have you ever visualized as a crowd went down the street jeering and mocking and so forth, and they saw there the three crosses, here's the center one, here's the second one, and there's somebody on each cross, and there on the middle one was somebody who shouldn't be there. Have you ever imagined Barabbas going up and saying, You know, my God, I should be hanging on that cross. Or have you made it personal and said, I should be hanging on that cross. He bore my sins in his body on the tree. Bearing shame and scoffing rude, in my place condemned he stood, and sealed my pardon. Salvation is so personal. Do you wonder that Charles Wesley wrote, Jesus, lover of my soul, let me to thy bosom fly. The hardest thing in the world is to try and get a group of people to worship, do you know why? Because a lot of them have been out of kilter since last Sunday, and you're trying to get them into line with God, you're trying to get them to utter some words that don't mean a thing. But oh, when there's that love relationship, and you see him there, and you see that love so amazing, so divine, and I hope you've read it this week. Yes, I'm afraid as I see it, the church now is where the disciples were, she's forgotten her Lord, she's forgotten his transformation, she's forgotten his miraculous power, we're content to sing a few words, we accept a hand-me-down theology from the preachers, and we think we're so good because we're keeping up tradition. Tradition won't save our generation, it doesn't want tradition, it wants life! And Jesus came, not that we may have more light, only that we might have life! And the insulting thing about the Bible is that if you've a colossal intellect, and you're one of the greatest modern scientists, the Bible doesn't argue that you're bad, it argues that you're dead! And the wonder of the resurrection is this, we don't have to wait to die physically to get into the resurrection. And yet Paul is still saying, what a character he was. I'm hoping they get the first five thousand years with him in heaven, so if you see me talking, will you keep your nose out of it till I get a few of my questions answered? Oh, what an amazing man he was. He outlived us, he out-preached us, he out-sacrificed us, why? Well, he says we have a home eternal in the heavens, and he goes down the chapter in what, 1 Corinthians 5 there? And then he says, do you know what it is? Do you know I go on when others stop? Do you know I fast when other people feast? There's a consuming love inside of me. He says the secret is this, it's not my colossal intellect, the secret is this, that the love of God is shed abroad in my heart by the Holy Ghost. And he says this is the secret in that fourteenth verse, the love of Christ constraineth me. I used to pastor a church in my early twenties, not in the early twenties, in my early twenties. We had a very beautiful lady, she was about six feet, she was as ugly as a duck, and she had a big nose, and her skin was all craggy, and she was the granddaughter of the founder of the Salvation Army, William Booth. Her name was the Marichal, which is French for Marshal. She went to France and had revival like dear William, Wilfred at the back there, that's the young man I told you about a few months ago, who dared to believe God and rented a bull ring in Valencia, and got twenty-five thousand people a night and fifty thousand people Sunday night, did no money. Took offerings and paid everybody what he owed and he didn't make a dime out of it. You never knew an evangelist do that in this country. But anyhow, let's skip over that quickly. But anyhow, we were singing in this big auditorium and I stepped back and I looked at this craggy face and the tears began to bounce off one wrinkle to another and splash down. And we were singing a hymn that woman wrote. She went to Paris. Her father kicked everybody to the ends of the earth, oh William Booth, get out, get people saved. He said the same to his family until his daughter came and he said, well darling you can't go because you've inherited your mother's curvature of the spine and it's a very difficult country. But she spoke French better than the French. She took a bunch of English society ladies who never even put up their own hair. They had maids and servants, they lived in castles and some didn't. And they went to France and they got a dirty, filthy basement in an old factory. Those girls that never washed a dish got down, rolled their skirts up and scrubbed the filth, scraped the filth off the floor and washed it and put chairs in there. Professors came from the Sorbonne, that great school that they have there. Queen of the Prostitutes came and brought a whole gang of people. Jailbirds came. One night as they sang a hymn some guys pulled the chairs away and they began to dance and these women lifted up their skirts and the Maréchal stopped it and said, do you want to dance? Yeah, sure. All right, he says, pull all the chairs back. Dance. I'll