The video emphasizes the importance of hearing the word of God for understanding and conversion. It suggests that visual aids, such as videos, may distract from truly hearing and comprehending the message. The speaker believes that words are the most efficient means of understanding and that pictures cannot fully convey the depth of truth. The sermon references biblical passages, including Genesis 1 and John 1, to support the idea that the word of God is the divine revelation of truth and life.

Strong arms. The Lord is not going to lose anything, much when he loses me, but great gain when the young, strong, happy, joyous, delighted next generation comes along. I'm going to read a few verses, beginning from the first general epistle of John. That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled of the word of life. For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness and show unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested unto us. That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you that you may also have fellowship with us, and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. And these things write we unto you that your joy may be full. This then is a message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin. John the Apostle is the youngest of the twelve. He survived all the others, and is said to be the only one to die of old age. He lived long enough to see and to write concerning the early heresies and false doctrines assailing the church, as well as the beginnings of the false church, the great whore. Because of that, he writes like the first of Genesis, always taking us back to the very beginning, the rudiments and the foundation of knowable truth. He immediately takes up the contrast between light and darkness, truth and lies, love and hate, life and death. And he plunges those topics to the very depths and brings them to bear upon every facet of doctrine and practice. Genesis 1 and 4, In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, and the earth was without form, and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters, and God said, Let there be light, and there was light, and God saw the light, and divided the night from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night, and the evening and the morning were the first day. First General Epistle of John, That which was from the beginning, which we have heard and we have seen in our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, are the word of life. For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and show unto you that eternal life, which was of the Father, and was manifested to us. And that which we have seen and heard, declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us. And truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son, Jesus Christ. And these things we write unto you, that your joy may be full. This then is the message which we have heard of Him, and declare unto you that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. John was the only theologian among the twelve. Paul was a logical, systematic theologian, who experienced, hardly embraced, and fervently taught mystical realities of Christ and the gospel. But John, as a theologian, was an unmistakable mystic, taken up completely with the Lord Jesus, the eternal God-man, in whom is embodied all that may be known of truth, reality, and life. He gives us not only the fourth gospel, the life of the Lord, which is published more than any other portion of the word of God, but three general epistles of the Christian church. In that capacity, he spans the gap between the original twelve and the succeeding apostles, among whom Paul was chief. He then closes the Bible, and the recorded written word of God, with the last book of the scriptures, titled appropriately, Revelation of Jesus Christ. That title embodies the burden of his whole life in ministry. The Word, or the Logos. The word Logos appears 272 times in the Bible. In the English Bible, it is translated Word, 212 times capitalized, Word seven times referenced to the Lord Jesus, sixty times in other various words as think, matter, speech, preaching, communication, doctrine, utterance. It is essentially that thing by which rational creatures understand, know, and communicate. It's wonderful that we can just move our mouths and think our voices, and something intelligent and understanding comes out to us. We do a lot of that, words talking. It goes beyond senses of smell, taste, and feel, which can only provoke pain and pleasure, or identification with which we are familiar. Words inform. They make us understand and know. And the greatest of knowledge is understanding and knowing, and knowing God. Note the key of understanding in Matthew 13. Matthew 13, beginning with verse 13. Therefore speak I to them in parables, because they seeing see not, and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand. And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand, seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive. For this people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes, that they should, are cold lest at any time, they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart. And ye converted, and I should heal them. So words and thoughts are in connection, and thoughts are in connection. They have communicated to us normally by hearing audible sounds, or by seeing, reading symbols and letters, which are understood to mean concrete ideas. By touch, braille, for the blind, the deaf people, understand these by the senses in their fingers. But