Major Ian Thomas shares the transformative story of the Orca Indians, highlighting how the murderers of missionaries became redeemed through Christ. He emphasizes that regardless of one's past, the power of Jesus' sacrifice can cleanse and regenerate anyone, making them a new creation. Thomas recounts the journey of Dr. Gerhard Dierks, a scientist who realized his need for God through his research, ultimately leading him to accept Christ and experience true redemption. The sermon underscores that salvation is not just about forgiveness but also about receiving the life of Christ to live righteously in a corrupt world. Thomas concludes by affirming that God’s grace is available to all, regardless of their background or past actions.

A couple of years ago, in our Bible school in England, we had the daughter, and this last summer, for his summer vacation, the son, of a man who was murdered in South America. And a few years back, I met the man who killed their father. I'm sure most of you will have heard the story. Nate Saint was one of the five missionaries who were murdered by the Orca Indians in the jungles of Ecuador. And Kathy Saint was in our Bible school, and Steve Saint came over and spent the summer with us last journey. The man who killed their father, I met in Berlin during the World Congress on Evangelism, because today the man who killed their father is the pastor of the church in that part of the Orca Indian tribe. I'm sure most of you will have read or heard at least of the story, how the Orca Indians, a Stone Age people, brought up in a tradition of death and killing, were considered by the Ecuadorian government to be totally untamable. They had resisted a request made by the oil interests that they should be liquidated, bombed out, and totally destroyed. To their credit, they resisted that suggestion. But at the same time, they considered that the Orca Indians were little more than animals, and hoped that very soon they would die out and become extinct. But several of the missionary agencies in South America were utterly convinced that the Holy Spirit of God, re-inhabiting the human spirit, whereby the life of God is shared again with man and earth, could bring about that radical, spiritual resurrection that the Bible calls New Birth. And that the Orca Indians, no matter how savage, no matter how primitive, no matter how depraved they might appear to be, were as available to God as you and I are available to God, for Him to do this mighty, redemptive, and regenerative work. And so it was that several men, for a very considerable time, made reconnaissance around the tribes, flew over them, you remember, in their little Cessnas, and dropped gifts and sought to make friendly contact with these people. They dropped a model plane, trying to indicate that the folk should clear a space where they could land. And finally rapport was gained, and they considered that the time had come when they should make their first attempt at physical contact. And all went marvellously well. They were landed by a ferry service by Cessna, on the sandy banks of a river which was the boundary between the Orca territory and the rest of the jungle. And actual physical contact was made with the Orca Indians. And of course folk were very excited as they heard the radio news from the missionaries on the spot. And then there was silence. And it was some time later before their bodies were found, speared to death. And one of the men who killed them is now the pastor of the church in that Orca tribe. It was Nate, the saint's sister primarily, who finally penetrated with an Orca girl into that dangerous territory. And that marvellous thing took place in the hearts of these savage stone age men and women that the Bible talks about in the second epistle of Paul to the Corinthians in the fifth chapter, the seventeenth verse, if any man, any man, no matter what his previous condition is, any man being Christ, he's a new creature, a new creation. All things have passed away, everything has become new. You see, by the exceeding great and precious promises he becomes partaker of the divine nature. His humanity, his flesh and blood, abused, misused and prostituted as it may have been, suddenly re-inhabited by God his creator, close the divine life of Jesus Christ. And he from within, not religion, not Christianity, that wouldn't do a thing for anybody, but Christ himself, he from within becomes the origin of his own image. We have been talking about this, the derived image that comes from the presence of the life of God imparted through the Holy Spirit to the soul of man. And this is the miracle that took place. Marge Saint was in Berlin when I was there and she tried to introduce me to the two Orca representatives who were participating with representatives from over a hundred different nations in the World Congress on Evangelism that took place at that time. She found it a little bit difficult because the Orca language is very limited. For instance, they don't have a word for chair for a very good reason. They don't have chair and there's not much