Tag: Judgement

A.W. Tozer Talks

Man’s Accountability to God

Pastor and Author A.W. Tozer

June 13, 1954

In the book of John, the fifth chapter, I want to read verses 22, and 26 to 29. For the Father, the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son, that all men should honor the Son, even as they honor the Father. He that honoreth not the Son, honoreth not the Father which hath sent Him.

Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that heareth My word, and believeth on Him that sent Me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death unto life. Verily, verily, I say unto you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live. For as the Father hath life in Himself, so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself, and hath given Him authority to execute judgment also, because He is the Son of Man.

Marvel not at this, for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth, they that have done good unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation. I can of mine own self do nothing. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just, because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent Me.

Now, I don’t mind telling you that I would very much rather not speak on the topic which is mine tonight. But in preaching through a book of the Bible, we must either preach it all or tacitly assume that some of it was not supposed to be preached. I don’t believe that any of it should be skipped.

And we come now to the matter of the Judgment, Christ Jesus our Lord, the Judge. I’m going to treat it like this. We’ll talk a little about the basic concept of judgment, and then point to some inadequate concepts of judgment, and then show the qualifications which the judge of mankind must have, and then show that Christ qualifies as the judge.

Now, the basic concept of judgment is very simple, and it has been believed by practically all religious people that have ever lived anywhere, with variations in detail. And it is that human beings are morally accountable. They are not self-created beings, nor self-sustaining. They have their life as a derived thing from Another and not from themselves.

The Father hath life in Himself, so nobody can judge the Father. He is not a derived being, He is the original Being. And He hath given also to the Son to have life in Himself.

No one can judge the Son. He is not a derived being but is of the Father alone. This concept of judgment is universal, with, I say, variations in application, and that human beings are morally accountable, and that while they are free to make moral choices, they are nevertheless under necessity to account to some authority for those choices.

Now, I have used a word and a phrase, and one seems to cancel the other one out. I have said free and under necessity, but there is nothing inconsistent here. Men are free to decide their own moral choices, but they’re also under the necessity to account to God for those choices. That makes them both free and also bound, for they are bound to come to judgment and give an account for the deeds done in the body. Now, that’s the basic concept of judgment. Some have tried to deny that.

In your high school days, you read Emerson’s famous self-reliance, I believe it was, or compensation, I think was the essay that contained this doctrine, that there is no such thing as a judgment, that everything is judged now and sentenced and rewarded or punished now. This, of course, is not the universal belief, and it’s not the belief of the Old Testament, it’s not the teaching of the New Testament, it is not the teaching of the Church, it was hatched out of the head of the very great man who lived in Concord.

Now, let us look at some inadequate concepts of judgment, and I think maybe we might mention that one first. That judgment is the operation of the law of compensation. That if you take it out of your left pocket, you’ll have to put it in your right pocket. And that everything that you do in one direction is counterbalanced by something that’s done in another direction.

The thief steals from himself, says Emerson. And the only punishment the thief will ever get is the knowledge that he is a thief. Now, that is true, but it’s not enough. That’s an inadequate concept of judgment. There is another, and it is that we are accountable only to society. Now, it is true that we are accountable to society, but that is only a portion of the truth, not all of it. The rest of it is that we are accountable to God, which we’ll mention later.

Now, we are responsible to public opinion, for instance. Everybody here is responsible to public opinion, and public opinion is going to judge you, and indeed has already judged you.

A rather silly but nevertheless accurate definition or proof of what I’m saying, that we are judged by public opinion, is seen in some time ago, it’s been some years ago now, I was walking down the street, and a little boy that just about came up to here, I would say, up to the lower part of this pulpit, and he took a good look at me as I walked along.

Usually I’m friendly to children, but I was preoccupied that day, I must have been. And when I got within hearing distance of him, he looked up at me and said, hello, picky puss. He had me figured out already, I was a pickle puss. And I was responsible to human society for the very shape my face was in. Now, I wasn’t mad at anybody, but he evidently thought I wasn’t as cheerful looking as I might have been, thought he’d needled me a little, which he did.

So we’re responsible for everything we do. You drive down the highway and you’re accountable to public opinion. They’re either going to conclude that you are a fine driver and a good man, or they’re going to conclude you’re a road hog, one or the other.

You live beside your neighbor, and your neighbor is going to judge you as being a good neighbor or not being a good neighbor. Now that’s true. But to say that that’s all the judgment there is, is to argue like a backward child, because there’s something more yet, and that is human law.

We’re also accountable to human law. Every nation makes its laws, from the most primitive tribes of New Guinea to the most civilized nation in the world, they have their own laws and everybody’s responsible to those laws.

But you say, how about the outlaw? And the answer is that the outlaw is an outlaw only in a few things. An outlaw will rob a bank in order that he might get money to pay taxes or pay something else. He is keeping one law and breaking another one to get the money to do it. So the outlaw is an outlaw only in certain details. In the majority of his life, say that in 95 percent of his life, he’s a keeper of law, not a breaker of law. But he is an outlaw, nevertheless, in those details.

A man is a murderer. Well, he’s broken the law that says that we’re not to murder our fellow man. But he might have been up to that time a keeper of all the laws of the land.

Another thing is that an outlaw is never a happy man. He’s accountable to the law even while he is breaking it, and he’s miserable even while he’s flouting the law.

Now, there’s a third thing here about this, that we are accountable to society. And it is that society cannot reach us in that sphere of our being where we’re most vitally accountable, namely, to God and to ourselves. I am a human being, an American living in Chicago. I am accountable to public opinion. I am accountable to the law of the land. But I am also accountable to myself and my God. Human society can’t touch me there. And in the very relationships that are the most vital to me, human society cannot touch me at all.

A man wants to commit suicide, he turns a gun on his head and blows his own brains out. He is not accountable to society nor the law. He’s accountable to some higher authority, for society cannot punish him.

A man stands up and says he’s an atheist and turns his back on God, society cannot punish him for that. There isn’t a country in the world that can punish a man for hating God. They can only punish him in some countries for not going to church, not paying his ecclesiastical tax, or not kowtowing to the host as it passes by. But he can hate God in his heart and never be punished because society cannot reach him in that important and vital realm.

Well, then there is a third inadequate concept of judgment, and it is that man’s accountability is to himself alone. That every man stands before the bar of his own reason and of his own conscience, and that the judge and jury of man will be man’s reason and man’s conscience.

Now this is the infamous relativity of morals that is taught in many of our universities. That each man is a law unto himself, and that good is whatever brings social approval, and evil is whatever brings social disapproval.

The answer to that of course is very simple, and it is that if that were true then there would be as many moral codes as there are human beings, and each one of us would be our own witness, our own prosecutor, our own judge, our own jury, and our own jailer. A man is accountable to himself. You know, that is so silly as scarcely to be worthy of consideration here tonight.

But never underestimate the ability of human beings to get mixed up. Any of you that are preachers or will be preachers, take a little advice and never overestimate the ability of people to get confused. And if a man with an eloquent tongue were to come to some of us and preach man’s accountability to himself alone, some silly people would accept it, forgetting that it has no basis anywhere.

How can a man be accountable to himself? You say, well, he’s accountable to his conscience, and I ask, to whom is his conscience accountable? How can I be my own prosecutor, my own prosecutor, witness on the prosecuting side, my own prosecuting attorney, my own judge, my own jailer, and my own executioner? All very silly and very poetic and very dreamy, and sounds very learned and very mystical, but it’s all ridiculous. It’s an inadequate concept of judgment.

For I never knew anybody yet except Leonard Ravenhill, it would be hard on himself. He’s hard on himself. He’s a judge and jury of himself, and he punishes himself, but outside of Christians like that, and they’re rare, God knows in our day, I don’t know anybody scarcely but what’s pretty easy on himself, you’re undersigned included. I know that if I were to be a judge and jury and witness and prosecutor and executioner, I’d lose my axe. I wouldn’t cut my own head off. I wouldn’t have the courage to do it.

So, God is not going to make this man accountable to Himself finally, and neither is He going to make you and me accountable to the law finally, human society finally. We are accountable to the One who gave us being. We are accountable to the One out of whose heart we came and who laid His laws upon us. We are accountable to God.

And it was this and is this that makes Christians and makes men and makes character and makes nations. And it’s the absence of this belief that makes soft, spineless Christians and churches without any meaning in them.

Someone was telling me of a young man in our Sunday school who went to a church down in Indiana that belonged to a denomination. The church was part of a denomination that used to be holiness people. I know them. I know the people.

And he said he’d been there recently, and they talked about books and your dreams and the effect they have on your life. And you know the topic when our friend was there? Peptic ulcers. Now believe that or not, that was the religious topic of the day. The church had backslidden and was talking about peptic ulcers. I’d get an ulcer if I stayed around a church like that or had to.

My brethren, when we backslide from the Truth and run away from the Word of God and build up our own notions out of our own heads, there is no telling what fools God will make of us, and how far we’ll go, and how silly it will all be, and how foolish we’ll become.

In the city of Detroit some years ago, some of our Alliance preachers were walking down the street past a church, and that preacher’s subject was out on the board in front. And he announced that next Sunday morning at 10:45, the Reverend Doctor would preach on the theme, Who Killed Cock Robin? You see, when the old Greeks have a word, they said, whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad. That is, drive them crazy.

And when the judgment of God begins to fall on the church, when they cease to believe in the judgment of God, then the judgment of God begins to fall. And you never know what that church will get into next, or where it’ll go.

It was belief in the accountability of man to his Maker that made America great at one time. One of the great leaders of America was Daniel Webster. That great bulging brow of his and those blazing eyes used to hold the Senate spellbound. His oratory used to, as he stood there and talked to them, not silly quips, not funny remarks.

The Senate in those days was not composed of half-baked comedians, but of strong noble statesmen who carried the weight of the nation on their shoulders. And someone said, Mr. Webster, what do you consider the most serious thought that has ever entered your mind? He said, the most solemn thought that has ever entered my mind is my accountability to my Maker.

And men who talked like that couldn’t be corrupted and bought off. And they wouldn’t have to be ashamed to have their telephone calls read back to them. They weren’t worried about what people thought as much as the fact that they were accountable to God.

Now, the third is that the judge of mankind must have certain qualifications. And according to this that I have read to you, there must be an authority to execute judgment. That is, the ones that are to be judged must be accountable to the judge. In this tentative and provisionary world in which we live, one group of men may make a law, and a judge, born a hundred or two hundred years later, may enforce that law, and may not even be remotely acquainted with the person whom he is judging.

But it is not so in the kingdom of God to be a judge according to the Scripture that judges those who are accountable to Him, and accountable to Him not only not by a law imposed by another, but accountable to Him morally and vitally, rather than merely legally. And in order to be a judge, a righteous judge of mankind, the judge has to have all knowledge.

Now let’s look at it a little, and sort of toss it around, let it get home to our hearts. I point out here that the judge has to have all knowledge so there can be no error. Many an innocent man has been hanged, and if the truth were known, many a life-termer who died in grave pallor behind prison walls was paying a debt he had never contracted, and the rascal who did the crime for which he was sentenced died in his bed surrounded by his friends. Human justice does its best, but because it is not all-wise, it makes mistakes.

But God Almighty is never going to judge the race of mankind and allow a mistake to enter. The judge must be one who has all wisdom. Therefore, I appeal away from St. Paul, I appeal away from Moses and Elijah, I appeal away from all men, because no man knows me well enough to judge me finally.

And I don’t know you well enough to judge you finally. I may pass brief judgment on you on some simple matter, or you on me, but when it comes to the placing of my eternal and everlasting soul somewhere, I don’t want any mistakes made. The judge of mankind is going to have to be one that will never need the testimony of a third party.

Nowadays they get witnesses in, and the judge sits solemnly and listens to the witnesses as the witness says, I saw him do this, I heard him say that. And if the witness is lying, the judge is misled. But the judge of mankind is not depending upon the testimony of another.

Listen to what He says. Verse 30, I can of mine own self do nothing, as I hear, I judge. And My judgment is just, because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which sent Me.

And there is another point. The judge has to be disinterested. He must have no personal interest in the case.

Many a judge has been severe because election time was coming up, or because public opinion was getting stronger, the newspapers were getting on him, and to save his own hide he passed a severe sentence, or didn’t pass a sentence, and his motives were ulterior and false.

The Son of God says, I judge as one who seeks not mine own glory, but the glory of God alone. Therefore, He can be the judge. He can be the judge because He’s personally related and yet disinterested and has nothing to gain or lose by His judgment. But all the glory belongs to God. Jesus Christ, therefore, I say qualifies as the Judge.

But more than that, he must have a sympathetic understanding. I don’t want to be judged by an archangel that never shed a tear. I don’t want to be judged by a seraphim that never felt a pain. I don’t want to be judged by a cherub that never knew human grief or disappointment or woe.

The judge of mankind must be one of them. For Jesus said, The Father hath given the Son power to execute judgment because He is a Son of Man. Because He is a Son of Man, He not only can be their advocate above, a Savior by the throne of love, but He can be their judge to sit upon the throne also.

Then there will be no dodging, no whimpering, no whining, no crying on our wrists and saying, But Lord, you didn’t understand. He does understand because He became one of us and walked among us. And never was a tear that He didn’t shed, never a bitter disappointment He didn’t feel, never a grief that He didn’t suffer, never a temptation that did not come to Him, never a critical situation that He wasn’t in.

