Three-Fold Vision - Part 5

God wills I'll go. How many times you get up, you've got to jump in a car, it only takes you half an hour. If it's a hot and buggy day, take a day to do it. Now you're doing the biggest enemy some of us have is our automobiles. I'm getting more stingy about my time. Maybe I don't have much left. I'd like another two years to write two very interesting books. But what about the time God gives us? We don't think about that. So I'm just telling you what David was sparking me off. I've done some thinking this afternoon. I've got to know if after that message is one to keep me going for a week. Thinking about worship and adoration. I believe that the highest form of worship is speechless. That Dr. Chaucer said, I can gaze and gaze and gaze. Remember an old hymn that says, I shall know him. I shall know him. When redeemed by his side, I shall stand. I shall know him, I shall know him by the prints of the nails in his hand. A quick thing, I didn't plan a lot of stuff to say just to kind of stir your minds up tonight. I don't know much about opera. I know that Verdi played his opera Aida in the great, what do you call it, in Milan, in Italy, in the opera house. And when he finished, the people clapped and cheered. They unhitched the horses from his carriage and let them go down. They pushed his coach and they pulled it down the street, yelling all the time, Verdi, Verdi, Verdi, Verdi. That was 10 o'clock at night. They were still shouting at midnight. They were still shouting at three o'clock in the morning. He went to the window and there were people dancing in the street and shouting Verdi, Verdi, Aida, Aida, and trying to sing as the Italians do. All because he wrote an opera. They did so without making vows. It's easy to make them in the heat of a meeting and then tomorrow there's no atmosphere. You face the world of flesh and the devil. You won't gain an inch of ground in this meeting, but what the devil will try and get five inches back. So here's hundreds of people shouting Verdi, Verdi. They're intoxicated with joy because he wrote an opera. Wait, there's a man. He's in a tomb. They put a stone on the tomb. They put wax over the stone. They put 16 soldiers. They put all the sin of the world there, but every demon in hell there. Christianity hangs on one thing and not on the cross. You remember the chorus, living he loved me, dying he saved me, buried he carried my sins far away, rising he justified freely forever. But David, I don't know if you've done it. I'd like to hear you do it. I've never once heard a sermon on the ascension. Jesus has to more than die, he has to ascend to the Father. Every demon in hell is nervous and shaking when he rises from the dead. Every angel is waiting to proclaim it. And so the tomb broke. I don't know why we only sing as day, it's jealous, said David. Why do we only sing up from the great heroes every Easter time? We ought to sing it every Sunday. The most disappointing day in the life of Jesus. Jesus, when he rose from the dead, nobody was there. Not one of the lepers he healed was there. Not blind Bartimaeus was there. Nicodemus wasn't there. His own mother wasn't there. How many times he told them, destroy this body and I'll rise again. And there was nobody there. Do you think he didn't feel it? The simple question, did you thank God today that he rose? Isn't it amazing? In a Christian kind of like America, the outstanding Sunday is not Easter Sunday or Christmas Sunday. It's what? What do you call that Sunday? Football Sunday? Superball Sunday. Everybody lives for Superball Sunday. They spend so much time watching football and spend about Jesus, up from the great heroes. Do you know what I believe somebody needs to do? Somebody needs to go to America and preach the new birth. I don't believe five percent of all the Christians, apostolic, Pentecostal, Methodist, Nazarenes are saved. And that's true of England. You go to your own pastor and say, Pastor, I want to ask you one question. Do you are the witness of the Spirit? John Wesley, one of the greatest men ever lived, do you know what he did? I read it today. Charles Wesley put John Wesley's theology to music. And one thing that Charles Wesley wrote, my heart is full of Christ. And as long as there is this glorious message, you know, John Wesley says, I went to London, I went to Birmingham, I went to Manchester, I offered men Christ. We don't offer Christ, we offer them heaven. Do you want to go to heaven? Raise your hand. Do you want forgiveness of sins? Raise your hand. The one battle David didn't tell you, he had three cruel years of conviction of sin. Why? Because as Paul said to Timothy, you've known the scriptures from being a child. Your mother knew it, your grandmother knew it. We took David and the family every time we could to England to conferences. And in Ireland we did, and in America we did. David didn't tell you, he's a very skilled artist. He does wonderful painting. But his battle was, he wanted to design his own studio and a follower. But he knew his scripture that stuck with him then, he often preaches now, is this, you're not your own, you're bought with a price. So he dropped his brush and never picked it up since. And I appreciate that. But 300 years ago, there's a great preacher in Scotland by the name of Philip Dalbridge. He wrote the greatest thing ever written outside the Bible on regeneration. And he wrote that lovely hymn, we hardly ever sing anymore, we're not too up and going. Happy day, happy day, when Jesus washed my sins away. He taught me how to watch and pray and live rejoicing every day. Happy day. And he goes on to sing happy day. And when he got from his knees, he'd had wrestlings too. But when he got up, he put it on record forever. I'd sing it hundreds of times. My granny sang it in the fireplace. It is done, the great transaction is done. I am my Lord and he is mine. Don't come in my office unless you're living and walking with God. I'd put my finger right between your eyes and say, does Christ live in you? Well, I didn't ask you that. I got the vaccine, I didn't ask you that. Does Christ live in you? Does Christ weep through you? How do you think God looks down on a hell of a world like this? He looks on Bosnia tonight running with blood. One of America's most gifted preachers, he doesn't count generations by 40, he counts them by 70. He says we had 70 years and then judgment came on America. What was it called? The Civil War. Then we had another 70 years, we had judgment. What was it called? It was called 1929, the crash of all the banks. Another 70 years goes to 1998 or 9. We're ready for another thunderous, devastating demolition that God gives. Nobody's going to escape our precious