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“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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A.W. Tozer Talks

“Death Is Not the Worst Thing“

Death Is Not the Worst ThingDownload
A.W. Tozer Talks · Death Is Not the Worst Thing

Death Is Not the Worst Thing

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

May 24, 1959

Please turn to Revelation 9, and we’ll read it together, that is, we’ll read it responsibly, all taking part in it. We’ll go over this chapter, chapter 9 of the book of Revelation, reading responsibly.

And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit. And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit. And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power.

And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree; but only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads. And to them it was given that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months: and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion, when he striketh a man.

And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them. And the shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared unto battle; and on their heads were as it were crowns like gold, and their faces were as the faces of men. And they had hair as the hair of women, and their teeth were as the teeth of lions. And they had breastplates, as it were breastplates of iron; and the sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots of many horses running to battle. And they had tails like unto scorpions, and there were stings in their tails: and their power was to hurt men five months.

And they had a king over them, which is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon.

12 One woe is past; and, behold, there come two woes more hereafter. And the sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God, Saying to the sixth angel which had the trumpet, Loose the four angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates.

And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of men. And the number of the army of the horsemen were two hundred thousand thousand: and I heard the number of them. And thus I saw the horses in the vision, and them that sat on them, having breastplates of fire, and of jacinth, and brimstone: and the heads of the horses were as the heads of lions; and out of their mouths issued fire and smoke and brimstone.

By these three was the third part of men killed, by the fire, and by the smoke, and by the brimstone, which issued out of their mouths. For their power is in their mouth, and in their tails: for their tails were like unto serpents, and had heads, and with them they do hurt. And the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood: which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk: Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts.

Now, you have heard, of course, on the radio today that the great Secretary of State, former Secretary of State, has died. And you may have also heard that there will be coming from Geneva, the foreign secretaries of England, France, and Russia, along with our own Herter, back for the funeral which will take place on Wednesday.

These are important things. That Geneva conference, which will be resumed, I presume, after the funeral. But we have read tonight, within the compass of twenty-one verses, truth so vastly much more important that the day will be when we, looking back with the wisdom of hindsight, as they say, looking back upon ourselves, this May, so that we may be able to remember this Sunday of 1959, we will say how foolish we were to be interested in anything else but the revelation of God, which is a light shining in a dark place.

Now, in this ninth chapter of the book of Revelation, we will touch some high spots in it. But you will know, if you have been listening to me over the last few Sunday nights, that my method in this series, and in fact I should say that my method generally, has not been to attempt to interpret all the symbols.

The Bible is a book of symbols. It has a great many as it weres and like untos. Do you notice that? The Bible rarely leaves you stuck with a symbol. It smooths it and softens it and takes the sharp edge off and says it is like unto and it is as it were.

The reason for all this is that the intensity and immensity of spiritual things is so great, the two being one, it is so great that human language will scarcely avail, it will not avail, to express it. So we fall back upon these symbols and the as it weres and like untos and after the appearance of as you find in the Bible so much.

Now, I say that it is not my intention to try to interpret these symbols nor force every passage to fit a pattern. I rather pity the man who starts out with a foregone conclusion and then trims every passage to fit it. When I first began to study the Bible, I of course was indoctrinated immediately into prophecy as a young man, and I still have an old Bible with a wide margin. I went over that Bible when I was too young to know any better, and I explained everything in the margin.

And all the passage I said, now this fits into verse 4 over here, and then further on it says, and that belongs to over here, and there never was a Daniel that knew more about where everything belonged than I did. But you see, that’s when I was a young man and didn’t know any better. But now I would not attempt to force every passage to fit a pattern.

It is far better to come to God and say, O God, thou knowest all things, and I do not. Thou art in heaven and I am on earth, and then expect God to give you a direct truth, the direct revelation to your heart of what things mean, than to try to take truth and bend it and shave it and fashion it to fit preconceived ideas.

You know, there was a Greek man once. He was an old rounder, a kind of a gangster, we would say now, and he had a very nice house. He kept an inn and had a nice house. His name was Procrustes, and he had a bed there, and as a sort of a lark, a sadistic prank, he would force everybody that stopped by for a glass of water and a bite to eat before they left, he would take them in and make them lie on his bed. And if they were too short, he called in his servants and stretched them to fit it. And if they were too long, he chopped them off. And that has been known ever since as the bed of Procrustes.

Well, Bible teaching can be like that if we don’t watch. We can start out with the bed already decided upon. We know how long it ought to be. We don’t make any allowance for some people being a little shorties and other people being tall. We say this is how tall people ought to be. And whether it’s more painful to be stretched to fit or cut off to fit, I leave it to those who underwent that terrible agony.

But I wonder if the Word of God breathes and bleeds and lives and suffers and feels, if sometimes when we in our attempt to show that our Procrustes’ bed is the only length that we can pull the verses of God’s word to fit them and cut others off. I have found places where it said in the margin that there were seven points there and I counted eight. I’ve done that over and over. And I found only six at times. But we’ll pass by that. And I’ll point out that we will attempt tonight to see what this is saying to me now.

Suppose that I could tell you that I could give this to you in detail and tell you exactly who the star fallen from heaven was, and what the bottomless pit is, the pit of the abyss, and exactly what the key of the bottomless pit is, and what the smoke is that comes out of the pit, and what happens when the sun is darkened and the air by reason of the smoke. And if I could tell you exactly who these creatures were that came up in verse 7 as the shapes of locusts, like under horses prepared under battle, with hair, the hair of women.

