Tag: Strength

“God is our Refuge and Strength”

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

December 15, 1957

For the next three days at noon, from 11 to 12, I am to have the ministry to the outgoing missionaries of the Conservative Baptist Church. They’re meeting here in Chicago, missionaries, officials, and a number of outgoing missionaries. And they want me to talk to them about their souls; about the spiritual condition of a missionary. And that’s what I plan to do, for three times, 11 to 12, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Kindly pray when you have your devotions.

Now in the 46th Psalm. What do you say we read that Psalm responsively, all reading the last verse. The 46th Psalm, God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore, will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea: Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled. Though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof; There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the Most High. God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved. God shall help her and that right early. The heathen raged, the kingdoms were moved: he uttered his voice, the earth melted. He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; he breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; he burneth the chariot in the fire. Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth. The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah.

Tonight, I want to do what I very rarely do and discuss some things that I very rarely discuss. You will notice that I specialize on talking about God and Christ, redemption, holy living, worship, and I rarely let myself go into the discussion of current events. And I shall do a minimum of it tonight. But a good prophet or preacher is one who preaches to his times and his generation, who speaks as the Quaker said, to the condition of his hearers. A good preacher is not one who has a tape in his head. And on occasion, he puts that tape on and plays it regardless of who’s before him, or what the changing circumstances may have put before him.

But I have noticed over the last year, or has been growing in intensity, the words of our Lord: men’s heart failing them for fear of things that shall be coming upon the earth. And I haven’t anything at all to say to the world, except, repent and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. But I do have something to say to God’s people. And there has been over the last years a mounting intensity of terror which has become the current psychology of our country, and I guess over the whole world.

Politicians have used the technique of terror to get out of the people what they want. They’ve manipulated the people as a bad mother threatens her child with a bogey or the devil or the policeman, and gets some kind of grudging and frightened obedience, but will have to pay for it all in time to come. So politicians have a way of stepping to the microphone or onto the platform or talking to the press, and literally scaring the populace into giving them what they want. And of course, as members of a fallen race, and as while we are Christians we’re still down here, we are affected by that. And I have noticed that it has affected God’s people very much.

I think I should not say too much about this, if it were confined to the politicians. We don’t expect anything from them. We don’t get anything from them, and so, two plus two makes four. But this is also the technique of much evangelism of the day. You can hardly turn your button on your radio, but somebody will be telling you that Khrushchev will get you unless you accept Christ.

Now, I sometimes preach after I’ve had enough of a thing, and Brother Thomas, I’ve had enough of that. I’ve had all of that I want, and my voice won’t be heard very far, particularly not on this wet night, when we’re not all here. But I’d like to say a few things tonight for you Christians. And if you have faith, you will take it home and your blood pressure will go down to least 10 points. But if you don’t have faith, then of course it’s so much as sounding brass and tinkling cymbal.

We have here in the 46th Psalm, a half a dozen words that I think probably are the most wonderful, among the most wonderful in the entire Bible. We begin with the word–God. We begin with the word–God. God, and every Jew knew Who that was. That was Jehovah. The Lord our God is one Lord. Hear O Israel, thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart. This is God, and that word, God, terrifies hell and sets all the hearts in heaven to ringing. And down here on the earth, that word, God, when it falls on the ear of faith, there is a response. And when it falls on the ear of unbelief, there is none. But we have that word God here, spelled in capital letters as it is set up here in the layout in our King James Version. But that’s a happy accident, typographical accident that it shouldn’t be there in capital letters.

For I want you to remember that after you have studied all the charts in the United States News and World Report, after Kiplinger has given you all the information he needs, and after you have heard all the dark brown and pessimistic talk out of Washington or from somewhere else. Remember always that you have a little three-lettered word that beats it all, and that’s the word–God. God says, this Psalm in its opening, and then you have a little verb that follows the word God and that is the word–is. So, you put one behind another and you have–God is.