point in having a word for something you don't have. I mean, they sit on the floor. And so she found it difficult to introduce me and try to explain that Kathy was in my Bible school. So all she succeeded in doing was to indicate that I was the chief of the tribe up in the little village in the northwest of England. You see where Kathy was. So I did a little war dance and everybody was happy. I was in the Orca territory or within 60 miles of that particular community only just a couple of years ago. I was in the Ecuadorian jungle at the Wycliffe base. I had hoped to be able to fly in at that time and meet them myself. Unfortunately, it wasn't possible because very delicate negotiations were going on precisely at that time between the Christian half of the Orca tribe and the other half that had become somewhat restless and the situation had become pretty sort of dicky and they weren't quite sure what was going to happen. But just at that time while I was there, they managed to make contact and when I flew out of the Wycliffe base during that very night, two parties, one from the still savage stone age section of the tribe were setting out to rendezvous with a small group coming out from the Christian section of the tribe and contact was made. We got the radio message next morning. But you know Cameron Townsend, the founder of Wycliffe was telling us how some year or two after the tribe was penetrated and the first Orca Indians had come to know the Lord Jesus Christ, the president of Ecuador was visiting that part of the country and the Wycliffe base offered him hospitality and the presidential plane because theirs was the only airstrip in the area that would give him access to that particular part of Ecuadorian territory. And while he was being entertained at the Wycliffe base there in the jungle, he expressed interest in all that had been happening to his amazement amongst the Orca Indians. He couldn't credit that these animal creatures could really have been tamed and become sophisticated individuals. And so they brought this man, the pastor of the tribe, to visit him and by interpretation he was able to engage in conversation and the president of Ecuador asked him what it was that had taken place, what had changed his life, what made the difference. And Cam Townsend said that his face shone as he told the president and this is what he said, "'The blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanseth us from all sin.'" That's how he began, "'The blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanseth us from all sin.'" And they went on to explain, "'Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came to this world and he died for me that my sins might be forgiven. And when I received him into my life as my Savior and my God, I was at peace with my Maker.'" But then the Orca Indian went on to say this, "'But the same Lord Jesus Christ that died for me and shed his blood that my sin might be forgiven was the one who rose again from the dead and who has come by his Holy Spirit to live in me.'" So, sir, he said, you see, my hands are now his hands. The hands that killed and love killing are the hands of Jesus Christ. And my feet are his feet, my lips are his to speak with, my mind is his to think with, my eyes are his to see with, and my ears are his to hear. That, sir, is what made the difference. Now that's biblical, historical Christianity from the lips of a one-time Stone Age Orca Indian brought up to kill and to love killing. That's Christianity. It's all there in that very simple statement of faith. You see, the Bible really from cover to cover only has two things to tell us. The first is Christ died to redeem you. Let him. The second is Christ rose again from the dead to live in you, share his life with you, and communicate that life through you. Let him. That's all. Everything derives from those two basic fundamental facts. Of course, there are a thousand and one things that derive, a thousand and one facets of the truth and activities that are the inevitable consequence of these two fundamental basic principles. But it is from this that they derive. That the Lord Jesus died to redeem you, that what he accomplished upon the cross wasn't some sentimental gesture, it was stern business. He transacted your redemption and mine in that God executed in his person the judgment that you and I deserved. That you and I might be acquitted. Because the sinless savior died, my sinful soul is counted free and God the just is satisfied to look on him condemned and pardon me. In peace let me resign my breath and thy salvation see my sins deserve eternal death. But Jesus died for me. Now the Orca Indian understood that message loud and clear and simply exposed his need to the adequacy of Christ's atoning death and was instantly acquitted, as I was at the age of 12. And I'm thankful to God. I didn't understand the theology of it anymore I suppose than that Orca Indian did when first he put his trust in the Lord Jesus. I couldn't have told you the doctrine of redemption or justification by faith or the ministry of the