Now what locusts would be doing looking like horses and having women’s hair? If I could tell you all these details, I don’t mean to make light, I only mean to say that I cannot stretch all these on that bed of Procrustes because I do not quite know what they all mean. Now I don’t. But if I could tell you what about those breastplates and the sound of the chariot running to battle, and who Abaddon is, and Apollyon, if I knew all these, and the angels of the Euphrates, the four angels that had been bound in the great river Euphrates, if I could tell you all that, still there is something that would be missing. And that that would be missing is what I want to try to find here tonight.

In other words, certain great underlying spiritual truths that are here and that are discoverable and that stick up like mountain peaks above the clouds to see, they’re here. So tonight, instead of trying to explain all this, if you wanted it explained, there are hundreds of preachers who will be glad to do it for you. But let me, instead of making careful explanations of all this, let me say to you what this terrible, awful, wonderful ninth chapter said to me.

Living as we live now in this 1959 coming into summer, some of us old, some of us young, some of us middle-aged, some women, some men, some married, some single, and some well-off and some having to scrape the bottom of the barrel, a general cross-section of a city like ours, what does this say to me? What can I get out of it?

Now, with your patience, I want to give you five truths here that I find sticking right up at me, saying, here, here, if you don’t know every detail here, you know this.

First one, I’d like to have you take them down. First one is that the world is essentially spiritual. You will notice here that we see things happening on the earth. There are strange and terrible things happening on the earth. There were locusts upon the earth and given power like scorpions. They were commanded not to hurt the grass. In those days, men seek death and not find it. There were locusts unlike unto horses.

There was one-third of the population of the earth that was slain and had fire and smoke and brimstone were issuing out of the mouths of certain mysterious creatures walking about on the earth.

Now, that’s what we see on the earth. But do you notice here in this chapter that all of this issued out of another world altogether? In the book of Hebrews, it says that the things that are seen do not originate with the things that are seen. That the visible comes out of the invisible. The material comes out of the spiritual. The earthly comes out of the divine.

And here we see it illustrated again. Now, this is something, brethren, that the great leaders don’t know. They don’t know it. We’re trying to discover how we can fight Russia. And I have wondered whether I ought not personally, myself, to study more carefully on this terrible plague that has come upon the earth we call communism. And I have wondered whether I ought not, myself, to throw myself into the battle to save the free, Christian world from this terrible plague of bubonic locusts that is moving over the earth and eating and killing and destroying everything as they move.

Yet I say unto you that this bubonic plague, this plague of rabid locusts did not originate on the earth. That is, they were born and lived down here. But the reason they are what they are and are as they are is a spiritual thing.

Adolf Hitler cannot be explained by psychology and the shape of his bone and his skull structure. He’s got to be explained by realizing that everything in this world is spiritual in essence and comes out of a spiritual world.

All of this terrible, frightful, fearful thing that we find here in the ninth chapter of Revelation as taking place on the earth got its start in that place, they call the pit of the abyss, the bottomless pit. It got its start by a fallen angel, not a falling one, but a fallen one, a star, a star that had come down, that had fallen, perhaps that star that once shone on the throne of God. It was a spiritual thing.

When they came to Jesus and began to talk about what they’d seen on earth, he said, I saw Satan as lightning fall from heaven. He knew that the origin of evil was a spiritual origin, and He also taught that the origin of righteousness is a spiritual thing. He taught that goodness that God accepts is not the goodness of mechanical acts, but it originates in the spirit. He also taught that evil was not the unwashed hands or the breaking of one or another day, but it was a wrong spirit.

This is a spiritual world, my brethren, and the visible world is a manifestation of spirit. We only see the external things, and we desperately try to understand them, but we can’t understand them because we have decided that the things which are can be explained by the things which are, that the things which are visible can be explained by the things which are visible. And all this is wrong.

The things that are seen can only be explained by the things that are not seen. And all of our psychological and nervous and physical and social and political problems are spiritual in their essence. This is what the world has forgotten, and this is what I see in this chapter. I see this terrible, this terrible, these armies moving upon the earth. Where did they come from? They got their start in the pit of the abyss. I see Apollyon and Abaddon, the call of the destroyer, and I see men die.

I see one man out of every three die on the face of the earth. I see corpses piled pyramid high. And then I try to explain it. I explain it by saying, well, it was a wrong choice made back there at Versailles. It was a wrong choice made at Potsdam. It was a wrong choice when we elected so-and-so and didn’t elect the other man.

Those are not the explanations, my brethren. The explanations lie back of all that and behind all that. They talk now about so much; we hear it everywhere. Every program on the radio is interrupted to tell us that we’ve got to give to the folks with mental trouble. How is it? What is the percentage? I’ve forgotten for the moment, but one out of every four people in every hospital bed in America are there for mental troubles? And we’re trying to understand it.

I talked to a good brother who used to be, well, he is still, used to be a psychiatrist. He was another denomination, a very learned fellow, a practicing psychiatrist, but he’s going to be an Alliance missionary now. I wanted him to know that I wanted him to get away from the psychiatry, so I called him a head shrinker. He took it good-naturedly, but I said, Doctor, this head shrinking now, are you through with it?

He said he felt that a man with a Bible, or at least he agreed with me, that a wise, prayerful man with a New Testament could do more than all the head shrinkers in the world, because the head shrinker is looking for natural causes, whereas the man with the book in his hand knows that everything has a spiritual cause. And if you want to solve your problem, go to God and get a spiritual solution. You and I are not men with souls, we are souls with bodies. And it’s not the body that matters, it’s the soul, it’s the spirit of the man.

Now, the springs of human conduct Jesus taught are spiritual, and that even fleshly sins, however gross they may be, even fleshly sins, are the outflow of the poisoned spiritual springs lower down. Out of the heart are the issues of life, that’s an Old Testament quotation, and Jesus said, Out of the heart proceedeth adulteries and fornications, and He named a whole list of sins and said they proceeded out of the heart.

