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A.W. Tozer Talks

“The Law of Moral Gravitation“

The Law of Moral GravitationDownload

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.

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“The Voice of God’s Judgement”

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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?