“The Once-born and the Twice-Born”
Sunday, February 7, 1954
John 3:7-11
We have read the three opening verses of the third chapter of John at least three times, so I’m not going to read them again tonight. Only this one, verse seven, to sort of get started. Jesus said, marvel not that I said unto thee, ye must be born again. I gather from this, marvel not that I say to you, you must be born again, that I gather that there must be good sound reasons back at all and that there isn’t anything strange or astonishing about it, and that it’s quite an order and reasonable and logical. And I want to talk about that tonight.
But let me begin by saying that this teaching of our Lord is more than teaching. It is of vital and far-reaching importance, so important that it would be difficult to overstate that importance. Sometimes we can exaggerate when we make statements. By using a superlative, we can go too far and be guilty of exaggeration. But it would be difficult to exaggerate this, the vital importance of a teaching of our Lord in the opening verses of John 3. It is wholly revolutionary, more revolutionary than any teaching of any religion in the world. It is sharply classifying. It distinguishes, it excludes, and it includes, it classifies men and it distinguishes men from each other. And it excludes certain men and includes certain other ones.
And I say that it differs from all other religious teaching, in that it is more than religious teaching. It did not originate with the Teacher. It is not a pattern of truth woven out of many threads as most religious teaching is. And it is not and does not represent simply the highest and finest and noblest thoughts of a lofty soul woven together. It is not anything like that. It is rather practical reporting. When a man goes to Asia or Washington or London as a reporter and he sends back what he has seen and heard, we do not say this is the teaching of this man. We say this is factual reporting.
And Jesus said in the 11th verse of this chapter, we speak, that we do know, and testify that we have seen. He there took upon Himself the character of a reporter. And he said, I am reporting to you what I know and have seen. So you see, it is not pieced out teaching. It is reporting. It is a report to men on earth what He, the Lord of Heaven, had seen and heard and knew while He was in Heaven. For no man ascended up to Heaven, save the Son of Man, who has come down from Heaven. And this teaching is what He saw. He is telling us on earth what He saw in Heaven, and a lot of people don’t accept it. He said, if I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, then how shall you believe if I tell you of heavenly things. No man hath ascended up to Heaven, but He that came down from heaven, even the Son of Man which is in heaven. That was His explanation when Nicodemus asked, how can these things be? He said, this is not teaching merely, this is reporting. I am telling you what I know and what I have seen.
And He says that this is to be believed or rejected by everyone. And it will be believed or rejected depending upon our opinion of the One who does the reporting. He said, there are those who will not believe my testimony that I give coming down from Heaven. They will not believe what I tell them that I saw and the way I know things to be. They won’t believe it and they will reject it. And there will be two reasons for it. One will be that they love the earth and sin too well, and the other, that they will have no confidence in the One who is reporting. That is unbelief in the Savior, the Son of God.
We usually don’t know that unbelief is not a failure of the mind to function. It is not simply a weakness in the department of our credulity. It is an opinion of a man. When we do not believe in Jesus, we have an opinion of Jesus, and that opinion, prevents us from believing. A man Goes to Washington, and sees and hears, and comes back and reports in the newspaper or wires it in, and we shrug it off. It is not because we’re unable to understand it, nor would it be because we have some psychological weakness. It is because we have no confidence in the reporter. We say we don’t believe that man. He has a reputation for misunderstanding or misrepresenting, and reproducing things that never were said and we don’t accept it.
Now, our Lord said in these chapters, these verses which I read to you before that that is exactly what takes place when His message is proclaimed. There are those who said it to their seal, that God is true, and they believe this message. There are those who deny that God is true, or at least that Jesus Christ is God’s Son. And they doubt the veracity of the reporter, and refuse to accept the reporter’s record.