It was this that set Jesus off above and apart from and placed Him beyond the other religious teachers. He knew that you could only explain politics if you knew about heaven and the bottomless pit. He knew you could only account for a Hitler or a Khrushchev if you knew about the bottomless pit or heaven.

He knew that you could only explain a Lincoln by heaven or hell, not by his body structure or his skull shape. He knew it. Jesus knew all this and He taught it. And of course, He was kicked out and finally crucified. He was rejected and crucified because He did teach this very thing.

Well, that’s point number one. We learn that the woes of the world are not the result of the, cannot be explained by any chains of cause and effect here, but that they are the result of something that lies deeper. That should have really been the sermon tonight. I shouldn’t have attempted to go any further than that because there’s so much more to be said and I don’t want to stop there.

There’s so much more to be said about this. You can argue and talk until we’re red in the face or black in the face, and when it’s all over, what a church is spiritual is what a church is finally. What a man is in his spirit is what the man is finally, and there’s nothing else that can be said about it.

And when this earth gives up her bones and her blood and her woes and her wars, it’ll be because there’s one who will come down like rain upon the mown grass from another world and will introduce new spiritual things into the world. And when men are no longer tempted, it’ll be because one is taken out of this world and put in the bottomless pit and chained there.

Now the second point is, right now in this world, this moment in history, the world hasn’t seen anything yet. That’s your second point. We’re trying to work it out. I want to be patient. I want to be a patient man. I’ve never been a patient man, but I would like to be patient, and I would like to understand, and I would like to be patient with men who go and try to confer with gangsters. I’d like to be patient, but I can’t be, because I do not believe that there’s going to be peace on this earth. I do not believe that. I wish I could believe it.

I saw our latest acquisition, no hair, red face, mouth that you could put this in easily, today, our latest, 16th. And I think of those little fellows and their children after that. And I’d like to believe that this would be a good world. I think of Becky and my family, and it’ll be living on. And I wish that I could say, oh, well, cheer up. I believe in the essential goodness of mankind. I don’t believe in anything of the sort.

I believe the world hasn’t seen anything yet. You can take all your gas chambers and all your concentration camps and all your decimation of populations and all your sinking of ships and all the rest and add them all together for the last fifty years, and when it’s all over, you’ll have to say the world hasn’t seen anything yet. This has always been a harsh, a violent world, a bloody, a sinful world, a tear-stained, a terror-filled world. It’s always been because of the price of the monstrous inversion.

What is that monstrous inversion is what I’ve been trying to tell you in point number one, that the roots and sources and springs of the world are spiritual, and men insist upon declaring that they’re natural and that they are material, and we try to explain ourselves by the laws of nature and forget that we were made at once in the image of God and that we’re fallen angels, so to speak, although of course we were never angels, we were human beings.

And we’re fallen, and this monstrous inversion is accepting the natural man as the right man and forgetting that the source and the springs of our existence are spiritual, and going down to the level of the beasts that perish in the vain hope that somebody somewhere will find a way.

Somebody will find a way, we say. Only one more conference, one more. And they say so plaintively that you could cry, we’ll keep the door open, we won’t close the door to any possible hope of peace, and I’m for them, and I hope for the best, but I haven’t any hope because it’s a vain hope that somebody will find a way; that peace shall come to the earth and men shall brothers be for all that and all that, and they shall beat their swords into pruning hooks and their spears into plowshares and sit under their own vine and fig tree.

It will never be till He comes, whose right it is to reign. When He who is the Lord of Peace, the Prince of Peace, when He comes, He will introduce a new spiritual principle into the world. Then it will come. But because the conduct and doings of the world spring out of spiritual fountains, it’ll never be until that time. Never, never, never.

So, I can’t hope, for the hope is vain, and the voice of prophecy cries out against our hope, cries out against the hope that we shall be able to get along with Russia. Cries out against the hope that if we all learn the English language or some other language and all intermarry and integrate and get together and love each other and put our arms around each other, all will be well.

It’ll never be so, because the voice of the prophets cried down the centuries, and the echo of their voices continue to cry, no, no, that there will be wars and rumors of wars and nations shall rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom, and it shall continue to be so till he comes who is the Prince of Peace. The world has seen nothing yet, but I wish I could say otherwise. I wish, I wish that I could say otherwise.

I get invited to the weirdest places, you know, I really do. I get invited to the oddest places. I don’t know why, because what I write and what I say I think is plain enough, people know where I stand.

But they want me to join this, there’s a psychic, a psychic, what do they call it, I don’t remember, but they’re psychic, and they want me to join them, you know. And I don’t believe in that psychic stuff, a woman down in a rented basement room with a weird babushka on her head looking into a bowl of blood and telling the future of mankind, I’d run like the devil to get away from that, wouldn’t you? I would. I remember.

I remember Saul went to the witch of Endor and he came limping back to die the next day in battle after he’d had his round with the witch of Endor. I want nothing to do with it. I believe there’s such a thing as being psychic. Psychic just means of the soul.

McAfee tells of the American businessman that went to Europe to do Europe, and when he came back, they asked him what it was in Europe that impressed him the most, and he said he thought that it was in an art gallery in Rome, the statue of Persuchus. Well, psyche, psyche is what he, I guess, meant to say.

But anyhow, this psyche, the soul, it’s possible to be of the soul, but if you trust your soul, brother, you’ll be worshipping Persuchus, because it’s spirit that matters. It’s a man’s spirit, and the root of our conduct is a spiritual thing. And the world hasn’t seen anything yet. God help us. God help these little fellows.

