In this sermon, the speaker reflects on his experience of attending a gathering where they listened to a recording of a singer who had been dead for 30 years. He mentions that during his own speaking engagements, he was given a strict time limit and would be interrupted if he went over. The speaker also discusses being questioned by students and not knowing all the answers, but being content with that. He then transitions to talking about Jesus as a teacher who believed in the truth of the Bible and used it to illuminate his message. The speaker highlights Jesus' death on the cross, emphasizing that he experienced both a physical and spiritual death. He concludes by referencing a passage from the book of Amos about a future day when the sun will go down at noon.

The two passages of scripture I always put together in my own thinking as I think about Jesus. One is in the second chapter of Philippians. Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, thought it not a prize to be gained to be equal to God, but made himself of no reputation, and took upon himself the form of man, a servant, and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore, God hath also highly exalted him, and hath given him a name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, and think in heaven, and think in earth, and think on the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Along with those verses I put a verse in the third chapter of John's gospel, the 31st verse. He that cometh from above is above all, he that cometh from heaven is above all. Of course, if men set their minds and their mouths and their pens and their pulpits and their printing presses and their quaffs, fully to portray all that Jesus was, is, and evermore will be, in his glory, his greatness, his goodness, and his grace, they set themselves to a task that puts men and angels to an eternal nonpluss. How much may be said about Jesus in one century, and still more in other centuries, still he peniteth himself will not suffice, fully to portray all that Jesus was, is, and evermore will be, in his glory, his grace, his goodness, and his greatness. Can one little coal of fire warm a thousand cold hearthstones? Can one little rosebud perfume this stifling atmosphere of a polluted city? Can one little cup of water cleanse a thousand dirty hands? Can any musician play Beethoven's Night Symphony on a tin whistle? You say, no. And I say, no more can all the words of the wisest of men, most skilfully combined and most eloquently spoken, set forth Jesus as he deserves to be set forth in the minds and hearts of people today. No mortal can with him compare among the sons of men. Fairer is he than all the fair who fill the heavenly train. As I said before, Jesus today is heaven's bread for us hunger, heaven's water for us thirst, heaven's light for us darkness, heaven's glory for us shame, heaven's grace for us guilt, heaven's forgiveness for us sins, heaven's beauty for us ugliness, heaven's wisdom for us folly, heaven's peace for us strife, heaven's comfort for us sorrows, heaven's justification for us condemnation, heaven's salvation for us damnation. Oh, who can paint him? Let the sweetest tone that ever trembled upon the harps of heaven be discord. Let the enchanting seraphim whose anthem is eternal be done by wonder, praise, adoration, all militant to the newness as it reached to the Christ, the only perfection earth has ever known, one eternity above all. I love to think how Jesus is above all in his source. In the seventeenth of John's Gospel, Jesus, in that marvelous prayer he prayed to his Father, testified that he had grown with God before the world was but loved by the Father before the foundation of the world. Meaning what? Meaning that he was co-existent, co-essential, co-eternal, co-equal with God. And Jesus himself said, The Father and I are one, O any one. No husband was ever so one with the wife of his bosom. No wife was ever so one with the husband of her heart. No child was ever so one, O any one, with its mother from the moment of its conception as was Jesus with God, and the glory they had, the love they had with and for each other before this world ever was. No beams of light ever came so brightly from the sun. No fragrance ever issued so sweetly from flowers. No crystal streams ever came so purely clear from crystal fountains as did the delights of the Holy, Holy, Holy Father's Son, and the love they had, the glory they had with and for each other before this world ever was. Father's love and glory, the Blessed Holy Spirit himself, was never excluded. And again Jesus is above all in his relation to this physical universe in which we live, this material universe, because he conceived it by his wisdom and created it by his power. And he's