play my instrument. We'll play our instruments for you to dance. So long as you'll listen to me preach for twenty minutes after you dance for twenty minutes. She's like me, she forgot all sense of time and she preached for an hour and twenty minutes. And they came and knelt at the altar, weeping. Criminals, society ladies, professors from the university. She had revival. I stepped back in that conference, I was a pastor of that church and the place was packed. And we began to sing the last stanza of the hymn she wrote. And they sang this, There is a love constraining me to go and seek the lost. I yield, O Lord, my 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 that was given me, a life divine and strong, it carries me through every sea of sorrow, storm and wrong. There is a love constraining me to go and seek the lost. I yield, O Lord, my all to thee to save at any cost. And I saw people on the front row looking up at her and saying, there's that big old lady and the tears were running down. There she is standing at the side of our pastor. Forget it, she wasn't with me at all. She was back in one of those revivals. I'm sure she was seeing what happened, why she blocked the streets like we used to do in England. And the cops came and arrested her. And she didn't take the warning, she went another day and blocked the street. And they took her to court. And the judge says, all right, you start a prison sentence next Monday morning at nine o'clock. And you'll go to prison for, I don't know, ten days or something. She said, no, Your Excellency. What do you mean no? I can't go to prison. You can go to prison, you broke the law. You may be an English lady, you broke the law, you go to prison. No, sir, I can't go to prison next. Why can't you go to prison next Monday morning? She said, because I'm starting a prison sentence in France next Monday morning, that's why. Oh, dear Lord. That passion, that vision seems to have gone somehow. Do you know why? Because the cross has got dimmed, for one thing. Because the resurrection has got dimmed, for one thing. Because we give Satan more credit than he should have. He gave us power over all the power of the enemy. Does that happen in your church? Come on now, come on, not theologically does it happen. A dear woman called me two hours before the meeting tonight. She broke into tears, Mr. Rainer, I want to come and see you. I'm going to Christ for the nations for a week, and please give me some time. And she choked up and I said, I'll give you some time. Twenty-four of us went about sixty miles into the hills in Denver, in the Rockies. A few years ago, twenty-four of us to wait on God for revival. We're down to ten now, but they were teenagers when they went, and they're now all up in their twenty-fours and twenty-fives and twenty-sixes. And we're still there, ten of us. We're in an old Methodist church with a pot-bellied stove. And she stammered through her weeping, her tears all the time, and she said, please, we need some help. We need you to talk to us. We need somebody whose heart beats for revival. Something has to happen, something has to happen. The night before a young man called me from Norfolk, Virginia. Are you Mr. Ravenhill? I said, I believe I am. He wrote a book called America's Too Young to Die. I said, yes. He says, well I'm in the American Navy. And he broke down and he couldn't talk for a while. He sobbed and sobbed. Are you still there? Yes. Brother, I'll be here as long as you want me. He said this message ought to be in every house in America, America's Too Young to Die. But he said the important thing is God's broken my heart reading it, and he's called me into the ministry. I'm going to give up all my careers and follow the Lord. A man called me the day before that and said, we want you to come up to a certain part of the United States and give a half hour interview on revival, on America's Too Young to Die. It's our only hope. I'm not saying that because I'm involved in it. I'm saying this, that you see when you get discouraged and say, well we're a funny little remnant here. There's just a few odd folk. There's hundreds of people round about. We could fill the largest auditorium if they had any compassion. We need to borrow the First Baptist Church in town or Greenacre or somewhere and pack the place to the roof. We live as though we're another millennium. What did the disciples do? Jesus said, Peace I give unto you as the Father hath sent me, so send I you. And he breathed on them and said, Receive ye the Holy Ghost, and that was before Pentecost. They received the Holy Ghost before they were ever in the upper room. I believe that's what John Wesley meant when he preached so often on Romans 8, when he talked about the witness of the Spirit, having the witness in ourselves. You can't conjure it up, because tomorrow if you're riding on a high crest, on a highway of emotion, tomorrow the bottom drops out and you think all hell is