I saw a little girl. And she was so tiny that she hadn’t learned to walk straight, and she’s kind of wobbling while she ran. She was running down the sidewalk here, and I stopped her and said, hi. And she stopped and looked up at me, and I said, where are you going? She said, toe, which meant store.

And I looked in her two little black hands and there wasn’t a penny, so I stuck a nickel in. And she left me in a whirl of dust, starting for the store out here. I think of them, little black ones and little yellow ones and little white ones, little blonde ones and little brunette ones, all around the world.

And the world hasn’t seen anything yet. It has seen wars that last 30 years. It has seen pogroms and persecutions and assassinations and massacres, but it hasn’t seen anything yet.

Third point is that death isn’t the worst thing that can happen to you. For I read in this chapter that situations in those days of the tribulation are such that men seek death and desire to die, but death flees from them, and they cannot find it. Death isn’t the worst thing that can happen to you.

If the devil can make you believe that the most desirable thing in the world is to live and the most awful thing is to die, the devil has succeeded in cheating you pretty well. My friend, death is not the worst thing that can happen to you, for just out ahead of us in this very world where we live, there will be a situation that will pinch the spirits and bodies of men until they want to die and can’t and would look to death as a relief but can’t find it.

Now for the Christian, death is a journey into the eternal world. Death is a quick space flight to the celestial country. Death is what Paul wanted. It’s a triumph and a victory and a rest and an eternal delight.

Our brother here tonight used a phrase that I’m going to pick it up, a rediscovery of the old hymns. I think also there ought to be a rediscovery of a place where good people go when they die. You know, there was a day of the Methodists and the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians and others in other Protestant countries when they looked forward to heaven with a shine on their faces.

And then along came the prophecy teachers, and I’m one of them, and we changed heaven into an eschatology. And now it’s eschatology and future events, and what Daniel saw. And I think of the ignorant preacher one time, Jerry Zimmerzill heard, he said, what did Daniel saw? I’ll tell you what he seen. And Daniel seen all right, and we are more concerned with what Daniel saw than we are with Jerusalem, the golden, with milk and honey, blessed.

At council, a committee on memorials, you know what the committee on memorials is? They get up and they say in the nicest language they know and in a solemn tone of voice, on August the 14th, there are left these earthly shores, the reverend, so and so, our brother. And on September the 3rd, there went to be with his Savior, sister, her savior sister, so and so, the wife of thus and thus.

And there’s a long list of them now. The Alliance is growing and we have a long list. And while they were reading that, I said to somebody beside me, well, there’s one committee you can be glad you’re not on yet. There’s one list you’re glad you’re not on.

But after all, it’s not so bad. And I am not at all sure that these brethren whose names were read weren’t better off than we were, whose names weren’t read. I’m not sure. I said it the other way, but I’m not sure. And when it was all over, they had read the list, they stood to pray. I don’t remember what the man who prayed said, but what I was saying was, Jerusalem the golden, with milk and honey blessed, beneath thy contemplation, sink heart and voice oppressed.

I know not, oh, I know not what joys await me there, what radiancy of glory, what peace beyond compare. They stand those halls of Zion, all radiant with song and bright with many an angel and all the martyrs throng. The prince is ever in them, the daylight is serene, the pastures of the blessed are decked with glorious sheen.

If we’re Christians indeed, and we’re not too bogged down in our overstuffed car seats and too fond of our TV sets and our fine homes. If we’re cut loose and are free, we’ll feel a little nearer to Jerusalem the golden than we do Chicago the dirty. But there are too many people that are all bogged down in Chicago, the sinful, instead of Jerusalem the golden. So, this tells us in this nineth chapter that there’s such a thing as a situation where death would be welcome.

One of the French novelists, I’ve forgotten which, there’s no confession, it’s just I guess I haven’t had any reason to say it before, but when I was a young fellow I was a great reader of the French writers, and I forget whether this was de Maupassant or Balzac who wrote this, but it was a story built around the idea that a situation could occur where the best and most desirable thing a man could do would be to die.

And he built this situation up, I think it was taken from the French Revolution, and the character in the story had reached a place, his people had been killed and his heart was broken and he expected and was looking forward with real anticipation to be the next one shot.

But instead of that they called him out and he stood at attention before the court and they sentenced him to live. And he went out with his broken heart and his tears to live when he had hoped to die. We’re too scared, that’s our trouble. We’re too scared because we haven’t known the prince who went to prepare a place for us well enough to want to go see Him.

Suppose, young lady, that you were just married, or suppose you older women who still love your husbands, suppose your husband went to Florida or California or Arizona or wherever you like to prepare a place and said, I’ll wire you, and when you get the wire, fly down, I’ll meet you at the airport.

First, I’ll get it ready. You know where your mind would be, you know the last thing you’d think of at night. You know that every time the phone rang, you’d hope it was a telegram read over the phone to you. You know that every time the gong rang you hoped it was a boy at the door. You know where your hope would be and your expectation. You wouldn’t look forward with fear and apprehension, but with keen, bouncing anticipation to rejoining your husband again in the land, the new land, the new country, the new place, in the new home among the palm trees.

And our Lord went and said, I go to prepare a place for you, and I will come again. And if we get the tiny little, tiny bit sick, the elders have to come wearing their shoes and soles off, rushing to pray for us lest we go to be with the Lord.

We are worldly minded, we’re earthly minded, we’re made of the clay, we belong to the frog pond and the swamp and the clay pit and the dust. God Almighty made us in His image and remade us in Christ into the newness of life. And heaven is our home, and the face of God is our landscape and our vision forever.

And if we get a little bit sick, we’re scared stiff. And it’s a proof of our carnality and our worldliness and our lack of spirituality. There’s a lot of worse things than you can do than die. And for the unsaved, of course, the terrible, terrible deception out of this world into a worse one for the lost.