I preached here some, oh, five months ago, maybe, on worship, a series of 12 sermons on worship. And in that series of sermons, I said that God is the Lord Christ. He’s the Lord of all being. That He is more than the Lord of beings. He is the Lord of being–itself. And I said then, having dug it out in myself, and not knowing that anybody else ever thought of it, I said that God, when they talk about God being, the son being of the same substance with the Father, that the Spirit being of the same essence with the Father and the Son, they were using the little word e-s-s-e-s-e, they were using a little word, which means, raw being. And I thought that I thought that I was the only person that ever thought of that–you often get in that fix. And so, I was preaching on: God is the Lord of all beings.

The other day in New York, I was shopping around with Bob Battles in a bookstore. And I saw a little book I’d never seen before by the famous and justly celebrated German theologian, Rudolf Otto. And Rudolf Otto, called attention to the fact that Being is God, God is Being and used my little essese. He’s a scholar, I’m a preacher. But this man who was a profound German scholar, and when Germany creates a scholar, you know, they create real scholars. And this man was one. And so, he had a chapter I haven’t finished yet. But I just began it and saw that he was after the same thing I had been preaching here, that Jesus Christ is not only the Lord of things and people and beings; He’s the Lord of all being, the Lord of essence, the Lord of being Itself.

So, we have, God is here. And you know what I think? I think that the devil is extremely afraid of the word God and the word Christ. And I think that when you and I are in trouble, that we ought to fall back on this, that God is. But that isn’t all and certainly, it isn’t quite enough. It would be enough if we knew what to do with it, but God knows our weakness, so he puts another little word, a pronoun this time after the little, after the little verb is. So, we have three words in this line. God is–our. Don’t let anybody scare you out of that, brothers and sisters, not for one little minute. I quoted the other day, one of the great theologians, I think it was Luther, who said that the power of Christianity lies in its personal pronouns. Don’t be afraid of the personal pronouns of Christianity, religion, Christianity, the Gospel, any kind of Christian worship, when it becomes so impersonal it loses its meaning for you and me.

But David said, or whoever wrote this Psalm said, God is our. And there’s a little, possessive personal pronoun that makes God ours. It isn’t enough to say, God. And it isn’t enough to say, God is. If we’re going to have it mean anything to us, we’re going to have to add, God is our, and that makes God ours and brings God to us. And in faith, we see that God, in a sense, belongs to us as a father belongs to his children. And we’re God’s children. God is ours.

Don’t be afraid of the personal pronouns. Don’t do like the man that I told about so often who never would say I. Leroy Thomas, you’ll know in a second. He’s gone to heaven now and I suppose they’re forcing him up there to say I. But when he was done here, he wouldn’t say it. He always said, one. He was a former missionary to China. And he’d say when one was in China, one saw Chinese and one did this in one day that need never say I. We couldn’t get him to do it. He thought it wasn’t proper. But David said, The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restores my soul. And he went right on using a personal pronoun. Don’t you be afraid of them. Only know what to do with them. The Lord is my Lord. He is my Lord. And the man of God cried, my Lord and my God. And he had Himself in there twice.

The coldest thing that I know, the coldest thing that I know is theology without the warm beating heart of the man. You’ve got to have us in there. You’ve got to put the man in there. God could be as cold in the Loop as the far frozen spaces. But as soon as the man of God said, God is our, then God is close, and we know that we have God Himself. God is our.

And then there’s another word that follows our and it is the word–refuge. And another word that follows the word refuge, and it’s the word–strength. Now you imagine that that’s simply writing, that’s just writing. You say, well, somebody had a page to fill up. He had some writing to do. No, the Holy Ghost never wastes any words. Always keep that in mind. If you have good translation, or you’re reading the original, you never need to worry about there being any padding. The Holy Ghost never puts any words in that do not belong there. God is our refuge.

Now what’s the difference between refuge and strength? A refuge is a place to hide when you haven’t any strength, and strength is personal. Refuge is objective. It’s outside of you. God is our external refuge into which we can run. What time I am afraid, I will trust in the Lord. The name of the Lord is a strong tower. The righteous runneth into it and is safe.

Now, we can think of God then as a refuge. We can think of Him as a place to hide so that Satan can’t get to you. Nothing can get to you that wants to harm you. But that isn’t quite enough. I don’t want to think of myself as a weak blob of moral jelly, a jellyfish, hiding somewhere, externally surrounded by protection. But if I ever got outside that refuge, I’d be set upon immediately, and would have no strength to resist. The Bible doesn’t quite teach that. It teaches that, but it doesn’t quite teach that. It teaches more than that. It teaches that not only is God a refuge into which we can go for safety, but He is our strength itself.