Holy Spirit, not as a kid of 12. All I knew was that in that tent meeting I was convicted of my sin for the first time I realized that the Lord Jesus died that I might be forgiven and that I'd never never had the decency to thank him. Never had the decency to welcome him into my life. I wonder if you've had the decency to thank the Lord Jesus for dying for you and receive him into your life. I wonder if you've let God do all that he made possible when he sent his son to redeem you, to reconcile you to himself. It's a marvellous thing when you allow God to receive you back to himself as an acquitted forgiven sinner. It's marvellous to know that your sins are forgiven. Because you see when God forgives he forgets. We find it very hard to forgive that way. We say we've forgiven somebody, we seldom forget. But when God forgives he forgets. You know rather like the two small boys they were quarrelling all day. And mother did everything in her power to bring about peace between the two. But all to no avail. She threatened, she pleaded, she promised. Nothing, nothing of avail. Until finally as evening came and it was time to go to bed she thought she'd try one last thing. And she appealed to the sentiment of the older boy. She said, son supposing your little brother were to die in the night, wouldn't you be sorry if you hadn't forgiven him? So the older boy thought that over. And then finally he said, alright I'll forgive him. I'll forgive him. But if he's alive in the morning. You see that's how we forgive. But that isn't how God forgives. When God forgives he forgets. And that orca Indian entered into the fantastic mercy of a living God who sent his incarnate son the Lord Jesus in the sinlessness of his humanity to make the one sacrifice for sins forever that allows a holy God to receive us back to himself. Acquitted, forgiven, cleansed. He blots out our sin like a thick cloud. As far as the east he says it's from the west. I put your sins behind my back. I bury them in the depths of the sea. I will remember your sins he says. No more for my name's sake. I'm glad he remembers them. He remembers every single one of them. There's not one single sinful thought or act or deed or motive that you ever cherished or did. But he doesn't know about it. I'm glad he remembers. I should hate to think that suddenly you know some skeleton in the cupboard would be laid bare. Something that God didn't know about. Just to spoil it off. No. God reads you like a book. He can see through you like a plane of glass. There's not even a thought that's passed through your mind while you've been sitting in this church here tonight that he doesn't know. And he says I remember the lot. But the moment you invoke the activity redemptively of my son who paid the price of your redemption having remembered your sins. I remember them no more. They're cleansed. They're forgiven. Fully finally and eternally payful. That's redemption. And then of course this orca Indian discovered that God doesn't just make us fit for heaven. That would be pretty pathetic. It simply has forgiven sin as we were made fit to heaven then left us sweated out here on earth. Utterly unfit. For the business of living life in the 20th century. 24 hours a day. That wouldn't be salvation. But alas that often all too often is the gospel that's preached. Just as all that the Lord Jesus came to the world for was that our sins might be forgiven. Nothing could be farther from the truth. In point of fact don't misunderstand me when I say it. But in point of fact the Lord Jesus didn't come into the world that our sins might be forgiven. He tells us plainly why he came. John 10. I'm come that you might have life. I'm come that you might have life. But you can't have that life restored that was forfeited in Adam until your sin has been forgiven. So I'm going to die for you so that your sins are forgiven. But only that the life might be restored to you that sin forfeited. The life of God in the soul of man that will make you man again and restore you to that moral competence that will enable you to discharge the office for which you were created. To clothe my righteousness. To give a valid expression of my nature. My person. My Godhead. That's the amazing, amazing privilege that is given to you and to me. And this Orca Indian discovered that he didn't have what it took. But the Lord Jesus did. And that the one who died for him to redeem him was the one who rose again from the dead to indwell him, share his life with him, and assume full responsibility every step of the way. That's marvelous. The first is called redemption through the death of Christ. That's what it takes. The second is called regeneration or new birth. That demanded the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. That's what it takes. We need not only what he did because of what we've done. That's redemption. We need what he is to take the place of what we are. That's new birth. And that's all in the package. This is what the Bible calls gospel. And it's marvelously good news. But of course there may be somebody sitting here