In this sermon, the preacher recounts a story of a man who escaped from a concentration camp and came to their community with a warning. The man described seeing fire and tried to warn the people, but they reacted with fear and violence, punching a woman who also saw the fire. The preacher emphasizes the importance of establishing a relationship with God in this life to avoid eternal damnation. He urges the listeners to abandon their human notions and embrace the truth of a living God. The sermon highlights the need for a warning to be spread across the earth, comparing it to the role of Elijah in the Bible.

As long as there's breath in my body, I shall never cease to persuade you to abandon your human notions. For if you will not, you shall surely perish. As if someone had struck him in the face with a wet cloth, that man just shuddered and came to a halt like the car that I described earlier. He threw on his brakes. In a word, no one had ever spoken to him more lovingly. I've not seen that man since, but I know that he's fully impressed in the depths of his heart that the things that I spoke to him that afternoon were not just little idiosyncratic fancies of an odd cat's or my little bag or my hang-up, but veritably the truth of a living God, and that knowing the truth of God, knowing the terror of God, I persuade men. It's a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a living God, and would to God that more men who live everywhere about us, yes, they may be Gentiles by birth, but they're effectually Jewish by conviction and by the style of their lives, shall know that there's a soon-coming judgment which men have shrunk from preaching because they were more concerned for the applause of men than the favor of God. I've yet to get into the heart of my message. We conveniently forget that it was Jesus who in sending out his disciples into the world to proclaim the gospel said, He that believeth not shall be damned. And as I said before, in that same gospel, mentioned in one particular place five times the fire that shall not be quenched and spoke of a hell in which sinners shall be cast and a fire that shall not be quenched, and time doesn't allow for the many references to the day of the Lord as a day of judgment in which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise and the elements shall melt with fervent heat and the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. And it's obvious also from the description that the Lord gives of the end times that we are just entering this initial stage of nations rising against nation and a time of famine and pestilence and earthquakes which are the beginning of sorrows. And I tell you it's an ominous thing to come to a gas station and to be told no gas. Something happens in my heart people and it's not just the inconvenience of having to look elsewhere. As if it's the first echo of something that shall increase in volume and magnitude when we shall see signs and breakdowns and closures and seizures, no gas, no electric, no water, no food, no services and a great calamity stealing over this earth and that great shaking which God has promised that shall come upon this earth that everything that can be shaken will be shaken and only that which can remain will remain because it is planted in that rock Christ Jesus. And if you are sitting here this morning wondering why it is that your marriage is being shaken, why your life is being shaken and you had the most beautiful marriage, you've never had any problems, you were so temperamentally inclined one to the other, you had such a happy accident of like disposition, it's because God is not going to let us get by with that. We're not going to survive by any happy accident. We're going to survive and stand and flourish because we're grounded in Him. I tremble for the increasing darkness that's coming upon the earth, socially, economically, politically, our institutions breaking down, our confidence in government crumbling, but I know that that same darkness shall make our lights to shine all the more brightly. Oh, we wanted all this in heaven too. We love to be Christians and enjoy the hallelujah times, but we wanted to be respectable also and didn't want to give offense, especially to our Jewish neighbors. For when the end shall come, then shall be great tribulations such as not since the beginning of the world. And immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened and the moon shall not give its light and the stars shall fall from heaven and the powers of heaven shall be shaken. And who is there whose imagination is so powerful as to assess the devastating horror of which these words speak? Who of us here this morning can begin to imagine these conditions? And I'll tell you the great difficulty of a prophet is to speak things that are yet to come to a people who are yet experiencing the affluence and the comfort and the ease and all of the amenities of our modern civilization. No wonder that it is that men stop their ears with their fingers and when that will not suffice, fly upon the messenger and stone those that are sent unto them. In the sixth chapter of the book of Revelation we're told about apocalyptic horrors of war and famine and death and hell and the power that