1961 Ernest Wakefield

Toronto, Canada. March the 31st, 1961. Gospel meeting.

Our Calvary is almighty in this company tonight. There are some, some in this hall tonight who are not yet under the shelter. I suppose that every one of us here who are Christians can look back to that time in our lives when we did not know the Savior.

And we let every boy and girl who has never yet received Christ as their personal Savior, tonight is lost, L-O-S-T. How solemn it is to come into this room, lost from those courts, the enemy of your precious soul, who do all in his power to stop you from hearing not the preacher's voice, but the very voice of God speaking to your precious, never-dying soul. I want to ask this question before we turn to God's Word.

I want to ask you, my friends, every man in this room, every woman in this room, every boy and girl in this room, I want to ask you this solemn question. If you had died last night, oh friends, how solemn this is. If you had died last night, I ask you, where would you be right now? Where would you be now? If you had passed away without Christ, you would be in eternal darkness, away from God forever, in your sins.

Now I'd like to bring the next question from the Word of God. God ever asks man. It's a very, very solemn question.

And the Lord God calls unto Adam and said unto him, Where? That's a very solemn question. Because it tells us that man is like a fallen creature. I didn't know where man was.

It's not because God couldn't see Adam that I believed that God would have this question sent from this platform tonight. Where art thou? Where are you hiding? For of the unsaved man and woman is hiding a solemn question. Where art thou? Here was a man who had only sinned once.

That one sin he committed. Hiding behind the breach of a diary to hide away from God. He only had a record of one sin.

And that one sin drove him away. Now, my friends, I want to ask you tonight, if you're unsaved here, without Christ, without hope, without God in this world, I want to ask you about your record. I want to say unto myself that I do know that our life is so solemnly known before God.

And tonight we'd like to, at the very start of this meeting, we'd like to bring you into the immediate presence of God himself, not in the presence of a God who loves the sinner, but a God who takes sins with all his power, with all his might. And God asks that question, Where art thou, you sickly matron? And he stands in the presence of God and he says, I was naked, naked, naked. I'm naked.

But outside of the Lord Jesus, outside of his death and resurrection, outside of his precious blood, there is no salvation. For in his sight I am great. Into your very heart, into the very depths of your soul, my friend, where art thou? Where are you hiding tonight, my friend? Where are you hiding? Heaven bound or hell bound? There's no middle ground.

There's no neutrality. Either tonight you're on the way to eternal glory, There is no record in the word of God of a seed that believeth in the Son of God, hath everlasting life in the first class. But he delighteth in the wrath of God.

And he hath made that wonderful discovery. And he hath found that the word of God concerning you is true. The whole world, he says, is no different.

We're all sin in some show. My friend, it's a wonderful discovery to find out you're a sinner so you'll never get to heaven, will you? Without that, my friend, you'll never come to Christ. So you'll find you're a fool, a liar.

A question that God is asking. Bow down. Now, my friend, in chapter three, we have lost.

In chapter four, we find that man is guilty of God and is lost and guilty. God says to Cain, What hast thou done? Did God not know? My friends, I speak rapidly. Did not God know that Cain's hands were stained with the blood of Abel? He knew that exactly.

He saw with his holy eyes that Cain had killed his brother, and yet he asked this question. Why did he ask it? To point out to Cain he was guilty and to point out to you tonight, my friends, that you are guilty. What hast thou done? The other night we were visiting the lady and as she sat in her living room with her husband, both of them were smoking cigarettes.

You do the best you can and you live a good life and try to do what's right. What else can God expect from a person? And the speaker said this to her. The one who was speaking to her said this.

My dear lady, you realize tonight that you have a heart just like Judas Iscariot. You have a heart just like Adolf Hitler. You have a heart just like Eichmann that murdered five million Jews.

And your heart is no better than that man's. Not a bit better. Not one bit better.

For you and I are sinners, my friends. I want to turn. I don't ask you to turn, but I'd like to read to you a few scriptures from God's Word that shows God's thoughts about your heart and my heart.

In the fifth of Genesis, in the fifth of Genesis, sixth of Genesis, Genesis 6, verse 5, God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 14th Psalm and the first verse. Now I want to say to anybody in this room that I use as a stranger, I want you to solely realize that these are the words of the only living God there is.

The only living God who reads your heart through and through. All fingers make it open to the eyes of him with whom we have to do. Psalm 14, verse 1. The fool has said in his heart, there is no God.

They're corrupt. They have done abominable work. There is none that do us good.

The Lord looked down from heaven upon these children of man, just to see if there were any that could understand. And he saw they are all gone aside. They're all going to become filthy.

There is none that do us good. No, not one. Not one, he said.

That's what God said. Not one. Jeremiah chapter 17, Jeremiah 7, is deceitful above all things and desperately or incurably wicked.

Who can know it? I, the Lord, search the heart. Of the Old Testament, the psalms all testify from the man walked to the scaffold, now turns his forefront out, the very Christ, and he ends it up by, never bother me, open up your heart, your head, the very death faces you. A young man, young lady, he proved his love.

Oh, my friend, he won your heart. We were down the hall, and we were praying for you. We were praying that God would speak to you.

We were heard knocking on the hall, 32 years old, in the city of Montreal, and heard those who are now our brethren in Christ, preaching the same precious gospel of the grace of God. We heard that voice touch in our poor, poor, lost, darkened hearts. That gentle voice said, tonight's the night.

Tonight's the night to receive Christ. And many a night, we walked into that gospel hall, saying, no, we will not come. We will not come.

But the wonderful love of God, the matchless grace of God, the marvelous love of Christ, has broken the barriers down. Christ. Christ has won the hearts of many in this room tonight.

I ask you to say, I don't believe in force and conversion. God forbid. But I say again, and I say again, God can.

If God has spoken to your soul tonight, if God has spoken to your soul, gnarly in the kiss of the serpent, raise those hands.