and saying, well I don't know why you're telling me all this. I'm not a stone age savage. Well I'm glad to know that. Looking around you're not always sure. But you know a year or two back I was in the Bay Area, San Francisco. I was at a place actually called Palo Alto, about 30-40 miles from the center of San Francisco itself. And it was my privilege at that time to be conducting a series of meetings in the Peninsula Bible Church. It's a very lively church. A very masculine church because it really derived out of about 17 home Bible studies convened by men only. Most of them space scientists and men in high academic positions. Men of unusual ability. A very refreshing church to be in. And one of the men, after a day or two, came to me and he said, might I invite you out to lunch? And I said certainly. I'm always enthusiastic about any invitation like that. And he said I'd like to tell you my story because I've been quite fascinated at the things you've been saying because they match. They match so completely my own personal experience. I'd like to tell you how I became a Christian. And so he took me to his fabulous home in Los Altos, which overlooks the Peninsula, and then out to lunch. His name was Dr. Gerhard Dierks. He was of German birth. A man who is fantastically clever. He was one of the pioneers in the creation of the electronic brain. He's just come up with another one that is likely completely to revolutionize the whole concept of computers. But that's by the way. In his home he showed me his study and just one glance at the head just went round in circles. He's fantastically clever. And he's got some of the earliest patents in the electronic field of computers. Anyway, while we're having lunch, he said I'd like to tell you how it is that I came to Christ. And he told me that as a young man, born in Germany, he was engaged in research in this particular area of memory systems. The earliest forms of computer with which all of us have now become very familiar. We take it for granted. But he was one of the pioneers. And he said this. He said it was my research as a young scientist that led me relentlessly to Jesus Christ. You see, before I began serious research in the area of the electronic memory system, I did the most sensible thing. I studied physiology. Because I knew that every animal was equipped with a computer. I knew perfectly well that I had in my own skull a magnificent, a masterpiece, a memory system. So quite obviously, if I wanted to produce something artificially that was capable of storing knowledge and having it on tap for instant and immediate recall, I had to do something like the brain. So I studied physiology. And he showed me some of the books later on in his library, which he had studied. And he said this is the thing that irked me. Because as a young scientist, to me, God was totally superfluous. God in religion to me was simply the crutch upon which lesser creatures than myself had to lean. I didn't need it. I got all that it took. I had a very high estimate of my own ability. A high estimate in point of fact that was constantly being reinforced and bolstered by the congratulations I was constantly receiving for the nature of my work. So why should I need God? Why should I have a crutch? But he said what irked me was this. That in all my researches, for which I was constantly being congratulated, I knew perfectly well, I knew perfectly well, when I was honest with my own heart, that I was inventing nothing. Absolutely nothing. All I was doing was copying, copying, copying, copying. All I was doing was plagiarising. I was using somebody else's knowledge and taking the credit for it, for myself. But what I didn't like was that I was copying something that somebody else had made that I denied ever existed. That's what I didn't like. That made me beastly uncomfortable inside. Well then he began to tell me something about the computer. Now I'm not a scientist, let alone an electronic scientist, but I had a vague idea of what he was talking about, very vague, because I had been to the IBM factory in Kingston, New York, where they make the radar interception system that guards the whole of the North American continent from unfriendly missiles that may be sent with love and kisses from somewhere else. And I saw these things. I saw one being tested under simulated war conditions, because the United States federal government refuses to accept any of the radar equipment that intercepts unfriendly missiles unless it's been tested actually under war conditions. And I comfort you to know that the moment war is declared or is known to have taken place on a nuclear basis, they pull a big red lever, which I saw there. It was labelled war. And when that lever is pulled, that's it. That's it. Man steps right out. He has nothing to do. Nothing to do at all. Everything is computerised. The alerts are given automatically. The anti-missile projectiles are activated and targeted and fired automatically. It's all computerised. Everything happens far too fast for the human brain. So it's all on tape. And so once