the designer behind all the designs of this universe, the lawmaker behind all of God's laws, the great creator behind all creation. How do I know this? I know it from this blessed, marvelous Word of God. John 1 says that all things were made by him, and without him were not anything made that was made. Paul, the great Aristotle and Demosthenes of the Jewish race, the great apostle of the gospel, wrote this to the Christian at Colossae. All things were created by him, things in earth, things in heaven, things visible, things invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created by him and for him, and he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. What a wonderful cluster of all things there. And turn to the first chapter of Hebrews, you'll find another verse that gives us the all things. Listen, God, who has sent the times and dollars, manners and times past, taken unto our fathers by the prophets, hath in these latter days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds. And again, he is above all in the way he came in, the universe he conceived by his will and created by his power, being the designer behind all the designs of it, the lawmaker behind all its laws, and became a human being without any earth or father. In eternity Jesus rested on the bosom of the Father without any mother, and in time he rested on the bosom of the Mother without any earth or father. He is above all in which he came in the world and became a human being. I love to think of ideas above all as the reveal of God. John 1.18 says this to us, No man hath seen God at any time, but the only begotten Son, who dwelleth in the bosom of the Father, he hath revealed him. He hath exegeted God. In Jesus' silence of God broke into full voice. One day Philip said to Jesus, Lord, show us your Father, and thou shalt satisfy us. That will be sufficient. I think Jesus had rebuke himself in his voice when he answered Philip. He said, Have I been so long time of you, and yet thou hast not known me, Philip? He that hath seen me hath seen the Father. How sayest thou then, show us the Father? Philip, you have seen me work, you have seen the Father work. You have seen me walk, you have seen the Father walk. You have heard me speak, you have heard the Father speak. He that hath seen me hath seen the Father. How sayest thou then, show us the Father? And what Jesus was in the days of his place on this earth, to the prodigal, the publican, the harlot, the hypocrite, the saint, the sinner, the disciple, to the devil, to rich, to poor, to men, to women, to boys, to girls, to scholars, and soldiers, and peasants, and philosophers, and kings, and queens, and beggars. That is God always, everywhere, to everybody. Jesus was God manifest in the place. And I love to think how he is above all in his supernatural power. He is perhaps super above all the powers that men know anything about. We have a little hell-bound human race that can strut sitting down, boasting about its power. Locomotives of power, planes of power, armies of power, navies of power, satellites of power, bombs of power. All this power we boast about. And we do have power, because human beings discovered something that Jesus put in the universe, nuclear power. But Jesus said, All power is given unto me in heaven and on earth. And his glorified body in heaven today, which body we are going to see some blessed day, thank God, one finger of his glorified body in heaven, and we will have more power in it than all the hydrogen bombs men could invent and explode in fifty years. All power, he said, is given unto me in heaven and on earth. He is above all in his supernatural power. Then I love to think how he is above all as a teacher. I've had some teachers in my life I wish I could forget their names. One or two of them were educational donders trying to break into the house of my faith, trying to get me to doubt some things in this book. But you know how far they got? Just as far as a canary bird was trying to fly across the Atlantic Ocean with a Washington Monument tied to its tail. One or two teachers I've had I wish I could forget. But Jesus was the greatest teacher of all, and he stands out above all teachers as a great palm tree in a desert of mediocrity. He stands above all teachers as a thousand-bulb chandelier over a little crust of people in flickering canals. He falls among all teachers as a deep crystal-clear river in the middle of a shallow desert. I remember I was babbling in the day sometime from Muddy Brooks. The hypocritical religious authorities of Jesus' day sent some officers to take him and outlanguish to arrest him. These officers came back without taking him, without arresting him, without handcuffing him. These religious authorities, who were rebuking that