Now, the Bible teaches not only that God gives us strength, but that God is our strength. If Dr. A.B. Simpson had anything to teach the church of Christ, and he had, it was what God is to us. You see everywhere, it’s what God gives to us. You just turn over in the catalogs, flip, flip, flip, flip, flip from A to Zed, and you’ll find books on what God has done for me and what God has given to me and what God promises to give me and what God promises to do for me, but always, we’ve got God on the outside. Always God is the refuge into which we can all rush when we’re in trouble. But while that is true, that’s not enough true. It’s true, but it isn’t all the truth, is a better way to say it. There’s something else. And it is, that God becomes to us, not only a subjective place of refuge, but an objective place of refuge, but a subjective strength. And he does not say that God gives me strength. It says that God is my strength, which is something else altogether. So, we have this wonderful line here. God is. God is our. God is our refuge. God is our strength.

Now, I want to point out to you a number of things which the scare boys are telling us. They’re hinting it or they’re declaring it or they’re threatening us with it. And you know, I don’t threaten easy. I don’t know why. I guess it’s that old Pennsylvania something. I heard a little old dried-up Wesleyan Methodist preacher one time that said that he’d been criticized and condemned for his preaching, but he said, I wasn’t brought up in the woods to be scared by a lightning bug on the end of a corn cob. And I rather liked that expression. And I wasn’t either. And as soon as they start trying to scare me, something inside me rises up and says, now just a minute, I’ll get God on you here. And I’ll get into God here and I’ll get back to God and put God between me and you. And I just don’t scare easy.

Now, here’s what they’ve been telling us, dear friends. And I want to point out, give you a little Scripture, not three great passages, but a little Scripture. I want to tell you this, that no matter what anybody says, no matter what politicians says, or what Gottlieb Vangelis says it or who says it anywhere. Remember one thing, that a race will never be annihilated. The Bible says that. And when our Lord comes, that before him shall be gathered all nations. When the Son of Man shall come in His glory and all the angels with Him, then shall He sit upon the throne of His glory, and before Him shall be gathered all nations. And He shall separate them. You know that story too well for me to go on with it.

All I want to point out is, that when the Son of Man shall come in His glory, the nations will still be here. But isn’t it just like the devil to hide the point we ought to be afraid of and raise up a specter that we ought not to fear. They are telling us that the ballistic missile can come from over on Russia, and in 24 hours, wipe out the human race. And they’re trying to make us afraid of that bogey-boo.

And I am not afraid of it at all, because I know better. But instead of seeing that what we ought, in reverential fear, to prepare for, is that the Son of Man shall come in His glory and sit upon the throne of His glory and gather all nations before Him. Not Russia’s bombs, but the Son of Man coming in the glory. That’s what we ought to look up to, and that’s what we ought to expect. And it’s that that ought to throw fear into the sinful heart and joy into the heart of the child of God. But they’re trying to frighten us by saying there won’t be anybody here when the Lord comes back. That one or two strategically placed bombs and the human race will be annihilated, chewed up and destroyed. What nations will the Lord then come to at the end, when He shall come and sit upon the throne of His glory and gather all nations before Him? What nations will He gather before Him?

No, my brethren, let’s get that idea out of our head. Let’s not fall in with Buck Rogers now and Captain Space and all the rest. I don’t have a TV set, so I’m a little slow on these boys that flap their wings, you know, and leap from planet to planet. But don’t be afraid of them and don’t worry about them, because you’ve got God and you’ve got a Bible. And you’ve got a Bible that forecasts the future. And remember that God is our God. And He is our refuge and our strength.

Then I want to point out another thing. It is, that Israel will not be destroyed by the Arabs. One of my, one way I get my little education is listening to the reporters and the interviewers. And whenever I can get Meet the Press or Face the Nation or Capital Cloak Room, or whatever I can get, I listen. And I hear them talking, and I sense that there are those who believe that if we don’t watch out and don’t keep on taxing you poor people half to death and propping up Israel over there, that the Arabs will swallow up Israel and the nation of Israel will cease to exist.