you see the hotline is broken down and somebody has decided that there's a war, and incidentally, we just have four minutes warning in the British Isles. They've got 13 minutes. I think it's 12 now, actually, in the United States. And somebody's got to decide in England, four minutes, United States, 12 minutes, whether there's a war or not. Of course, if they make a mistake and they think it is when it isn't, there's one anyway. And of course, if they think there isn't one when it is, it's too late. Now, I'm not really joking. This is how near you and I are to nuclear destruction any moment of every day. One third of the combat force of the United States is always in the air, armed with nuclear missiles, ready at a moment's note with sealed instructions. They all know exactly where they will have to go by opening those instructions on a code word. Now, this is the world we live in. We've created it. We've got to live in it. But it was fascinating to watch these things and to see others, you know, semi-made with their guts sort of hanging out, pardon the expression, but that's really what they are. And I could see these banks and banks and banks of tiny little pinheads, nodules. And those are the memory system, sort of banks of nodules upon which the messages are electronically recorded. And Dr. Gerhard Dix explained to me how this operated in the most unsophisticated early attempts that he produced with others of the electronic brain. And he explained that on those little pinheads at least four messages could be electronically recorded. And so information would be fed in and all the information electronically recorded. And then he said we had what we then used to call the word button. We gave it the word. Interesting. They gave it the word and that activated it. And he said the moment we gave it the word, on the basis of the information we'd fed in, it would draw a conclusion. And that conclusion drawn from the information received would be recorded and we would call it an experience. And that experience recorded was added to the information already received. And on the basis, you see, of the information already received and the experience recorded, we'd feed more information in, then we'd give it the word again. And you see, using all the information received in the past plus the experience that it drew and the new information given, it would have another conclusion and that would be recorded as a second experience. You see, and now they'd feed more information in and then give it the word again. And on the basis of two past experiences, new information, it would draw a third conclusion and have a third experience. And after a bit, he said it would become quite an experience machine. Now, you understand exactly how that works, don't you? Now, he said, I knew perfectly well that giving it the word at any given moment, I could recall in a split second, infinitesimally, smaller than a split second, I could recall all the information recorded. Now, he said one of the things, one of the things that I had always argued in my favour in rejecting God as superfluous was this. However could there be a supreme being who would hold me morally responsible for all the things I did and said and all the thoughts and the intents of my heart? He said, stop the nonsense. How could there be anybody, a supreme being, who could hold me responsible for all the things I'd done and said and thought in a lifetime? And then I realised that I was producing just a very poor, shabby imitation of what had already been built into my head and I knew that one press of a button, I could instantly recall everything that had ever been recorded. And I knew perfectly well, as a scientist, that in the split second, even if sudden death were to overtake me, in a split second, far less than would be necessary, everything ever recorded electronically in my brain could be recalled by its maker. Instantly. Instantly. Every thought, every motivation, every intention, every deed, every memory, every word you've ever spoken, every lust you've ever entertained. All recorded. All recorded. And recallable instantly by its maker. He said that frightened me. But he said what frightened me also was this. I knew this, that if we had an experienced computer that had much information fed into it and which was thundering satisfactory by the stupidity, by the carelessness, by the ignorance, by the idleness of some operator, false information could be fed into that computer. And it would behave. It would act magnificently. It would do exactly what it was supposed to do on the basis of the false information. On the basis of all past experiences, however good, and with the new bad, dirty information, as we would call it, it would draw a conclusion. It would behave with complete integrity. But we knew perfectly well that on the basis of the bad information, it would come up with the wrong conclusion. It would operate. It would be entirely sincere in what it said. But it would be wrong. And he said when that happened, we said it was a dirty machine. And every time it drew a conclusion