word, said, Why didn't you bring him? And here's the answer given. Never may a man speak like this man. Yes, Jesus is a marvelous teacher. Jesus believed all the Bible said. He used the Bible to illumine the midst of his cross. He used the Old Testament scriptures in knowing what the New Testament would be when it should be written. He said, Sanctify them by thy truth, thy word is truth, all thy word is truth. If one part of the Bible isn't so, then another isn't so. If I can't believe all the Bible, I can't believe any of it. I believe it all. I wrote a book. I believe it all. If you haven't yet, don't claim to be educated. That's what I tell college faculty and students. My book at first was called Lord, I Believe, published by the Broadman Press, and they dropped publishing of it. Baker Boothouse was publishing it again under the title, Talks About Miracles. I wrote that book when I passed the First Baptist Church in New Orleans. But Tulane University students used to come to hear me preach. Many began to ask me up to their student forum and let me talk 20 minutes. That's one of the hardest things I have to do, is to speak 20 minutes. You've found that out already. They had a man with a stopwatch. If I went one second over 20 minutes down on the stopwatch, you'd press his finger, and a man with a Chinese gong would go boom, boom, boom. They'd shoot questions at me. Sometimes they kept me there an hour. Wonderful students they were. One question they asked me was, and my book talks about the miracles of actual questions that they asked me and actual answers I gave them. They wanted to know me, where Cain got his wife. I told them I didn't know her and I didn't care. She suited Cain, she suits me. I said, I know a lot of homes and a lot of folks have been a lot better off. Some men let other women along, some men let other men along. One very beautiful Auburn-haired, green-eyed girl asked me a question, very sweetly. She said, Dr. Lee, do you really believe in the whale-swallowed Jonah? I said, my dear, I believe all that the Bible says, all of it. Not some of it, not most of it, all of it. The Bible tells me that God prepared a big fish to swallow his runaway preacher. I said, if God can make a preacher, he can make a fish big enough to swallow him. I said, I'll tell you something if you don't already know it, if that fish had to hold down some of your professors three days, it'd never hold him down. I don't make fun of anybody's faith, I never have, never intend to. But there's one young man down there, had the biggest nose I've ever seen on a human face. Oh, it was a waffle. He had a little tiny mustache right beneath that nose, sort of Hitler-like, a little tiny mustache. Of course the mustache was small, because nothing grows a mustache. And he came up to me with a super-silly smear on his little Hitler-mustache-lip and said, now, man-to-man, honest to God, do you believe Balaam's ass talked? I said, yes, I believe Balaam's ass talked, being the female, the species she had the advantage to start with. I said, sir, did you ever hear Madame Schumann-Hicks sing? He said, no, sir. I said, I did. Paid $5 to hear her, worth more than $5 to hear her sing Silent Night in German and English. I said, did you ever hear Caruso sing? He said, no, sir. I said, I did, I paid $7 to take my sweetheart and myself to hear him sing. Worth more than that to hear him. I said, I can go down to my house, sir, start a little wax discs rolling, and out of the point of that needle will come Madame Schumann-Hicks' voice and Caruso's voice. By the way, this hadn't happened when I talked to him, but in 1952, I was in a Bible conference in New York. I read one day in the New York Times where they were having a commemorative concert at a certain park, Amgen Park, I think. I didn't know anything about the park, didn't know where it was or how far it was, but I got a cab and went out. There were 6,000 people there, and I have a picture in one of my scrapbooks, because keeping scrapbooks is one of my hobbies. There were 6,000 people out there, and it was just as worshipful an atmosphere as we have in this auditorium this morning. Do you know what we were doing there? We were sitting there and listening to a man sing who had been dead 30 years. Mr. Caruso's 30th anniversary of his death. We were sitting 3,000 miles from where he was buried, his body. We sat there, worshipful attitude. Some people had tears on occasion. For an hour and a half we sat there and heard a man sing who had been dead 30 years, and we heard it by means of the phonograph. Now, listen to me. If man can compress Caruso in the microscopic point of a needle, make him sing for an hour and a half, 30 years after he's dead, and 3,000 miles from where his body is buried, you