was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth to kill with the sword and with hunger and with death and with the beasts of the earth. Many of us are not even yet disposed to open our homes to hospitality. We think Christianity means a potluck supper or a full gospel bear hug, but if it comes to the actual giving up of our privacy, the actual taking away of the masks, the actual opening of our lives for the intrusion, the unwelcomed nuisance of others, the inconvenience of other lives, we shrink. But I tell you the hour shall come when we shall be given to hospitality and we're going to find ourselves, those who have been uncomfortable, thinking how shall I be bedfellow with that one who rolls in sawdust. That's not nice, it's not my style, I'm a little skittish, a little offended by that particular way, it's not the thing to which I'm familiar. We're going to find ourselves, even against our wills, be driven and seek for the fellowship of the saints when these conditions shall come upon the earth. And the mere potluck supper shall be put away for what it was, a mere token and a crumb, a caricature against the fulfillment to the thing to which God has called us, that we should love one another as he has loved us. That we might be one as he is one, that the world might know that the Father sent him. Oh, the stakes are enormous, people, and our pocks and every lesser substitute which we've accepted to shrink from the fulfillment to which God has called us. The bumper stickers and the literature distribution and all of the evangelistic devices that were convenient and spared us the embarrassment of bringing to our next door neighbor or our Jewish friend or lawyer or teacher the gospel which is foolish to them that perish but the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Gentile. How can we imagine what shall be the horror of those who have to face the stern, consuming judgment of God which every man must face for the kings of the earth and great men and rich men and every free man shall hide themselves in dens and rocks and mountains and say to the rocks and the mountains, Fall on us and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb for the great day of his wrath has come and who shall be able to stand? And one would think that with all these dangers imminent and that they should be seen in their real magnitude that all mankind would be in a frenzy of concern about their eternal salvation and yet just the opposite is true. A universal indifference, a great casualness over these enormous issues and men willing to speak of dozens of lesser things and be completely impervious to the truth of the living God in Christ Jesus. It's amazing this indifference of mankind that stand at the very brink of destruction doing business as usual eating and drinking and marrying and giving and marriage as if God had not spoken as if the warning of his soon coming judgment had not been proclaimed and the truth of the matter is that it had not. There's a wonderful book written by a contemporary Jewish writer by the name of Eli Wiesel and he's the sole survivor of a concentration camp. All of his family were the victims of the Holocaust and a book which he has written called The Night he described his little Jewish community in Transylvania in Central Europe up in the mountains in the last stages of the war what had happened to the Jewish communities of Poland and Germany had not happened to them and they thought somehow in hope against hope that they would be spared what others of their kinsmen had suffered. The war was almost in its final stages and yet one day a man came to their community a strange, freaky kind of individual who had escaped the concentration camp and he tried to cry to them a warning, a warning and they didn't want to hear it frightened them and they pushed this strange one from the midst of them and they stopped their ears this too shall pass they thought it shall not come upon us isn't it amazing how every man one way or another is a man of faith I was an atheist for 35 years but I was eminently a man of faith but the problem was it was a faith misplaced it was a faith in man rather than God it was a faith in odd cats rather than in the Messiah of Israel it was a faith in inevitable human progress it was a faith in science it was a faith that this too shall pass so believed they all until one day there was a strange ominous rumbling in the distance peculiar noise and even the ground shook beneath their feet and on the horizon they saw great clouds of dust which they could not interpret and it got closer and closer and closer and the noise was deafening and finally it came right into their little village and community great panzer tanks and armored cars with the swastika and the iron cross and booted Nazis getting out and then day by day the edicts began to be plastered on the wall the Jews had to leave their homes and move into a certain portion of the community where brick walls had been installed into a little ghetto and they thought well this too shall pass we'll suffer this but we'll get by we'll survive and one day the sign was put up tomorrow morning at daybreak you're to be at the train station with only such things as you can carry oh that night they