So, because He’s a Son of Man, He has authority to execute judgment. Christ qualifies on every count to be the judge of mankind. The tears that He shed, the pains that He suffered, and the griefs that He bore made Him not only a just but a sympathetic Judge of mankind.

Now, His presence in the human race is our present judgment, or present judgement on sins. For judgment am I come into this world, that they which see not, might see, and they which see, might be made blind, 9:39, in the same book. For judgment am I come into this world.

Now, here is one of the forgotten doctrines of the Bible. Somebody could write a great and, I believe, important book on neglected Bible doctrines. This would be one of them, that Jesus Christ is the judge of mankind, that the Father judgeth no man. When the Lord, the Son of Man shall come in clouds of glory, then shall be gathered unto him the nations, and he shall separate them.

It is He who is the judge. And when the Judge of mankind shall appear, He’ll have the shoulders of a man, and the face of a man, and be a man, the man Christ Jesus. God has given authority to judge mankind, so that He is both the Judge and the Savior of man. That makes me love Him and fear Him. Love Him because He’s my Savior, and fear Him because He’s my judge.

And if the ten-cent store Jesus that is being preached nowadays by a lot of men, if the plastic-painted Christ, who has no spine and no justice but is a soft and pliant friend of everybody, if he is the only Christ there is, then we might as well close our books and bar our doors and make a bakery out of this or a garage. But that Christ that is being preached is not the Christ of God, nor the Christ of the Bible, nor the Christ we must deal with.

For the Christ we must deal with has eyes as a flame of fire, and His feet are like burnished brass, and out of His mouth come with a sharp two-edged sword. He will be the judge of mankind.

You can leave your loved ones that have died lost in His hands, knowing that He Himself suffered, knowing that He knows all, no mistakes can be made, there can be no miscarriage of justice, because He knows all that can be known.

It’s said one time, rather, or as though it was an afterthought, sort of thrown in, it says that Jesus need not that any should testify of man, for He knew what was in man. That’s in John, second chapter, 25 verse. He didn’t need anybody to testify about men, because He knew all that was in man.

Let me read verses 28 and 29. Let me read them. Marvel not at this, He said, for the hour is coming into which all that are in the grave shall hear His voice, the Son of Man’s voice, and shall come forth, they that have done good unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation.

And this coming out of the graves will be at the invitation of the Son of God Himself. Like a file officer He will command, and they will stand on their feet, a great army, to receive judgment. And the judgment will be based, strangely enough, upon the kind of life they lived in this world. That’s another forgotten doctrine, but it’s here. They that have done good unto the resurrection of life, they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation.

And this is the Judge, the Judge with the flaming eyes, so that Jesus Christ our Lord is one with whom we must deal, cannot escape Him. We can shrug Him off and drive away in a cloud of fumes, but we’re going to have to come back and deal with Him finally. You’re going to have to deal with Him, and I am.

And be sure of one thing, He’ll either be my Savior now, or my Judge in the end. And the tenderness and sympathy of the Savior now will be laid aside while the justice and severity of the Judge then, comes to the front. Without canceling out one, He will exercise both, so that Jesus Christ is both the Lord and the Judge of men, as well as the Savior of men.

Where’s our book, Brother? We have 1,000 or 800 or 900 of these, and still, I never can keep one down. 116, let me read it. Not all the blood of beasts on Jewish altars slain could give the guilty conscience peace or wash away the stain.

Now, where is that taken from? The 8th and 10th chapters of Hebrews. But Christ, the heavenly Lamb, takes all our sins away, a sacrifice of nobler name and richer blood than they. The precious blood of Jesus Christ takes away all sin. Then says the writer, My faith, and I want you to think yourself into this, My faith would lay her hand on that dear head of thine.

Does anybody know where he got that? In the Old Testament, a sinner used to come to the priest, and he would say, I have sinned, and I bring a lamb, or some other creature. And they would take that creature, and the sinner would lay his hand on the head of the beast, and they would kill it and sprinkle it blood, and the sin which he had committed would be forgiven him. My faith would lay her hand on that dear head of thine, while like a penitent I stand and there confess my sin.

Those of you who don’t want Him as a judge, you better think seriously now about Him as a Savior and stand like a penitent or kneel like one and confess your sin. My soul looks back to see the burden thou didst bear while hanging on the cursed tree and knows her guilt was there.

Do you believe that brothers and sisters, that your guilt was there on that cursed tree? He that knew no sin became sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. And then he says, believing, we rejoice to see the curse removed. I’ve seen this song edited and they’ve twisted it around and some educated, sophisticate, who didn’t like this word, curse, and removed, he fixed it up.

But I won’t sing it, I sing this one. Believing we rejoice to see the curse removed. What curse? The curse of the broken law, the curse of sin.

We bless the Lamb with cheerful voice and sing His bleeding love. How wonderful all this is, came to my heart tonight as I was upstairs by myself there in my room. I thought of this, what a wonderful invitation song, what a wonderful song of triumph, what a song full of theology and meaning and gospel. That what blood of goats couldn’t do, the blood of Christ is doing and has done.

So, I would urge you tonight, if you are not now consciously forgiven, consciously forgiven, close your eyes and by faith lay your hands on that dear head of His, and like a penitent confess your sin and then the curse will remove from your heart and you will know your sins forgiven and the blood will cleanse and you’ll know you’re delivered.

Which is He going to be for you, Savior or Judge? He will be one or the other. If He is the first, He won’t be the second. But if He is not the Savior, He will be the Judge. I for my part can’t afford to face Him as my Judge. I must have His protecting blood and face Him as my Savior, now. Praise God He knows too much me for me to dare brazenly barge into His presence and let Him judge me.

Scripture tells us of certain ones who have sent their sins on before the judgment. You can send your sins on before the judgment, have them judged and settled and dispelled of, now while you’re still on the earth, the Savior will cover your sins, cover them.

As the old brother said, if Jesus Christ had covered our sins with His life, when they took His life away, they’d have been exposed, but He covered them with His death. And by His death forever He put my sins where they can’t be found, for the blood of the everlasting covenant. Do you believe it? You certainly have powerful control over your emotions. Amen, I get blessed when I get thinking about these things.

What about you, my unsaved friend, my borderline friend, my doubtful friend, my doubting friend, if there be such here. What about you? Right now, this is your opportunity, there’ll never be a better one.

Bow your head, look back and see the burden He bore. Lay your hand of faith on His holy head and confess your sins and the curse will remove. And you can say, believing, I rejoice to see the curse removed, I praise the Lamb with cheerful voice and sing His dying love. Amen.

Tags Accountability, Judgement

Messages

A.W. Tozer Talks

“The Foundations of the World are out of Plumb“

The Foundations of the World are out of Plumb Download

The Foundations of the World are out of Plumb

Pastor and Author A.W. Tozer

May 3, 1953

You will find the Book of Psalms to be a very revealing book, for the Holy Spirit is in the Book of Psalms, and as has been said, the Spirit of Christ is in the Psalms. And many places in the Book of Psalms you will find the Holy Spirit looking down the centuries and making present tense statements, which were not present tense, but were future prophetic tense.

The “is” is sometimes way down the years, and this 82nd Psalm is that kind of psalm. Certainly, it has its local application to circumstances that gave it birth. But just as certainly there is more here than at first meets the attention, there is the groaning and the yearning of the Spirit of Christ which was in them, to quote Peter, who saw and here foretells conditions that are to be in later times. We have a picture here of God standing among the mighty angels, not sitting because He had risen.

If you are interested in this, you will find many places in the Bible where God stands, but almost always God sits. A judge always sits. It is a subject that stands. So that we find God sitting and men standing in His presence, that is as it should be. The great God sits quietly and calmly in His everlasting rest while men and angels stand before Him. But a few times we see God standing.

When our Lord Jesus Christ went to heaven, the Scripture says that He sat down on the right hand of the Father. We read of that very many places in the Bible, that Jesus Christ sat down on the right hand of God. His position is that of a seated one. Having completed the work on earth, He has now gone to sit down, waiting the time when His enemies shall be made His footstool.

But there was one exception to this, and that was when they were stoning Stephen to death. Stephen looked up, and his death-dimmed eyes became preternaturally bright, and he said, I see Jesus sitting, standing at the right hand of God. He had been sitting, now He is standing, as though he had become suddenly so keenly interested that He rose and was gazing down, in His divine excitement, watching His first martyr die.

Here we find God standing now, and He is standing among the mighty angels. Here is what He sees. He sees injustice, and oppression, and poverty, and ignorance, and darkness, and dying, and He sees it all over the earth. It says here that He judgeth among the gods. That gives some people a notion that there are gods, and that God recognizes these gods. The truth is very much otherwise. God does not recognize any gods.

He says, I am the Lord, and there is none other beside me. But the word “gods” here is elohim in the plural, and it is a reference to leaders and judges of the earth. It is, says Rotherham, God ascribing to those whom He has placed in high position, something of His own name, because they are His ambassadors. He gives them not the sword in vain. They are the judges and rulers of the earth. And God boldly calls them after His own name, and says, God standeth in the congregation of the mighty, He judgeth among the elohim, the judges, the rulers of the earth.

And what He sees there, I repeat, is injustice, and oppression, and poverty, not the poverty that a reluctant earth might impose upon a people who could not rest a living from her, but rather the poverty that comes from oppression and from injustice. And there was ignorance and darkness and dying. The sad thing about this all, my friends, is that it could be avoided. All of this could have been avoided.

Now, in this dark world in which we live, there are some things that can’t very well be avoided. And I suppose that we might as well get used to them and say, there be here; they were here when my grandfather walked the hills of Ohio or Indiana. And they were here when the red Indian roamed and hunted the buffalo there. And they were and will be and always have been, and we may expect them to be.

There will always be accidents, and there will always be diseases, and there will always be bereavement as long as the sun rises and sets. And there will always be the sad leave-taking when friend greets and shakes the hand of friend and tearlessly turns away with an agony that knows no respite in tears. There will always be the lightning that will flash out of the sky and smite the great oak, and the boy that lies sleeping under it. And there will always be the wild beasts and the rampaging river and the tornado and the tempest.

And my friends, you can take all of the accidents of the world and all of the adverse forces of nature and include in it all the diseases that mortal flesh is heir to and combine them together. And you will not have all told and added up as much sheer misery and pain as man imposes upon himself by his wicked deeds.

This is not merely a preacher talking. Let us look at over the last hundred years. There have been floods in Europe, and there have been earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. And there have been in Europe over the last hundred years epidemics and the outbreak of diseases. There have been storms and lightning flashes. Nature has shaken her fallen shoulders, and poor victims have died. No one with an ounce of brains would deny that nor attempt to deny it.

And nobody would dare to close his eyes if he has any regard to his own reputation for sanity, and say that nature is all gentle and tender, and that all is good, and good is all, and all is God, and God is all, and all is all, and none of that. We got to face facts, and we might as well be realistic.

Europe, just to choose one continent, has suffered greatly in the last hundred years, sporadically, now and again. There has been toil, and there have been tears, and there have been bereavements and losses. But ladies and gentlemen, it fell to the lot of one little undersized man, inconsequential in looks and build and weight, education and gifts, it fell to the lot of one little man to bring to the continent of Europe more suffering and agony and pain in four years’ time than one hundred years of the combined forces of misfortune was able to visit upon that same continent.

Korea has had her famines, and she has seen her people die. The snows and bitter cold of the winters have taken their toll, and diseases have taken their toll. But in the last two years in Korea, man has visited upon that peninsula more sheer misery and unbearable pain than all the unfortunate circumstances that nature might have visited in the last five hundred years.

God standeth among the mighty. He judges among the elohim, and He’s not pleased with what He sees. For He sees injustice and oppression and a poverty that’s imposed, and He sees an ignorance that can’t be excused and a darkness that shrouds the minds of men, and He sees dying and dying and dying.

Now he says, ye are gods, but you shall die like men, because you will bring down upon you your social structure. You will bring it down on your heads by the natural law of cause and effect. It will not be as the astronomers sometimes dream by a sideswipe from some wandering maverick planet. It will not be as the result of the insects taking over the earth as some naturalists prophesy morbidly.

It will be that man proves himself unfit to live and therefore must die like men, that he proves himself unfit to build and must watch his structure collapse around his ears. Your building, says the Holy Ghost, is worthless. It can’t last because all the foundations of humanity are out of plumb. And everybody knows that if you build a building upon a crooked foundation, your building will stand in imminent peril of falling. The higher you go and the heavier your superstructure, the more certain will be the collapse.

Now, the hope of the nations is deceitful. I wish that I might be able to be an optimist one time in my life if God would only allow me. I’d love to do it. I’d love to get up sometime and for 25 minutes or 45 minutes just stand here and spout optimism and tell you that I believe that the world is getting better. But I’d be a liar if I said it. The hope of the nations is deceitful. But the nations of the world, strangely, are seeking to make a sound, free world for themselves. And they’re promising it to the people.

I am not as old as I will be if I live ten years more. I’m older than I thought I was because I was in a restaurant tonight with my little girl. She’s 13 and looks older. And the waitress came up and wanted to know if that was my granddaughter. Imagine that, she needs glasses.

