In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of paying attention to stories that are repeated four times in the Bible. He shares a personal anecdote about his mother repeating things to him multiple times to highlight the significance of repetition. The speaker then focuses on the story of Barabbas, a violent revolutionary, which is repeated four times in the Gospels. He suggests that this story holds great importance and encourages listeners to pay attention to it. The speaker also mentions the concept of God's judgment and the potential for a revolution if Christians do not obey God.

We're going to do a seminar on the violence revolution. There is a story in the Bible that's repeated four times. I believe it's a tremendously important story because if God ever says something four times, you know he wants us to listen to it. Did your mother ever say to you something four times? My mother used to have four different levels of volume that she used to say things to me. She used to say, uh, Winky, come in. And I'd be working out in my lab doing something, you know. And she'd say, Winky, come in. And I would just say, all right, I'm coming. You know, that was level one, that was all right. And then five minutes would go past and I'd still be working away and she'd say, Winky, I told you to come in. And I knew I had three minutes then, see. I'd say, all right, all right, I'll be right there. Just, say, and then another couple of minutes went past and then she hit a third pitch. Winky! You know, it went up. I can't get as high as she went. And then I knew I only had about a minute left of grace, see. And I'd say, I'll be right there. Come in, my love, I'll be right there. I'd work away, you know. And then when she hit a number four, it was ultrasonic. Up there, very loud, windows breaking all over the place. Then I knew I had to come in or there was trouble. Now whenever somebody says to you something four times, I think you can understand that it's supposed to be important. And this is exactly what God gives us, a story here. There's very few stories or illustrations of Pables that are repeated four times in all four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. But here we have a story in the Bible that's repeated four times. And it's the story of a man that I call a violence revolutionary. You'll see his story in the book of Mark. Here is Pilate. The thief, he released unto them one prisoner whomsoever they desired. And there was one named Barabbas, which lay bound with him, that had made insurrection with him who had committed murder in the insurrection, or the revolution we'd call it today. And the multitude, crying aloud, began to desire him to do as he had ever done unto them. But Pilate answered them, saying, Will you that I release to you the king of the Jews? For he knew that chief priests had delivered him, this is Jesus, for envy. But the chief priests moved the people that he should rather release Barabbas unto them. And Pilate answered and said again to them, What will you then that I shall do unto him whom you call the king of the Jews? And they cried out again, Crucify him. Then Pilate said to them, Why, what evil has he done? And they cried out the more exceedingly, Crucify him. And so Pilate, willing to content the people, released Barabbas unto them and delivered Jesus, when he had scourged him to be crucified. I want to take you this morning in imagination to the hills above the city before this event takes place that is repeated both in Mark, and I've given you another important part here in Luke for you to look up. It's also on the television screens for you to look at. I'm going to take you in imagination to the hills above the city. A young man here is gathering together a group of revolutionaries. Now, they are deeply serious young people. They're committed young people. There are weapons being thrust into hands that have been stockpiled. And these kids are not playing games. They've made pilot raids before, made the trial equivalent of a bombing or two. They're deadly serious, deeply committed. They hate the system that has taken control of the people. And they want to see this torn down and destroyed, and the enemy of their people overthrown. The city is Jerusalem. The radicals, a group called the Zealots, and their leader, a young man called Barabbas, the time 2,000 years ago approximately. As we read stories like this in the Bible, it gives us some encouraging news. Revolutions are not new. They've never been new. We've had them before, and we're fast heading to have another one at this time, at this nation. I'm interested in revolutions, and I'm especially interested in revolutionary. Because I've asked myself over the last years I've been in this nation, what is it that makes a young man into a violent revolutionary? What makes a young man into a radical who hits the streets with his bombs and with his ideas to change things? Some people say, well, it's because the rotten system around them. That's why they want to see the system change. It's an idea in this, and it's basically this, that the system around you makes people the way they are. If you didn't have a rotten system, then people would be beautiful in their own way. I don't happen to agree with that. I don't think the Bible does either. But a lot of people say, well, kids become radicals because they see all the problems of poverty and race and ecology, and so they get into trying changing it. Sometimes they try to do it violently. Sometimes they try to do it by more peaceful means. Maybe Barabbas here, this guy we're talking about, had reason to see change. He had seen a lot of poverty, and he had certainly seen a lot of cruelty. As Rome came in and completely conquered the people of Israel, just ruled them with military might and power. He may have seen one welfare check too many and all this. But I don't really believe that most of the revolutionaries and most of the young radicals in the New Left and SDS that I talk with simply get into this violent thing because of the rottenness of the system. I think there are deeper reasons than that. Maybe this young man, Barabbas, just didn't fit in. Maybe he just