think God Almighty would have any trouble making no cloth-haired, water-eyed, Democratic donkey talk? I don't! I believe this book, all this book! I don't have any trouble believing it. And Jesus believed it. He said, Sanctify them by thy truth, thy word is truth. He said, Search the scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life, but they are they which testify of me, for Moses wrote of me. As I said yesterday morning, Jesus is the theme of this book. Take Jesus out of this book as I tell you. He's out of fire, melted out of music, numbers out of mathematics, mind out of metaphysics, facts out of history, fiction out of literature, brains out of scholarly expecting intelligence, and brought out of the body and expecting health. This marvelous book, infallible in its authority, inerrant in all its statesmen, immeasurable in its influence, inexhaustible in its adequacy, regenerating power, personal navigation, a miracle book of diversity and unity, of harmony and infinite complexity. Jesus believed it to be truth, and I believe what Jesus believed. I'm going to preach it that way. I preached it that way down in Memphis. The spider didn't spin in the webs of my Baptist either. Let me say something else. Jesus was above all in the way he lived. Nobody can find any fault in what Jesus said or did. One day Jesus said to his enemies, and he had plenty of them. I have enemies. I've told the people of my convention that if when I die somebody gets up and says, Dear old Dr. Lee, with some hoot-owl voice, never met an enemy in all his life. I said, I hope God will raise me to life long enough to stick my head out of the coffin and say, That's not so! No man can take a stand against liquor today and not make enemies, or communism and not make enemies, or liberalism and modernism and not make enemies. No enemy? The boast is poor. No enemy? You never diced a cup from a purging lip. No enemy? You never hit a traitor on the hip. No enemy? You've been a coward in this life. No enemy? The man had turned the wrong to right. Jesus had his enemies, but no one could find any fault in what he did or said. Jesus' life on this earth was a very geography of perfume. It was a overflow of graciousness. It was a thrill of the uncataloged. It was a language of the unuttered. And Jesus wore the white flower of a blameless life in the midst of a crooked and a perverse and adulterous generation, like the generation in which we now live. And Jesus was so finely strung, so unutteredly keyed to truth, to mercy, to justice and to love, and so quickly felt the sorrow, the sympathy, and the indignation which wrong and injustice invader elicits from all high souls. Temptations never loosed the moral fiber. Popularity never caused him to hurry. Antagonism never caused him to delay. He never made any apology for anything he said or did. He never acknowledged there was any need for repentance on his part. He was a sinless, absolutely holy, H-O-L-Y, holy Christ! And the devil could not get him to fall. He was above all else in life. Did you find anybody in this world who never said anything they shouldn't have said? Didn't you? Or did something they should not have done? Jesus was absolutely sinless. He never made a mistake. He never said something he should not have said. He never stayed silent when he should have spoken. He's above all else in the life he lived. I challenge all the microscopes of skepticism, all the telescopes of infidelic observation, all the X-rays of investigation to find anything, anything, anything wrong in the life of Jesus, by word or by deed, is above all. Let us enter a little bit into the Holy White Sanctuary with your prayer. Jesus is above all in the sacrifice he made and in the suffering he endured in our behalf. Some man wrote a book and said the greatest sacrifice ever made was when Solomon dedicated the Temple of Jerusalem and killed 22,000 oxen and 120,000 sheep in the sacrifices. That isn't so. He wrote beautifully, but he wrote error. The greatest sacrifice ever made in all ages was when Jesus, the Lamb of God, died on a cross outside the walls of Jerusalem at the place called Ascar. Not all have brought a beast when Jesus ought to slain to give their guilty conscience peace or wash away the stain. But Christ, the Heavenly Lamb, takes all our sins away, the sacrifice of nobler name and richer blood than day. He saw me plunged in deep distress and flew to my relief. For me he bore the sinful cross and carried all my grief. He suffered. He suffered physically, but he suffered more in his soul. He said to his disciples, My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death. I can hardly stand it. I'm about to die. My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death. And soul-suffering is the