Now we want to break down what our Lord said here, that that I have said before is introductory too. This which I shall now say about the new birth, our Lord talked about. We’ll break it down in the light of Scripture, not holding entirely to these verses, but going elsewhere in the Bible, and show what our Lord taught here, and what is back of this all. So, that it may be said, marvel not that I said unto you, you must be born again. In the light of Scripture, there is nothing strange about it. It’s quite normal. It’s sound, philosophically. I want you to take a notebook if you don’t have a good memory. And I want you to put down five, well, really four items here. And these items are contrasts. As for instance, where our Lord says, that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. There’s what I mean by a contrast. And I give you four contrasts here which are taught in the Bible, taught here by our Savior and also taught by the apostles elsewhere in the Scriptures.
First, that there are two heads of the human race. There is that first Adam, the first head of the race, the head of the natural race. How it says in 1 Corinthians 15:22, For as in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive. Showing that in Adam, who is the head of the race, all died. And in Romans 5, it tells us even more plainly this thing. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll read quite an extended passage here for what I could read would be more beneficial than what I could say. The man of God, the same Paul wrote Corinthians is writing and he says this, Wherefore, as by one man, sin entered into the world, and death by sin, so death passed upon all men for that all have sinned. Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the likeness of Adam’s transgression, who was the figure of Him that was to come. Adam was a figure of the Christ who was to come, being the head of the old race. And not so as it was by one that sinned, so is the gift. For the judgment was by one to condemnation, but the free gift is of many offenses under justification. For if by one man’s offense, death reined by one, much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness, shall reign in life by One, Jesus Christ. Therefore, by the offensive of one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation. Even so, by the righteousness of One, the free gift came upon all men, the justification of life.
That’s familiar reading, for what it teaches here is, that there are two heads of the race. There is Adam, the head of the natural race, who is the forefather of us all. And we are his natural children, born by natural generation. And then there is a second head of the human race, which is Christ, the last Adam, Head of the redeemed human race. And we read about that many places, but we read about it in 1 Corinthians 15:44, I think it is or 49, where it says that it has sown a natural body and raised a spiritual body, for there is a natural body and there’s a spiritual body, as it is written, the first man Adam was made a living soul and the last Adam was made a quickening spirit. There you will have the contrast between the two heads of the human race. Adam, the head of the natural human race, and Christ, the head of the spiritual human race, for He was and is a quickening Spirit.
The first man is of the earth, earthy, and the second man is the Lord from heaven. Now, that’s what the Holy Ghost teaches here regarding the two heads of the human race. And so, for the present, we have two human races. You know, this sounds like Russellism, or Eddyism or something else, because it’s so little heard in the churches. The very bringing of it before an audience puts one on the defensive. You say to yourself, now wait a minute, I hadn’t heard this before, hadn’t heard this preached. People aren’t preaching it, but it’s here. And it is the reason our Lord could say, don’t marvel at the thought that I said, that you must be born again. For there’s a reason back of it all. There’s a sound philosophy that rests the mind. One of the reasons is that there are two human races, that there is the race that is in Adam and there’s the race that is in Christ. There is that which is of earth and that which is of heaven. There is that which stems from Adam the first and there’s that which stems from Adam the second.
Now, these two human races are coexisting and commingling. The ones that belong to the first Adam are human beings of everywhere, and the ones that belong to the other, they are the new ones who are created in Christ Jesus unto good works. If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation. And thus, he has a new head which is Jesus Christ, the Lord. Adam is no longer his head. He does not go back to Adam. He goes back to Christ. He does not take his life from Adam. He takes his life from Christ. And he gets his likeness from Christ and not from Adam, for Christ is the new head of the new creation and of those that are born of the Spirit.
Now, these two human races coexisting in the world, that’s the trouble, the reason for persecution and trouble, religious trouble, because in every city, there are two human races. There are, in the city of Chicago. There’s that part of the human race or that block that belongs to Adam that grew out of Adam, and stemmed down from Adam, was born once of Adam’s seed, and so it’s Adam’s race. And commingling and coexisting along with that race. there is a smaller race in this same city, living in houses, eating regular food, doing work, driving automobiles, talking on telephones, and paying bills, and doing everything that the old Adam’s race does. But lo and behold, mystery of mysteries, something wonderful has happened to that group. They look like the others, but they’re not. They can hardly be distinguished, but they’re different from the others in that the others are born of Adam’s seed, and no more; and this other race is rescued from Adam’s seed and born into the kingdom of God. So, that leads us to two kingdoms coexisting also, the kingdom of the flesh, and the kingdom of the Spirit, which we also call the Kingdom of God.