Now, the fourth thing is that God holds our lives in His hand and says, and they shall not find it. Men shall seek death and not find it. They shall desire to die and death shall flee from them. Men have a certain amount of freedom, but God withholds His permission. When He withholds His permission, the murderer can’t kill and the suicide can’t die. They sought death and couldn’t find it.

We’re not as free as we thought we were. Do you know it? Listen, now some of you Methodists and with a strong Salvation Army and Methodist background, you will want to shag me home cleared down the avenue tonight for saying this.

But there’s more than a little bit of truth in the old Calvinistic idea that God runs His world still and that you and I are not as free as we think we are. Here were people that tried to die and they couldn’t die. They searched for death with all the scientific knowledge of the civilized world and couldn’t die. If God doesn’t give you permission to die, you can’t die.

Well, I don’t know how important that is, but I think it would help us to humble ourselves a little bit if we knew that God still held the world in His hands. That God isn’t the Santy Claus the modern gospelers have made Him. That God isn’t the kind man upstairs. God is the great and terrible God who holds the life of the world in His hand. He speaks and it’s done. He commands and it stands forth. Myriads of angels rush to do his will.

Last of all, the fifth point is, and I’ll learn it from this chapter if I didn’t know it from any other, that rebellious men can’t be forced to repent. You can’t force a man to repent by punishing him. Here we have it in the verses, their power. The rest of the men who which were not killed by these plagues yet repented not of the works of their hands that they should not worship devils and idols of gold and silver and brass and stone and wood.

Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts. Now here, invisible to the eye and audible to the ear and present to the touch, was the most terrible hell that the world had ever seen. With these strange creatures that had come out of the smoke that had issued from the abyss, and these strange creatures with breastplates of iron and the sound of their wings as the sound of chariots, and these that came out of the river Euphrates, Apollyon and Abaddon and all the rest. Here was hell turned loose on the earth, and one-third of the earth’s population died. And yet there were two-thirds of the population of the earth left grinding their teeth in angry rebellion and saying to God, You and who else?

Brethren, sin is an awful thing, and an impenitent heart is harder than the lower millstone. I’ve always heard, and evangelists always use it, we preachers always use it, and we think it’s so, but it bears a little bit of looking into that if you don’t repent, God will punish you and make you repent. Brother, if God doesn’t put repentance in your heart, all the punishment in the world can’t make you repent, for the Bible tells us here that they repented not.

The rebellious heart of man is altogether too hard to be frightened into repentance. It doesn’t say the fear of hell leadeth thee to repentance, it says the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance. And if the goodness of God in a vision of a cross with a man dying for His enemies in blood and sorrow, if that doesn’t melt you and bring you down to repentance, earthquakes and fire out of heaven won’t do it.

They repented not, it says, even though one out of every three men on earth was lying dead. The other two that still remained were too hard to repent. The simple fact is that all men are morally obliged to repent, and if they do not repent, they will perish. And yet they will not unless the goodness of God leads them to repentance.

We’re pretty much in the hands of God, brethren. If you’ve hardened yourself and been stubborn and stuck your jaw out and said, that fellow will never, never succeed in winning me, I’ll never listen to him.

Well, I don’t mind, because I’m just working for God. But if you’re so hard that nothing will melt you, I don’t know what in the great heaven above or hell below could ever melt a man. If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they repent, if one go to them from the dead.

Our psychic friends are trying to bring back the dead, you know. Trying to some old fellow that died, and they set up a situation and they bring him back, and he always comes back and talks like a fool. They never manage to sound it. They’re always half-witted, I guess, but they sound half-witted, even though they might have written great books, painted pictures, you know, and done wonderful things while they’re on earth. But when they come back, they sound like idiots. I’m all well and happy and feel good to hope you’re the same, you know. Sounds like a hasty letter. And they’re trying to get a message back from the other world.

But listen to me, if your husband or father or relative or friend who died some years back could come back and stand by your bed and speak to you and warn you, it wouldn’t help you, because if they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they repent, though one came to them from the dead.

There’s something terrible about the impenitent human heart, something violent and stubborn, too much to describe. Only the goodness of God can soften a man’s heart. But oh, how thankful we ought to be if there’s a tear, if you’ve got it in your heart to be sorry, if there’s something inside of you that grieves, if there’s something in you that’s sorry you did it.

If you look on His cross and bow your head that you put Him there, how thankful you ought to be, for there are millions that don’t care. Electric chair facing a young man, he’ll set his jaw and go. Sometimes they repent. But if they got pardoned, I wonder what they will do. I’ve had more funerals in my time, and the sorrowing relatives promised me they’d come to church. And some of them came once, but I never remember any of them that ever came twice, with one exception.

I have in my mind now a family, and I could talk about it, but I won’t. But outside of that, I can’t recall. Mostly they don’t show up at all, or if they show up, they don’t show up twice. If the human heart loves its sin, it will love its sin, even though locusts and fiery horsemen are everywhere about it. The sun is clothed in darkness, and the moon turned into blood. The human heart will still love its sin.

They repented not of their fornications and of their evils, even though the world around them was dark and men were dying on every hand. Dear friend, if you want to know God, if you want to know God, you’re so much better off than most people, for they don’t. And if you feel in your heart a longing to become a Christian, you’re so much better off than most, because most people don’t. And if you’ve got a sorrow unto repentance within your heart, you ought to thank God and nurture it, nurture it.

The story I read of the two men who were lost in what they call Norther, out in the far west in Montana. Incidentally, those Indians were from Montana that were here this morning and not from South Dakota, as I erroneously mentioned. But out in Montana and the Dakotas, where the terrible Northerners come down, they were caught, these two men. And they knew as night came down that it was a little fire or terrible death by freezing, and they searched their pockets all through. Matches had all been used up, no lighters, nothing.