But I’ve been around quite a while, and I have seen quite a number of men get elected. I’ve seen three presidents elected on the promise that there wouldn’t be any war. Or if there was any, they’d get over it right away.

When I was just old enough to be interested in such a thing, Woodrow Wilson ran for the presidency on the slogan, he kept us out of war. And we elected him with a great big majority. And he was hardly inaugurated when he had to declare war on Germany. And we had three years of World War I.

There was a silver-voiced gentleman whom I never followed, but whom I can’t help but admire because he certainly was a big man. And with his New York accent, he told the trembling mothers of America, I say to you again and again and again that your sons will never fight on foreign soil. Three of mine did. That was World War II.

And in our horror of dying and blood and woe and prison camps, the American electorate last fall turned in fury on the man they thought had put them in Korea and listened to the voice of the man who said, if I’m elected, I’ll go over. No, I admire the gentleman that said it. I think he’s just a good, honest American, and a good and big American. But he opened his mouth a little too wide when he told us, or gave us to understand that he could bring war to a end. One hundred days he’s been in the White House, and they’re still dying in Korea. It’s not his fault.

The only fault would lie in a man saying they can when the whole world is stacked against them. They can’t. Woodrow Wilson meant well, but the foundations of the world are out of joint. Franklin Roosevelt never meant to betray the mothers when he said again and again, they’ll not go overseas. They did go. And Ike Eisenhower’s honest, Kansas heart meant what he said, that the foundations of the world are out of joint.

How long has it been since they were promising us the four freedoms? How long since they said we’ll fight this out and finish it and then we’ll never have any more war? We’ll have freedom from war. I think at that time they called it war. Freedom, they said, from war, because we hate war. But war we’ve had, brother. Go and ask those poor Koreans.

My son who fought in Korea said, Dad, it was touching and almost unbelievable a wave of war would sweep over a hillside. And there would be a little hut, and you’d see the old Korean with his tired old wife and a kid or two, and he’d get his belongings on his back and disappear into the woods or cave someplace, and the wave of war would pass over.

As soon as the last retreating soldier’s neck was, back of his neck was seen, they’d be right back in where they’d been before. Next week, the wave would come back the other way and out would go the Korean to the hills with his sack full of possessions. And as soon as the backs of the necks of the soldiers seen back, he was in his little hut again.

Go to Korea and say, are you free from war? Go to Indochina and ask that question. Go to Laos, where they’re rapidly engaged in the terrible business of losing their nation to the Communists. Ask them, are you free from war? No. It was all big, windy talk, this talk about freedom from war. And they said we were to have freedom of religion.

I’m just reminding us of what they said, freedom of religion. But we have gotten more persecution and had more religious troubles since the war ended than we had for decades before. Go to Columbia and ask our missionaries, is there freedom of religion there? No, of course not. Go to Palestine and inquire. Arab and Jews quarreling. Go to India.

Nehru has lately come out with an edict that nobody dares make converts there. No freedom of religion. Freedom from want, they said. The orators and the silver-tongued boys that yodel down the airways, vote for me and we’ll fix up this business. Everybody will have enough. Go into the dark places of the earth and inquire.

Our missionaries say, and all the good people tell us, such a percentage, and it’s a large, high percentage, never have enough to eat from the time they’re born till they die. No freedom from want.

And then freedom for the masses. No freedom for the masses. We have the greatest freedom in America, and I thank God we do. But there’s no freedom in Czechoslovakia. There’s no freedom in East Germany. There’s no freedom in Yugoslavia, nor in Russia, nor in China, nor in Manchuria, nor in Austria, nor wherever the heel of the Communists has gone, there’s no freedom. Freedom is a mirage.

And the relative and conditional freedom which we have in this country has been at the price of everlasting vigilance and eternal warfare to keep ourselves free. But the foundations of the world are out of plumb.

And the temple of freedom rests upon a foundation. It isn’t something that simply grows up like a dandelion without planting and without cultivation. There are great foundations that are there, and if those foundations are crooked, the building will be crooked. It’s just a question of time till it collapses.

These foundations foretell the future of the temple. Any builder can stand up and look at a foundation and know theoretically what will happen without ever waiting around. We built this building, we had on our board a gentleman who’s still with us.

I don’t know whether he’s here tonight, Mr. Marx, a structural engineer. And he could look at a few marks on a piece of paper and tell you whether the thing was structurally sound or not.

Somebody wrote him all enthusiastically, his daughter Esther, from up in New York State, and she told him about the building that the Alliance district had built at Rome, Delta Lake at Rome, and gave him a description of it. And he made a few marks on a piece of paper and said that building won’t stand, that it’ll collapse.

And that year, somewhere, I think in December, when the heavy snows came, it collapsed. It went down so flat that even the seats went down with it. It was a big tabernacle. Even the seats flattened out. There wasn’t anything around there that wasn’t as flat as a hymn book. He never saw the thing; he just heard the description of it.

You don’t have to be there if you have any imagination, brother. All you have to do is project what you know into what you don’t know, and you have what you known. See what I mean?

So, you don’t have to wait around to see whether Democrats or Republicans come out on top. All you have to do to project and foretell the future is to say, look at your foundations. If your foundations are solid, your superstructure will stand. If they’re not solid or if they’re crooked or out of line, it’ll go down, it can’t help it. You needn’t be a prophet; you only need to be a man with a bit of imagination and information.

Now let’s look at the foundations of human society. Sketch them out here a minute as we go along. One of the first is faith in God. It’s absolutely essential to the sanity of the human race that men believe rightly concerning God.

Put these down, if you will, for they constitute the foundations of society. And if they’re crooked, society will be crooked. And anything built upon crooked foundations is bound to collapse.

The day in which we live, faith in God is a rarity. Somebody will say, no, I know better, Mr. Tozer. There are more Bible schools and more big evangelists and more coast-to-coast broadcasts and more FMs and shortwaves and more Bibles printed and all that. I know that there’s more faith in God than there used to be.

Well, maybe, faith of a kind. But what kind of God is it people are believing in now? I ask you. They say that there’s a resurgence of religion in America, that more people are buying books about religion and more people are going to church than used to go to church. One man said, greatly encouraged, that there was, I think, sixty-some percent belong to churches now and only ten percent belong to churches in the days of the founding fathers. Therefore, the difference between ten percent and sixty-some percent is the difference in how good we are compared with how good we were then.

My friends, it’s impossible to be very much wronger than that. Faith in God doesn’t simply mean to have an area of your hide somewhere that’s sensitive to religion. That doesn’t mean that. You can find more carnal, unborn-again, self-centered old maids than you could bury in Grand Canyon who have religion and they’re sensitive toward it.

You can find more stoop-shouldered, weary old beaten-up men like me who have some sensitivity toward religion. You can find it. You can find men that live like the devil but they’re sensitive toward religion. And if an evangelist sweeps through and the excitement gets big enough, they’ll go to the meeting and swell the crowd and give a dollar and get counted and get photographed and it’ll look big.

But the catch is here. After it’s all over, the moral standards of the community are right where they were before. And whatever does not raise the moral standard of a church, or the community has not been a revival from God.

We have become too chummy with God altogether. We have dragged God down to our level in place of painstakingly trying to help Him to bring us to His, humanly speaking. And the God we believe in is not the sovereign God who judges men.

And when we believe in that kind of God, we’ll change our way of living, and we’ll change it for the better. And we’ll repent and we’ll reform, and we’ll turn to God, and we’ll cease to do evil and we’ll begin to do good. And we’ll put away our evil from us and we’ll turn from the world and turn hard unto God.

Seek to crucify our flesh and put on the new man which is renewed in holiness. Faith in God is all but gone. When the Son of Man cometh, will he find faith on the earth? So don’t you be taken in by statistics that tell you that more people belong to churches now than belonged in the days of our fathers.

In the days of our fathers, everybody except a rare infidel now and then, and he had been taken. But everybody went to church. Grandfather got up. Grandmother got up. Married couple got up. Then they dug their babies and children out of their beds and all fixed them all up. And washed them off and put clothing on them they hated thoroughly. They got into their starched clothes, out of their ginghams. And marched off to church and sat together in church through sermons an hour to two hours long. And rode there in a buggy and rode back in a buggy. Hayburners, if you please, took their time about getting there. And almost everybody went to church.

But nowadays almost everybody goes to church Easter and Christmas, and for the rest of the time they don’t. That’s number one. Faith in God. Any hope for the nations that is not built upon faith in God is a false hope and will collapse.

Then there’s love for our fellow men. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God and thy neighbor as thyself, love for our fellow men. But in place of that we have quarreling and lying and exploiting and competing to a shocking degree.

But did you happen to notice this? Since the beginning of the world there never has been more hatred among nations than today. And that hatred doesn’t cross the color line always. In fact, rarely does. It’s within the race itself. The presence of specific races is not the source of our trouble. Our trouble is the disease of our own hearts.

And the white Russian hates the white American. And twice within 25 years the white German tried to kill and destroy the white Englishman. Occasionally there’s race flare-ups between races. But mostly it’s within their own racial strain. It’s not race, brethren, it’s sin. Sin, sin, sin, sin. And the foundations of the world are out of focus, out of plumb, because we hate instead of love.

Then there’s a mutual trust, and that’s very close to what I’ve been saying before. Mutual trust among men and nations. Where is there any trust among nations? Do you trust a communist? Does he trust you? No. I wouldn’t believe a communist if he stood on the stack of 150 Bibles and swore by the beard of Lenin. I wouldn’t believe him. He’s a liar. He’s a liar from the beginning. He’s been taught to lie. Lying has become his religion. And hell has become his heaven. Sin has done all this.

So, there’s no trust among nations. And friends, if you can’t have trust among nations, you can’t have a lasting edifice of any sort. I might mention the relation of parents to children. Children to their parents has gone so badly out of plumb in the last 50 years, under the prodding of John Dewey and the Columbia School, and old maid preachers that wear trousers and shave, but have enough manhood to be able to tell the truth. There’s no obedience to parents left anymore. The foundations are upside down and out of joint.

And as soon as the children are able to earn their own money, they turn on their parents, scorned in a great many instances. And until there has been established a proper relationship between the parent and the child, there never can be a foundation that is strong. And until we have a strong and level foundation, we never can have a safe superstructure.

The English couldn’t whip us. Some fellow took a ride one time and said, the British are coming. You remember that? One lantern, if they’re on, coming in canoes, and another lantern if they’re walking. Remember that? That was Paul Revere. The English couldn’t beat us. The Indians couldn’t beat us, and the Spaniards couldn’t beat us, and the Germans couldn’t beat us.

And I’m not a jingoist, but I don’t believe the Russians can beat us. But I’ll tell you what can beat us. Our kids can beat us. They can beat us by grieving God Almighty and outraging divine justice, by violating the right relation between child and parent, and upsetting the normal order. That can beat us, because God will withdraw His defense and we’ll be left as helpless as was Samson after his hair was cut, the right relation between men and women in their respective places. The world is sowing a field of thorns.

Now my friend John R. Rice has written a book called Bossy Wives, Bobbed Hair, and what was it? I haven’t read the book and don’t intend to. I think I sketched it when it first came. And I don’t follow my friend John on that, but I will just tell you this much.

God made man, and He made woman. In spite of Christine Jorgensen, He made them different from each other. And He not only made them different from each other, He gave them different functions in society. But we have all mixed it up. Mixed it all up now until we don’t know one from the other. We say, isn’t that funny, Mr. Tozer? He’s such a cute fellow.

Yes, our old boy’s telling you some things somebody ought to tell you. And the proper relation between the sexes. I’m not talking now about immorality, that’s another field. I’m talking now about the right social place for both. We have violated the Scriptures, and we have violated common sense, we have violated the laws of biology. And we’re going to reap, and don’t you think we’re not going to reap? The foundations of the world are out of plumb.

And then I think also of our rapport with nature. Dr. Mason said, and rightly said, and I thought so much of it I wrote it into an editorial right away. Man was born in a garden.

Now why didn’t God build a city? He could have done it, made it out of plastic. God could have done that. Let there be a plastic city, and it came to pass there was a plastic city, and the morning and the evening were the ninth day. God could have made a plastic city and trimmed it in chrome. He could have done it, and placed man in it. And said, here you are, get on to that escalator, go up nine stories and come to the stories, and come down the elevator. God could have made a plastic city and put man in it.

He could have gone better; He could have made it out of gold. But He didn’t, He made a garden; worms in it, flowers and fruit, and all of it makes a garden. God put man in a garden. I think it was Milton that said, God made the country and man-made the city.

Now, we are losing our rapport. You French speakers please forgive; I don’t know whether any other word to use there except that bad French. But we have lost our rapport with nature. We are born in hospitals, laid out in mortuaries, and buried in memorial parks. If anything goes wrong with it, we are shot full of mold, penicillin or something. People live and die and never get off the sidewalk. We’ve lost our power.

Mr. Chase tells about some artists from Chicago that went down in Brown County, Indiana, for a little vacation and do a little painting. They were city fellows, and they slept down there in a little house in the woods among the beautiful rolling hills of Brown County.