most terrible suffering in the world. Victor Hugo in that great novel, which I think is the greatest novel ever written, that's just my idea. You can have your own. Picture that truth in John's black hair that turned white in a single night. White hair, black hair, turning white in a single night! When I was in Paris, I said to my dear friends, Arthur and Muriel Johnson, two of the sweet friends I have, I said, I want to see the little room in which Queen Marianne and Ed Spinner last hours. They said, I can take you to it. It's below the Seine River. We went down the steps below the Seine River, and I gave $5 to the old guy and God. He said, Come, sir, these dungeons you see, people starve to death, animals rot to death, nobody cares. No beam of sunlight ever in any of these dungeons, sir, not a beam. Down the corridor of the dungeons we went to, we came to the little room, little plank floor and little wooden swinging doors, where Marianne and Ed Spinner last hours. The old God said to me, that chair, sir, she sat in just before she went to the death wagon, and said, this little handkerchief on the glass she used to wipe her tears away, she had a lot of them to wipe away, sir, and that blade on the wall chopped her head off. But come, sir, your feet are walking on the same planks her little feet walked on, your body is going through the same little wooden swinging doors that her body went through to the death wagon. Come, sir. He took me out to the place where the guillotine had been. He said, Here, sir, they chopped off her head. I remembered my history a bit, how an executioner, when his head fell in the basket, he picked it up with a hair as it dripped blood in her eyes, looking like glass marbles in her head, and his hand was crammed full of hair white like wool, white as snow, which three days before had been black as a crow's wing. What made Marianne's black hair turn white in three days? Soul-suffering! That did it. Soul-suffering. Jesus said, My soul is exceeding sovereign to death. I have a sermon that's being published this year. Two deaths died by one man in one day. Jesus died on the cross. He died two deaths, a physical death and a spiritual death, which was absent from God, when he cried, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? All the days that I knew and all my life I've had one night to them. The old preacher Amos said to his great congregation one day, as he preached to them, There's coming a day when the sun shall go down at noonday. I can hear those folks going to their tents after Amos preached and talking to each other. Well, I'm eighty-five years old. I ain't never seen the sun go down at noonday. Have you, Rebecca? No, I'm seventy years of age and I've never seen the sun go down at noonday. Somebody says, No, I haven't either. I haven't either. The sun going down at noonday, the preacher must have been a little wrought up today. He must have been a little bit on high tension, a little bit nervous. No, the preacher can't get wrought up today and worth shooting. One of my deacons came by one Sunday morning when I had preached. He said, You seem to be wrought up today. I said, Yes, I'm wrought up. When are you going to get wrought up? That day came. Midnight came down in his black garments and pushed noonday with her bright, resplendent garments off the throne of the universe, and sat down on the throne and spread his black garments all around us, a little terrestrial ball, as we call it, in one of our hymns. And the earthquake, thunderously and rumblingly and grumblingly rolled forth its gauge, and irresistibly, that there in the temple was a man running to from the top to the bottom. And in that darkness, Jesus said, My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me? That's when God turned Jesus' soul into hell in those three hours of darkness. Jesus went to hell for me. Jesus went to hell for all of us. Let me give you some words from a man who had a greater mind than I could ever hope to have, a great theologian, a great preacher, founder of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, Dr. B. H. Carroll. He used to preach an hour and a half and two hours. Listen to what he said. It's unquestionable that Christ's soul entered hell while he was on the cross. He had died the spiritual death which is absent from God when he said, My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me? This must be interpreted literally. During that time of seeming eternal duration, the Father's face was hidden, his back was turned, and in that awful darkness the Son of God endured the pangs of spiritual death and desolation. And the devil and demons were around him, and the thirst of hell was upon him. But Jesus had said by the prophet these two things. The pangs of hell got