didn't fit in. I'm thinking of one young man like this who didn't fit in. He just didn't feel like anybody ever accepted him, or he felt part of the major group. He just felt like an oddball, an odd man out. I know this young man, I'm thinking about, belonged to a despised minority group. Now, we've had a lot of despised minority groups in history before. It depends on the nation you're in as to which despised minority group you're in. But a lot of kids in minority groups have to push twice as fast and grab twice as hard to hold on to what they've got. But this young man that I'm thinking of belonged to what is possibly the most despised minority group of all history. See, this young man was a Jew. Not too many people like Jews in Germany where he was born. Can you imagine what it's like? Here is his dad. He's a Jewish businessman. He's living in Germany in a time when it's not too popular to be a Jew. So what do you think his dad did? Dad sent him off to a religious school. Said, listen, we're going to go to church. It's better for business this way. So he sent his son off to a religious school, Christian school. And this kid wasted four years there looking at his father who never really loved God. He just adopted religion as a quote for his business selfishness. And the kid looked at all this. He looked at all this hypocrisy. And for four long years he wasted his time in this school. The last paper that young man wrote was a paper called On the Union of the Believer with Christ. He never experienced that union he talked about because his eyes had seen hypocrisy and he rejected the whole thing. And just four years later. You've heard the words of this young man. I'll tell you in a little while. I think you can learn a lesson from this. Just going to a religious class or going to a religious school cannot make you a better person. Now my parents were business people. And when I was little they had the same idea. They weren't Christians but we'd been baptized good Episcopalians and we went to church at least Easter time and Christmas and what more could you ask? But they figured well the kids need to go to Sunday school. You know we're not heathen or anything. So they sent us off to Sunday school. And then there's only one thing I liked about Sunday school. They had this Kool-Aid cookies and punch trip that they ran through first before you got to sermon. You'd all sit down you know. And I'd grab myself a handful of goodies and I'd split before the guy got to the rotten part which was the sermon where he'd say now you all you know you better if you want to go to heaven when you die you're going to have to be better people you know. And I'd always split before he got to that part but I got a handful of goodies. That's about all religion ever did for me. I think you learn a lesson from this. Religion cannot make you a better person. No religious class, no religious teaching can make you a better man. And this kid finally after wasting his time all these years he finally hung it all up and he hung it up with bitterness. And just a few years later he wrote these words Religion is the opiate of the people. Man makes religion. And they called him Karl Marx. And he laid the foundation of what is today the violence revolution. Maybe Barabbas had another reason for being a revolutionary. Maybe somebody heard him. I've seen this happen all too often. I think of a young man who walked into Baltimore. He was an African. He was studying at a university here in the United States. He'd come over to study. And he walked into this hotel in Baltimore and he said could I have a drink of water please. And the man pointed to a spittoon on the floor. He said sure, drink all you want. That young man went back to Africa. Nobody reached Swami Nakruma in time and he began his own revolution. I think of another young man who walked through the schools of learning of this country. He went to some of the finest technological training schools this country has to offer. But as far as we know as he walked all through those schools no family, no religious family ever took the trouble to invite him even home for a meal. Let alone invite him to church or to some place where he could hear the real story of the gospel. And all those years he walked he got more and more bitter until finally he began to hate this nation. He put together all his technology and he went back overseas. And I think this young man is one of the most dangerous young men in the world today. Because he with American technology is heading up the Red Chinese Intercontinental Ballistic Missile Program. I met a young man back in California. We were having a rally one time in a large place and I turned it over to questions for the kids. This young man came up to me and said let me ask you a question. I said yeah, what is it? He said, can you be a Christian or be a communist or Marxist? I said, well no, not if you know what Marxism is. He said, thank you. And I thought to myself, why did he ask that question? He's a kid from a church. Church that believes in Pentecostal things too. I went and saw this tall young man afterwards. I said, why did you ask that question? He said, because I'm a communist. I said, do you know what you're talking about? He said, yes I do. We got into a two hour long discussion. I have another friend. He went into a church to take a choir. These kids were going to tour. And he asked these kids personally, what's your relationship with Jesus Christ? This one kid said, well, he says, I don't really think much about him. He says, I don't even know whether I believe in God or not. And the guy says, what are you doing in this choir then? He said, well they need me. I'm a good bass guitarist and if they don't have me they're not going to be able to have good music. He said, we don't need non-Christian people singing about Jesus. He said, you get cleaned up or you leave. You know, blew the guy's mind. He said, oh, you're going to have me. I don't know, see. He went away for a couple of days and his friends all started getting cleaned up in the choir and one of them came back and led him to God. He came back and he said to my friend, he said, you just got me in time. He said, we've started a little chapter on our high school campus and our next project, a radical chapter, he said, our next project was to blow up one of the high school auditoriums as part and parcel of a radicalization of the school. And I'm talking about kids who come from churches, kids who've seen miracles. And this is a scary thing to me. Maybe somebody heard him. The guy I'm thinking of now believed in God when he was little. He came from an upper middle class like Karl Marx and he went to church out of habit like so many kids do because that was the thing to do and his family expected him to do. One day, sitting in church, he got to be about 16. 