Now I want to turn over here to the Scriptures and read a little passage and see if it sounds to you as if the nation of Israel should cease to exist. Thus, saith the LORD, which given the sun for a light by day and the ordinance of the moon and of the stars for a light by night; which divided the sea when the waves thereof roar. Jehovah of Hosts is His name. If those ordinances depart from before me, said the Lord, then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before me forever. Thus, saith the Lord, if heaven above can be measured and the foundations of the earth searched out, then I will cast off all the seed of Israel for all that they have done, saith the Lord God.

Now, my brethren, when we are able to destroy all the stars that shine, and when the sun in the daytime can be blotted out of the sky, and the moon by night can be blotted from the sky, then Israel will cease to be a nation from before God. So don’t let anybody tell you that the Arabs are going to suddenly fall upon little Israel and destroy Israel from the face of the earth. It just isn’t so.

Then, I want to point out a third thing, and it is this, that Russia will not conquer the world. It is not in prophetic Scripture that they will ever do anything of the sort. And if God were to permit a godless nation, dedicated to materialism and godlessness, who are now saying that they have proved what they thought all along, that there was no God. Now, they’ve said, we’ve shot our little Sputnik up into the sky, and there’s no god up there. These things running around there, what has God got to do with it? You know, brother, whenever you get over on the opposite side from God, God just winds you up and lets you run down. And He just lets you make a double-died, long-eared donkey of yourself and keep right on being a donkey till you die.

And so, that bunch over there, they’re simply moral donkeys. Don’t they know that that the little 350-mile affair they shot up is nothing compared with the 25,000 miles of our moon? And God never said that He had set up housekeeping between here and the moon. He never said that if you get up there and roll around that you would run into Him. He never said that. He said, lo, the heaven of heavens can’t contain God, and the world in the fullness thereof can’t contain God, and how much less this house which ye have builded. Why, God contains all of that, and that doesn’t contain God. And it’s simply the wild ravings of a moral maniac that will allow us to believe that anybody has proved that there isn’t.

And do you remember when Hitler started out and he was wicked, and he won. And he was wicked and he won. And he was getting more wicked every day, going mad and going crazy and going morally crazy as he got older, and everything he said he wouldn’t do it, did. And everything he promised, he brought to pass and everything he threatened, he made good on. And every nation he warned, he swallowed up.

I got up here in this pulpit 15 years ago or so and I said, now, I want to tell you something, especially you young people, I want to tell you this, you have been taught that sin must lose, and righteousness must win. You have been taught that God will win at last and that good will conquer at last and that evil will be destroyed at last. And Hitler is disproving everything you’ve been taught. Now, I said, let me warn you as a prophet of God, don’t pay any attention to what he’s doing now. Wait a little while and see.

Where is Hitler now? Where is Hitler now and all that gang of status and totalitarians and gas chamber artists? All we’re either hanged or else did whatever Hitler did. Somebody said, if he’s running, I’d vote for him, and somebody else said, he’s running if he’s still alive. He hasn’t stopped yet, trying to get away from the people that hate him, or hated him.

So, I tell you now about Russia. Russia’s warring and threatening. And that big hunk of vodka and baldness over there is standing up and threatening and sounding out his warnings. Now, don’t get excited, beloved, and don’t let anybody stir up enough decibels of Russian syllables to frighten you. God is our refuge and strength. And God has never ordered it in the Scriptures that Russia should conquer the world.

Again, there are those who are saying well, we might as well give up. Integration has taken over. And there’s going to be one brown race. We’re going to interbreed and interbreed, and the black with the yellow and the yellow with the red and the red with the white and the white with the pink. And in a very short time we’re going to be like barnyard chickens, all integrated and instead of being what we are now, races distinct, and each race proud in its own right and happy to be what it is. We’re going to be a bunch of speckled brown barnyard chickens without character. You can’t recognize a Swede nor a German nor a Chinese nor a German. Did I say German? All right, you can’t recognize any of them. They’re all separated and brought together now, and they’re going to be integrated.