pursuing you and you think God's out of business. But oh, if the Spirit bears witness on the inside, listen, neither hell or high waters, the old hymn, a poet says, will disturb you. You see, make up your mind, was it settled there? Did Jesus really put away our sin? Did he rise from the dead? Has he risen? Are we justified? You see, everything hangs on this. My resurrection hangs on his resurrection, so does yours. Oh, I love that thing. I know I'm taking the prayer time, but I intended to do this tonight, to try and rivet this deep in your mind that Jesus has made a perfect atonement, that Jesus has risen and he has all power, all hail, redeemer, hail we sang tonight. Jesus says, Do you marvel that I unstop deaf ears and open blind eyes and raise the dead? Then he says in what, John 5, The day is coming in the which all who are in the graves. If I got discouraged at one time, I read Romans 8, 28, till I could recite it back to front and middle to each way. But I found something more glorious than that. I found that he's Lord of life and he's Lord of death, and he has the keys and he has all power and one day every knee is going to bow. And at the voice of the Son of God, that voice like the sound of many waters. And just as he turned and said to Lazarus, Lazarus come forth, he's going to say to all who are in the graves, Arise! And at the voice of the Son of God, they're coming by their millions and their billions and their trillions. I crossed the Atlantic nearly twenty times on the United States and the Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth and I made a point every time I crossed, somewhere at night when they were dancing to go stand at the deck rail and look over it and the boat goes whizzing past you know and those white waves look so nice in the dark and I'd look down and say you know I talked to myself, after all you talk to somebody sensible now and again and the Psalmist talked to himself he says bless the Lord O my soul. And I'd look overboard and say you buccaneers down there at the voice of the Son of God you're going to get up and come out. Right there where the Titanic sank with fifteen hundred people in that big steel casket they're going to come up at the voice of the Son of God. Where the Athenia sank in World War II when they torpedoed it with about five hundred mothers and children, they're going to rise at the voice of the Son of God. If you go to Pearl Harbor you'll see those great battleships that were sunk and we've never been able to raise them and they're full of dead American boys. And they're going to come at the voice of the Son of God. And Elijah and Enoch and Moses and all the saints of all ages, won't that be something? John in his preview says this is why I say you see these people didn't know a fraction of what you and I know. My God look at them. You know everything that's going to happen in the Kingdom of God. You can't explain every single mystery but you know what's going to happen. The panorama is set before us. The timetable we're not so sure about but this we do know that Jesus Christ is going to reign as Isaac once said. Where'er the sun that its successive journeys run, his kingdom stretch from shore to shore till noon shall wax and wane no more. Blessings abound where'er he reigns, the prisoner leaps to loose his chains, the weary find eternal rest and all the sons of want are blessed. At the voice of the Son of God. I think one of the great joys of eternity, I don't believe sinners will see us judged. Might do them good if they did. You know if I looked out there tonight it's as black as night. There could be twenty people out there. They're watching this frantic Englishman doing his exercises so they think. And there they are all standing in the dark. I can't see them. They can see me. There's Dale Brown. There's his wife. There's somebody. I look in the dark. You know what? Maybe it's a bit exaggerated you think. I believe everybody in eternal darkness, that's hell, will be able to see into heaven. It will be one of the agonies of hell, to look into heaven and see you could have been there and you're not there. Can you imagine people in hell looking at the banquet, sitting down with Abraham and Isaac and all the saints of all the ages? I don't like too many modern songs. I like one of them, it will be worth it all when we see Jesus. Life's trials will seem so small when we see Christ. One glimpse of his dear face, all sorrow. You know five minutes inside of heaven you'll forget. You'll live to be ninety or sixty or whatever you had. A cow jumped over the fence or something, Dale, or something broke its leg. We won't even have one single backward thought. You know I need the cross to take care of my past. I need the resurrection to take care of my future. And my future is far more important than the past. Give me another minute. Won't it be nice to see Mussolini bow to Jesus? Ever imagine how nervous Pilate's going to be when he has to stand