I suppose they all more or less felt the same way about it, but it was the job of one fellow to shamelessly tell how he felt about it. He said, these birds are driving me crazy. He said, listen to them, I can’t stand that. He said, listen to them, birds, birds. And he got on the train and came back and listened to the elevator. He couldn’t stand birds. God put man in the garden and man says, I can’t stand birds. So, he comes back to listen to the elevator.

Some fellow said, who was it? I believe it was here in Chicago. Somebody said that New York was the dirtiest city in the world and this fella indignantly denied it. He said, New York isn’t as dirty as Chicago. He said, let the person that said that New York was dirty in Chicago feel our air between her thumb and fingers. He said, just let her take a little of our air and feel it like that and just see how dirty it is. And yet there are people that love it and look on a whore with a lovely worm with a fur coat or a bird that drives them crazy.

Now, of course, those are extreme. That’s not true of many people. A great many people love nature. So, they get a basket full of sardines and pickles and olives and they go out and have themselves a picnic and commune with nature among the sardine can.

But we’re as artificial as it’s possible to be, nevertheless. We’ve lost our rapport with the garden or with that best thing after the garden, the field in which God’s cast us. So, we’re going to pay a price for that? Oh yes.

One of my favorite writers as a younger fellow, he still is when I don’t have much time for him anymore, was William Wordsworth. My heart leaps up when I behold a rainbow in the sky. So was it when my life began, so is it now that I’m a man, so let it ever be or let me die.

One of my boys told me that the kids in the college or university where he got his degree referred to Wordsworth as Nature Boy. When they had to study Wordsworth, they scornfully referred to him as Nature Boy.

But his heart leaped up when he beheld a rainbow in the sky. And was he that talked about the cataracts blowing their trumpets from the hills, praising the art that could catch that cloud before it disappeared and put it in on a canvas and hold it there. He loved the world around him.

And our fathers loved the world around us. Strong men, they didn’t have any chlorophyll in those days, but they weren’t so confined, and the embarrassment was not so great. The big out-of-doors helped them out so that they didn’t need the chlorophyll. Why reeks the goat on yonder hill who seems to dote on chlorophyll. But they sell us chlorophyll nevertheless and all the rest. And we’re a bunch of artificial zoo animals.

Emerson said, every once in a while, take off your shoes and go out and walk on the ground. It’s good for you. Get in on the floor with the earth. He might have had something there. Try that sometime in your fourth-floor apartment.

And then I got one left and I’m through. Are you glad?

And this is very serious, and it is basic righteousness, justice, and honesty. If the blood of Jesus Christ can’t cure a man’s dishonesty, it can’t guarantee his entrance into the kingdom of heaven.

Our Salvation Army friends sing a song, when I reached the pearly gates, I’ll then put in my plea, I was once a guilty sinner, but Jesus died for me. I believe that. I believe it with all my heart. Supposing Jesus Christ came to me and said, son, you’ve been a sinner, but I’ll justify you by my blood. And I said, thank you, Lord Jesus. Thank you.

When it comes time for you to die or I come in the glory, you will enter into the presence of the Father with exceeding joy, all by my blood and righteousness. Thank you, Lord Jesus. Thank you. Another thing, son, my blood is going to cleanse you and make you clean. And my spirit is going to enter you and help you to live a right life. Thank you, Lord Jesus. Thank you.

But I found after 25 years of following Him that His blood didn’t cleanse. The Spirit couldn’t make you right, that Christianity didn’t have the power to make you live right. It didn’t. Now this is all hypothesis. I know better, of course. I’m talking from the other side for the moment.

So, I find after 25 years of praying and trying and reading and giving and listening to sermons, I find Christianity doesn’t work. And then you expect me to die in peace and say a Lord who lied to me once won’t lie to me again. The Savior that was too weak to save me from iniquity will be strong enough to take me boldly through the pearly gates. I wouldn’t believe it for a second yet.

A Savior that can’t save me from my sins now and here can’t have my confidence to save me from judgment in that great day. But he can do both, thank God. He can do both. I want no other argument. I want no other plea. It is enough that Jesus died and that He died for me.

I believe that. And I’m helped to believe it by the fact that that same Lord Jesus Christ can take a sinner and make a Christian out of him down here now, can clean him up and change him, put a new impulse within his heart and a new direction to his life and change him. He’s not a phony and he’s not selling you a bill of goods.

He’s promising you safety in the judgment and He’s proving that you’ll be safe in the judgment by demonstrating that right down here now He can give you a new heart and renew a right spirit within you. And the things you used to want to do, you don’t want to do. And the things you used to be careless about, you’re now doing with delight.

You used to hate your brother and now you love him. You used to be stingy and now you give generously to the Lord’s work. You used to be dirty-minded and now a dirty thought hurts you so bad you repent before God for it. You used to have sinful tendencies, but God’s cured them. God can lay solid foundations, ladies and gentlemen, He can. I don’t know whether He ever will for the nation of America or not. I doubt that very much.

I ought to be ashamed to say that. But I don’t know in this confused country of ours, the light we’ve had, the truth we’ve trampled under our feet, and the insults we’ve offered to God, the trying of God over the centuries.

Possibly we’ve sinned away our day and like Pompeii and Babylon and Assyria the future may see us pass from the scene if the Lord tarries. I don’t know that. But I do know that wherever righteousness is laid down by faith in God and Christ, there is a solid foundation. I do know that.

And I know that any religious individual, and I’m through in three minutes, less than three, any religious individual, anybody, that wants to be sure that his superstructure will stand in the eternal light of God only needs to build down upon the Rock, Christ Jesus. That’s all.

But if he builds on anything else, the foundations of his life are out of plumb. And no matter how high he goes; the collapse will only be the greater. So let us tonight, let us turn to Jesus Christ our Lord.

We’re units of society. I can’t help Chicago too much, nor the state of Illinois, nor the country, but as a unit of society, as one individual, I can lay my foundation solid down on repentance, down on the Book, down on high conceptions of the sovereign majesty of God, down on strong faith in the power of Jesus Christ to save me now and in the day of judgment. I can lay my foundations down on those, my building down on those foundations. So can you. Starting now, let us pray.

O Lord Jesus, we can feel the breath of hell on our necks. We hear his ugly, ominous growls. He hates us, and he hates our church, and he hates our people, and he hates us for God’s sake and Christ’s sake. And he hates to see foundations solid. He’ll undermine them. He’ll get us interested in something else, so we’ll lay crooked ones if he can. O God, we’re not scared in spite of it. We’re not frightened.

Jesus, Thou art our big Brother, our Lord. God has given Thee power in heaven and earth. All power is Thine. Thou hast made a show of principalities and powers and exposed them openly, defeated them and risen from the dead. Thou art seated at the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens. Thou hast sent Thy Holy Spirit here to the earth, and we thank Thee that He’s with us tonight and in us tonight.

Now we beseech thee, Lord Jesus, Thou wilt help us to go out and straighten our lives, straighten them reverently, tearfully if need be, before the throne of grace, with repentance and sorrow of heart and strong yearnings for righteousness and true holiness, so the foundations will be solid.

Lord, here’s a church. It isn’t a big one, but it’s a church. And we’re building on solid foundations. Eternity itself can’t eat away nor dissolve what we’re doing. But Father, look at our foundations. They’re crooked. They’re out of plumb.

O Lord, we tremble for that day when Thou wilt judge the deeds of every man. We shall stand and say, I wrought, I worked there in that church, I attended there, I went there.

O Lord, we pray that our church may be founded upon the solid foundations, so that all our money won’t be wasted, so that our prayers won’t be wasted, so that everything like the pieces of broken bread will be gathered up and nothing be lost.

Now we trust Thee to bless this Word spoken. We don’t claim anything for it, only that it’s true, that’s all. Send these friends out, we beseech Thee, to a week of strong faith and holy living and earnest prayer and Bible reading, worship, and faithful testimony, and honesty, and truth-telling, clean thinking, frugality with themselves and generosity with everybody else.

We ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Tags Judgement, Justice, Oppression

Messages

A.W. Tozer Talks

Post author By pshappard
Post date March 15, 2026

“The Law of Moral Gravitation“

The Law of Moral Gravitation Download

The Law of Moral Gravitation

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

November 25, 1956

Again, I want to talk about something that I would much rather avoid. One of these times, maybe over into January, I expect to finish, God willing, a series of sermons I began about eight years ago on the attributes of God. I preached 14 sermons, and I said I had six more left. And I want to pick that up and preach again a series, and you will hear about it because I want to announce it. And that I’m going to enjoy preaching.

This tonight I’m not, but tonight I’m to speak on the law of moral gravitation. And in Acts 1, the 15th verse and on, in those days Peter stood up and he said, Men and brethren, this Scripture must needs have been fulfilled which the Holy Ghost by the mouth of David spake concerning Judas, which was guide to them that took Jesus. For he was numbered with us and had obtained part of His ministry.

Now this man purchased a field with a reward of iniquity. And falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out. And it was known unto all the dwellers of Jerusalem, insomuch as that field is called in the proper tongue, Aceldama, this to say, the field of blood. For it is written in the book of Psalms, let his habitation be desolate, and let no man dwell therein, and his office let another take.

Wherefore, of these men which have accompanied with us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John unto the same day that He was taken up from us, must one be ordained to be a witness with us of His resurrection.

And they appointed two, Joseph, called Barsabbas, and Matthias. And they prayed and said, Thou, Lord, which knowest the hearts of all men, show which of these two thou hast chosen, that he may take part of this ministry in apostleship, from which Judas by transgression fell, that he might go to his own place. And they gave forth their lots, and it fell upon Matthias. He was numbered with the eleven.

Now, verse 25 is the verse that I want particularly to point to tonight. The apostleship, from which Judas by transgression fell, that he might go to his own place.

Now, that’s the text. And I want to talk about the operation of the law of moral gravitation. For the teaching in this verse, uttered by the Apostle in prayer, is undoubtedly that Judas went where he went because he belonged there. Now, that’s very plain. It doesn’t take a profound mind to see that. He fell away from the apostleship, that he might go to his own place.

Now, he was called elsewhere a son of perdition. And therefore, without being angry or abusive or even careless about it, we have a right to conclude that since he was a son of perdition, when he died and went to his own place, he went to perdition.

Now, this isn’t pleasant, and I don’t like to talk about such things, and I wish I didn’t need to. But this is the conclusion we arrive at from the Scriptures, that this man went where he went because he belonged where he went. No one got angry with Judas and in a fit of temper threw him into perdition.

Justice and righteousness and nature and moral intelligence and the cosmic fitness of things put him where he went as naturally as it’s possible to think. His nature had fitted him for that place, and he went where he was fitted to go. Just as a bird is fitted for the air and therefore spends a good deal of its time in the air, just as a fish is fitted for the water, and when a fish goes to the water, it goes to its own place, and when a bird goes to the air, it goes to its own place, and an earthworm, when it burrows in the earth, is burrowing in its own place.

And that’s no reflection on the bird. God made the bird to go there, and by law of natural gravitation it goes where it belongs. And no reflection on the fish nor the earthworm; God made them. They were fitted, one to burrow blind in the earth and the other to swim in the water.

Now there is a law of God that runs through all his universe, that everyone and everything will finally go to his own place. I want you to hear this, and you know that my method of Bible teaching and preaching is not to quote everlasting verses of Scripture and say Peter said this and John said that but read some verses and then try to find out what they meant.

And this is what the Holy Ghost meant when He said that Judas fell from his apostleship that he might go to his own place. What a horrible incongruity it would have been if Judas could have continued in his apostleship belonging in perdition.

Now about Daniel it says almost the same thing. The last verse of the book of Daniel says, Daniel rest and stand in thy lot at the end of the days. And another version says stand in thy allotted place at the end of the days. Daniel when the end of the days come will find himself automatically in his own place. And Judas will find himself automatically in his own place. And so will every one of us find ourselves in our own place.

Now the problem is where is your place and where is mine? I think that I have said this many times, but I doubt whether it gets a hold of people that the judgment will not decide the destiny of Daniel or Judas. We’re looking forward to a judgment that shall decide the destiny of man.

No, the judgment will simply confirm that which the moral operation of things already has declared. It may come as a surprise to men. It may come as a surprise to a lost man to find at the judgment day that he’s lost in that he thought he was saved, he was a church member, or thought he was good enough.

But as far as God’s concerned there will be no weighing of evidence at the judgment bar. Don’t think of the judgment of God as being a court trial where there’ll be lawyers for the defense and lawyers for the prosecution and witnesses on both side and a jury or a judge.

No, there will be a just and gentle monarch who will be Judge without a doubt. But all He will do will be to declare that which all the moral evidence has shown down the years and during the lives of the person who is affected. The judgment will not decide the destiny of Daniel. Thou shalt arise, said God, O Daniel, and shall stand in thy allotted place.

Look at another passage of Scripture in the Bible and notice what it teaches there. Almost the same thing. There’s the rich man and there’s Lazarus. Now we know that the rich man died and in hell he lifted up his eyes and we know that Lazarus died and went to Abraham’s bosom.

And we assume that because Lazarus died and went to Abraham’s bosom, therefore, and he was a very poor man and a beggar, that the poor men and beggars go to Abraham’s bosom and the rich man died and went to hell. Rich men go to hell. Now our Lord never taught this here. This has been introduced there. It’s not there. The rich man went to hell not because he was rich, but because he belonged there. He went to his own place, that’s all.