worked furiously and they dug holes in the backyards and in the basements and they buried their menorahs and their family heirlooms and their money and their jewels and things precious to them and they thought we'll come back we'll survive this this too shall pass and the next morning they were out there with trembling with their children with their meager possessions and they're on the tracks with the great freight cars cattle cars waiting to receive them and in they were pushed and jostled and jammed so tight and so choked that they could barely breathe and the doors were slammed shut and locked no food and no water for three days and nights as they hurtled through Europe train lurching and rumbling and great cries and teenage kids fornicating sensing the last opportunity the taste of that joy people going into shock and stunned and there was a woman in a coma and he described to her waking from her coma and crying out fire fire fire fire I see fire and it so frightened them that they punched this woman into unconsciousness and she would wake up again and revive and she would cry out again fire fire I see fire and they would punch her again and she would go unconscious and finally one day the trains came to a slow halt and a thud and as it stopped they began to smell a most peculiar odor and when the doors broke open the flames the light of the flames just danced right into those dark cars loaded with human excrement and urine puke and right up by the tracks were great troughs of burning gasoline and the half-dead infants were plucked out of the screaming out of the arms of screaming women and thrown into the flame and the men and the women were separated and one went to one line and the other to the other line and they walked into the ovens and into their death he alone was spared to write this book and as I read that book something in my heart broke I thought of the great suffering of my people I've been to Dachau I've seen the ovens I've seen their bones in the ashes I've touched the smokestack but what is the cremation of six million to a fire that shall not be quenched to an eternal burning to a wailing and a gnashing of teeth and that my own mother shall be among that multitude whose howl and wail and anguish of soul shall never be stopped rent from her lips I want you to turn with me to my text which is 1 Kings the 18th chapter my intention had been to read the entire story of Jeremiah to speak from it I'm sorry from Elijah God has had me to speak things I didn't intend I appreciate your patience I'm fascinated with Elijah I can't take my eyes off him I think of him continually he's in my heart and in my consciousness there's something about Elijah from which I cannot turn there's something about what he represents that I can't take out of my consciousness the Lord is drilling it into my heart Elijah Elijah Elijah Elijah Elijah that one who would come before that one who would turn the hearts of the fathers to the children that one of whom it says behold I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord oh I know many of us have subscribed to that very neat theory about rapture and I have to confess people and you know it already you're not listening to an eminent theologian I'm a nincompoop I'm wet behind the ears but I tell you everything in my experience and everything in my spirit and my heart doesn't seem to verify that very happy theory when I see these stickers on bumpers watch out any moment the driver of this car might vacate I don't jump for joy I wince with pain it makes me sick that glib unctuous nonsense that giddy sense that well you guys might be stuck with suffering but we've got it made don't be so sure there's a reason why God is leading us to establish conferences on discipleship there's a reason why God is putting fearful words in my mouth to begin to encourage people to tighten the belt to gird up the loins of their minds and their lives to begin to walk with God in disciplined ways to begin to resist the spirit and the blandishment of the world which makes nice nice and have have and eat eat there's a reason why God has blazed in my heart the story of the prophet Elijah the forerunner who comes to prepare the way for the soon coming Messiah and King prepare the way make the way straight repent ye for the day of the Lord is at hand it's a great day for those who shall await his coming it's our hope for those of us who like him have been fed by ravens and have been watered by the brook sheriff and have been sent to widows who shall sustain us when the drought shall come and everything shall be dried up and we shall live by faith in immediate obedience to him who speaks by a still small voice I would to God you would hear that voice now and begin walking with that voice now lest when he speaks go I have commanded the ravens to feed you you think that you are suffering indigestion and no God that you know shall ever command raven birds or birds of prey or ravenous birds that feed on refuse to feed you and you will have missed God's provision because you knew not his voice and you knew not that he was the God who always chooses the foolish things now is the hour of preparation that when that hour comes and it shall come far sooner than any of us think we shall