Now, this kingdom of the flesh is the realm inhabited by Adam’s descendants. And these descendants of Adam are related by blood and by common origin. Do you know, I said here a long time ago, and I just got it off a tape on to type here the other day, and I was rather shocked at what I had said, but I edited it and left it in to shock me, it probably shocked you, and it might as well shock your readers to what I said was that I believe in the brotherhood of man. And I know that some would faint immediately and want to be carried out, and would have be brought to by strong smelling salts, to have any man say that he believes in the brotherhood of man, but I do. I believe there is a universal brotherhood of the once-born. And then I believe in a universal brotherhood of the twice born, where our modernistic and liberal friends make their mistake is they do not distinguish between the twice born and the ones born. They make a universal brotherhood then say everybody is in, then Jesus Christ makes a universal brotherhood and says everybody is out, except them that are born in. There’s the difference. The liberal says, I believe in the brotherhood of man; and all that universal brotherhood are children of God. Jesus Christ says, there is a universal brotherhood of the flesh, that which is born of the flesh is flesh. And no man will ever enter into the Kingdom, except he gets in by a birth.
So, I do believe in the universal brotherhood of man, the universal brotherhood of fallen man. And then I said, and I repeat now, that I believe in the fatherhood of God. Do you know, the modernists have labeled that and have taken it to themselves so that we shrug our shoulders and refuse to accept the fatherhood of God. But I believe in the fatherhood of God, not the fatherhood of God over the whole race of Adam, for that not so, but the fatherhood of God over them that are born anew, that are saved. The Christians have God for a Father. The man in the old world who is born of Adam, has Adam for his father, not God. God created Adam and Adam had progeny. And their whole world is populated with the progeny of Adam, who are universal brothers descended from one ancient father, but not children of God. But, when we enter the kingdom of God and are made children of the Most High, then we enter a new brotherhood, the brotherhood of the redeemed of which God is Father and Jesus Christ is the Head.
Now these two kingdoms I say, there’s a kingdom of the flesh inhabited by Aaron’s descendants, and they’re related by blood and by common origin. They are separated also, by color, and language, and minor racial marks. The human race is united by blood and common origin, but as we see it scattered over the earth, it is separated by color and language, and minor racial marks. Some sub-races of the human race have long heads. What did they used to call those in biology? Here I go, again, the long heads and the narrow heads, Nordic type. Yeah, that’s what I thought. But anyhow, we’ve been out of schools so long we forget the terminology, but it has to do with the shape of their heads. Welsh people, for instance, have a certain shaped head in the sciences. They talk about the shape of a Welchman’s head. He has a certain racial head, and Dutch people have a head. I tell them sometimes they come into the world with wooden heads and wooden shoes. But anyway, they have a certain racial trait. You can pretty near always tell them; tell the Anglo Saxons by the shape of their heads and a few other traits.
And so, the human race is united by blood. But it’s divided by language, and time and space, and racial characteristics and the color of the skin and the shape and slant of the eyes, and the hair, whether it’s blonde, curly, or what it is. But they’re all nevertheless sons of Adam. And they’re all of one blood that inhabit the face of the Earth, says the Holy Ghost in the Bible. So, there is a unity of the whole human race. And there is also minor divisions in the whole human race, racial divisions, and linguistic divisions, and color divisions.
Now, there are also differences, these are minor. There are differences of cultural level. There are some of you that never had lorgnette in your eye, and never will have, thank God. And there are others in the city of Chicago that do. There are some that say I wouldn’t go “either.” But there are others that wouldn’t be caught dead saying “either” either. They are more cultured. And so, they use a word that doesn’t exist, “either.” I go along with the Irishman. They say, that which is right, either or either and he said, neither. I accept that definition myself, and neither. Well, there are differences in cultural level, and differences in education, and differences in advancement of scientific achievement and degree of civilization.