on the basis of false information, we said that it had had a bad experience. Now he said I knew perfectly well as I look back over my life, there were all too many bad experiences. And yet I flattered myself that I could come up with valid conclusions about God, about spiritual issues, about morality, when I knew perfectly well that I was a dirty machine and I wouldn't be so stupid as to expect one of my dirty machines to come up with a valid conclusion. I knew perfectly well I was playing the fool with my own conscience, just like some of you, just like some of you, usually out of moral cowardice, because you haven't got the guts to face the facts. He said I was relentlessly forced with my back to the wall to face a God who deep down in my heart I knew existed and from whom I was running away because I was a moral coward, just like some of you, dirty machines, afraid to face the fact. He said I became so perturbed, I took leave of absence and I went to a place called Bad Pyrmont in Germany, which was a vacation resort. I booked into a hotel. He said I didn't know what was happening to me then, I do now, I was under deep conviction of sin, convicted of the Holy Spirit. When I booked into that hotel, I discovered that a Christian conference was taking place and I recognized the name of one of the speakers, Dr. Richter, Arthur Richter. I happened to know his name because he'd published several books. He was a man of considerable intelligence and I knew his name and I was so worried, I thought to myself, well there's nothing to lose, there might be something to gain if I'm prepared to humble myself and not be too pig-headedly, arrogantly conceited and proud to seek help. So he said, I asked for an interview with Dr. Arthur Richter and when I was alone with him, Dr. Dix told me, he said, I explained to him the things I've been explaining to you and I said, Dr. Richter, if there is a God and he created me, this computer in my head that I know exists, that I've been copying, has he made any provision to make a dirty man clean? Because Dr. Dix said to me, I explained to Dr. Richter, I knew that as the creator of this particular invention called the computer, the moment it was dirty, it could do absolutely nothing about it. It could go on behaving and always be wrong. It could draw every kind of conclusion and always be wrong and it could do absolutely nothing about it. The only person who could cleanse it was its maker. I was the only person that could cleanse the record and give it a clean start. Now I said, Dr. Richter, if there is a God, has he provided any means whereby a man who knows perfectly well that he's dirty can be made clean and given a new start? He said, yes, he has. And you know what he said? He said this, the blood of Jesus Christ, God's son, cleanses us from all sin. Exactly what a once stone age Orca Indian told the president of Ecuador. Dr. Dix said he explained to me that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. That the creator God chose nearly two thousand years ago to assume our humanity, walking this earth for 33 years, unblemished, unstained, uncontaminated, so that he could stand up in a public square and say, which of you convinces me of sin? And though they were his worst enemies, none dare accuse him. And then after 33 years it was as though the Lord Jesus looked up into his father's face and said, Father, there'll come a day when boys and girls and men and women out of many nations and kindreds and tribes and tongues looking around will recognize that something's gone wrong and will want to find their way back. And they'll ask for forgiveness and we won't have the right to forgive them because they're dirty. Father, dub on me, credit me with their guilt, just as you and I might dub from one tape to another. Dub on me the dirt, the filth, the slime, the muck of a dirty wood. I'll die instead. I'll pay the price of their redemption. That's what happened on the cross. There was nothing glorious about the cross. It was a Roman gallows. And it wasn't even physical death that the Lord Jesus suffered only. He did suffer death. God made him to be sin for us who knew no sin. All the things in your own heart and life of which you're downright ashamed, that you would never tell a soul, it was all dubbed on Christ. All the misery, all the crime, all the drug addiction, all the alcohol, all the hate, all the murder, all the licentiousness, all the adultery, all the filth of a sin-wrapped world was dubbed on Christ in the day that of his own free volition he accepted in his person the responsibility for providing redemption. The blood of Jesus Christ, the symbol of the life that he laid down for you and for me. The blood of Jesus Christ, God's son, cleansed us from all sin. And Dr. Dick said, as this was explained to me, I sobbed like a child. And I dropped on my knees by the side of Dr. Arthur Richter and he led me in the first time that I'd ever prayed, sentence by sentence. And I thanked Christ for dying for me. I asked him to cleanse me, become my saviour and I welcomed him into my life as my