And finally one fellow, getting way down into the seam of an old leather jacket, got hold of half a match and held it up, half a match. And they looked at it in the waning light, and they said, our life is between my finger and thumb. If this thing works and we can get a little fire here on the lee side of the hill, we can live.

If the wind blows it out or the wood doesn’t catch, we might as well shake hands, but we’re done. No searching party would find them for days and days, and then would find their cold, stiff bodies in stark death. Then they took their coats, held them tight, stood as close together as possible, and got some rough material and prayed and struck the match. Flew up and then dimmed down, and then leaped out and caught a little chip and then a piece of wood, and then they got it down on the ground and began to pour it on. Pretty soon they had a roaring fire. Managed to live it out and stay alive until the searching parties came.

But at one moment they held in their hand, between thumb and finger, a half-match. You know what that half-match is, man? That’s your desire to repent. You got it there. God gave it to you, or you wouldn’t have had it.

Oh, how you should nurture it. How you should ask God for help, that it might catch and flame up and lighten your soul.

Shall we pray? Now we’re going to have a moment of prayer. And before we do, I’d like to know if you’d like to be prayed for. Is there anybody here who would say, Mr. Tozer, would you please pray for me that that little… Yes, God bless you, sir. I see your hand. Go up back there. Who else? Yes, sir. I see your hand. Who else? Yes, I see you. Who else? Yes, I see you, too. Yes. Who else?

Holy Father, there are three men and one woman. They have asked us to pray. O Father, they hold in their hand tonight a little truth, which if it lives and flares up, it could be life to them. But if they let it die and go out, it could be death to them. For Jesus’ sake, Father, grant that these may have help now from Thee. We pray it in Christ’s name.

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“Repentance“

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“Repentance”

January 4, 1959

Now, I want to talk today, this morning before the communion, on the 51st Psalm. We read it previously, perhaps a few of you came in late for it, very few. But it’s the 51st Psalm, and David that starts out, to have mercy upon me O God according to Thy lovingkindness and according unto the multitude of a tender mercies blot out my transgressions.

Now, we come to the communion service, the first communion service of the New Year. And of course, we entered the new year. It’s 1959, the first Sunday of the new year. And there are some things we want from God and we want them legitimately. They are not the whimpering of spoiled children. They are the legitimate and appropriate desires of mature Christians. I’ll name about five or six things that we want. We want protection during this coming year. You and I can no more dare face the year without the protection of God than we dare face a thunderstorm or a blizzard without shelter.

Then we want guidance during this coming year. Every one of us will want guidance. We want personal guidance and we want providential guidance, because you will be sought, and your exploitation will be attempted by 10,000 persons who want to make something of you. You will be asked here and there, you will be. Suggestions will be offered to you by the scores, and you want guidance. And you have a right to want prosperity. Not financial prosperity necessarily, though that is not even wrong to desire that we might prosper financially.

Then we hope you will want growth. We hope you will want to fulfill the Scripture that says, but grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. And we hope you’ll want to make spiritual progress and advance in holiness. If you do, I believe you’re in the will of God. If you do not, then I’m afraid you have wasted the last year, because last year should have made us desirous of having spiritual progress the next year. And then this year we’re now in should prepare us to want more spiritual progress in the years that may lie ahead. And if we do not I say, if we are languid and perfunctory about all this, if even one of us, even one of us, it’s all then, we have wasted last year to a large degree. We have lived like a turtle or some other animal that barely vegetated. We have spiritually, merely vegetated, merely stayed alive.

Then, if this is true, and I think it is true that we do want during this time, a protection and guidance and prosperity and growth in grace and spirit to make spiritual progress and to advance in holiness and likeness to God, then one quality must be present to assure these benefits. And that one quality is true repentance, contrition. I wonder why we can’t see this, that repentance is not something you do and get over with. Repentance is something you feel. It is a state. It is contrition. And contrition is not something you feel and then get over with as you might take a shot of penicillin soon, to cure, to kill the bugs inside your blood and heal you have, a disease and then forget it. We cannot thus think of contrition. Contrition is rather a permanent state of mind. Flaring up or dying down as a fire might a little as we go along, but always present. The glow of it ought to be in our hearts always and it must be.

The 51st Psalm is a classic example of contrition. It had a historic reason for it. But it created a mood in which David lived. And we do well to let this Psalm create a mood for us. And to try to keep that mood, it’s far better than to try to seek comfort this coming year. If you will have decided, or secretly even decided that you’re going to enjoy yourself more this year, that you’re hoping to have more comforts, more conveniences and a better state of affairs, so you’ll comfort yourself and live better, then you haven’t properly, you haven’t learned Christ yet, as you should.

Now to enjoy ourselves, that’s the counsel of unbelief, to desire to do better, feel better, to be more consoled and to rest more and relax more and work less and have more of the comforts which we tell ourselves we have well, well earned. All right, if that’s your plan for the coming year, then that’s the counsel of unbelief. That’s, that’s what the rich man wanted. That’s what Demus was wanted. But that isn’t what the children of God ought to want. We ought to want guidance and protection and spiritual growth and advance in holiness whether we’re comforted or not. I don’t care whether I feel good this year or not. You know, you can get so busy with God, you don’t notice whether you’re feeling good or not. And if somebody asks you, how do you feel, you have to stop and ask and consult yourself to see if it’s worth the problem?