hold upon me, but God does not leave my soul in hell. Dr. Carroll goes on to say this. Jesus was in hell. He was not there to stay. He came out of hell to say to the Father, Receive my spirit. He was no longer forsaken of God the Father. Christ descended to hell within the three hours of darkness when he was God-forsaken, and in the power of Satan, to death by one man, one day, by Jesus, who suffered in hell. Let me say this. He said, Above all else is death. The Bible speaks about death being our enemy, the last enemy that shall be destroyed. Oh, death, whose only prize are faded garlands on coffin lids. Death, whose only music is a sob of broken hearts. Death, whose only pleasure fattens with the falling tears of the world. Death came into my house and left me a lonely house, left me with a heartache looking at the vacant chair at the table, left me with a silence, unbroken, in which I can't hear the voice I love to hear for over fifty-seven years. Death has done as much for some of you. And death laid hold upon Jesus. They never did stop till they killed him. They said, He's a king. His enemies said, If he's a king, he ought to have some royal insignia with high office, so they cut his back to shreds with a scourge. If he's a king, he ought to have a crown, so they crowned him with piercing thorns. If he's a king, we ought to say so, so that it'd spit in his face, and mouths that had kissed the mouths of harlots and been placed on rum jugs and uttered their dirty jokes and profaned words did spit in his face. If he's a king, we ought to reach out our hands to him, so they beat him up with their hands and pulled out some of his beard. For he fulfilled the scripture, I gave my back to the smithers and my cheeks to them that cupped off their hair. They said, If he's a king, he ought to have a throne, so they nailed him naked to a wooden cross and lifted the cross up. They killed him. You and I killed him. Our sins killed him. He bore our sins right on a tree. Our sins were the scourge that cut his back to shreds. Our sins were the dirty sputum that befouled his face. Our sins made the procession where he was loaded down with a wooden cross and fell beneath it. Our sins pulled out his beard. Our sins beat his face to a pulp. Our sins crowned him with thorns. Our sins nailed him to the cross, and our hearts were the hard hammers that drove him there. We did it! You did it! We did it! We did it! They killed him. I'm glad that Joseph of Arimathea was a rich man. I believe if it hadn't been for him, Jesus would have been taken out and dumped on the garbage heap with dead dogs and lambs and cats and all other refuse. I believe that. Joseph went in to see Governor Pollack, and here's the way I picture it in my own mind. The Governor's in his office. Some soldier standing out there with spears to guard him. And Joseph the rich man came in, and Governor Pollack, who had a yellow cotton string, would have had a backbone. Well, Joseph, what can I do for you? And Joseph the rich man said, Governor, the man dead on the cross out yonder, whose death was your son, named Jesus, and he's dead. I said, well, I don't know if you'd let me have his body and bury it. Well, Governor Pollack called a Roman and sent two of the soldiers and said, is he dead already? The soldiers said, yeah, Governor, he's dead, all right, he's dead, he's dead, he's dead. Well, Governor Pollack gave Joseph of Arimathea permission to go take the body of Jesus down and bury it. The Bible doesn't tell us this, but I think this is what happened. Joseph went out on the street and he met Nicodemus, who also had been a secret disciple of Jesus. He said, hello, Nick, hello, Joe, where you been, Nick? I've been to see the Governor. What do you want to see the Governor for? I want to know if you'd let me have the body of Jesus to bury it. He said, I could. You want to help me? Sure, Joe, sure, I'll help you. Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimathea, pulled out the nails, took his body down, wrapped it in linen clothes and put the spikes in and put a napkin around his head, as was the custom for the Jews to bury, and put him in that tomb. He went out on the solid rock, yondered and derided him to death. The Roman Empire rolled a big stone to the door and sealed it with seals and put soldiers to watch him. Everybody said he's dead. Blind Bartimaeus with tears in his now-seeing eyes said, the one who made me see is dead. Mary Magdalene, out of whom Jesus had cast seven devils, said, the one who took the devils out of me is dead. I wonder why they wanted to kill him. The man with a withered hand reached over and touched his wife's cheek and said, honey, the one who made my hand old is dead. I wonder why they wanted to kill him. And if old Zacchaeus