Abraham was also rich, and the Bible declares that he was. The Bible says Abraham was rich in camels and asses and sheep and goods and servants born in his own house, and he had much goods. Abraham was a rich man, but Abraham also was a man that got delivered from his riches and held them as if they weren’t his and got saved from them and lived a rich man in the earth, but a man completely free from the foul pollution of riches.

And then there was Job. Job also was a rich man and God stripped him, but God gave it all back to him sevenfold, so he’s richer at the end than he was in the beginning. And yet Job was a man after God’s own heart and a man that God called attention to in the very heaven itself and said, have you seen My servant, Job?

Now, this rich man who went to hell, went there, I say, by natural gravitation, by a moral magnetic attraction. He went there just as a bird goes to the air, a fish to the water and an earthworm to a burrowing in the ground. Then there was Lazarus, and it came to pass that Lazarus also died and went to Abraham’s bosom.

Now, why did Lazarus go to Abraham’s bosom? Because he was poor? No, because if that were the case, then a man’s financial status would determine his place, and it doesn’t. It may determine his place in the world, I grant you that. The man’s rich enough, why, he’ll be able to make a place for himself among men.

But you know the song they used to sing in the Billy’s Sunday meetings, the rich man was there, but his riches when death came had melted and faded away. A poor man, he stood in the judgment, his debt was too heavy to pay. That was an old bass solo they used to sing in Sunday’s day, and it was perfectly sound theology and good sound philosophy.

Lazarus did not go to Abraham’s tender bosom because he was poor, for the very man whose bosom he went to had been rich while he was on earth. The very Abraham who opened his bosom to Lazarus had been a rich man and the poor man he took into his bosom was way down, way down on the financial scale below him. And then think of the blind beggars. Now I say blind in quotation marks who aren’t blind at all.

Think of them, they put a tag on their chest to help the blind, but as soon as they get around the corner, they take it off and go look at the movie. They’re not blind, they’re just beggars, they’re poor. And think of the people who come where it’s permitted to the doors and bang on the door and say that they haven’t had anything to eat. They’re poor, but they’re liars. So, you can be a liar and a voluptuous and vicious pervert and still be as poor as a church mouse.

So, poverty didn’t put Lazarus in Abraham’s bosom, and riches didn’t put the rich man in hell. They both went where they belonged.

Now I’m glad to be able to say that to you tonight, my dear friends, that when you die you will go where you belong. You will not have an angry God grab you by the scurf of the neck and hurl you in a fit of temper into hell. You will not have a God in a burst of sentimentality pick you up and sweep you into heaven dramatically like an actress making an entree into a nightclub. You will go where you belong, ladies and gentlemen. There is a place which is called, your place.

Judas went to his own place and God never allowed the creature to come into the world that He didn’t have a place for him. And He never allowed a creature to live or die that didn’t have a natural place. And in the moral world there is a place where we gravitate to naturally. Heaven has for Lazarus’ soul a magnetic attraction.

Now a part of that song we sang tonight, a different verse, different stanza of it, this celestial country which we sing is, “Jerusalem, the Golden,” talks about the sheep flock from the goat herd shall part on either hand. And then he says this beautiful thing. He says, these, that is, the sheep, the goats, these shall pass to torment. And those, that is the sheep, shall triumph then. The new peculiar nation blessed number of blessed men; Jerusalem demands them. They paid the price on earth and now shall reap the harvest in blissfulness and mirth. The glorious holy people, whoever more relied upon their Chief and Savior, the King, the Crucified.

Jerusalem, that’s heaven, demands them. It was the poetic way of saying heaven. Heaven demands them. The man Lazarus couldn’t have gone to hell any more than an English sparrow could have swum ten feet down across the Atlantic Ocean, because that’s not the sparrow’s place. He doesn’t belong there. He doesn’t gravitate there by the law of nature. He belongs up on the telephone wire, on the eve of a house, chirping and quarreling and flying around. That’s where he belongs. Whales and fish belong in the water, but sparrows belong in the air.

And Jerusalem demanded. Abraham’s bosom had a moral attraction for the man Lazarus, and he went there by a demand. Jerusalem demands him. And I believe there are people walking around on this earth, I think there are people listening to me tonight, that heaven demands you.

When you know your heart no longer beats and you’re finished with this earthly pilgrimage, there’ll be no question of where you’ll go. Heaven demands you. You’ll belong there by the law of moral gravitation. You’ll go there as a steel filing will leap to a magnet. You will go to your own company. You will go to your own place.

And thou shalt sleep and thou shalt rise and stand in thine allotted place at the end of the days. I believe there are people maybe here tonight, I hope not, but I believe there are people here that hell demands. Hell demands them, I say, as the carrion demands the buzzard and as the darkness demands the sinner. So, hell demands some people.

Now I hate to do this, and I want you to forgive me, but I want to ask, where are you demanded? What’s demanding you? Where’s the attraction so strong that as soon as you stop breathing, you’ll zip there instantly? Where do you belong? Does hell demand you or does heaven?

Well, now some people say, well, Mr. Tozer, hell doesn’t demand me because in hell there will be murderers, and I never could feel at home there. And in hell there will be drunkards, and I couldn’t feel at home there. And there will be sex perverts there and I couldn’t feel at home there. And there will be assassins and whoremongers and the malicious and the hateful and I couldn’t feel at home with them. No, your heart revolts against them and so does mine. Your heart revolts and you wouldn’t feel at home there.

But let’s remember that in perdition the majority of people are not murderers. The majority of people are not drunkards and perverts. The majority of people who are demanded by perdition, demanded by a law of moral gravitation, they’ve got to go there and nothing can save them from it when they go.

Most of them are not whoremongers. They stayed clean from all that. Most of them are not assassins. Most of them are not malicious. They forgave people before they died. Most of them are not drunkards. If they drank, they controlled it. They were not wallowers in the streets. And would you feel at home among those who tell white lies and then shrug and laugh? Well, they’ll be there.

All the white liars will be there. Those who say, well, it’s a white lie. The secretary who lies for her boss and says he’s in conference when he’s at a ball game or he’s not in when he actually is in. The secretary who lies for her boss. She’s telling a white lie. She’ll be there. For all liars shall have their part.

All liars, all colored liars shall have their part. The black lie of a Judas or the white lie of a secretary. The merchant who says these goods are fresh when he knows he’s had them on his hands until he’s begun to wonder if he can get rid of them, that kind of white lying. The man who cheats on his income tax and tells a little lie about this. Goes out and spends $15 loosely and says it was to pay for a lunch for customers.

Well, they’re white lies, but white liars shall have their part in the lake of fire. You see, heaven has no magnetic attraction for them. Heaven does not demand a liar because there’s an incompatibility there. They couldn’t go there because heaven wouldn’t have them.

And then there’s the cheater and the lustful fellow and the fellow who’s got soiled speech and who can’t talk at a party even, who can’t talk with a group in the car without borderline dirty jokes. Now that fellow will be there and the lustful fellow will be there and the worldling will be there and the godless will be there and the prayerless and the irreverent, they’ll all be there and you’ll get along with them now. And some of you even seek their company.

And you’re here tonight, somebody brought you, but tomorrow you will seek the company of the white liars and the soiled people with soiled speech and the worldlings who know more about Elvis Presley than they do about David with his harp. And you seek their company because you belong there, you see.

Now I’d think this over, my brethren, and I wouldn’t take anything for granted. I want to ask you, would you feel at home in heaven? I hope you can all stand and say yes. I’m not going to vote you. I wouldn’t embarrass you.

I’m going to preach two weeks, one week from tomorrow at Moody Bible Institute to the faculty and students on, courtesy in the life of a minister. Somebody told me I knew nothing about it, but they’ve asked me to speak on the subject and I’m going to do it.

So, I wouldn’t be so discourteous as to vote you. But I do want to ask you the question, would you feel at home in heaven? For after all, the heart goes to its home. Being let go, they went to their own company.

The sailor who leaves the ship goes to his home. The sailor boy, the soldier boy in Germany or the Far East, wires home or cables home, he wants to come home. I know the awful homesickness of the military service. I was in for a short while in one of the wars. And I know the horrible homesickness. I know it. And my brethren, your heart is sick to be home. Your home demands you. It creates a vacuum. It sucks you back to where you belong.

And when the boy’s released, he immediately hits out for home, hits out for the old familiar place. That furniture he thought was a little tacky when he left looks like it, but it was made of gold when he comes back. Things he used to complain about when he went, before he went, now he thinks that it’s a gorgeous palace when he comes back. Your home demands you, because your heart is there.

And I want to ask you, would you feel at home in heaven? Would you feel at home in an atmosphere of perpetual worship? For that’s what heaven is going to be, an atmosphere of perpetual worship.

When I think how much drum beating and bell ringing and chime playing and tender organ playing we have to do to get people in the mood even to sing a worshipful song in this world of ours. When I think how many sermons it takes to get a fellow in the mood to even think spiritual thoughts.

Well, I wonder about some people when they get to heaven where they live in an atmosphere of perpetual worship. I don’t think that heaven is going to be a place where God’s on a throne and every other creature on their knees. I don’t think that at all. We’ll have too much to do. There’ll be a lot to do. Oh, we’ll have real saints to paint from, Magdalene, Peter, and Paul, and we’ll paint for an age at a sitting and we’ll never get weary at all. As the poet said, we’ll have lots to do there, but it’ll be done in an atmosphere of pure worship. It’ll be done in an atmosphere of doxology.

And some of you are bored to death with worship. There are people that have been going to this church for years and years and yet haven’t learned to like the type of songs we sing. They want something else. They want a rock and roll Elvis Pelvis type of song that they have in some places. They don’t want this other thing.

Oh, couldn’t we have some of the dear old numbers like, thank you, Lord, for saving my soul. Well, now that’s worship, brother. And the other thing is, it’s just a cheap imitation and there’ll be none of that in heaven, but I don’t think it’d even be any of that in hell. I’ll take that back. No, I don’t think so.

But some people are bored to death with a prayer meeting. Check on yourself, man. When have you been in your last prayer meeting? It bores you. Some of you say, well, I don’t like the way Tozer conducts them. Well, he only conducts them about half of the time. McAfee conducts them, Moore conducts them, Chase conducts them, visitors conduct, other people conduct them.

You simply don’t feel at home in a prayer meeting. And so when you die, do you think that that perpetual prayer meeting up there is going to demand you? It didn’t demand you down here. If it did, you were so far, you didn’t feel the magnetic attraction and you never showed up once. You showed up at every banquet, but you never showed up at any prayer meeting. And then you want me to believe that you’re going to die and go right sailing off to heaven like a Nike guided missile, straight to the throne of God. The throne of God will have an atmosphere of glorious worship around it.

And if you’re not at home here in an atmosphere of worship, how would you be at home then? There are some people to whom heaven would be an insufferable bore and they’ll never get there. Never, never, never. For there’s a law of moral gravitation that will put every one of us where we belong.

And then I wonder whether you would be at home in a place where God is enough. For most people, God isn’t enough. They have to have God and something else, but God is enough in heaven. The beatific vision, the sight of his face will be enough.

I wonder if you would be at home where all the conversation was about the Lamb, all the conversation up there is about the Lamb. And we redeemed sinners will be telling the unredeemed, that is, those who didn’t have to be redeemed, the holy ones, we’ll be telling them about our experiences and how we fell and were brought back again. And the angels that desire to look into these holy things, their eyes will shine as a Jerry McCauley and a John Newton and a John Bunyan and a Billy Sunday, or you or me, tell the story of redeeming love.

And the song that Brother McAfee sings sometimes says that the angels cannot sing because they never knew what it was to fall. But we knew and we can tell them. And the conversation will be about the Lamb. And you’re embarrassed when anybody talks about Jesus in the company where you are, and yet you’re a Christian. Well, do you think that you’re going to feel at home where everybody talks about Jesus, where nobody will mention the Yankees, nobody will mention politics, nobody will mention cards, nobody will mention the latest TV fad, nobody will mention anything. Everybody will talk about Jesus. You’re not at home in a company like that now. How could you be at home in a company like that then?

I ask you, what demands you? What is it that pulls your heart by moral magnetism? And I want you to think over now these two places. Which is your place?

But somebody says, Mr. Tozer, you’re presenting an either-or and it isn’t fair. You are making a block of black and a block of white and setting them together and say, take your choice. But the fact is different.

I believe that I expect to change. I know that heaven doesn’t demand me now because there’s nothing in me that’s like heaven. I know it, but I expect to change and be fitted for heaven.

Well, then I want to ask you a question. When will that change take place? It didn’t take place last year, did it? We’re coming to the end of 1956, and it didn’t take place. It didn’t take place last month or this month and we’re nearly the end of November. It didn’t take place last week and it didn’t take place yesterday and it’s not taking place tonight. When’s that change going to take place? You successfully resisted that change up to now and you found your pleasures and your interests elsewhere. How can you hope then that that change will ever take place?

But you say, Mr. Tozer, it’ll take place in death. I suppose that it’s hard to conceive of anything sillier than that. Is death going to do what the blood of the Lamb couldn’t do?