Well, this contrition is found here in Psalm 51. There are two things I want you to notice about it. One of them is that the writer says no good thing of himself. And he says only good of God. For after all, there are only two persons here. There was a lot of sin and a lot of involvement. David was involved with various persons and he’d sinned against a lot of people, against his country and against the people that trusted him. He had sinned a lot. There was a lot of involvement. But when David began to pray, he recognized that all that involvement was secondary. The Primary Person is present here too, then, David, he saw that there were just two persons here. I against Thee, Thee only have I sinned. Against Thee and I. That’s all David talked about.

Now, he said nothing good about himself. He offered no excuses. And he offered no defense. I believe this is greatly pleasing to God, to come to God without excuse, and without defense, I believe greatly pleases God. For God is pleased with some things and displeased with others that we do. And I believe the heart that comes to God without defense and without excuse, greatly pleases God. A woman who came to Jesus and asked him to do certain things for her. He looked at her in amazement and said, why, surely woman, great is thy faith. He was pleased with the woman. With others, He was displeased and said, oh ye of little faith. I think it’s pleasing to God to come to Him without excuse, without defense.

Then, he says only good of God. He doesn’t come to God whimpering or complaining or finding fault. He throws himself on God’s mercy. And I believe that’s the safest place in the universe, throw himself, throw ourselves on the mercy of God. From every stormy wind that blows, says Stowell’s song, from every stormy wind that blows, from every swelling tide of woes, there is a calm, a sure treat: Tis found beneath the mercy seat.

Now, the mercy seat is not a poetic hiding place. The mercy seat has a sharp theological meaning. It is, it is the cross, it is the mercy seat where Christ sits. It means to throw ourselves on the mercy of God without excuse and without personal buildup and without defense, and without any whimpering or complaining against the treatment God has given us; to come to Him thanking Him for every good thing and admitting frankly we deserved every bad one and throw ourselves on the mercy of Gods.

You know, the problem with us is, and the reason that our good resolves don’t last, it is a joke. It’s a cartoonist joke it. It is the joke of the comedian and the funny paper and all the rest that we make a resolution and break it. But the reason Christians make these resolutions and break them, whether it’s at New Year or whether it’s sometime in the middle of the year at some convention or revival meeting, is inadequate repentance. Inadequate repentance, that’s our trouble. To have sinned or be practicing sin and to know it and yet to be unable to feel sorry about it. I tell you, that’s worse than cancer. That’s worse than multiple sclerosis. Those things are physical, and they can even be healed, but you can’t heal this.

To sin, to practice sin, to be living with sin on you and to know it, and you to be unable to feel sorry about it. And, in order to feel sorry and be too weak to amend, that’s, that’s inadequate repentance. And inadequate repentance always is a sandy foundation. And all of your good intentions will fall apart and you will not make any progress if there is inadequate repentance there. I say, to feel sorry for our sins and yet not to be able to make any changes, or to know we have sinned and yet not even to feel sorry, this is greatly to aggravate our evil and compound the felony. And then to admire ourselves and to defend ourselves, it’s to deepen the intensity of sin and make it grave and critical. And I believe it’s greatly to displease God.

And then while trying to repent, secretly to desire to continue in the thing we’re trying to repent of. What inconsistency is this, what incongruous praying, what hypocrisy; that we’re trying to repent and secretly intending not to repent at all, but to go back and do the same thing over again. And to be so little concerned even while we’re repenting that we break off without concerned to eat or to sleep or to chat or to seek entertainment.

You know, Israel in the olden days when they were repenting, they put on sackcloth and ashes. Do you know what sackcloth is? It’s a gunny sack we call it now. It’s about as coarse a cloth as there is. Nobody would want to wear it. And if you wore it next to yourself, you’d be scratching continually and suffering after a while with a rash. And ashes, what about ashes? Nobody can say a good word for ashes. I can’t think of a good word to be said for ashes.

And Israel put on sackcloth and threw ashes on their heads, up into their hair, down their necks and down over their bodies. Why did they do that? Was there some sanctifying virtue in the sackcloth? No, they didn’t think that and you don’t think that. Nobody does. Did ashes have anything in it, ashes. No, ashes have nothing. There’s nothing in ashes or sackcloth. But what they meant was, O God, we have sinned and we mean to repent and we’re trying to repent and we want to repent and we’re willing to even lay aside even the common and legitimate pleasures. Even the legitimate pleasures, we relinquish them in order that you might know that we mean what we say. Instead of breaking off to eat or sleep or look at a TV program, why, they put sackcloth and sat and threw ashes on their heads. It looked silly, and it did not have any Biblical commandment. There was nothing in the law of Moses that they were to do it so far as I know. But they did it because they wanted themselves to know and they wanted God to know that their repentance was going to be adequate. They were ready to give up the legitimate things in order that they might make their repentance effective.

Now what is the uses, or are the uses of sorrow in repentance? For the Bible talks about sorrow and repentance. But I believe that sorrow chastens the soul. To sin and to get off easy and sin again and get off easy and to sin again and get off easy and continue, pretty soon you’ll get a habit. You get a habit of it, to sin, commit the sin of omission. Any sin of omission and to get off easy, and then to commit it again and continue to commit it, pretty soon we’ve established tracks for our hearts to run on.

And because sin didn’t cost us anything, but we cheerfully said, well, Jesus paid it all. He’s forgiven me and it cost us nothing, we don’t know how bad it is. We don’t sense it. And so, sorrow is the chastening of the soul. Sorrow is the sackcloth. A man who had worn sackcloth for two or three days, he didn’t forget it. And he hesitated twice before he went back to do that thing again, for he remembered the rash and the itching and sleepless nights and the sneezing from the ashes and the dust and gritty ashes in his hair, he remembers that. He punished himself a little.