hear and immediately obey and we shall be sustained in the drought and in the famine and God shall prepare us in that widow's home with whom we shall stay when that son shall be suddenly taken and die and that widow who would not believe in the God of the prophet who called him the man of God and saw that the meal was not wasted nor did the oil be exhausted according to the word of the Lord that came through the mouth of the prophet and yet would not believe and make that God her God and so by necessity her son had to be plucked from her bosom and God shall put his finger on the sons of many in our modern world those who are indifferent about their own lives but who tremble for their children or that thing most prized the Isaac of their lives if we'll not come to God for the love of truth and for righteousness and to flee from the terror to come God shall touch us most deeply where we live and put his finger on that cherished Isaac and take the breath out of him and the world shall come to us with stunned amazement and say as the widow said have you come to call my sins to repentance O thou man of God simple ignorant woman but she recognized that the sudden taking of her son had to do with her spiritual condition I tell you I know Jewish mothers only too well and though they will not be saved for their own sake they'll be saved when God puts his finger upon their sons and so is it already in our generation entire Jewish families coming into the kingdom of God when their drug addict sons which no amount of money can save no amount of fancy institutional hospital a psychiatrist can save finds his way stumbling in his death in a teen challenged center and is saved of God and filled with his spirit and they come and they bring their son and said as Elijah said to the widow woman after he had prostrated his body over him and cried to God three times and the breath of the Lord had come back into him see thy son liveth and whatever our reasons whatever our confusion whatever Satan has done to pollute that name which is above every name and the only name whereby men may be saved we call upon that name and come father, mother sisters and brothers into the kingdom of God through the name of Jesus Christ because we've seen one brought back from the dead oh I tell you it's no easy thing to bring life from death no cheap kind of evangelism is going to do it nothing less than the prostration of our own bodies and lives over the dead corpse of the world oh I tell you it's icky to take that stiff cadaver up to where our abode is and put them down on our own satiny sheets talk about privacy being violated and if that's not enough to make our bed a mess God calls us yet to stretch out our own bodies and lives over that dead corpse eyeball to eyeball and fingertip to fingertip and cry out oh God take that breath which is in me and impart it into that dying world we don't have a cheap gospel and we don't have a cheap evangelism that gospel required all and so shall God's evangelism of the end times also and there's a God who is shaping a corporate body of Christ and he's shaping also a corporate figure that must come as a forerunner before the appearance of that corporate Christ and it's a corporate Elijah one who walks by the still small voice one who trusts God for every provision fed by ravens one who shall bring life back to a dead world by the prostration of his own body and life over it and one who shall call in 1st Kings 18 an apostate people to a reckoning before God and I'll tell you what the reward for such an Elijah shall be it shall not be the kinds of things which we're being given today praise God for this happy season but it shall not last much longer we shall not receive the B'nai B'rith man of the year award or see as I saw when I was resting in Pat Boone's study one day before a gorgeous meeting in his living room 150 to 200 Jewish film colony intellectuals where we ended up baptizing 9 people that night and as I was resting I looked around and I saw Pat's white buck shoes now cast in bronze and I thought my only a little while ago how I despised this guy how he was a symbol to me of that alien gentile Christian world of which I knew nothing and could never relate he was the epitome of that nice nice gentile type so unrelated to my Jewish life we Jews who beat out chess and cry out in anguish and now I love him like a brother what a soul and as my eye went from award to award in his bronze shoes and his golf awards it finally rested on a plate from the B'nai B'rith man of the year award for community service I think it was 1956 and I kind of chuckled under my breath and thought Pat baby it's the last time you'll receive one of those but there's a reward laid up for you in heaven I'll tell you what the reward shall be when you shall cry as in Elijah to people who will not welcome the message repent for the kingdom of God is at hand repent for the day of the Lord is at hand you shall hear what the prophet Elijah heard when King Ahab encountered him in the 17th verse of the 18th chapter and it came to pass when Ahab saw Elijah that Ahab said to him art thou he that troubleth Israel that shall be your reward oh I know it's going to make you to tremble because I know I'm looking at a people ironically