They have what they call the Stone Age. That was the age when the only weapons they had, the only machinery they had, were made of stones. Then came the Iron Age. It advanced a little, and then the age of steel. And now we’ve come to the age of the atom. But it’s all Adams race nevertheless. He can ride in a plane, or ride on a wheelbarrow. It’s the same old son of Adam. He’s just the same and he isn’t a bit improved over what he was before. He can say either or neither, or neither, or neither. And it’s all the same. He is still a son of Adam. He’s just the same as he was before. There are differences among the sons of Adam, but they’re all one, in that they are all sons of Adam, and they inhabit the kingdom of the flesh.
Then, there’s the kingdom of the Spirit. Sometimes I say, called the Kingdom of God. And it’s inhabited by the Spirit-born. And they are separated just as we have separations in Adam’s kingdom, the kingdom of the flesh, linguistic and color and shape of head and so on, separating group from groups; so we in the kingdom of God, certain separations too. For instance, the Brother talked this morning about language barriers. There are Christians that are kept apart by language barriers. The only two words they know that are alike are amen and Hallelujah, like in all the languages, but they kept apart. And then there is space that keeps God’s people apart. On the day of Pentecost, they were all of one accord in one place. That would be totally impossible now to get all the church together in one place. There are too many of us. There isn’t any stadium in the world big enough to hold all the redeemed people of God. They’re a company that no man can number, and you cannot get them; spatially, it’s impossible to get all God’s people together.
And then, we don’t live together in time either. Some are already dead. Some have been dead a long time. And if Jesus tarries, some Christians are not yet born. So, there’s a time division, and there’s a space separation. And then there are all the little incidental separations. For instance, you’re a Lutheran and you’re born again and brought up and really a Christian in the Lutheran Church. And by a certain narrow, limited view of things, maybe you don’t know there are any other kinds of Christians at all. And one Baptist man said down in the South, he said, I never have gone to any other church in my life except the Baptist church. He didn’t know what he was missing. There are other Christians here and there, so that we may not mingle with certain other truly born-again people, inhabiting the same spiritual kingdom we do, because we can’t speak their language, they’re dead before we were born, we’ll die before they’re born, or they’re across another part of the world, or they belong to some remote denomination that we don’t mingle with. And so, we just don’t get together, but there are nevertheless a people, extant, inhabiting a Kingdom, born of the Spirit into the spiritual Kingdom, of which Jesus Christ is the Head of which God in Heaven is the Father.
So, just as the one human race, one human race, one kingdom of Adam, one kingdom of the flesh is scattered every place. We have a hermit in a cave, who never mingles with it, but he belongs to it. We have the Egyptians who died and gone long ago. And they had never heard of us. We only hear of them in history, but it’s all the same race, same people, born of the same flesh, all descended from the same man.
And there’s the kingdom of the Spirit, I say. And there are those who say that if all Christians are supposed to be together in one denomination, or one religious front. And certainly, divisions are terribly to be deplored between Christians that they know they are divided, but you can’t help but to have certain divisions between Christians. It’s impossible. We’re scattered all over the face of the earth. We never see each other’s faces of at all, but yet, in spite of those temporary and surface separations, we’re all one; united by birth out of one Spirit, baptism into one Spirit, membership in one Body, with one Father, and one Savior, and one Lord, and one Bridegroom, and one heaven toward which we’re moving. So, instead of sneering at the song, we are not divided, all one body, we all that one in hope and doctrine, one in charity. Instead of making a wry face, let’s thank God that it’s true. Let’s thank God that it’s true, that there is a kingdom composed of those who belong to the spiritual world, and they are all one and they are undivided. And Jesus said that they all may be one. And so we are one, just as the human race is one. The human race is all one.
I preached three days at Fort Wayne last week at the Fort Wayne Bible college. And there I saw predominantly German people. Predominantly German names. A young lady sang a solo named Miss Nieunswander. No Irishman there. And so, Germans, Germans, but along with those Germans and sitting right down in the front seat, there were young men and women from Hawaii. They didn’t look like the Germans at all. But nevertheless, the Germans and the Hawaiians are all one flesh and of one blood. Not a one language, not a one color, not a one height, but of one blood.