God. And he said when I got up from my knees, I was a Christian. And I've been a Christian ever since. And I thought I'd like to tell you this, he explained to me, because so much of what you have been saying matches exactly the experience of my life. Dr. Gerhard Dirks today is one of the main consultants for the federal government on their outer space research. He's a consultant for every type of space firm. Some of the vast industrial empires of the United States. Simply because he knows them. But he's a man who knows God. And he's a man who was wise enough to recognize his own need of God. Who refused to go on like an animal. But chose to be restored to that relationship to God that makes man, man again. On God's terms of reference. So that God our creator can fulfill in us that for which he created us. Inhabit our humanity. You see that's how God intended us to function. Indwelt by the Holy Spirit, within the human spirit. With unchallenged access to the human soul. Which is simply our behavior mechanism. Mind, emotion and will. So that God through the Holy Spirit might function within the human soul as instinct functions within the animal soul. The animal soul obeys the rigid thrust under the law of compulsion of a built-in instinctive thrust. Now man wasn't built that way. Man was built to be inhabited by God through the Holy Spirit indwelling the human spirit. Not on the basis of a law of compulsion, a rigid interlock. But on the base of a law of love, a moral interlock. That's why we can have a relationship to God. That's why by everything you do and say and are, whether you like it or whether you don't, you're saying something to God. You're either saying God I love you or God I hate you or God I couldn't care less. An animal doesn't. An animal has no God consciousness. An animal by the way it behaves doesn't adopt any attitude whatever to its maker because it doesn't have any kind of moral relationship. It cannot help but do what it must do because of an instinctive thrust that controls it. But you and I have total free volition. You can do as you please and by doing as you please you tell God something. That's the essential difference between man and the animal kingdom. That's why you and I are moral beings and animals are not. And that of course is why the Bible presents us with a moral choice. That's why you've got to do something about it when you read it and that's why the vast majority of people never read it because they don't want to do anything about it. You see you've never heard a kid stand up at school and say I don't believe in Julius Caesar. Don't believe it. Well it'd be stupid to stand up and say that because it doesn't matter whether he lived or whether he didn't. Nobody cares whether Julius Caesar was a mythological character or a real flesh and blood man that walked this earth. Nobody cares at all. But the moment somebody says that Jesus Christ God's son died for your sin, that involves a moral choice. The only reason why people want to repudiate the fact that he was born and lived and died is that you can't escape the moral issue. If he really lived and died and rose again for your redemption. That's why it's much much easier to pretend that he never lived. Then you don't have to face a moral choice. But nobody's deceived by the exercise. You're really only advertising your moral cowardice. You're running away from the facts. That's why if you never really want to face up to your own sin, don't read the Bible. Don't listen to what God has to say. It'll only embarrass you. Just stay in the gutter where you belong. But of course if you're intelligent enough to want to be the kind of person that God created you to be, you'll immediately discover what's wrong and accept the remedy that God has provided as the only thing that'll put things right. And of course all down the history of man and all over this world today there are tens of thousands and I meet them constantly because I travel tens, hundreds of thousands of men and women and boys and girls of every nation, kindred, class and color of mother tongue who've entered into the thrilling adventuresome relationship to God that restores a man to his true humanity. There are no barriers that divide man from man in this society of redeemed sinners. But you know Dr. Dix went on to say this. He said, I discovered there was something infinitely more wonderful than just that my sins were forgiven because Christ died for me. And then he went back to the computer. He said, you'll recognize the fact that if we've spent months of labor and made the millions of dollars on a computer that is now highly sophisticated, very experienced, in which an enormous amount of material has been fed, he said you could realize that it would be disastrous if by somebody's stupidity or carelessness or ignorance dirt was fed into it so that it was destroyed in its effectiveness. So he said in the very earliest days our invention and production of the electronic memory system, we built in what we called at that stage a repudiator. It's called draining off the waste I believe