If I die of polio, is polio going to sanctify me? Is a heart attack that knocks me over on the sidewalk going to make me fit for heaven? Is there anything in leprosy that’s going to make me a pure man if I’m not a pure man now? Going to change my attitudes from earth to heaven and from here to there and from man to God and from sin to righteousness? No, it’s foolish to think that death will sanctify anybody, or death will purify anybody.

But our friends, the Catholics say that purgatory is the place, and they frankly admit up to now they could have gone along with me. Any Catholic theologian would have gone along with me up to here and he’d have said you’re perfectly right sir, you’re perfectly right.

By a law of gravitation, we’ll go where we belong but if you’re not quite ready for heaven why there’s a place called purgatory where you can get ready? Well now I wish that were so and I’d like to believe it. It would be to take a lot of pressure off of a lot of people.

But tell me, I hold a Bible in my hand, I hold a Bible in my hand. Not only do I hold a Bible in my hand but up in my study I have Catholic Bibles, whole Catholic Bibles. Not one line anywhere, not one line, but you say there’s a Scripture that you Protestants throw out, and in that Scripture, it teaches that. That’s not so.

I know the books and I’ve read the books that the Catholics put in. They’re called the apocryphal books and there’s not one line in the apocryphal Scriptures that says there is a cooling off place or a heating up place or a purgation, a place where you can make a fellow ready for heaven who isn’t ready now, not a place.

And on the other hand, I don’t want to be humorous about this, but it does have a strain of facetiousness in it because you see in order to get out the purgatory you have to have masses said and in order to have masses said you have to have money.

So I could visualize a man dying just before the stock market blew up and he expected his rich friends to bail him out and just after 20 minutes after he died the stock market blew up and the depression came and his friends would lose everything and wouldn’t have money to pay for masses.

How do you expect to get out, brother, if you’re in purgatory and you think that if you had no moral attraction for heaven now you’re attracted the other way but you’re still a Christian you’ve been sprinkled and worked over and massaged and had things done to you and you expect to go to heaven but you say I’m not fit to go but they’ll get they’ll get me out of purgatory by the masses.

And suppose that there’s a law passed suddenly that no masses dare be said and there will be when the antichrist reigns or suppose that I say again your folks who pay for your masses suddenly get so poor they can’t pay for steak and I’m telling you this if it comes to a difference between eating or saying a mass to get you out they’ll eat, they’ll eat. Don’t be too starry-eyed about all this, they’ll eat. Not only they’ll eat but they’ll buy automobiles too and cars and coats and they’ll just let you roast there.

Now my brothers and sisters I say this only to show how utterly foolish it is to think that if I have a nature that doesn’t fit me for heaven now and there’s no moral tug in my heart toward that place but that an honest examination proves that the moral tugs in the other direction and yet I hope to make it by that halfway house we call purgatory we’d better watch that.

The simple fact is there’s not a word of truth in it and there’s nowhere in the Bible. It was made up by men who stood up and said Latin masses were drunk the choir boys had to hold them up to keep them from tumbling down. It was made up by men who had nothing else to do and there’s not a line in the Bible, not a line. After death is the judgment.

And Lazarus died and went to the bosom of Abraham, and the rich man died and in hell he lifted up his eyes, no halfway house there. Each went to his own place. Where is yours?

But somebody says, Mr Tozer, again you’re wrong. I have accepted Christ. I have accepted Christ and by accepting Christ, I have a mantle, a cloak, I have His righteousness attributed to me. I know that I feel at home among white liars and cheats. I know that I chuckle at dirty jokes. I know that I’m a bit worldly. I know that I’m somewhat prayerless. I know that I’m a bit bored in a prayer meeting. I know that I don’t feel at home in an atmosphere of worship, and I get embarrassed a little when they talk about Jesus in a group. I admit all that, but I’ve accepted Jesus and that’s all I need.

Listen, where does your heart belong? You accept Jesus you say, and it didn’t change your heart. You accepted Jesus and it didn’t change the inner life of you. Why Paul didn’t talk that way about it. Paul said, if any man be in Christ, he’s a new creature. Old things have passed away and lo, everything’s become new. And the old gravitational tug that used to pull him that way, he accepts Christ, and now it pulls him toward this way now.

Isn’t it possible that this accepting Christ fools a lot of people; they think merely that going through that is all we need. Well, that’s all we need provided a change takes place. But if the change doesn’t take place, then we only think we’ve accepted Christ. We only think we’re converted. Paul said if any man be in Christ, he’s a new creation and those old things will pass away now. I don’t expect young Christians to be as rich and wonderful as old Christians.

Oh, I got a letter from brother Rimel who used to be among us here. He helped us put this building up and one of our fine men, and a physical condition made him move to Arizona where the climate was hot and dry and he’s all right there. But I got a letter from him and you that knew him, and he wouldn’t mind a bit and he may even hear me say this because it’s taking on tape and he gets the tapes. I didn’t think about that but I’m going to go on. And this good brother Rimel.

Why, I remember him when he was pretty sharp spoken fellow, pretty tactless and he’ll grin when he hears this, if he does, pretty tactless fellow. He could walk up to you looking in the eye and tell you your pedigree about as nicely as anybody.

I got a letter from him the other the other day. Oh, what a tender, beautiful letter it was; how rich and kind and friendly and cordial and warm it was. And he says, I don’t in no matter, where I go or who I hear, nobody will ever take your place in my heart, Brother Tozer. And your sermons and your preaching, and the dear people back home.

Why he’s down there in Arizona but his heart’s back here. All you’d have to do would be to cut his shoelaces and he’d fly back here by moral gravitation. God has given that fellow a new rich thing. He’s getting to be a middle-aged man now, and that’s the way it ought to work. That’s the way it ought to be.

Some of you accepted Christ 10 years ago, but you’re still, still if you were suddenly to die, all you’d have would be the hope the personal worker gave you. You’re not a new creature. Nothing has changed in you. You’re not different.

Ah, my brother, true salvation fits us for heaven and heaven demands us. And the man who’s been renewed by the operation of the Holy Ghost in true conversion, heaven demands that man. And he could not go to hell, he could not go to hell. Heaven demands him. Heaven is a vacuum into which his soul will rush when he dies, because morally that’s where he belongs; spiritually that’s where he belongs.

But you say, what shall I do then? I say repent. That was what the prophets all said. That was the first thing John the Baptist said. That was the first thing Jesus said. That was the first thing Peter said at Pentecost; the first thing Paul said when he was filled with the Holy Ghost later on in Acts. And that’s what they preached all down the years. That was the first thing Finney said, and the first thing the great revivalists have said, repent, repent!

If your heart is still unfitted for heaven, then you need to repent because when you repent, really repent and change and believe and seek and ask and knock and find, you’ll find there will be a wonderful gravitational tug.

Judas fell from his apostleship that he might go to his own place. I’m so sorry his own place was not purgatory, but that worse state. What do they call, limbo, I think that’s the time. Well, anyhow, you don’t get out of there. They throw the key away.

But purgatory, there’s a chance. There was no purgatory for Judas—perdition, perdition. I’m so sorry. I wish it were otherwise, but I can’t change God’s Word. And the Scripture tells me that I’m to be a good servant of Jesus Christ and a good minister and tell the whole truth and I’d like to preach on the goodness of God and the 53rd of Isaiah and the book of John for the rest of my life, but I can’t do it. I’ve got to tell people there is a law that permeates the universe from the far star to the soul of man and it is that everything finds its own place.

And right now, we’re all mixed up because sin has come into our human world, and for the time being, we’re all mixed up. But as soon as we’re dead or as soon as judgment comes, everybody will find his own place. Where is your place?

Brother McAfee told me he heard a song on the radio. I’m sorry I didn’t hear it in, but second hand, and I can’t tell it as well as he could. He was so horrified he was physically sick. He said he heard a group sing about the great production in the sky, the great show that was being put on in the glory land. Who all was there? Al Jolson was there, the follies girls that used to kick so high that they kicked the moon down, and Jean Harlow, yes, and all the rest. They were all there. And it said the greatest production of all and why shouldn’t it be when God was the director putting it on.

You see, brethren, a lot of those people have accepted Christ they said, but that didn’t change them not a bit. What did Jean Harlow belong up there? What does Al Jolson belong up there. What is Earl Carol doing up there? What is Al Capone doing up there? What are they doing up there? They would be out of their place.

There’s Peter, oh yes, Peter belongs there. Sure, Peter, old clumsy, tumbling Peter, he belongs there because God did what Peter said, gave him the nature of God. And Paul, old fiery-eyed Paul that breathed out threatening and slaughtering, that Paul there, he belongs there. Why? Because he said, I am the least of the apostle and unworthy to live and I ought to die, but God in his mercy saved me. He belongs there.

There they are, that grand parade. You want me to tell you something, friends, tonight and close. I had this in my notes and took it out, but I want to say this to you. If justice without mercy were done, and there were no cross and no Christ and no Redeemer, it would be the inevitable operation of the law of God that I should go to hell. I, A.W. Tozer, I, in my natural life, in my nature, I belonged there and belong there as certainly as the earthworm in the earth.

And if only justice were done, kind justice, but justice, without a Redeemer and without a cross and without a Savior, I wouldn’t belong in heaven any more than I belong not a thousand times as near as I belong eating beside the Pope in Rome or the Queen in England. I’m not a member of that outfit and I’d be out of place there. I wouldn’t belong there.

But O grace, sweet grace, supernal, has all my sins washed away. And by that infinite grace of God, I feel the upward tug. Not by nature, not by education, not by character, not by merit, not by virtue, not by faithfulness, not by prayer, not by any of those things, but by the infinite mercy of God that changed me.

I wanted you to know that’s I felt about that. I wanted you to hear me say, for if I died without an advocate above, I’d plunge instantly by the law of moral gravitation to hell. But there’s another nature that stirs within me. Every Christian is spiritually pregnant with a life that stirs and moves and kicks within him. It’s another life from another world and he can’t go to hell. He goes to God’s heaven as a bird rushes to the air or as air rushes into a vacuum. The seed of God is in him.

Oh, my friend, is that your condition? Can you say it’s true of you? If you can’t, I say, repent, believe, quit your sins, throw yourself out on the mercy of God, and God will renew you within and put within you his own nature and the root of the matter will lie in you. And though you won’t be a perfect Saint, there will be a magnet.

I have on my desk, a horseshoe magnet somebody gave me as a paperweight, a very heavy thing for as little as it is, very heavy and powerful. And when I set it down on a little thing I get kidded about up there, it has everything, paper clips and rubber bands and thumbtacks and bobby pins that I pick up here and there over the church as I walk through and all sorts of things. I put that magnet down there. Some of those things jump to it at once. Others lie there unconcerned. They go where they belong. Steel leaps to steel. But the buttons and the pennies and other things that aren’t steel, they just lie there unaffected.

So, heaven is a magnet that some people feel its pull and leap to it. Heaven demands them. What demands you? Let’s pray.

I’m going to pray and we’re going to close. But before we do pray, in order that we might pray intelligently, are there those who would say pray for me, Mr. Tozer? Now whatever the need may be, whatever it may be, God bless you, sir, I see your hand. And yours back there, sir, I see yours, and yours, sir. And yours, sir. And yours, lady. And yours, sir. Six men and one woman have asked us to pray. Who else? Let us unite. Yes, I see you, ma’am. Six men and two women. Let us pray.

God, our Father, God, our Father, Thou hast made us and we’re glad. Were glad we were ever born. Glad our tired mothers ever brought us into the world. Glad that we ever saw the sunrise. Glad that we learned to speak and see and hear. Glad, O God, we’re glad we’re alive. Glad we’re human beings, and not earthworms or bugs. Glad thou didst make us in thine image. Oh, we’re glad tonight.

Father, we’ve sinned, we’ve suffered, we’ve disappointed Thee and disappointed our friends, disappointed ourselves, tumbled around and we can look far down the mountain where we wandered many years, often troubled in our journey by the ghosts of doubt and fears, and it’s all true of us.

But we thank Thee for redemption in His blood. We thank Thee for the best and dearest Father who loved us and who loves, and who in pollution saved us and from our pollution lathed and delivered us. We thank Thee, thank Thee, Lord, tonight for redemption. Thank Thee for redemption.

Now, Father, for these eight persons who’ve asked us to pray, Father, wilt Thou search them as with a candle. Wilt Thou search them as with a candle, and grant our Father, we pray Thee, that before they close their eyes in sleep tonight, that any doubt they have will be swept away as the billows of the sea sweep things from rocks, as the wind in its fury sweeps away the leaves.

Sweep away from their hearts; cleanse, we pray Thee, by a mighty purgation, whatever hinders them. Take away, we pray Thee, those heavy weights that load them down, and put within them, we pray Thee, by the new birth, the magnet that feels the tug of Jerusalem above.

Great God, it’s a clear case of which, and we pray for all these friends. We pray that this week they won’t let their work and eating and sleeping and drinking and bathing and talking and reading the newspaper, they’ll not let those things hinder them from seeking Thy face with an urgency and fervor they’ve never known before.

We pray Thou deliver from habits. That Thou will go through, O Lord, and purge, and let the fiery purgation of the Holy Ghost cleanse their hearts. And let the blood roll over their souls, and deliver them so that whatever comes, life or death, they’ll know that they belong up there, and that there’s a vacuum up there waiting for them, into which they’ll rush sweetly, beautifully when they die.