the most efficient means of understanding comes by hearing words. Romans 10, 17. Video adds very little to understanding. It has more entertainment value than anything else, and may be actually confused or clouded word of truth, which I think the old radio way of hearing the gospel is a whole lot better than the seeing of your television set in your living room. You get to looking at that pretty things, and you don't hear the word, and you have to hear the word. To say a picture is worth a thousand words may be true in aesthetic effect, but understanding realities as a word is worth a thousand pictures. Deafness is a worse handicap than blindness. Written words or images of actual things cannot interpret, inflect, emphasize, and reveal it. Urgency, power, pathos, passion, and affection. Inflection, volume, tone, brevity, pauses, deliberation, emphasis of spoken word all combine to mightily inform the actual spirit, the invisible substance and reality of the thing communicated. A good argument can be made that a spoken word is better than written, and that a message preached in the power of the Spirit is better than one written. A message preached is better than one than in reading the Bible. I have to go that again. The past is better than power, or the word of God is power, and the Spirit is better than written, and better than having a Bible. For thousands of years the truth was communicated effectively and purely without a Bible. That's because Jesus Christ is the Word, and He is not limited by lack of technology or devices. John is the only writer who uses Word in reference to the Lord Jesus. It seems he intends for us to understand that the Lord Jesus Christ in His person is the divine revelation of all that may be known and understood of truth, abiding substance, reality, and life. Man has an extremely dim and nebulous idea of what life is to be capable of auto-existence. There are three orders of life. Plants. Plants are able to take in nutrients from the soil and atmosphere and maintain themselves, grow and reproduce before they die. Animals. These may do all the above but have consciousness, a mind, a thought. You can't talk to a rose. You might think you do, but the rose cannot talk back to you. Animals have all that, but they have consciousness, a mind and thought, and can know and understand. They have emotion, affection, fear, courage, drive. Your dog wags his tail when you talk to him, and he is cowed when you growl at him. But then we have man. Plants, animals, now man. Made in the image of God, they have all the above, yet they have a spiritual faculty, a consciousness and a capacity for God. They have a moral conscience and a capacity for enormous and horrendous evil or great nobility. Men. But none of this tells us of the origin of life. Where does life come from? Why is there life? Where was our life before we came into existence? It's a good one, isn't it? Where did you come from? Where will it be when we die? And what will happen to what we know when we no longer know? This can never be discovered or explained in laboratories where all can be dealt with as matter. Life, thought, knowledge, understanding is not matter. It's spirit. It gives mind and spirit to matter. It gives light, mind, and spirit to a locked mystery. Jesus Christ is the life, John 1, 4. All life proceeds from Him and returns to Him, and no one truly lives until he lives in Christ. All else is a temporal mist and a vapor that vanishes. Jesus Christ, our Lord, is the Word of Life. Nothing is known, nothing is understood of life apart from Him, Jesus Christ. In Him is life, and that life, the Scriptures tell us, is the light of man. When God breathed His Spirit into the man, Jesus Christ came to that man by the Holy Spirit, and he became a living soul. When man sinned, the Spirit of Christ left him, and he died spiritually and intellectually. I'm talking about man. Man. He becomes spiritually stupid, knowing nothing. The light went out in his soul, and he fell into a pit of darkness and stupidity. There he will ever remain unless Jesus comes to regenerate him and make him live and know again. You're dead until you're converted. The Apostle Paul said, For me to live is Christ. I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live. Yet not I, but Christ. Christ is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. As the Word, Jesus makes everything that is to be real, to have power and reality. Nothing is alive. Nothing is. Nothing lives. Nothing has reality. Nothing has relevance. Nothing has abiding substance apart from Jesus Christ. It is vain, empty, meaningless noise. Christ is that which makes the difference between dead doctrine, scholarship, dead letters and words of life. He, the Lord Jesus, in you, is that sweet fragrance of life in your speech, in your conversation, your very life. He is that indeed which makes us the light of the world and the salt of the earth. May we then, with John, declare and witness, We have seen, we have gazed upon, we have handled of the living Word of life. Father in Heaven, we are unspeakably grateful to have been privileged to know and to understand. We are thankful to be counted worthy of a gathering of your saints, the sweetest and dearest living creatures on the face of the earth. We are thankful for what you have all done these years here in these buildings and the men and women who have come from various places throughout the earth to joyous fellowship one with another these days. Bless us, O Lord, and receive our gratitude and glorify yourself among us. For it is in Jesus' name we pray, Amen.