In the city of Chicago tonight, there are probably people from every nationality all over the wide world. And they’re separated by language barriers. And outside of a little broken English, they could not communicate at all with each other. But they are brothers. In that they all descended from one seed. And they’re all of one blood on the face of the earth. Separated maybe, maybe warring against each other, but one blood. And in that glorious Kingdom, the kingdom of the Father, there is also a redeemed and renewed race, dwelling and they are all one. One not by blood, one not by flesh at all, but one in Spirit. One in being born of one Father, of one Spirit, and baptized into one body. Now, I’ve repeated that three or four times, I want it to sink in. I’m not out to deliver an oration, but to give you truth, which I want you to take home with you.
So, there are the two kingdoms. And again, we have two births. I have already mentioned that, and we will be as brief as we can. But there are two births, that which is born of the flesh. What does Jesus Christ say about that which is born of the flesh. He settles it forever in two words, and puts a period down and turned around, and walks away from it, and leaves it there forever. What does He say, that which is born of the flesh, is flesh. I don’t know any more terrible thing to say than that. And if all the workers of the world were to get busy and call to their command the finest language that the races and nations know, they could not add anything to the finality, the fatal finality of that expression. That which is born of the flesh, what Lord? What is flesh and He turned around and left it there. And that which is born of the flesh, can never be anything but flesh. It can never cross over into the kingdom of the Spirit. And not all the religious education you can give it won’t cross it over into the kingdom of the Spirit. And not all of the discipline and teaching and instruction and education you can give the flesh won’t make spirit out of it. Though we have all the reasoning of Plato, flesh still remains flesh. We have all the art of Michelangelo, and flesh is still flesh. We may have all the music of Beethoven. Flesh is still flesh. And though we have the genius of an Edison, and though we have the strange, sheer penetrating abilities of a scientist like Pasteur that could make it possible for a man bitten by a rabid dog to get well again, it’s still flesh that gets well. Or if it didn’t, it would be flesh the died.
Though we have an Einstein, whose amazing mind could penetrate down and down and back into the dark, unseeing and unseen recesses of the atom and could lay the foundation for the physicist who came and has brought us the H-bomb and the cobalt bomb and the a-bomb. Though we have all that genius, Edison was flesh and Pasteur was flesh and Einstein is flesh, and Beethoven is flesh, and Plato is flesh and the learned societies of the world, they’re flesh, and the great operatic societies are flesh. And the great literary societies, they’re flesh, and the great libraries are flesh. That which is born of the flesh, is flesh. And, you can’t by any means known to mortal man, bring the flesh across into the Spirit.
Then, there is that which is born of the Spirit. And that birth is a new creation, just as the first birth is a new creation. Mr. and Mrs. Jones lived at 1721 North Boulevard. You go down to see them. They’re there. And you go back in a year and you sit talking with them and you ask, what is that I hear? She smiles and gets up and says, that’s Junior. He’s waking up for his bottle. Junior? Why, I was here a year ago and there was no Junior. No, the Junior has come around since that. A new creation, where’d he come from? I don’t know. I have no remote idea. I only know God Almighty made him and he is lying in there now begging for a bottle. A new creation has come, a creation that is flesh. And that which is born of the flesh is flesh.
But, when we’re born of the Spirit, there’s another birth that’s also a new creation. It is just as real and just as literal, and just as actual as the first birth. And I am sure I’m sure that when Jesus Christ said to Ananias, Ananias, go down to the Straight Street and ask for a man name, Simon the tanner. There is something down at his house. Lord, what is down at his house? I’ve been down there. There’s nothing down there. Oh, yes, there’s somebody down there that’s praying. But Lord, a year ago, there was nobody down there that prayed. I know. But there’s has been something that happened since. But a man named Paul, and Paul is down there. And he was born since that time, and he’s down there and he’s a praying man. Go down there and pray for him that he might receive his sight. A new creation has taken place. And Paul wrote, that if any man be in Christ Jesus, he’s a new creation. He knew what he was talking about. There was a new man down there, so that there are two births. There is the birth that makes us flesh and puts us in the body of Adam. And makes us inhabitants of the kingdom of Adam. There is a birth which is of the Spirit and puts us into the Kingdom of God and makes God our Father and Christ our Head.