before Jesus, Son of God? He never thought of that when he put Jesus to death. And Caiaphas, and Pontius Pilate, and all the Romans, Caesars, Caesar Augustus, Julius Caesar, Agrippa, all the kings of... I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God. How many commandments of God have been broken ten million times in America alone today? And how many in all the nations of the earth? And you believe, Brother Amiel, that God's going to take every man's life and every detail, yes every idle word is spoken, every business deal is done, it's all going to be reissued at the judgment seat. Well how long is it going to take? I don't know. We're not going anywhere anyhow. Maybe a hundred million years, that would be great. But oh, the supreme joy, to see the Father has committed everything into the hands of the Son. And the hymn writer says, lo the tokens of his passion, I believe in heaven. We'll see those nail prints in his hands. He rose from the dead, but he didn't have a body like you and I have, he left all his blood at the cross. And he said, the spirit hath not flesh and, what? Bones, as ye see me have. Some of you young athletes and strong folk may not mean much to you, but we older, weaker folk, to think about getting a glorified body. That's the last bonus we get. Wouldn't that be wonderful? Poor Dale was sick this week. No more sickness, Dale. No, he won't need any powders or heptabismal or anything else. In that day we're going to have perfect health, perfect intelligence. Wouldn't that be wonderful? I went to hear C.S. Lewis preach one day and when I got there there were about, oh I guess maybe 500 preachers there. Most of them had their collars backwards way, you know, in England because preachers were going backwards way. And there they were. And here on the platform is a big hulk of a man with a big oval face and red cheeks. And he's sitting there, didn't stand up to sing, he was singing. And then the chairman, I thought the chairman was going to say, oh C.S. Lewis couldn't make it, he's so busy at the university, this old farmer's going to speak. And he said, now we've all read Dr. C.S. Lewis's wonderful books and now I present to you this great modern scholar, Dr. C.S. Lewis. Mr. Lewis, we're glad to, you never applaud in England, that's bad manners. But anyhow, he just came up to the platform like this, you know, as though he was weary. I believe in the resurrection. I thought, alright, don't tell me. I do as well, I mean if you're voting on it, vote both hands right away. I didn't know, he got into a dissertation, I can't remember a thing of it except this, he said, a friend of mine has a beautiful little girl, only one girl, they live on a nice estate and they have a lake. And the little girl wanted a pony and finally he bought the girl a pony and he and his wife used to ride every day and he said to the groomsman, now you teach my little girl all the etiquette of riding, make her a real lady. And he looked out of the library window one day and she's walking up with a pony behind her like this. And he ran down and he said, darling what's wrong, did the pony try to bite you again? No. Did he try to kick you? No. But I don't want it, I don't want to ever see that pony again, I'll never ride it again. Well you asked me for a year to get you a pony and that's the best it is. What went wrong? Well, daddy you told me I could go through the gates of the estate and you told me when I came to the big oak tree that I could turn around and I forgot about it. I was looking at the flowers and listening to the birds and then I saw the traffic swishing past. Oh, daddy said you'll one of these days you'll get in that traffic and get killed. I turned around and came back and when I came back there, behind the oak tree there's a beautiful chestnut horse. Oh, it was beautiful. I threw the reins over a post and I went and stroked the horse's head and said, you're the finest, most beautiful horse I've ever seen. And he said, that's right, that's right. He didn't quite say it like that, he said, hmm, hmm, hmm. And every time I spoke to him he said, hmm, hmm, hmm. And she said, I hope I can get a pony, a horse like that. I've got such a little horse. And he said, that's not a horse. Don't dare call it a horse. That's a pony, not a horse. You want to see a horse? She said and he canted round the field like that. Oh, it looked so beautiful. I don't want to ride this pony again. I want a horse. He said, sweetheart, I've watched you mount and dismount and you don't do it like a lady and you don't hold your riding properly and you don't sit upright enough. You've got five major faults in your riding. And as soon as your groomsman can train you and get those five faults out, I'll buy you that horse. That man's got dozens of those beautiful thoroughbreds. Yes, she said, but every time I look over the fence I see that beautiful horse. Well, I've told you, I'll buy it for you. And he said, when I got home at