today, but it was called a repudiator he said then, so that when we knew that it had received, been exposed to dirt, something which was inaccurate or false or wrong, then we pressed the repudiator button and a message was flashed throughout the whole system. Reject! Reject! Reject! Reject! In other words, we created a device so that a clean computer could be kept clean in the face of dirt. And he said one of the most marvelous discoveries that I made after I received Christ as my Redeemer was that he rose again from the dead and that as the risen Lord he came by his Holy, Holy Spirit to live in me. And that by his presence through the Holy Spirit within me, he could keep me clean in a dirty world, exposed constantly to the dirt of a godless, degenerate society. Down the street look at the placards, outside the cinema or the playhouse. Pick up the literature, the dirty, pornographic literature with which our sophisticated bookstalls are littered today, which any communist country repudiates. When I was in India they say we don't take American or Australian or British literature, we take the communist, it's clean. We don't want the dirt, but we're progressive you see, we're liberal, we're permissive. You can be as dirty as you like. Communists aren't. Open the newspaper, see the headlines, listen to the filthy conversation of the folk in the room next door, go to the classroom, listen to the conversation between two fellows sitting next to each other, even in a church building, and you're constantly exposed to the dirt. But the marvelous, marvelous thing Dr. Dick said I discovered was this, that the Holy Spirit of the risen Christ monopolizing your humanity, even in the face of dirt, can keep you clean. Reject, reject, reject. That's something worth knowing. Here it is, Paul mentions it in the second chapter of his epistles to the Philippians. My beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. He's not saying work for your salvation, he knows you can't, that would be diametrically opposed to everything else the Apostle says. He says work it out. Discover for yourself that all that God gave me when Christ came into my life, he's given you when Christ came into your life. I'm no wealthier than you are. Don't lean on me, I'm not your crutch. More in my absence than in my presence, because so long as I'm with you, you'll be tempted to lean on me. Ate my antics, copy my expressions. He says don't do that, because I'm not the author of your salvation, Christ is. I'm not the content of your faith, Christ is. So more in my absence than in my presence, work out your own salvation, verse 13, for it's God, God himself, the God who made you, your creator, God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure, that you may be blameless. Not that you may become blameless, that happens, because the moment you claim redemption through the blood of Jesus Christ, the blood of Christ cleanses us from all sin. We're credited with the righteousness of the Lord Jesus. That justification by faith, that instant cleansing through the vicarious sacrifice, his one sacrifice for sins forever, that's when you become a child of God. This isn't being, just becoming a child of God, this is being the child of God you have become, that you may be blameless. That's the process of time, 24 hours a day, not just sitting in church or holding a hymn book or saying a prayer, that's in the office, that means at breakfast, that means plowing in the field, it means working at the factory, it means sitting at your school desk, it means walking down the street, it means sitting in the bus, it's the process of being 24 hours a day, that you may be blameless, that you may be harmless, that you may be the sons of God, that you may be without rebuke. Where? In a monastery? Wrapped up in cotton wool? Insulated and isolated from the icy blasts of a naughty world? No, no, no, that isn't where. That you may be blameless, that you may be harmless, that you may be the sons of God and without rebuke in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom you shine as lights in the world. In other words, you're going to be kept clean in a nation of crooks, right in the middle of a nation of perverts. Right there. Kept clean. Kept clean. In a dirty world. But I'm so glad that my boys know Jesus Christ. They haven't got my faith, they haven't got my religion. They know Christ in themselves. That's why I'm not afraid of them becoming alcoholics. That's why I don't expect to find they've just killed themselves on drugs, like a youngster that I had in my home just a few months ago. That's why I know they won't suddenly come into the house and say, Dad, I've got to get married in a hurry, otherwise I'll wreck the life of the girl I've abused. You see, that's one of the marvellous things about being converted, being a Christian. And that's one of the marvellous things about having a Christian home and a Christian family. A family in which you can bring up boys and girls to know somebody who, having redeemed them, cleansed the record, can keep them clean in a dirty world.