Didn’t I say to begin with that Jesus Christ classifies and distinguishes and excludes and includes, destiny and fate, and Heaven and Hell right on every classification. We had better listen to Him. We better stop fooling with our religion. We better stop coming to church to hear the music, and pay no attention to the truth preached. We better get down to business on this. For that which is born of the flesh is flesh. And there are two destinies, that which is born of the flesh remains flesh, and that which is of the Spirit has another destiny all together.
Now it says in Daniel 12:2, they that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to eternal life and some to shame and everlasting contempt. There’s your division again. There’s your classification. There’s your inclusion, your exclusion. There is the sharp distinguishing of the Spirit of God. There are two destinies in eternal life. You know I don’t preach very much about Heaven. I don’t know much about heaven. I read about it and I like to sing and read over all the long verses of the Celestial City, Bernard’s conception of Heaven, being founded upon the Scriptures. But I don’t know too much about Heaven. But there is that which God calls, Eternal Life. It is the kingdom where those that lived who have life eternal. It is the Kingdom of the Father. It is the Kingdom of God. It is the Kingdom of Life. And all that are born the second time, who inhabit the spiritual kingdom, and are members of the new body of which Christ is the head. their destiny is to enjoy eternally, that Eternal Life.
I remember when I was a young preacher, we used to sing a rather morbid, but pleasant little, old number. There’s no Disappointment in Heaven. Have you ever heard it? There’s no disappointment in heaven, no poverty, sorrow nor pain. And I liked it. Because it was better than nothing, but it certainly couldn’t compare with many of the great hymns on Heaven, but at least it did lift our hearts to remember that there is a place called Eternal Life. Now, God sometimes uses that expression. Paul says unto eternal life, sort of making eternal life synonymous with all the immortality, and the brightness, and the deathlessness, and the painlessness, and the cheerlessness, and the joy that is the saints throughout all the years, and eons that lie ahead, world without end the city upon which the sun will never go down. For the sun is the Lamb and the Lamb is the light thereof. And the destiny of the twice born is Heaven. The destiny of the twice born is eternal life, in that heaven of life, presided over by the Lord of Life, and surrounded with the life of God. This is the destiny of the twice born.
And then it says, those others, shame and everlasting contempt. Now, I hope we get this straight, that those who are of the old Adam and are brothers in a fallen race, the Scripture says shame and everlasting contempt is theirs in the day when they rise from the dust of the earth. They that now inhabit the old kingdom, they have the money. They have a good bit of the education. They usually run things, these sons of Adam, these strong bulls of Bashan; they push in and the meek Christian quietly lets them push and sometimes, I think too much so. And they take over, and they buy us and sell us, and they tell us how much taxes we pay and they tell us when we pay them. And they run us more or less because there’s more of them, and they’re more aggressive. They’re extroverts, they’re pushers. And they shove us out of the trough with their long horns and they take over and the humble Christian takes what is left and comforts himself that the meek shall inherit the earth after that bulls of Bashan get done with it, and the Lord renovates it and cleanses it. And they take over, these great, strong extroverted fellows. And we wear the clothes they decide we’re to wear. And the wicked old Frenchman over in Paris, tell you women up-down, up-down, up-down, up-down, and you slavishly follow them and do exactly what you’re told and then give a reason and say, why I know, they’re short because you get more sun. And then later, down, down because you do what you’re told to do. And I’m not scolding you. I didn’t design this. This they tell me is the result of TV. They make them like that because they show on TV. I don’t know. I just go buy them or get them given to me.
But anyhow, we’re all the sons in one sense of the whole world. And naturally, we’re pushed around and dictated to and ignored and tramped over and voted down and lied to and deceived and sold gold bricks, and we don’t dare fight back. We just have to wait until the day when God will judge the heart of every man by my gospel. But in the meantime, we’re living in another world too. We’re living on two levels at once the level of Adam, but we didn’t stop there. We were born up on to another level. And that’s the level of the Spirit, and there we meet and mingle with all the good saints down the years.