God, if there be those here tonight, and any of those who raised their hand might be, and know in their deep, honest hearts tonight, that the magnetic pulls downward. We pray Thee, God, make a change this night. No later, Lord, we can’t afford to wait. We commit them to thee.

And now, Father, we join to pray for this boy who is ill, who is brought here from Lombard. We pray for his physical deliverance. It is written that they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. And, Lord, we’ve been afraid of that, and we’ve shied away from it and all, but it’s there. And we’re Thy believers, and we’re Christians. And so, we have a right to believe, Lord, that when Thou dost offer us something, that we’re supposed to take it.

And so, wilt Thou bless us. And as we later gather a little group to pray, O come on us with the gift of faith, and of prayer that we might pray the prayer of faith. Amen.

Tags Destiny, Judgement, Repentance

Messages

Tozer Talks

Post author By pshappard
Post date April 20, 2025

“The Voice of God’s Judgement”

PDF Download Download

The Voice of God’s Judgement

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

July 5, 1953

This talk tonight will be number five in a series of talks on Voices that Entreat Us. And I have been speaking on the voice of God’s love, the voice of Jesus’ blood, the voice of wisdom, the voice of conscience, and tonight on the voice of judgment. In attempting to prepare this message for tonight, I searched the Word and found myself, strangely enough, unable to get past, or away from the house of God.

So I must speak tonight about judgment as it pertains to the house of God, to Christians, rather than to sinners. And I want to read a number of passages of Scripture, Romans 14:12, so then every one of us shall give account of himself to God. 1 Corinthians 3:13, every man’s work shall be made manifest, for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire, and the fire shall try every man’s work.

1 Corinthians 4:5, therefore, judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness and will make manifest the counsels of the heart. And then shall every man have praise of God. 2 Corinthians 5:10, For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that everyone may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad, knowing therefore the terror of the Lord we persuade men. Now, that’s part of the Scripture that I shall use in speaking tonight of the voice of God’s judgment entreating us.

Now, let me begin by calling attention to a well-authenticated historic fact, and it is that religious people are prone to select a favored truth and to hold that truth at the expense of other truths. Now you say, maybe in your heart, I know that’s true because I know a man. No, I don’t mean that. I mean that we, the sheep of God’s pasture, the children of His love, the so-called orthodox people who believe the truth and hold to traditional Christianity, we, are prone to select and favor, say, one truth at the expense of the other truths that are in the Bible, and to overemphasize that one truth so as to obscure other truths which are just as important.

I can’t think of anything drier than this. A young fellow, Brother Sandrock’s boy, was telling me with much delight today, because the joke was on me, I mean Mr. Sandrock’s boy said, let’s go down to Junior Church. It’s not so dry down there. I admit it’s dry, but if you listen, you’ll get something.

And that is that the historic records show that we are prone to take certain truths and favor them at the expense of others, and by overemphasizing them, we obscure other truths which are just as important, so that they actually disappear for generations.

Now I want to tell you what I mean by disappear. I mean that they fall into disuse. Suppose that there was a key on the piano over here and let us suppose that it just didn’t play. It just didn’t play, that’s all. It didn’t play. It’s out. And now somehow our friend could get on in an evening, but if it was somewhere up near the middle of the keyboard where it’s often used, he’d have a time of it, and he’d always be wincing under the fact that he hit the key and that nothing happened. It wouldn’t be removed from there, and if you’d photograph the keyboard, you’d find it in a picture, and if you were to run up and down the scale, you’d find your finger would touch it, but it just didn’t play.

Now that’s what I mean by certain basic doctrines of the Christian faith that have been allowed to fall into disuse, so that they just don’t play. You don’t hear them. They’re not talked about. They’re there, and if you go to the book of discipline, the statement of doctrine, you’ll find it there, because it’ll say that we do firmly hold this truth, and they’ll have it number seven there in their creed, but it has fallen into disuse. It just doesn’t play, and it has no emphasis and no power because it is slurred over and forgotten.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, there are certain great Bible truths which fall into disuse because certain other truths which lie close to them have been overemphasized to the obscuring of those truths, and then those truths, the absence of them, begins to do its deadly work, and down and down and down we go until finally some prophet of God has to come and reassert those truths and emphasize them and trumpet them forth. And at first he’s considered a heretic because he hadn’t heard that for a generation or two; that hadn’t been heard since great-grandpappy’s time, and I didn’t hear it at camp meeting last year. I didn’t hear it at that Bible conference. I didn’t hear it over here at this convention. I didn’t hear it out at that council. I didn’t hear it at the playground of the Christian world. I just didn’t hear it. Therefore, it isn’t so.

But the prophet of God keeps on blasting and trumpeting until the church wakes and adopts that truth and does something about it, and then some kind of a life comes from the dead. What did Luther do? Invent a new doctrine? He did not. He dug a doctrine out which had fallen into desuetude and never was heard, and by sounding the trumpet blast of justification by faith, he brought about the Reformation.

What did Wesley do? Not invent any new doctrine, but by sounding forth a forgotten doctrine that it was possible to have purity of heart, he roused the church.

And so, with every man who has ever been used of God tremendously in any generation from Calvary down to this hour, they have not preached any new truth. They have simply had the anointed vision to discover truths that had been obscured by the overemphasis of certain other truths, and at first, they were considered heretics and stoned out of town, but after a while the church listened to them and began to wake up, and they that slept awake from the dead, and God gave them life.

Now that’s introductory to say this, that justification by faith has become such a doctrine as this. It has been emphasized to a point where it has obscured certain other close related truths, and we have lost the power of those truths because we have overemphasized one truth.

Now ladies and gentlemen, it would be very difficult for any man to be eloquent enough to overstate the vital importance of justification by faith. The man shall live by his faith, and it is not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us. And it is through faith that we come into this state wherein we now find ourselves. Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God.

Now I say it would be very difficult to overstate the importance of the doctrine of justification by faith, because it delivers us from the fruitless struggle to be good. It delivers us from the bondage of the Pharisee and the bondage of the ritualist and the legalist who attempt by certain foods or by abstaining from them, by counting your telling beads so many times before breakfast and keeping certain holy days and certain feasts to make themselves presentable to God.

It is old Adam decking himself out in his best religious garments for the sake of impressing God Almighty and getting an in so that he’ll be taken in at last as having been a man who served the Lord faithfully all the days of his life.

Now that is the bondage some of our fathers fell into because the doctrine of justification was obscured. It was dropped out of the teachings of the church. And so, they had holy beads and holy water and holy everything, and the sacred hearts of this and sacred hearts of that, and days to eat and days to abstain from eating.

And they tried to make themselves acceptable to God by money and by all sorts of methods. Then along came a man and with no new truth, but digging up an old one buried and forgotten in the Bible, he said, it’s not by works of righteousness, but it’s by faith that we are pleasing to God. And immediately the Reformation was born and the Church of Christ got up out of her long sleep. And like the dry bones in Ezekiel’s vision, she walked and stood up a great army.

And then the doctrine of justification by faith has been emphasized until now. It has been thrown out of focus as badly as the opposite was before Luther’s time. So that as it is now understood and preached and emphasized and hammered on and twanged on by everybody and his brother up and down the country, here is what has happened. All responsibility has been thrown over upon God and we conceive ourselves to be happy little Christians without a responsibility in the wide world except to give out a tract occasionally. And all sense of accountability has been lost.

We no longer sing except with our fingers crossed a charge to keep I have because we have emphasized the automatic quality of faith to a point where if you believe and accept Christ, all responsibility goes off your shoulder for all time to come and all accountability passes from you to the Savior and you’re not accountable to God anymore. You simply get in the Pullman sleeper, pull down the bed out of the wall and wake up in the depot in heaven.

And also, all judgment has been bypassed. Christians aren’t thinking of judgment anymore. They’re not worried about judgment. The only thing I can ever get a Christian worried about is that he might lose what we call fellowship, that he might not be as happy tomorrow as he was the day or happy the day after tomorrow as he was yesterday. He wants to be happy, happy, sing it all together now, happy, happy, happy. He wants to be a happy little moron.

And so, the result is, that he says, now I’ve got to learn to keep my fellowship up, so I’ll be happy. But the idea of a probationary period, that there is a judgment to come, that he is accountable to God for the deeds done in the body according to these texts, has completely passed out of the theological thinking of the modern fundamentalist church.

And faith has become a kind of magic, having beneficial properties which accrue to the man who believes. And they accrue to him no matter what his state of life may be. They’re automatic. They accrue to him. He believes; therefore, it accrues. And regardless of the moral condition of the man, whether he’s obedient or not, how faithful he is, or what kind of Christian he is, he believes or has believed, and therefore the automatic benefits of this magic faith accrue to him now and in the world to come.

Now, this has obscured a Bible truth, the Bible truth that I want to deal with tonight. It is a true doctrine pushed out of focus. It is the doctrine of faith and grace and justification by faith alone, pushed by uncorrected logic to a ridiculous and grotesque extreme.

Now let’s talk about this doctrine of probation. I say that we don’t hear this very often, and I admit that in standing before this intelligent audience tonight, Bible-taught audience, I feel very much like a heretic. I feel as if I should be branded and perhaps put in the stocks. Maybe I would have been in the early days of our country. But the Bible still teaches the doctrine of probation.

Now what do we mean by probation? We mean that this life is a preparation for the next, and that that preparation is not concluded when I believe on Jesus Christ for my salvation. There is a preparation that goes on beyond that.

We take the thief on the cross who believed in Jesus Christ and met him in paradise the same day, and we make that to be the criterion by which we judge the whole thing. And so we believe in Christ, and that prepares us. We are then prepared, and there is no such thing then as probation, as testing, as judgment to come, nothing like that now in modern theology.

And the man that will rise and declare it, may throw himself open to bitter attacks by persons who have forgotten the beginning of this sermon, the truth of it, that it’s possible to take a good doctrine and to push just as good doctrines out of the Bible with it.

That’s what happened in our day, ladies and gentlemen. I don’t think I’ll ever be the man to reform anything. I’m getting too old, and I’ve sinned too much against God in my time. I don’t think he’ll trust me with it. But I do say this, somebody may yet arise in America who is willing to be unpopular and to be thought a heretic and a fool, who will be willing to endure the heartache and agony and misunderstanding of daring to face out and stare down the hierarchy that has said that the doctrine of probation is not biblical, that we are, everything is taken care of by one act of faith, and there’s no such thing as a judgment nor an expectation of a judgment to come.

Now, I say that the doctrine of probation teaches that life is a preparation, this life is a preparation for the next, and that accepting Jesus Christ settles some things forever. It settles forever my past sins. It settles forever my justification before my Father. It settles forever that my name is written in the Lamb’s book of life. It settles that I am a regenerated man, and the seed of God is in me. It settles that. That’s what accepting Christ does.

But our mistake is that we forget that we Christians are on probation. All Christians are now on probation to prove character and to test us for the world to come, to see what we’ll do with the light when we’ve been given, to test our repentance, how real it is, to test our obedience, whether we plan to be an obedient Christian or not, to prove our faithfulness, to see what we’ll do with time and gifts and opportunities and money.

But because we have emphasized the doctrine of justification by faith to the obscuration of this doctrine, there’s practically nothing at all said anymore ever by anybody about the fact that you and I are going to have to give an account to God for our time, your years and my years.

We’re going to have to give an account to God with the gifts we have, for the gifts we have. We’re going to have to give an account to God for the opportunities, that is, the situations which enabled us to act that we didn’t take advantage of.

We’re going to have to give an account to God for the money we have. We’re riding high in America now. Our dollars, they just lie, just fly around like leaves in the fall. Everybody’s got money now.

I know a boy that wanted to get a little quick money in the summertime between semesters, so he’d go back to school. He got a laborer’s job in a factory. He worked overtime one day and made thirty dollars, which was two weeks’ wages in 1933. Thirty dollars in one day, a laborer.

Now, we’ve got all kinds of money, and most of us are overlooking this, that we are on probation, and God is testing us to see what we’re going to do with that money. Nothing to giggle about, boys. Nothing to smile about. This is a serious and grave situation, that God has given to us Americans more money than to any other people in all the world, in all history. And we have taken it as a matter of course and tossed it around as loosely as dandelions.

Now, there’s nothing I can do about that. I might just as well sit down and shut up, because I know you people, you’ll do as you please anyway. But you’re on probation, and God is going to hold you accountable for what you do with your money. And He’s going to hold you accountable for what you do with your abilities. Every man according to his ability, said the Holy Ghost.

And he’s going to hold you accountable for what you do with your time. You say, now Brother Tozer, you stay out of our business. I’ll do what I please with my time. Well, I know that. But I also know you’re on probation, and God is now testing you to find out if you have moral sense enough to know what to do with time.

Time is a creature gift which God has given you, but he hasn’t given it to you foolishly. He has given it to you to see whether you have moral wisdom enough to know what to do with it. And the result of that testing will be seen in the judgment of the great day. Now, I say that every Christian is saved, but on trial.

And every Christian is awaiting the final severe test. Look at this test. Every man’s work shall be made manifest, for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire.

Now, he’s not talking about communists here. He is talking about born-again believers. He’s talking about his own children. He’s writing to the Corinthian church. And he’s even talking in this instance about the servants of the Lord who teach. And he says that every man’s work shall be made manifest for the day. Paul used that word as a solemn catchword. The day, he would say, the day.