night I was praying, Lord, I long for your presence. I long to have a body like unto your glorious body. I've such a cramped intellect. I thought I had a pretty good intellect, but you know, he knew best. And so she said, my intellect is so cramped and I'm all tied up. I want to get out. I want a glorified body. I want a glorified intellect and I don't have the power to express my worship and adoration. And he said, I look over the fence and I see my glorified body. And he said, the father said to me, son, you've got five things wrong in your walk with me. Number one, number two, he went through the five. And he says, as soon as you correct them, I'll take you home. And you can have a body like unto my glorious body. You know, they say the art of preaching has been simple, as I've proved to you tonight. But isn't it really? And a brilliant man like that used a child's illustration. And he says, I can see it. As the Lord began to point them out, yes, Lord, oh, I need improvement there and I need some correction here. And this needs straightening out and I certainly can improve there, Lord. I won't argue anymore, but I'm going to keep pressing on the upward way, you know. Is it true? New heights I'm gaining every day, still praying as I onward bound, Lord, plant my feet on higher ground. You know, if he hadn't have risen, it wouldn't be a bit of good praying tonight. He's at the right hand of the father, living to make intercession for us. Before the throne my surety stands, my name is written on his hands. Won't it be wonderful when he raises those hands in eternity? And it says, what's the last request at the end of the 150th psalm? He says, let everything that hath breath praise the Lord. And then it's taken up in Revelation chapter 5. It says, everything in the heavens above or the earth beneath, and every creature in the air. Somebody said to me yesterday, see those big mosquitos aback? You know, if you don't know the Texas size around here, the monsters, they can really bite you and hurt you. At least they do me, maybe because I'm so sweet, they all come my way. But, you know, I believe one day that little buzzing thing that bugs around your ear will be saying hallelujah. Everything that hath breath is going to praise God. That's what God intended in the beginning until it got marred by sin. Everything under the sea and in the air. Oh, no wonder Mr. Wesley says, oh, for a thousand tongues to sing my great Redeemer's praise. You know, if we saw him in his glory and his majesty every day, you'd get over every hardship, you'd laugh, you'd spit in the face of the devil and say, listen, I'm as much a son of God without a dime in my pocket as though I had $10,000. And God loves me as much if nobody else loves me on earth, and if I have a love relationship with him, so what? Let me pray. Father, we are honest when we say we marvel that the disciples forgot so soon. They forgot the wonder of the mountaintop experience of transfiguration, those who were there. They forgot that they'd seen you raise the dead on more than one occasion. You triumphed over every work of the devil and somehow their judgments got clouded. They got under the weather and they forgot. They didn't know the full story as we know it now. They didn't know you'd appear to hundreds of men at once. They didn't know that very soon they'd stand and see you reverse the laws. You'd reverse the law of life and came into the world without a father, that you'd reverse the law of nature and ascend to heaven in a cloud. Oh Lord God, save us from dumbness and blindness. Save us from this wretched status quo. Save us from living to try and defend a man who died 2,000 years ago. We want to prove that power. We want the power of his resurrection, as Paul said, with all his revelation of God, with all the fact he'd been raised up to the third heaven. He's still saying, oh that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his suffering being made conformable unto his death. Give us a thirst like this for God. Give us a thirst for holiness. Give us a longing to see the wretched empire of Satan, the gambling empire, and the drink empire, and the lust empire, and the film empire, and the drug empire, to pull them down in the generation in which we live. Give us a loving heart for those who are tied up in cults, whether the Romanists or some of the Adventists, maybe not as bad as others but Lord as we think of the Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses, and Spiritists, and the Hare Krishna people, and the Mooniites, and some of them put us to shame with their sacrifice and devotion. Oh God, I covet tonight. Lord, it would happen in this room that suddenly we feel the quickening of your resurrection life in our bodies, in our minds, in our emotions. Yes. And dare to tell you that as you raised us from the dead spiritually we want to go full speed into a lost, tired prison house of the world and tell them that Jesus is not dead but he