16, a lot of guys start thinking about girls because suddenly they discover that there's creatures in the world who kill girls. So he decided to miss church a couple of times to see this particular girlfriend of his. This bothered his dad no end. My son is giving up going to church. So what the dad did, he went over and he got a priest. He called the priest over to his house. He said, listen, my son is not coming to church so often. He said, what should I do about it? The priest said this to him. Well, I got a good suggestion. You just get a stick and you whip that kid and you whip him and you whip him some more and you keep on whipping him until he learns his lesson. You make sure that he comes like that. And what he didn't know is this kid was next door listening to a crack in the door. And that kid got so mad, he ripped the cross off his neck and slammed it on the floor. He's just 16 years old. And that was it as far as this kid was concerned for church, for God, for religion, for everything. He hung the whole thing up. We learned another lesson, I think, from this young man. No church can make you love God. No rabbi, no priest, no preacher, no minister, no pastor can make you or force you to love God. And right on top of it, this young man, when he's still 16, his brother got captured by the government of the country. And he was taken away and his brother was hung for treason right before this young man's eyes. You know what it's like to be hurt so bad and so deeply that you hate the world and everything in it? I've worked on the streets. I've worked with kids long before there was any radical violent revolution here. Setting up, I've walked and talked with kids who have been bitter and hurt. And they've just gone around smashing windows because they're so mad at things. I remember talking to a young man in Detroit. His name was Dale. I met him in the streets. I was talking to some of his friends first. And Dale wore these shades, you know, these dark shades that covered his face. And the only thing about Dale was this. He only came out at about 11 o'clock at night. He worked all night and then he disappeared at about 5 or 6 in the morning. And he never came out all during the day. I came up to Dale and I heard a lot about him from his friends. I talked to one of his friends. His friend's name was John. And John was at Karate Campus. Hands were all calloused from karate and stuff. And I said, who is this guy Dale? He said, well, he said, Dale is really a rough guy. And these are his actual words. I said, is he really as tough as people say? He said, well, without his knife, he said, I think I could take Dale myself. But he said, when he gets that knife in his hands, he made it himself. A switchblade that he polished and cut and ground himself and sprung himself. He said, when he gets that switchblade in his hands, Dale is a big, big man. And these were his actual words. He said, if you mess with Dale, you find yourself holding your guts in your hands. And I said, hmm, I don't think I'd like to meet Dale. But anyway, one night we're in this coffee bar and Dale comes in. He's got his shades on. And we found out we were taking his business. We were leading all these girls to prostitutes to Christ. And we found out he was the one who ran the prostitution house. And then he comes in. He's wearing this long-sleeved silk Hawaiian shirt. And he just doesn't say anything. He just leans against the wall and he's watching. And I'm supposed to be running this thing, so I go, you know, with my glossy smile, uh, hello? And he just doesn't say anything. He just, you know, he just looks at me, you know, with his shades on. And he finally takes his glasses off, you know. And I know he wears his shades. His eyes were like a snake. Bright, shiny. And they just watch you hard like diamonds. You know, mmm. And he looked at me and I, I said, hi, I'm Winky. He just stood there. He said, I'm Dale. No hair, no shade, nothing, you know. I said, goodness. I said, I hear that you're a pretty good fighter. He said, yeah. I said, you know, I've never seen a switchblade up close. He said, oh, really? This thing comes out. I said, how does it work? It had a little spring, and he said, like this. And the thing went like this, and I saw this, but I said, oh. I said, I understand you made this yourself. He said, is it sharp? He said, well, yes. He took his arm and went like this, and I saw all the hair go on the floor. I said, yes, it is too, isn't it? I talked to Dale, and finally Dale started to open up a little bit to me. He was really hurt, really bitter. And he showed me his arm. I said, there's big, long scars all the way up his arm. I said, what's that? He said, you see these scars on my arm? He peeled his shirt back, and there was a big, long one along his back. He said, somebody went at me with a knife, and I turned sideways. It carved a chunk out of my back. But he said, that guy's never going to walk again. And I said to him, Dale, how'd you get into this? He said, I'll tell you. If you really want to know. He said, my dad came from a big family. He was drunk all the time. And he said, one day he said to me, Dale, you go out and get a job. You've got enough mouths to feed in this place. And he said, you've got to help keep me in booze. I've kept you all these years. You go out and get a job. He said, I was 15 years old. I said, I can't get a job at 15 years old. And the dad said, can you go out? And don't you come back until you've got a job. And he came back at the end of the