Now, I know self-punishment does not atone for sin, but it does serve to make a man sick of it. And that’s why Paul said there was a sorrow not to be repented of. He that sorrows unto repentance, sorrows with a sorrow not to be repented of. Nobody ever repented of having repented. Nobody ever did yet repent of having repented. And the chasing of the soul by the Holy Ghost in the sorrow of contrition, helps to cure us so we don’t want to do this thing again. It’s a kind of therapy, a cure, a psychological cure, to make us sick of the condition that we’d gotten ourselves into. I believe that we would do well my serious-minded friends. I believe we would do well wo enter this, vibrant, living, dangerous new year, this threatening, louring new year, to enter it in a state of contrition.

But I would close by asking you to beware of contrition without hope. Because contrition without hope becomes remorse, and remorse is sick repentance. Judas did not repent. But Judas felt remorse. The repentance of the man Judas was a sick repentance and the result was he simply tormented himself to death, went out and committed suicide and knew the foretaste of hell before they went there. That’s sick repentance, which is contrition without hope, I want to warn you against it. I want to warn you of the frivolity, the spiritual frivolity which allows you to go on and on carelessly on your way without checking on yourself. But I also want to warn you, that if you allow yourself to become so serious and so heavy hearted, that there’s no hope in it. Then your repentance is a sick repentance. It’s self torment and it’s not the repentance of faith.

True Repentance is three things. Let me give them to you and then we’ll close. True repentance is a realistic self judgment, a realistic self judgment. I do not believe God is pleased to have me say worse things about myself and it is true, if indeed I could imagine anything worse than is true. I don’t believe it pleases God. I have heard and I’ve smiled, I’ve heard young girls, say 14-15 years old, stand and testify, very emotionally moved and eloquently tell what vile wretches, what terribly depraved, deeply sinful and abandoned creatures they have been. And I smiled to myself and said, God bless the little honey. I suppose the worst thing she ever did in her life was slap her little sister or drink Coca Cola. But, you know, she was calling herself names, abusing herself because that was the proper thing to do you know, where she came from. That was the proper thing to do. Never, never lie about yourself, not even not even to please what you think is pleasing God. Be realistic in your self judgement. David said, let everyone, not David but Paul said, let every man think soberly of himself. Not more highly than they ought to, but soberly.

So, judge yourself. That’s the word, judge yourself. Judgment isn’t a 100% condemnation. Judgment is an appraisal of the depths of the guilt and the handing out of punishment in keeping with the degree of guilt. If it’s only secondary murder, then they’re not going to hang a man. They’re going to give judgment according to the depths and degree and intensity of the sin. And so, we must be realistic about this thing. And then, when we’ve been judged ourselves realistically, we must make full determination to change, any sweet talk before God about how bad we are that isn’t accompanied by a quiet determination to change, is not repentance at all, but nothing else.

Then there should be a third thing and that is a cheerful confidence in Christ. Ah, the devil must grind his ugly teeth together when he sees a Christian so penitential that he’s tremblingly before his God and pleading for mercy, and yet sees a smile on his face at the same time. Because the smile is there, out of cheerful confidence in Jesus Christ the Lord. The same day that he wrote Psalm 51 he also wrote Psalm 103. And these are the words of Psalm 103. No remorse here. No sick penitence here, but wholesome sound repentance followed by cheerful hope and good expectation of God’s forgiveness. The Lord is merciful, said this same David, and gracious, slow to anger and plenteous in mercy. He will not always chide, nag. Have you had friends about you, husband or wife or anybody, father, mother that would just nag continually? Your faults were a subject of continual nagging. God will not nag. He will not always chide. Neither will He keep His anger forever. He hath not dealt with us after our sins nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is His mercy toward them that fear Him. And as far as the east is from the west, so far hath He removed our transgressions from us.

When I first came to the city of Chicago, there was a great pulpit orator in this city by the name of Dr. Frederick Shannon. Maybe somebody would remember him. Dr. Frederick Shannon. He preached somewhere in one of the downtown churches. I used to hear him occasionally on the radio. He was one of the old-fashioned orators, an Irish orator. He would talk about the robin as the bird with the sun down on his breasts, I remember hearing him. And he said that once he was preaching in his church and there was a great retired professor of mathematics sitting down near the front. And he was preaching from the text, as far as the east is from the west so hath He removed our transgressions from us.

And he spoke out and said, Dr. So and So, how far is the east from the west? And he said, instinctively, the old man reached in his pocket, pulled out a pad and a pencil. Then he stopped, and put them in back and looked up at the preacher and grinned. You can’t figure that Brother. How far is the east from West? Nobody knows. Not all the mathematicians in the world can tell you that. And that’s how far God takes sin away. For like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pities them that fear Him. For He knoweth our frame. He remembers that we are dust. But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon them them that fear Him, and His righteousness unto children’s children. Bless the Lord ye His angels, blessing in all places of His dominion.

Let us enter the new year in a state of cheerful contrition. Before God, contrite always. But also, cheerfully hopeful that our God is forgiving, kind and loving and tender. He’ll never deal with us as we deserve, but deal with us out of His own heart. That’s my hope for this year, that I’ll be dealt with out of God’s heart. God will never look down and say let’s look Tozer over, so we’ll decide this year what to give him. Uh-uh! If He did, oh, I’d be remorseful to the place of sick, pathological penitence, but would never have hope. But He will look in His own heart and say, out of my heart, I decide how good I’m going to be to him.

So, that is our hope friends this year. God will treat you the way God is, not the way you are, provided of course that you have done as I’ve suggested here, that you have realistically judged yourself and determinedly changed to please the will of God and then cheerfully hope. I believe that God will keep us during this year, and that we shall grow in grace. We’ll have His protection and His kind watchfulness in all the days ahead.