who have a greater love for my Jewish people than any on the face of this earth I received a mighty baptism in the Holy Spirit not at the Pentecostal church which I attended loaded with strife and enmity and jealousy and dispute where people were afraid to leave by the same door lest they touch elbows the Spirit of God could never have cut through that maze but one night in a ramshackle farmhouse in Northern California with eight spirit filled Gentile believers who loved the Jews and Israel and making plans to live and to serve God there who knew more Yiddish and Hebrew than I in one spirit and one accord with those who loved the Jew the heavens opened and God poured upon me such a mighty stream of His Spirit as from which I've been God's fool since that day and I'll tell you what the reward shall be art thou he who troubleth Israel and your gulp and your Adam's apple shall bobble and your knees shall turn to jelly and your legs tremble me I love the Jewish people but you know what you shall hear and we've already begun to hear the first ominous choruses with the advent of Key 73 weak, feeble, ineffectual thing though it is great cries from the leaders of the Jewish community great rabbinical swellings what about our pluralistic society? what is this harassment of the Jewish people? isn't it enough that we suffered all these centuries and in the Holocaust in recent times six million of our Jewish people lost their lives and in Russia they're trying to extirpate our Jewishness are you too trying to make Christians out of us? and to take from us our Jewishness? I get this all the time people I'm being told that I'm worse than a Hitler that what I'm trying to do is more insidious than what Hitler did and that what he did by physical force I'm doing by cunning and spiritually trying to wrest from Jews their Jewishness what a paradox when we know that God is not calling us away from Jewishness but to authentic Hebraic life in the God of Israel and by His Spirit and yet that's how the world shall read us anti-Semite when your heart is breaking for the love of Israel that shall be your reward art thou he who troubleth Israel? but do you know how Elijah answered? I have not troubled Israel but thou and thy father's house in that you have forsaken the commandments of the Lord and thou hast followed Baalim as long as there is a breath in my body I shall not cease from persuading you to give up that bankrupt human Judaism and receive the Judaism of God for if you will not you shall surely perish now therefore send and gather to me all Israel and to Mount Carmel and the prophets of Baal four hundred and fifty and the prophets of the groves four hundred which eat at Jezebel's table all of God's prophets wiped out by Jezebel except those who left the Lord's table to eat at hers and we're watching that phenomenon beginning to take place even now and even at that university meeting two nights ago a priest a minister stood up with white collar and all the whole thing the jewelry the whole bit and sided with my own kinsmen my adversaries and said I believe that Jesus Christ died for all the world and it doesn't matter whether you personally receive him he's a much bigger God cat than what you've been representing and his mercy is for every person what are you trying to do harassing those Jewish people you call that Christian love and the Christian kids that were there that night were so stunned at the encounter their prayer that night was so jocular and light hearted but the next morning they were stunned different group their prayer had been much deeper much more travail they said we've not seen anything like this in all our life well this was like going back into the book of Acts this encounter and we saw as these things came forth both the Jewish opposition and those that sided we saw the configuration of what shall be in the end times a small band of disciples who believe the word of God even unto death and do not flinch from bringing the entire counsel of God to men and those who cannot stand the cost and shall for one reason or another find themselves gravitating more and by more to that growing centrifugal force that shall become a groovy world church very nice full of all kinds of blandishments and rewards and nice cliches about human brotherhood and love but without the power of God thereof sitting at Jezebel's table so Ahab gathered all the children of Israel and the prophets together Mount Carmel and Elijah came unto all the people and said how long do you hold between two opinions if God be God follow him might well God raise up a band of prophets today to cry to the Gentile denominations as well as to my own people how long do you go on with mock motions of religion how long do you go on with your cliched nonsense and speaking correct words without true knowledge of God and masquerading and disguising your lives while effectually being lords unto yourselves if God be God follow him there's a reason why we've not heard that still small voice because we've stopped our ears I've heard it many times from that first day in Jerusalem ten years ago when I walked into that bookstore operated by Jewish believers in Jesus with their chapel next door where when I found out what it was God spoke to me