week. He tried everywhere. Nobody was going to give a 15-year-old kid a decent job. He came back. He said, I can't do it. I can't find one. And his dad said, get your bags and pack and leave. As far as I'm concerned, I don't have you as a son anymore. Dale said he cried that day. And it was one of the last times he's ever cried. And he said he learned to sleep on the park benches of newspapers. He learned to break into empty apartment houses and live there until the people came back. He learned to fight. He said, I learned to mug people on the streets and live just like an animal off the streets. And he said, I got really mad. And he said, the thing that put the real cap on it. He said, one day my brother was walking through the park. He said, he was like you. He was a slightly religious guy, I guess. He said he was walking through the park. And three guys jumped him because they didn't like the color of his skin. He said they murdered him. Killed him right there in the park. And he said, Winky, he died on my birthday. And he said, for every year of my life since then, I've put one of those XYZ cows under the side for my brother. And his young man, he's 21 years of age. And he'd already murdered 21 people. Last time, I heard the police had caught up with Dale. And he fled to Los Angeles. I don't know where he is today. He might be under the ground with a bullet in him. But I've never forgotten Dale. I'm thinking of this young man then as he stood there, 16. And he watched them hang his brother for treason. Just 16 years old. 17, 16. He stood there and he looked up. And he got so mad and so angry and so hurt and so frustrated. He started to scream. He said, I'll make them pay for this. And one amused, contemptuous, sneering adult looked down at this teenage boy and said, You'll make who pay? He said, Never mind. I'm not. And that young kid changed his name. And they called him Lennon. Man of steel. Another, in the early days of the formation of the early Russian Revolutionary Party, another man in the party said, I am deeply afraid of that young man Lennon. And they said, Why? He said, Because I don't know of anybody else in the world that I've ever met in revolutionary consciousness that thinks and dreams nothing but revolution 24 hours a day, 24 hours a day. And what would you do if your parents were hypocrites? Let's say you lived in a family where your parents were supposed to be church-type people, yet they got drunk so often and so angry with each other because they blew their marriage, that instead of beating up on each other, they beat up on you because you were the child that reminded them of their blown marriage. What would you do if your parents were so angry at each other they continually took out their frustrations on you? Maybe you know what it's like to come from a broken home. Our home was broken until the power of Jesus Christ sewed it back together again. Our parents were split. Us kids know what it's like to, my sister and I, to have to wake up early in the morning and hear our parents arguing and fighting until 2 or 3 in the morning. But we saw the power of Jesus sew our home back together again. That's why today I'm following God. I know the depth of his revolution. I know one scrawny kid who came from this kind of home. He had a funny name. He was a junior shickle grubber. His dad's name was Mr. Shickle Grubber. And he's just a skinny little kid, you know. Can you imagine getting called shickle grubber? You know the names that they called you at school? And he was just scrawny and he couldn't... His parents keep beating up on him all the time and he got so mad and he got such a big violent thing in his heart that he determined one day, he said, I'm going to change, I'm going to get some power to do something one day. And he grew himself a little toothbrush mustache and he changed his name and we know him today. They call him Adolf Hitler. I'm beginning to learn what makes young people revolutionary. And I don't think it's always because of the social causes. I think a lot of young people become revolutionaries because of hurt or bitterness or anger they feel in their hearts that come off and out of their homes and then they try to find something in the system they can use as a vehicle for violence. And here is Barabbas with his revolutionary group up on top of the hill. And his mind is filled with hatred. I don't know what made Barabbas what he was like. Maybe it was any one of the number of things. But his mind is filled with what the Bible called a wine of violence. Violence can become like a wine. You can drink it and your head becomes so hairy and it becomes a... You know, you can lose yourself in violence. And he's like this now. I can see every well-trained muscle in his arm. His arm is just aching for the clash of the conflict he's about to experience. And then down they come like a cloud of silent ghosts. They come down. Surround this little Roman garrison in the city. Now, they've made raids like this before. And what they do is this. They hit the Romans at an off time when they get a tip that this is their rest time. And their idea is they'll kick open the door. They'll deal with a few sentries outside and then go inside and slaughter as fast as they can and then get out and split before they can mobilize. Now, they've done this hit-and-run technique perfected many years before Che Guevara and Meister Tong. And Brabus gives the signal. And then they go in, kick the door open, and then they run into the middle of the place. And all these men pour in with their swords flashing. And suddenly there's this pitch darkness inside. And, you know, they're all in there with their swords and nothing. It's all black in there. And then suddenly a horn blares from outside. From outside in the cobalt suns have come. And then they hear the pounding of scores of Roman army sandals. And they realize they're full of this trap, a well-planned, well-laid, well-executed trap. And then from all these surrounding places and houses and streets come scores of Roman soldiers. And Brabus fights his way out, cuts his way through a couple of people. He rushes down the street, see, and he sees one of his men knocked