was living, I think he said, the one who changed my life from darkness to light is dead. All of them said he's dead. And Mary said, the one to whom I gave birth, the one who nursed my breast, the Son of God, is dead. I hear old Sin cry out to death with his raucous, sinful voice, hey, you got that fellow Jesus? Yes, Sin. I got him, and I'm going to keep him like I kept all the folks that ever came in my power. The first day. The second day old Sin called out again, hey, death, you still have that fellow Jesus? Yeah, I had him, Sin, don't you worry. And I'm going to keep him like I kept all the kings and queens and crowned folks of all ages that ever came in my power. I'm going to keep him. The third day morning old Sin called out, hey, death, you still there? Yeah, I'm here. You still have that fellow Jesus? No. He'd gone away. Thank God. Up from the grave he arose. With a mighty triumph, oh, it's close. Hallelujah. The one who's above death arose. He says to us today, I am he who liveth and was dead, but I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys. And he does. What he locks, nobody can unlock. What he unlocks, nobody can lock. He has the keys, because he has the key to your life. I'd like to ask you, incidentally, the last thing I want to say is this, not the last thing I want to say, but I'm going to say it. He's above all, and he's coming back to this earth again, literally, visibly, bodily like he went away! Coming in the air first! He's going to bring our loved ones with him. Oh, I'm going to see my little lady Lee again, when she comes back with her Savior. And when he comes in the air, the dead in Christ shall rise first! What are these general resurrections going to do with that, who say the wicked are dead and the Christian dead are going to rise at the same time? It isn't so. The dead in Christ shall rise first, and we who are alive and who are Christians will be given glorified bodies, and caught up together with them to meet the Lord in their soul, and say, Well, we'll be with the Lord, and after a wedding in the sky! Dr. Peter Wolfe used to talk about it. He's coming back to this earth. He's going to land on the Mount of Olives. The whole mountain is going to split wide open, part will go one way and part another, and he is going to set up his throne in Jerusalem and make real what he promised in the Luke that the first God would give to him, the throne of the Father, David! God hasn't done that yet, but he's going to do it! The Bible tells me that the time is coming when little children can play with highland moccasins and rattlesnakes and cobras and not be hurt. Has that time ever been? No. The Bible tells me the time is coming when the terrestrial will be taken out of wild animals, and the lambs shall lie down together, and the lamb will not hurt the lamb. Has that time ever been? This book tells me the time is coming when men shall beat their swords in the process, and their spears in the pruning hooks, and men shall learn war no more. Has that time ever been? Look at Cyprus today, where the Turkish army marches! War! No, that time never has been, but it's going to be when Jesus comes back and reigns on this earth a thousand years. Oh, blessed Lord Jesus, come quickly! When he comes, it's going to be the Master's reckoning day, it's going to be the Servant's pay day, it's going to be the King's coronation day, it's going to be the Bride's wedding day! Amen! He will so come quickly, Lord Jesus! But I thank God Jesus above all. I'd like to say to him today in my heart, and I'd like for you to say it too, if you will, what Shakespeare pictures say to Bassanio, her lover. She said, For you, my Lord Bassanio, I would be troubled twenty times myself, one thousand times more fair, ten thousand times more rich. And I'd like to say to him this morning as we turn and go away, For you, my Lord Jesus, I would be troubled twenty times myself. I'd like to be a thousand times better for thee than I've ever been, until thou shalt come again, or until thy holy blessed fist in hand shall open the gates of grace to me, shall open to me the gates of glory beyond which I'm going to see some angels' faces I've loved long since and lost awhile, and best of all to see Jesus. And I'll walk around a little while with him in the fields of glory. Would you like to say that to him this morning? For you, my Lord Jesus, I'd be troubled twenty times myself if I could. I'd like to be a thousand times better. Would you like to say that? Well, say it to him while we bow our heads. If I say it to him, please, he's right there. Say it to him. Say it to him right now, no matter who you are, no matter where you live. Make him a promise. Keep that promise, till he comes again, or until he opens the gates of glory for you.