and said Art you are not to leave audibly and I've heard that still small voice on other occasions since and I can tell you people there's one thing that characterizes every utterance I've ever heard by this still small voice of God it has never once called me to convenience there's never been an instance when it's called me to anything but great inconvenience great prospect of suffering and death if any man would come after me let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me if God be God follow him how long do you hope and you know what happened that day they had a sacrifice and the false prophets of Baal they built their altar and they laid out their wood and they took their great ox and they laid it open and they danced and jumped on it and they cried out to their God and silence nothing oh they jumped they went through all kinds of motions and oh Baal hear us but there was no voice nor any that answered and they leaped upon the altar that was made and it came to pass in the 27th verse that Elijah mocked him and said cry aloud for he's God or either he's talking or pursuing or he's a journey or perhaps he's sleeping he must be awakened Elijah mocked him oh you say oh that's not nice I'll tell you that there's a God who by his spirit is speaking a lot of things that are not nice and they would never think that God would choose to speak in an hour that's becoming increasingly urgent I've heard God out of this mouth mock a Pentecostal assembly and I thought oh my God I have really flipped Lord what's happened to me how dare I mock your people and I prayed Lord stop my mouth and direct me according to your spirit and I opened it again and the mocking continued but the end thereof was a glib anxious pastor who had given me the most fancy introduction that I had ever heard and my heart was sinking as he spoke it and a happy faced congregation that looked like they needed nothing from me and I had need to be ministered to of them but the end thereof was that same pastor on his face like a dead man rising to his feet by one o'clock in the morning as one who had passed from death unto life who had passed a thin invisible frontier and had moved from being a man of God to a professional slickster and didn't know it the same elder of the church who had brought me to my seat on the platform that night confessed that night that he was in continuous adultery although that next week he was scheduled to give his testimony to full gospel businessmen many such things that God worked that night because the spirit of God mocked the congregation out of the mouth of the prophet oh precious people if we shall play it by the numbers and think well God will never do this or say that we're going to miss it there's a God who's calling us to such an intimate fierce walk by the spirit that many shall not have the stomach for such who enjoy a groovier kind of religion and we shall see that fantastic polarization taking place of people being moved into the one of the two great camps and there shall be no neutral ground between I'll try and bring this to a close and so the prophet made his own sacrifice and you know what he had to do first he had to build the altars that were broken down it says elsewhere in the scriptures these were the altars that were torn down the Jewish people were not just indifferent to the religion of their fathers they were fiercely opposed and in anger had broken the altars of their God and the first function of the prophet is to restore the true altar the true worship of the living God and I tremble before you this morning when I know how a lot of us as clever practitioners have learned that it's a great expedient principle to get people in worship and standing and raising their hands and doing many things and somehow it'll make the meeting far more electric God save us from becoming technicians and manipulators because we've stumbled on a correct principle the altars of God need to be raised anew the holy altar requires a complete sacrifice and he gave it he took that ox and he cut it up and I tell you sacrifice is painful people and it's bloody and many of us have shrunk from that whole burnt offering of the opening and the laying out of our lives before God because it's painful but there's no other sacrifice that God will consume by fire and he amazed the Jews who were with him that day when after the whole thing was built he said now go get water and douse this sacrifice and they poured out barrel after barrel of water until it was seeped and saturated with water 12 barrels full and I tell you people the fire of God shall not fall upon our sacrifice until it be saturated with our own tears we've been dry eyed far too long and I'm standing here before you this morning because as I said last night although I knew not a single person who knew what the word prayer meant one of my own students used to come home from school in the afternoon weeping over me and her mother told me whom I met months after my conversion Archie said since that day both my daughter and I have been praying for you the effectual fervent prayer of righteous men and women availeth much have you been praying for the lost sheep of the house of Israel have you been weeping for the unnumbered souls everywhere about