out. He sees a guy hit across the head. And he sees his two lieutenants, bang, bang. They're full on the ground. He races up down the side road. And as he's getting down the road there, suddenly from behind he thinks he's made it. And then an arm, Roman arm, drops down the back of his neck. And the edge of it, the end of the sword, half just goes wham, right in the back of his head. And he blacks out. And then the next thing he sees is when he comes to and his eyes begin to clear. There's the top of a Roman jail cell. And then Brabus's heart comes as still. This is it. This is the end. This is the end of me. And this is the end of what we tried to do. And you see, that's the trouble with revolutions of blood. They begin in hatred and violence, and they feed on hatred and violence. They start off with kids who have burning issues in their hearts, and they wind up with kids' burning bodies. People, first of all, go around throwing hot words, and they wind up throwing hot bullets. And the trouble with many of the revolutions is this. They start off just simply with words. They throw taunts, and then they end up throwing bombs. And they feed on violence, and they thrive on violence, and they must survive on violence. Let me show you how to radicalize a campus. Karl Marx believed he discovered a historical law. He believed that if you created chaos, that out of the culture that was under attack, a counterforce would be formed, and then when these two came into collision, a revolution would take place, and that third force that came out of that clash would move the whole world closer to universal Marxism or to communism or to a time when all people could share all things in common. Communism originally was designed as a way to make people unselfish by changing society. Now, an easy way to radicalize a campus is simply to come in, create as much chaos as you can, march for issues or whatever, and the board of people are running the thing, and the president says, Listen, we can give you the right to paint your dorms blue, but you can't park your Volkswagen's on the chapel roof. It's just not done around here, you see. And then you can, Marx, we must have the right to park, this is, you chauvinists, you know, and you can give all this radical language, see, and then finally the dean says, No, I'm afraid we're going to have to draw some lines, boys and girls, and then eventually it can bust into the dean's office, throw them out the window, you know, like doctoral, you like to be in cigars with burning doctoral theses and stuff, and you've got a confrontation, and guess what's going to happen? Why? The dean will call up the military man, see? Oh, you must come over, something rotten has happened. Now, about 80% of the campus is wandering around laughing. See, they may throw a brick or two, because every kid likes throwing bricks, you know. Did you like throwing bricks? Windows and stuff, if you could get away with it. I did, you know. I didn't get away with it often. A lot of kids are just wandering around. Let's say there's only 10% of the radicals in this thing, doing this thing. A lot of kids join in, holding a sign, and throw a brick or two, you know, for fun. Then suddenly in comes the military. Violent confrontation, couple of kids throw a brick or two at the military, and in that second you get something like happened at Kent State. And then a violent reaction comes from the students. Maybe these radicals have got something after all. Scene closes, you get this. Scene closes, with maybe 70% of the campus now moved towards the radical cause. It's very simple. That's the way it works. Some of you say, well, I don't, you know, there's not very much going on at campuses, but the tone being, I believe that's the calm before the storm. We're about to see a revolution take place in this land, unless God helps us. Now the media's been full of it. We have no excuse for knowing that it's coming. I believe I'm going to show you now some songs that have talked about this for a long time. The violence revolution's about to break out over this land. Scene ends. The next group is a group called Steppenwolf. Probably one of the top acid and hard rock groups in the United States. It's very, you know, clap, clap, clap. You know, you can do it as a chorus, you know, power, clap, clap. It's a very simple song. And the words aren't particularly profound. But hear it once, and they'll stick in your head, and you'll remember them. And this is a good marching song. I believe what's happening is gradually, this is pretty recent, just in the last year this song has been. I believe what's happened is we're gradually moving up towards a mobilization. I think confrontation in this country will begin when people finally start a street march, and then they're attempted to be arrested, and this will trigger the violence. And this is John Lennon, on television last night in an interview, the Dick Cavett show. He talked about his songs. He said, I'm a political revolutionary, but I'm a revolutionary artist. I use my artistry to help push on the revolution. And here is a prime example of music used as a powerful tool for revolution. And then lastly, we've seen a lot of minority groups mobilize against the larger white groups. First it was the black minority groups, and next the brown or the Chicano minority groups, and then finally that very large minority group that had been ignored, that every time you switch on the television you feel them getting shot and killed. Notice what the way... Hummerhawk and the Bowie night. Notice the word lock. So I think we've had ample warning. It is to this day, the day of revolution, that the young radical looks and waits. And I think it will come. When will it come? It will come only if Christians do not obey God. God has done some beautiful things. He said in the scriptures, if I pronounce judgment against a nation, and that nation turns, retents, then I will reverse my judgment. He said again, if I pronounce blessing for a nation, and the nation does not obey my voice, then there will be trouble for the nation. The New Left is trying to bring this up, as we said in 1972. I believe it's time we had Christians