I believe in the communion of saints says the Apostles Creed. What does it mean? It means that I have a level in my life where I am one with all that have gone on before me, all who have gone before. My days among the Dead are spent around thee I behold, Where my roving eyes are cast, The mighty minds of old, said Lamb in his library. Reach up and pull down Plato. Reach over here, pull down Aristotle. Reach over here and pull down Jonathan Swift. Reach over here and pull down Shakespeare. He was communing with the mighty minds of old.
I’ve got something better than that. I can pick up a hymn book. And I can commune with the mighty minds of old. Here they are, these saints of God. Here’s one by Gypsy Smith and here’s one by Mrs. Morrison, that good holiness woman and here’s one by good old John Keeble. And here’s one by Joseph Heart, and here’s one by Ellerton and old John Fossett and Benjamin Schmoke translated into English. Here they are, where my rolling eyes are cast, around me I behold the mighty souls that have lived. And it’s not only in my imagination that I commune with him, but in my heart, I commune with them, and in my spirit, I commune with them.
I had the pleasure of preaching to a bishop when I was down in Fort Wayne. And he sat there just like anybody else. And I felt a kinship with him the brother. I felt a kinship. He was a bishop and I wasn’t, but I felt there was a certain likeness there, because he was born again. I know he was by his language. Bishops can get born again too and he was. He was born again. He was a real Christian. And I felt a sense of similarity there, a rapport; a tuning in with another soul. God’s people, have this future, and the poor souls outside of Christ, shame and everlasting contempt.
You see now, don’t you friends. That this that I’ve given you tonight, is not just religious teaching, not just the finest thoughts Jesus could bring and put down here that I’ve commented on, but it’s the way things are really. It’s the way you will find them to be when you come to investigate. It’s the way you will find them to be at last when you come to die. It’s the way things are really. It’s the way Christ saw them and knew them to be in Heaven and came and reported to us, that there were two heads of the race; two kingdoms in which those two groups move, but they co-mingle and live concurrently, and sometimes you can’t distinguish one from the other.
There’s an accident on the street. And the man is found lying badly injured. You don’t know whether he’s a Christian or not. You can’t distinguish him from from a sinner. Two shall be working in the field. One shall be taken, another left. Two women shall be grinding at the mill, one shall be taken and the other left. Two shall be sleeping in the same bed, one shall be taken and another left. And the man down the street didn’t know which was a Christian maybe. But God knew that two people live in the same house and live clean, and both go to church, and maybe nobody will know which is born again, which isn’t. If they both live reasonably right and that often takes place, often is true. Our Heavenly Father knows. He knows whether that soul is born into His Kingdom or not. He knows whether that soul inhabits Adam’s old world or the new Kingdom of the Spirit. He knows. Christ saw it and we’ll see it in that day.
And now do you in the light of all of this not value the invitation our Lord gives? Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy-laden. Or the exhortation He gives, marvel not that I say unto you, ye must be born again. For unless you should be born again, you shall not see the Kingdom of God. These are not credo statements. These are reports on solid, serious things. Shall we not tonight think this over? I want to ask you bluntly. Where do you live? To whom do you owe allegiance? Where’s the source of your life? Where do you classify? According to the factual statements of our Savior, where do you classify? Whose child are you? To what race do you belong? What destiny is before you? But I’m not as good as that fellow. I have not said a word about that. I ask you, to what kingdom do you belong? Who is your father? Which level of the human race do you inhabit? Which kingdom do you dwell in? Which creation is it, the old or the new?
You had better think that over very seriously, very seriously, because that can be most important. And what I’ve given you tonight is the very essence of the Christian teaching, the very essence of the Christian teaching, held in some form by every evangelical church from the day Paul founded his first church. So we better take this seriously friends and ask ourselves the question, who’s my father? Where do I live? What level am I on? To whom do I owe allegiance? God help us.