One man said that Paul lived with one eye on the judgment seat of Christ and one eye on the perishing world. Only we’ve forgotten the judgment seat of Christ, and we’re so happy that we’re saved that we have forgotten that we are men and women on trial. Not for our sins, for our past record. That would damn us forever, too deep ever, to find our way out of the hell where we’d be placed.

But we’re on trial for whether we have moral wisdom enough and moral courage enough and faithfulness sufficient to be able to know what to do with this hour and these moments and this day and time and money and opportunity and the times in which we live. There’s a great deal of groaning and bemoaning the times crushed between the nutcracker of communism on one side, liberalism and Catholicism on the other side.

And I could spend the next five hours describing the dark side of the times in which we live. But they’re God’s gift to you, sir. God sent some Jews down into Babylon where they knew not the language, hung their harps, some of them did on the willows.

But there were certain ones that were tested there. Daniel and his brethren, they were tested men, and the times they lived in became the very acid, to test them and prove to God what kind of men they were. And I won’t be coward enough to wish for one minute that I lived in any better times than these.

I don’t wish for one minute that I lived in any better city than Chicago. I know it’s rotten. I know it. And I know that we’re a great top-heavy country, and we might come crashing down as other empires and nations have done. But I don’t wish myself in any other period of the world’s history. These times are God Almighty’s gift to me as a Christian, and I’m on probation and God is seeing what one of the least of his servants is going to do about the times in which he lives.

Justified and saved, but on trial, there’s where the Christian should hold himself. But we’re so eager to get out from under all responsibility, and like an unbroken colt, romp from one side of the field to the other, kick up our irresponsible heels in the sunshine, and snort our defiance of all judgment.

And ladies and gentlemen, we had better, while we can, listen to this rather pessimistic preacher, and be warned in time that you and I are on probation.

Now, you can get away with almost anything now. And the reason we Christians can get away with almost anything is that this is not a period of judgment, this is a period of probation. If this was a period of judgment, you’d sin and the Lord would let you down, the Lord would punish you immediately, the Lord would prove to you immediately that you weren’t worthy of his kingdom.

But this is not a day of judgment, this is a day of probation. This is the period of probation, and the Holy Ghost says, therefore, judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come who will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness and will make manifest the counsels of the heart. Then shall every man have praise of God.

So this is not the judgment day, this is a period of probation. If I were to put it around like this, this is not the trial, this is the preparation for the trial. This is not the last examination; this is the getting ready for the examination.

Now, doesn’t this sound like strange doctrine to be coming in a fundamentalist church in the city of Chicago in the year 1953 A.D.? For it is simply all out of harmony with everything you hear. Polly and the cracker. Polly wants a cracker, he says. And if you put a ribbon around his neck and teach him to say Polly wants the cracker in a high-cracked voice, you get a reputation of being somebody.

And the crowds will rush in to hear this Polly say Polly wants a cracker as no other Polly ever said it. You should come and hear that bird. You should come down and hear him, he’s wonderful. He says Polly wants a cracker in a tone and with an inflection you’ve never heard before, but he’s awful careful to stick to his one lone text, Polly wants a cracker. He doesn’t dare get out of that, he doesn’t dare change his text, he has to say the one thing that he’s been told to say and taught to say.

So, the idea of probation and a period of trial when God gets us ready to be judged in that day, not for our salvation, understand, I insist justification makes us justified and that settles that, but whether we’re fit to live in God’s heaven among God’s great, whether we’re morally and spiritually wise enough and good enough that you say we’ve got to be because we’re clothed in His righteousness alone. Yes sir, clothed in His righteousness alone, faultless to stand before the throne. And if it were not for that you wouldn’t appear before the judgment seat of Christ, you’d appear before the judgment of the great white throne and with the lost of all the ages be judged. But I’m talking about something else altogether.

Now, I admit that sometimes, according to the Bible, God’s people can get so out of hand that God has to precipitate judgment. First Corinthians 11th chapter says there, let a man examine himself for he that eateth and drinketh unworthily eateth and drinketh judgment to himself not discerning the Lord’s body for this cause many are weak and sickly among you and many sleep.

And if this teaches anything, it teaches that at the Lord’s table, at least at one time, things had become so sacrilegious, so irreverent that God did not wait for the day of judgment, the testing day to decide what to do. He precipitated the judgment and allowed some of these Corinthians to become physically weak and sickly and some of them to die before their time because they handled holy things in an unholy manner.

At the Lord’s table, they were irreverent and drunken. Because they were, God reached out and pulled the judgment in a little for them. I say sometimes God does that, but for the most part He does not. For the most part, He simply lets us go because we’re on trial, saved but on trial. This is a period of probation for the world to come.

But you say, Mr. Tozer, if I thought that, I never could be a happy Christian. If I thought that there was a time coming when my deeds were to be tested and judged, my life was to be examined by the eye of God, I never could be quite a happy Christian.

Well, there are two or three answers to that. One of them is that the Bible makes a great deal less of your being happy than it does of your being holy. The Bible doctrine is a doctrine of holiness, not necessarily a doctrine of happiness. And to my mind, one of the proofs of the infantilism, the spiritual infantilism of the church of Christ today, is that we insist upon being happy and let hell freeze over. We’ll be happy anyhow. We had better not seek to be happy.

We had better seek to discharge our spiritual obligations and then believe that in so doing God will allow an overtone of spirituality to accrue to us and the joy of the Lord will come. Paul used to write his letters weeping and wet the paper with his dropping tears, and at the same time have a joy that wouldn’t stay down.

There’s your paradox, beloved friend. It’s possible to be solemn and serious and grave with the thought that I am in a period of probation, that I am a probationer, and that sometime I’ll stand before the judgment seat of Christ to give an account of the deeds done in the body, at the same time to have a well of joy springing up within my heart.

But the average Christian in our day trusts to what he believes to be the magic of faith that automatically fixes everything up for him for all time to come. So, he’s on board, streamers waving, whistles blowing, and the band playing.

No, that’s not Christianity, brethren. Read your Bible with the thought in mind that I’ve given you tonight. Read it. Try to think your way past all this notion that’s been funneled into our heads in the last few years and try to remember that a Christian is one who’s justified but on trial, who is saved but on probation. Are you following me?

You say, all right then, Mr. Tozer, are you saying that I won’t know whether I’m saved or not until the judgment day? If you still think that’s what I mean after all I’ve said tonight, you and I might as well shake hands and quit because I never can make you see it.

I have said boldly that that’s not what I mean. I mean that I am saved by faith and forgiven and justified and regenerated and protected by the Advocate at the right hand of the Father, all by faith. But at the same time, I’m a man on trial still.

For all shall appear before the judgment seat of Christ to receive the things done in the body, whether they be bad or good. And every man’s work shall be tested by fire, for the fire shall declare it. Now that’s in the Bible too, but we’ve obscured that doctrine. Our Plymouth brethren friends occasionally refer to it. They call it the Bema, the judgment seat. That’s, I guess, the original Greek, and they like to use occasional original Greek.

You know, we all do to make folks believe it. Well, anyway, this Bema business, you see, but you don’t hear it emphasized much. The average man isn’t worried as half as much about the Bema as he is about Life magazine and how popular he’ll be and how much money he’ll have and all the rest. But this bothers me. I don’t know about you, but it bothers me.

Now, this whole doctrine is set forth by our Lord in Matthew 25. He tells there the story of the man who went into a far country. Before he went, he called his servants in. He had just had three. He gave one of them five talents, he gave one of them two, and he gave one of them one, each one according to his ability. They couldn’t complain because one man had five talents worth of ability, one man had two, one man had one, each got what he deserved. Now he said, use these, I’ll be back.

The man that got five began to use them. The man that got three began to use them. The man that got one buried his. After a while, the Lord returned. This man returned and called his servants in.

Now, while he was gone, they could have done just as they pleased. They could have spent that money at a card table. They could have done what they pleased with it, and nobody would have judged them. They could have written books, led singing, sung solos, preached sermons, been on boards, run prayer bands, young folk societies, Sunday schools, edited magazines. They could have done all those things and still squandered their master’s money and foolishly betrayed his trust. Still, they could have been as religious as a cross between a Muhammadan and a Buddhist. But when he came back, he just called them in.

They were on probation during his absence. Two of them knew it and one of them didn’t. One of them, two of them, one said, I used your money wisely, here it is, with interest. The other one said the same. The other one said, I was afraid, and so I hid the money. And the Lord said to the ones that he approved, he said, well done, good and faithful servants. You’ve been faithful over a few things. I will make thee rule over many.

Now, those three servants didn’t know that they were on trial. He didn’t tell them that. He just said, here, use this, and went away. But they were on trial, and the [Lord] had promotions ready for those men. And when he came back, he promoted two of them and cast the other one out. What are you going to do with that passage?

Now, the ultra-dispensationalists, they have gotten rid of it by saying that Matthew doesn’t belong to us. I just as soon believe the modernist when he says Isaiah doesn’t belong to us, as to believe the dispensationalist when he says Matthew doesn’t belong to us.

I’m not going to have books of the Bible ripped out from under my nose just when I’m getting a stomach full of the green pastures by some dispensationalist who says, That’s not for you, brother, just a minute. You need not eat from Abraham’s book. Abraham and I are brethren, and he lets me come to his table and nibble with him? Sure.

And I don’t believe any dispensationalist needs to get excited for fear I’m going to get blessed on a verse that he has marked verboten. No, sir. Good German words, isn’t it? Oh, did I miss one? I thought I had.

But this verboten business, I forbid you to use that, brother Tozer. It’s not for you. Rightly divide the word of truth. Oh, get on out. I’ll take the word of God, and this book of God was given me. It’s not all about me, but it’s all for me. It’s one of the rules at Moody Institute, and it’s a good rule.

Now, I ask you tonight, brethren, whether this is not an eloquent voice. It is an eloquent voice to me. People say to me, why don’t you take it easy? Get rid of some jobs and take it easy. I can’t do it. I can’t do it. I’ve wasted so much of my time. People say, Oh, you’re such a busy man. If they knew how much time was wasted. I ask you if this is not eloquent, this voice, not mine, but the voice of probation, the voice of judgment.

And remember that there is not and there will not be one lonely friend. See, when we get under conviction now and get feeling low and feeling bad, we can run to our friends, a little religious talk, a little chitchat about the Church, about the evangelists and about this and that, pretty soon we feel better. But in that day, there won’t be a friend, for every man shall give an account of his own deeds. And there won’t be one lonely friend to go to for help.

In that hour, when our smiling but serious Father and our gracious and kindly faced but serious Savior call us to their feet and say, now, my redeemed children, I must have an account of the deeds done in the body since you were saved. I must now have an account.

What about the money that you got in your lifetime, and I gave you a lot of it. What about the abilities that you have, so many more abilities than lots of people? What about the times in which you lived, when you could shine as a star in the darkness? What did you do about it? What about it?

There will be no place to hide then, brethren. No running to a soda fountain and nurse on a malted milk while we laugh away and joke away the seriousness of it.

You can’t do it then, too late then. You can do it now. Some of you are going to do it just as soon as we’re over here now in the next few minutes. Maybe you’ll go home because it looks as if it’s going to storm, but normally you wouldn’t go home, you’d go somewhere and joke off tonight’s sermon. Because you’ve forgotten you’re on probation. You have tried to settle everything by one act of believing. You settle some things by one act of believing, I’ve insisted, but there are some that aren’t ever settled until death cuts us off or until the Lord comes.

Now, what is the way of all this? The way is the way of self-judgment. If we should judge ourselves, we should not be judged–self-judgment and obedience. I want to warn against one thing. I want to warn against the tragic moral error of always confessing and yet never making any change in the life.

When you confess a thing, it goes without saying that you intend to abandon it. So instead of forever confessing, I must confess and abandon it, if God is going to believe my confession, so self-judgment and obedience.

Oh, I say, we don’t sing anymore the song that has this stanza in it. Arm me with jealous care as in thy sight to live, and O thy servant, Lord, prepare, a strict account to give. Someone says, if I believed I had to give a strict account and serve in the eyes of God, I never could be happy. The man that wrote that was only one jump short of hysterically happy. That was Charles Wesley.

That man was so spiritually happy, that old Dr. Samuel Johnson, the English philologist and critic, said of John Wesley, he is the loftiest example of complete moral happiness that I have ever seen. And his brother Charles was happier still, if there could be any difference. Happy in God and in Christ, and yet he said, arm me with jealous care as in thy sight to live, and O thy servant, Lord, prepare a strict account to give.

He believed he was on probation. He could sing, arise, my soul, arise, shake off thy guilty fears, the bleeding sacrifice in thy behalf appears. Before the throne my surety stands, my name is written on His hands. He could sing that, but he could also sing, and O thy servant, Lord, prepare a strict account to give. We’re having ourselves a time that never came down from heaven. It doesn’t sparkle with the pure shine from the waters underneath the altar.

But we’re determined to be happy if we can burst a lung that we forget we’re on probation, and that your day-by-day service to God and your fellow man will be sharply scrutinized and severely judged before the feet of Jesus Christ in that day. To me, that’s an eloquent argument. What do you think about it?

Tags Judgement