to infiltrate, to get right inside the radical consciousness and to change it with God's kind of revolution. I'm going to share with you now here about what Barabbas saw. Here he is in prison, and I've seen so many kids go into the radical movement. They get sometimes shot, sometimes killed. And it's getting scary now in the movement. A young man talking to me just two weeks ago, he said they led somebody to the Lord up in Canada. He looked scared, and he looked frightened, and he looked very angry. But they spent a whole couple of days with him, and finally they led him to Christ. And they said to him, what were you doing? He said, well listen, you just go up to me and tell me. He said, I've just finished an intensive guerrilla training program. And he said, for graduation they gave me a gun. And they said, all right, you go home and you prove you're discipleship. Go home and shoot your parents. And these Christian kids, hit him right on the street, led him to Christ. I think that's one good way to bust the revolution, by getting right inside and changing it inside. Because you see, this revolution of violence cannot survive unless it has enemies. And I know one person who can change enemies, and his name is Jesus. Here is Barabbas, and he's put in prison. Now he knows the way he's going to die. They're going to crucify him. And crucifixion is probably the most fiendish way ever invented by sick minds to put another man to death by execution. The Persians apparently invented it, and the Romans had borrowed it from them and polished it with their military genius until it had become a fiendish science with them. And Barabbas had seen all this before, because he'd seen probably other people die. And what they did is they'd take a cross of wood, sometimes a T-shaped piece. They'd hold the man's hands down. They'd hammer nails through through his wrists, through his hands, nail them down there. And of course, this would send just bolts of pain right up into his mind. And then gradually they'd, after they'd finished hammering his wrists in, they'd lift this man up on the cross. And they'd drop it into the hole, and often their bones would be dislocated as they dropped in. And they hung there. And gradually as the blood began to drain from their hands, this raging thirst, their tongue began to swell up. Sometimes it took a strong man three days to die on a cross. And what killed them was not the pain in their arms, so much it was this. See, in order to breathe out, you have to push up with your legs like this on a cross. And they had to constantly push up like this to breathe. Like this, and you could hear them dying. Sometimes it took three days. All night you'd hear these guys. Seen this way, they invented this. Brabus had seen this. He knew what a crucifixion did. And he knew about the suffocation, the thirst. He knew about the people who would stand around the cross. See what they did, they'd stand around. There was no real silence. They'd jeer and they'd laugh. Some people would cry who knew you. And often they'd strip a man naked, let him hang there before the crowd. It was really a rotten way to die. And what Brabus did not know is that that cross was going to be changed in just a few hours' time to become instead of a symbol for terror, a symbol for life. He didn't know that, see. Because another man was coming into Jerusalem who was more than a revolutionary. He was a radical in the real sense of the word radical, because radical comes from the Greek word radix, which means root. And this man really knows how to cut at the root of things. He's more than a simple revolutionary. There's never been a revolutionary like this man. He had no bombs. He had no bullets. He didn't come with any special weapons. He had no sword. He had no dagger. He carried nothing with this. This man had single-handedly taken on the whole Roman Empire. He'd taken not only on the Roman Empire, but a whole corrupted church system at the same time. And this man is the most radical of all revolutionaries because of all men, he comes right to the heart of the human problem. He didn't stand with the Romans. He didn't stand with the system. He didn't stand with the corrupted church. And he didn't stand with the zealots. But he did stand for God. And all the cities in Europe were all because of this man's life. Just a few days ago, they'd counted his praises in the streets. But now he'd given himself up to the hands of his enemies. Notice this. They didn't capture him. They tried to do this one time before. One time, what he'd done, see, he was over near the edge of a cliff, and a whole group of men came up, and I tried to push him off the cliff. They gathered around him like this. You know what he did? He just simply walked through the middle of them. They couldn't stop him. And then other times, the chief priests, they'd said, Listen, you go and capture this man and you bring him out. They sent out polished professional soldiers who really knew their job to capture him, unlock him, and bring him back. And they waited. We've got him now, they said. And the soldiers came back empty-handed. They said, What happened? They just said, Well, we never heard anybody talk like that before. Well, where is he? Never heard anybody talk like that before. No, they didn't capture this man. They didn't capture him. Nobody could touch him. He gave himself up. And this person is no ordinary man. He's a visitor to the planet Earth. But he's not an alien. Because, you see, he's the one who first put the whole thing together. He's related to the human race because we were made in his image. And this is no Jesus of the superstar album, no terrified, confused human being. This is a man who is more than man. This is God who became flesh and walked among us. This is God who reached down to us, pull us up, and put us back so we could become like him. And they call him Jesus, the Messiah, the cross. And this Jesus is the world's most effective revolutionary because he knows why the system goes wrong. Now, what is the system? The system is simply a group of people, a group of people committed to selfishness. And Jesus strikes right at the core. He doesn't go around