lives. And as we sang tonight, you asked me how I know he lives. He lives within my heart. Lord, make this the most enjoyable Easter time we've ever had. Grant Lord that's become a tradition just to get up early Sunday morning and go out and sing in the cold or go up a mountain or something that Lord just the novelty will wear off somehow appear in your resurrection majesty we pray. In 10,000 places around the nation where people gather, some were told only go to church on the Easter day and on the Christmas day. Oh God of mercy. There's no reason why one person in America should go to hell. We have an open Bible and through the marriage of Jesus we have an open heaven. And yet somehow the clogged up mess in the church. God, Lord if we need to get seventy take us to get seventy. Oh we've got so used to this staggering story. I think angels must wonder what kind of human beings we really are. We can be satisfied to eat and drink and be merry and drive pretty cars and wear nice clothes and somehow we've got our vision distorted. The Lord I pray for myself, for my darling wife, for these precious folk, Dale and Betty and Bill and Dick and others that I know intimately. But Lord I pray for everybody in this room tonight that this Easter will be different. We'll feel the throbbings of eternity as we've never felt before. We'll die, we'll die Lord in the secret place. You think of these disciples who run away but Lord when they saw the resurrected Christ it says they were glad when they saw the Lord and they went everywhere. And they embraced hardship and punishment and penalties and prisons and privations. And they did what Jesus said, count it all joy. And Paul from a wretched prison can write to other believers saying rejoice in the Lord. And as though they didn't hear him he said rejoice in the Lord and again I say rejoice. Oh God put the light of eternity in our heart. Put a light in our eyes that doesn't belong this world. Put a passion in that we've never, never known before in our hearts. Lord if Jesus tarries I pray particularly here in this valley. It can become a valley of dry bones and it will unless you breathe upon us. Lord if you tarry another year that some miracles will have taken place. We will have seen, we will have seen our own wonderful miracles and Lazarus has been raised from the dead. Of captives set free. Of people bringing as they brought the blind and the name and they said to Jesus have mercy on my son he's a lunatic. That somehow somewhere in this valley, I don't care where it is, Agape or here or down at Garden Valley or Joe Fossey's place or anywhere. Somehow Lord there'll be something different this year. Give us one more chance in this valley. Dig around us that like the man whose tree was to be cut down and he said just let me fertilize it one more year and if it doesn't bring forth fruit. God I wonder how many of us dare say that out of our own hearts if I could say it or my friends here. Lord make this my most fruitful year or cut me down. Yes God. Lord nothing, nothing, nothing can be cheap in the light of the cross and we never dare talk about sacrifice in the light of the cross. And the loneliness of Gethsemane and the shame of hanging on a cross while everybody laughed and jeered. And Lord we remember you never showed yourself to the world after you rose from the dead. You proved you were the Son of God with power in every area over demons, over death, over sickness and if they wouldn't believe you weren't going to put on a spectacular display and raise the dead for the fun of it. And Lord you've shown our generation so much of your power and we've forgotten, become lazy and indifferent and worldly. We pray for the suffering church tonight. We think of the Siberian seven who are now Siberian six there in the embassy, U.S. embassy in Moscow and we pray that this will be a very blessed special resurrection to them. We believe there are hundreds of pastors and others in those prison houses in the Gulag archipelago and elsewhere suffering and almost forgotten in other areas of the world. Oh God. It seems a fairy tale to say that you gave us power over all the power of the enemy. It seems if we go to a meeting and clap our hands and have a bit of fun and a laugh it was a good service and maybe you weren't even in the place. Make us, make me more sensitive to the spirit. Oh to hear somebody in the middle of a service cry out with a broken heart in their wretchedness or somebody cry out because they can't live while the world is lost. Or like that precious woman weeping so much over the phone she couldn't get it out. We must have revival or we perish. Oh God. I feel the church at present, at least in America and England and Christian countries so-called, I believe the church is an embarrassment to you. Lord I know you don't need anybody to pass you a vote of confidence. You don't need anybody to cheer you up. You don't get depressed but you must wonder why we drag our feet.