us lost and facing the prospect of an eternal anguish and cry and that without remedy the fire of God shall not fall until we lay out a whole sacrifice without concealment bloody and costly over an altar that shall be raised up again that is authentic and true and saturated without tears and then we shall speak as the prophet spoken that day when it came to pass at the time of the offering the evening sacrifice in the 36th verse that Elijah the prophet came near and said Lord God of Abraham Isaac and of Israel let it be known this day that thou art God in Israel and that I am thy servant that I have done all these things at thy word hear me O Lord hear me that this people may know that thou art the Lord God and that thou hast turned their heart back again then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt sacrifice and the wood and the stones and the dust and licked up the water that was in the trench and when all the people saw it they fell on their faces and they said the Lord he is God the Lord he is God O people how often do I come away frustrated in ministering to my own people they will not believe they will not hear my own mother although she has seen a transformed son but I tell you nothing less than fire from heaven shall bring an apostate world on its face before God who has gone through the motions of a mock Judaism but has in fact turned from the following of the living God this world needs to see fire from heaven and when they shall see it on the altars which we shall raise up they shall cry out the Lord he is God he is not a superstar he is not an object of derision the Lord he is God the Lord he is God and they shall be saved God is wanting an Elijah band to go through this earth crying out a warning of a soon coming judgment and I have a reason why I think that we fail to press the truth on an unwilling world an unbelieving world and it's largely because of our fear to offend it many of us are still trying to be respectable believers evangelical but contemporary too and far from being pilgrims of the tent and the altar we've settled ourselves quite well in the world and have habituated ourselves quite nicely to it in fact we've become so accustomed to this world and its blandishments and its reward and its things that the prospect of God's judgment and fire coming upon the earth does not exactly titillate us and in fact we even shrink from the vision of it licking at our own groovy wardrobes or new hi-fi and we think that by evangelistic devices or a few bucks in the collection plate that somehow we can placate a God who has called us to follow him and preach this gospel to every creature beginning at Jerusalem to the Jew first and also to the Gentile thinking to rack up so many points by a kind of heavenly bookkeeping that though we have defaulted in our obligations before God that somehow by giving or by some lesser kind of activity he will allow us to keep that hi-fi and wardrobe and to have all this and heaven too. Perhaps it'll be easier for us if we could be granted a vision of the guilt and agonizing remorse of that office colleague that next door neighbor that member of our own family that nominal Christian believer that Jewish dentist or lawyer or friend that we know when we shall contemplate for all the eternity that shall be spent in hell because of the failure to establish in this life a relationship in spirit and truth with a living God who sought him but of whom he knew nothing because we did not press his claims upon him because we didn't want to offend. Fire! Fire! I see fire! that woman cried and they beat her into unconsciousness. There's a warning that needs to go forth over the face of this earth by an Elijah band that shall say to the spirit of this world as the Lord my God liveth before whom I stand. Hallelujah. I don't look for your rewards. I don't look for your applause. I'm just as immune to your criticism. But it shall not rain according to my word. God is looking for a people like that who shall hear the still small voice of God and obey it. Have you been hearing that voice this morning through this Jewish Brooklyn accent? Have you been crying in your own heart even as the spirit of God has been going forth? O great God, there's a fire that need fall and in fact in the starkest proportions of the end times there are going to be only two alternatives. The fire of repentance or the fire of God's judgment and that judgment begins with the house of God. O gracious God, may that fire fall even this morning and through this day upon us. May we lay out before you a whole burnt offering cut up and exposed nothing dark nor concealed. May it be saturated with our tears that the fire might fall and consume not only the sacrifice but the wood and the hay and the stubble and the dross and the insincerity and the lovelessness and the indifference of our lives of our dry eyed prayer and our failure to be the men and women that would have challenged the world everywhere about us. O great God, may that fire fall upon us today. Great baptizer who shall baptize us in the spirit of fire that we shall go from that day forth as ministers of fire flaming ministers to proclaim to all the world the foolish life saving gospel of Yeshua HaMashiach Jesus the Christ.