throwing bombs at this plant or this plant. He takes the people in it, and he says, to change the system, you must change the people in it. In Albuquerque, New Mexico, I met a young man. He said, I hate this mess. He said, I'm going to change it. I said, how can you change the world until you yourself are changed? How can you take selfishness out of this generation until your own life has been cleansed from selfishness? And that's where Jesus begins. I take here that unless Jesus had touched my life today, I'd be helping bomb universities. I think I'd have become a Marxist. I want to see some change take place in this world. But because Jesus Christ starts with an individual and changes you from the inside out, I know how effective his revolution is. You see, Jesus is the only person who learned to forgive his enemies. And that's one thing he's going to have to do. Because I found something. Have you ever met an old couple that have lived together all these years, they've been married for about 50 years, and they start looking like each other? Have you ever seen that? You know, you think that's weird. Maybe he married his brother or sister or something. They look so much alike. I found something. And you start to think about somebody. If you really love them, you start to change, and you start looking like them. That's why it's beautiful to be in love with Jesus, that you start changing and looking like him. But I found something else, too. If you hate somebody and you think about them all the time, guess what? If somebody does something really rotten to you, I'm going to rip off my eraser. Oh, well. I didn't need that anyway. Just dramatize this a little bit. Here's you, unsuspecting, smiling. See? And this person comes up. And does something really rotten to hurt you. You can say, Oh! Oh! And hold on to that and think about, Oh, what rotten, rotten. And as you think about them, you'll find that you're just as rotten as they are. You don't know how many times I've spoken on the streets and an old man's come up and he's drunk and he says, I had my father. He was drunk all the time. I said, Oh, really? You know, and here's the thing. Unless you learn to forgive, you're going to become like the person that you despise. Now, Jesus forgave his enemies. He was never changed by the system. He changed it. Oh! I don't know what happened to Brabus' revolution after Brabus was put in prison. Even after his release, it never really got off the ground. The last thing of it was Masada, where a handful of little zealots held out until the end, until Ron marched in and they all committed suicide. But I can tell you what happened to Jesus. Within 2,000 years, within just 200 years, over half the Roman Empire had become secret Christians. Every time they took a Christian and fed him to the lions, they say 12 people in the stands gave their lives to Jesus Christ when they saw those people go out singing. And those Christians, you know what they said? Those lions aren't our enemies. They're our friends who are about to ask you a sin to meet their Lord. Can you imagine how that blew the Roman mind watching then? See that? It was always lions 9. Christians 0 on those arenas. Christians never won anything on those games. But they won an awful lot of people from the stands. And that's what Jesus' revolution is like. God had to find a way that he could show to man what man's selfishness had done. And so God designed a beautiful thing. Here's God's problem. Imagine you were a judge and your son or daughter had committed a terrible act of murder. Tremendously frightening thing. It just mass murdered a whole bunch of people. Deliberate, premeditated murder. And you're the judge of this court and through some strange freak, which will not happen in this country apparently, you had to fly and pass sentence on your own son. The jury comes back after deliberation. They can find no extenuating circumstances. And they say, I'm sorry, but your son has committed a crime that we cannot find any way to let him off or even mitigate a sentence. We recommend a death sentence and we recommend it immediately. And you're the judge. You have to pass sentence. Now what do you feel? What do you feel about this? If you were the judge and you had to do this, you got a whole court watching you, how would you feel? Your son is standing in front of you. They recommend the death sentence. You've got to make the final verdict. Now you could say, well, he's my son and I just really, you know, I pardon you. I'm sorry, but I have to let him off. And then all the people, all the relatives and friends of this, that your son has murdered, of the people that he's murdered, they're sitting out there in the audience and they, you know, they're broken and they're hurt and they're angry and you know there's got to be some form of justice. Otherwise, if you say, well, you know, he's a relative of mine, I'll just let him go, then everybody will say, hey, I've got to be a relative of that judge too. Because I've got 15 people I want to murder and then I'll just say, well, judge, you know, I'm your first cousin and he'll have to let you go. One hand, you've got to show justice because you're a judge. The other hand, you love your son. You really like to show mercy. What would you do if you were a judge and you were in that position? I'll tell you what God did. Before the eyes of the watching universe, God said guilty. He must suffer the full penalty. And then everybody went, whew! At least he's just, but wow, maybe he didn't like his son, maybe he didn't love his son anymore, maybe he just gave him up and said, well, I'm just going to pretend I didn't even have him. What does the son think? My father even has turned against me. See that? That will help the people to see that justice will be done but it sure won't change the son in me. And then when the whole watching universe is watching God put in effect, bring in the chair, the electric chair, and get it ready because execution is going to take place right now and the son starts shaking. He said he could put it off. He said he could get away. He starts to shake. So he doesn't know what's happening. And then the judge, as the