Now, don’t let anybody tell you that my dear brothers and sisters, because that isn’t so yet. Oh, they’ll fool around, and they will make us miserable. They’ll make us sweat you know. They’ll push this integration business. All they’re doing is stirring up trouble between races to get us in a jam, so that we will be embarrassed before the world. And that’s Russia’s scheme. But I’m not talking now about the rights of the races.

I believe that all races are equal. I don’t think the white race is above any other race. I think that we are equal. God made us all and we are made of one blood, all nations to dwell upon the face of the earth. But he also made us into distinct nations and races. And when God laid the nations out, he laid them out according to the tribes of Israel. And there will be no such thing as one brown race. For I read back here in the book of Revelation, that when the time is coming, after this I beheld and lo a great multitude of all nations and kindreds and people and tongues stood before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes and palms in their hands and they cried, salvation to our God that sitteth upon the throne and unto the Lamb. And all the angels stood round about the throne, about the elders and four beasts saying, amen, blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be unto our God forever and ever. And there were people there from all kindreds and tongues and nations and races that had come up out of great tribulation. And in the 14th chapter, we see it.

So the nations of the world are going to continue to be nations and they’re not going all suddenly to become hash. And the races of the world will preserve some distinctiveness and will not all be pushed together and integrated and become one according to the Scriptures. Again, the world will not be conquered from outer space. So don’t get that in your head. That’s Buck Rogerism. The world will not be conquered from outer space. You know, I had several opportunities to get up and look at that hunk of metal flying around up there, and I slept through. I just wasn’t enough concerned. I can look out and see some light flashing on the fender of an automobile and see exactly the same thing.

That’s what it is. It’s just the sun shining on a hunk of metal, which they threw up far enough that it was outside the tug of the earth gravitation. That is, it was held in by the gravitation but the centrifugal force if it’s going around, threw it out just far enough. I did the same thing when I was a kid. I used to do this. I used to pick up a pail full of milk and swing it, show my little sisters or show off, show my little sisters. And then I’d say, now watch it, I can swing this over my head, and I won’t be a bit of milk come out. And finally, you get her going, and round and round and round I’d swing it and then slowly let it come down. There wouldn’t be a drop spilt. Centrifugal force held it in.

That’s all. I did the same thing. What is Khrushchev yelling about? Only I didn’t push it up as far, that’s all. I didn’t shove it up as far, but I did the same thing. All he did up there is take advantage of centrifugal force and the Earth’s magnetic attraction and through something between the two, and that’s all there is to it. And yet here we are saying, oh, the world is going to get conquered from outer space and people are actually scared. Their hearts are failing them for fear of things that are coming on the earth. Well, if you’re not right with God, I suppose there isn’t anything else to do but get scared. But if you’re right with God, you hear the man say, God is our refuge and strength and a very present help in time of trouble.

There’s nothing in the Scriptures, no prophecy anywhere that leaves any remote impression that there’s going to be any conquest from outer space. The Scripture says the earth has God given to the children of men. We belong to the earth. We’re made out of earth. We’re animated earth’s crust.

And then I point out this, and it’s part of the other that we’re not going to be conquered from some other planet. Keep that in mind. All the planets in their turn are singing and shouting and saying that the hand that made them is divine. But I wouldn’t be afraid of anybody on those planets, because there was a God one time that made the heaven, and He made the earth and all things on the earth. And he looked it all over and he said, I’m lonely. I’ll make me a man.

And so, God knelt down by the river, and He scooped up the clay, and He molded the man in His own image. And like a mammy, said the poet, bending over her baby. So, the great God Almighty that flung the stars to the most far corner of the night, kneeled down by the riverbank and He molded that clay till it was in His own image. And into it He breathed the breath of life and man became a living soul, amen, and amen. And that man, He gave this earth and said, you have dominion over it. This belongs to you, this is yours.

And then one day when man had sinned and that great God who loved that image that He had made and loved it and He loved the breath he had blown into it and loved the image that it still had. His Son came down and became part of that, that we call humanity, and the Word became flesh. He became not only a man, He became man to dwell among us. And the second Person of the Trinity, the great Lord Jesus Christ, the Word became flesh of the earth.

And then somebody asked me to believe that there’s going to come some strange, weird looking, bug-eyed, green creatures with yellow hair from some other planet riding down on a saucer. Someday they’re going to paralyze us with a ray and take us all over and brainwashes and control us by thoughts and we’ll go and be going around like zombies. I don’t believe it and I’m not scared at all. I’m not one bit scared.

And I think it’s shameful that men should try to use such unscriptural, illogical, and ridiculous notions to bring people to the altar. I’d rather see the church emptier than it is tonight and this is bad enough. I’d rather see it I say, than to have anybody go to an altar because I’d scared them by a green fellow with a bulbar nose and yellow hair coming from another planet.

You know what these green boys with the bulbar noses are going to have to do? They’re going to have to get permission from God Almighty to invade the race that He made; to invade and destroy the race that has taken the image of which his Son took in the incarnation. Ah, no, they’re fooling us.

And then I want to point out something else. Radiation will not produce a race of monsters. Keep that in your mind. People are worrying about radiation. And no matter what happens, you know, they say I know what it is. It’s those, it’s those atomic tests. And they’re frightening us with that. I got a friend out in California, bless her, she’s scared stiff. She writes us sometimes. She’s afraid of radiation. She’s thinking about her great grandchildren, what little monsters they’re going to be. Brother, at times you think some of them are little monsters now, don’t you, when you’re tired?

But do you know what we have sitting on the dresser? An illuminated dial so you don’t have to get up and go clear over to see what time it is and turn on light. And you know, we get as much radiation from that as you do from the average atom bomb fallout a little distance off. And every time you go and have a toothache x-rayed, you get as much. They’re scaring us, and they’re trying to terrify us, brainwashes us and bring us under their control, and I refuse.

I am a Protestant and an American and a Christian. And when you get those three mixed up, you’ve got to rebel and I refuse to get on my knees and say, what wilt thou have me to do, unless I’m talking to God. I won’t talk to any politician, nor scientist, nor preacher, and say all right now, tell me what I’m to do. I know what I’m to do. I’m to worship the Lord my God and Him only am I to serve. And so they’re not fooling me with that kind of stuff. I don’t expect my great grandchildren will look much different from what I do. I hope there’ll be some improvement. But as it stands, I’m not frightened in the slightest. This will not produce a race of monsters, and don’t you believe it. And how do I know it? I know it because the Scripture traces the human race right down to the millennium and on into the new heaven and the new earth. And there are still people there, still people that looked like Jesus.

And when Jesus Christ became man, He standardized the human race and all that will be born down the years. They’ll have the natural mutations that come from having a redheaded grandfather and a black-haired great grandmother and all the rest, but normally will not be monsters. So, I’d quit worrying if I were you. I would just go home. You want to worry? Don’t have your toothache x-rayed. You just get as much radiation.

Then another thing is that the saints are not going to be destroyed from the earth. They’re trying to tell us that the saints will be destroyed from the earth. But Jesus Christ said, the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Do you believe that? The church is going to be here after Khrushchev is down there. And after all these politicians, I told somebody about the politician I had seen in the cartoon. He was talking to the press, and he said, all right, gentlemen, if my opponent wants to use guided missiles and satellites as a campaign issue, I am willing. I will match my ignorance with his any day.

And if that’s what they want, all right, but the gates of hell won’t prevail. Let people argue. Let them talk, and when it’s all over, we have the Word of the Lord, that the gates of hell cannot prevail against the children of God. God will never leave Himself without a witness. There will never be a time when there won’t be a voice saying, holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty. There will never be an odd day, when there won’t be somebody raising holy hands to the cross and crying, Lord Jesus, Thou art the Son of God. There will never be a time on this earth, until the Lord takes his children away and sends finally at the end, the fire to burn it up with a great noise as in Second Peter. Then the race will be gone from there.

But until that time, the church will still be around. He said over here in the book of Matthew, that if He didn’t shorten some of these terrible days, except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved. But for the elect’s sake, those days shall be shortened. Isn’t that plain to you, my friends, that there is going to be no time that will destroy the children of God completely. They’ll die martyrs, of course they will. There’ll be martyrs. There always have been martyrs. And the blood of the martyrs has been the rich seed of the church, and there will always be martyrs. And there will be times when the church is struggling and not knowing which way to turn as inside China now and in places behind the Iron Curtain. But if she’s not growing in one place, she’s growing in another. And the Lord Jesus Christ is getting himself a bride from all kindreds and tongues and tribes and nations from every place. And He’s going to take her home leaning on his bride. And He’s going to do that in spite of all scientific advancements. And He’s going to do it in spite of all the men who say there’s no God.

So, let’s believe. Will you? Come on, let’s shake this thing off. Arise my soul, arise. Shake off thy guilty fears. A Living Sacrifice is pleading at the right hand of God for you now, and you’re all safe if you’re right with God.

Then I point out one more thing, and it is this. That there will be no true world union, except in Jesus Christ the Lord. I believe in the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. Do you? I believe in the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. Now if there’s any Moody students here, there are smelling salts in the basement, and we will bring you to after the service.

But the Fatherhood of God means what? It means that God is the Father of His redeemed family. And I believe in the Fatherhood of God. I believe in the brotherhood of man, a two-fold brotherhood. I believe that the human race, born the loins of Adam are a brotherhood, made of one blood. So, there’s the brotherhood of the human race. Because sin is in the world, they’re all divided up hating each other. But they’re a brotherhood, nevertheless, a brotherhood of fallen Adam. But there is another brotherhood. It’s the brotherhood of the redeemed saints. It’s the brotherhood of the faithful, the brotherhood of the church. So, I believe in the brotherhood of man, the brotherhood of fallen men, living and dying and being damned together. And the brotherhood of redeemed man, living and worshiping and being glorified together. And I believe in the Fatherhood of God over His children, but not the Fatherhood of God over the race. He created mankind, but we are all children of God by faith in Jesus Christ, or else we’re not children of God at all.

So now you know what I mean. I believe in the Fatherhood of God. So, I’m not going to be scared and run when I see a liberal coming. When he says he believes in the Fatherhood of God, he means that God is the father of all mankind. He’s wrong. When he says he believes in the brotherhood of man, he says that all people are alike saved, and therefore are brethren. He’s wrong. But if he’s willing to believe that God is the Father of the redeemed and the faithful, I would go along with him. If he’s willing to believe that there’s a brotherhood of the ransomed, I’ll go along with him, but no further.

Well, now let’s just go a little further and we’re through. Therefore, we will not we fear. Though the earth be removed and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea. Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountain shake with the swelling thereof, there is a river, the streams where of shall make glad the city of God the Holy Place of the tabernacles are the Most High. God is in the midst of her. She shall not be moved. God shall help her and that right early. The heathen rage, that is the nation’s rage. The kingdoms were moved, and He uttered his voice and the earth melted. The Lord of hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is our refuge.

Now, the old man in the Spirit, looking down the corridors of time, says, come, behold the works of Jehovah. What desolations He has made in the earth. He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth. He breaketh the bow and cutteth the Sputnik in sunder. He burneth the chariot in the fire. Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted in the earth.

My dear Christian friends, science, I think, is just about overstepped her limit. I think God will put up with this just a little longer. And then He’s going to start exalting Himself. What is the final windup to be? The final windup is to be all these boastful, arrogant, godless people put down, and the saints of God put up, and the God of all the saints exalted in the earth.

And it may not be too long until they that are in heaven above and they that are on the earth, and that are under the earth and they that are in the sea, shall all join together to say, worthy is the Lamb that was slain. For he hath died and is risen and He hast redeemed us out of all kindreds and tongues and tribes and nations.

So friends, let’s thank God as we near the end of the old year. And let’s believe that the God of Jacob is our refuge. The God of grace is our refuge through Jesus Christ and go home and sleep well. He giveth his beloved sleep. I both lay me down in peace and slept. I woke for the Lord’s sake.

Do you want to worry, and you want to carry a burden? Carry the burden of the poor world and pray for the poor world and ask God for a burden for the poor world. Suffer with them that suffer and give of your money to the poor and to missions and try to help the world, but don’t be scared for yourself. You’ve got nothing to be afraid of, but sin. And if you’ve put sin behind you and let the blood of Christ wash it away, you can walk out of here with your chin up absolutely without fear. Amen. The God of Jacob is our refuge.