chair is set off, he comes, takes his robe off, takes his wig off, and he goes down and just as the boy is going into the chamber he stops and he says, Son, excuse me. And he goes in there into the electric chair and he dies in his son's place. What did the judge do? In one act he showed his justice and he showed he loved his son. And this is the beginning of God's revelation. When Jesus is taken and led away to judgment, this is not the end. This is just the beginning of God's fantastic way to change people's lives. Now I'll take you back to Barabbas. He's in prison and there's a little weeny astral grate way up the top here, see? He can see this grate and he can hear some sounds. He can hear crowds shouting something outside. And he wonders what it is. So he throws himself up and he pulls himself. And he pulls himself and he gets right up the top. And he just gets his ear near to it and he can hear the crowd shouting, We want Barabbas! We want Barabbas! And his fingers give way and he goes, shoom, boom, and he falls down again. And then he hears this waaaah outside and he thinks, What is this? What is this? He throws himself up and he misses all the part in between what shall I do with Jesus. He misses that. He throws himself up again and just as he gets to the top he hears these words, Crucify him! Crucify him! And his hands fall off and he thinks, Oh no. I was trying to help everybody man and now look what they're going to do. I thought I had some friends out there. Now he's already seen his two lieutenants in the next door cell be taken away. They're preparing crosses. They can hear the mic in the mountain stand. He heard his two lieutenants fighting and screaming and cursing as they took them away. And he knows they're already being nailed up there on that hill called the hill of the skull. And there's old Pilot out there. He doesn't know what Pilot said to the people. Pilot said this, Look you all know I love you dear people. I've got nothing against you. I'm not really prejudiced against you at all. Though I've been taken from my luxurious Roman mansion to this dirty filthy stinking dung heap of a city. And just to show you that I'm big hearted I'd like to release you one of these prisoners. We've got two troublemakers in jail. We've already had to finish off two. And now I've got another two. One guy's name is Jesus and one guy's name is Brabus. Now which one shall I release to you? Now you know that Brabus is an insurrectionist. He's a revolutionary. He's murdered. He's killed people. He's stolen. Then there's this Jesus. I can't find anything wrong with him except that he's supposed to have healed a few people and restored sight to blind eyes and all this kind of thing that may have been false advertising that he's in here for. But I said, Which one shall I release to you? And the people said what? Brabus. Why Brabus? Because if you let Brabus go and he starts this revolution again you can always put his thing down with tanks and bullets and guns and the National Guard and the military. But how do you stop Jesus? How do you stop this man who cannot be bribed who cannot be bought and who cannot be changed by the system he is changing? And how do you stop the children? How do you stop those who had faith in him and followed him and learned to forgive and changed from the inside out? How do you stop that man? There's no way to stop him. So the crowd screams Brabus. And they begin to take him out. I think it's funny. Here's Brabus. He hates people violently taking other people's property. He hates people, the Romans, who have taken away his people's life. And he hates these people who are using force and power to enslave his people. And Brabus is a murderer and a thief and a violent revolutionary. And they take the door open and he hears the soldiers coming down. They're coming down the corridor and he's thinking, this is it. He braces himself. He figures, maybe if I hide they won't see me. He braces himself in the corner of the place and he's waiting there. And finally, the soldiers come in and he fights. He tries to get through and some Roman guy smacks him across the face and they lock his hands behind him and they begin to frog march him outside. And he sees the cross already being moved on to the place of the skull. And he's fighting and struggling and cursing and swearing and the Roman guy begins to march him outside. And he wonders, there's only two of them there. There's not this big, long, you know, procession of soldiers. And finally they take him outside and he's fighting him, swearing and cursing. And they kick him right down on his face in the dirt. And the Roman guy slits at him and turns around and walks away. And Travis gets up and he's looking, what is this thing? He still thinks he's going to get crucified, see? And then he looks up and he sees two of his friends from New Zealand. And they come up and they're smiling. He says, what is this, man? What is, what? And he's looking and they say, forget it. You're free. He says, what do you mean free? And then they point. They point and there in the distance he sees that horrible hill called Calvert. Golgotha, the place of the skull. And he sees two crosses on that hill. And on those two crosses he sees his two lieutenants. There. The end of the revolution. There in the middle is another cross going up. The one that belonged to him. And on it is another man. Another man who's about to begin a revolution that has come all the way down to divine. And as he stands there his two friends say, hey, we want to switch. You're free. Man in the middle cross has taken your place. Maybe you didn't understand. But you understand. This is the real revolution. And it's sweeping the world. Let's look to God and pray. Heavenly Father, we need a revolution that cuts to the core of selfishness in young people's lives, in adults' lives, because unless people are changed there's no way this system can be changed. You began it two thousand years ago when you gave your son. We pray we'll carry on the flame that we may see this spiritual awakening take place. It will stop in its tracks the violent revolution. For Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen.