Serving Our Generation

The pitiful part about this is we just don’t know how this is all going to work out. We wait on the Lord and we know that nothing can be added to this or nothing can be taken away. Yet we do need light on the Word and especially the Book of Revelation. We need light, because this is the book that is for our day and will be used for our day.

But the pitiful part about it is that the Jew will be deceived as a whole. And we know that the man of sin, the anti-Christ, will come upon the scene and even now we can understand that he’s on the horizon. We see everything that leads up to the moment when he’ll take over.

And he is a man. He will be a man, a man of sin, the anti-Christ. And as his shadows are just going ahead of him now, we see the shadows over all the land of all the nations. And as Jesus told us in Matthew, that there would be wars, rumors of wars, earthquakes, pestilences and nation against nation. And yet the end is not yet.

And we know that somehow that as the anti-Christ takes over, not only the nations and not only the peoples of the earth, but he will also make a covenant with the Jew. And they will figure that now they have come into their own through the deceiver. And God will permit this; we wonder why again that they will be allowed to be deceived.

But “He will purify the sons of Levi.” And the worst trouble is yet, that they haven’t had, even though the six million were killed, that they haven’t had yet what they’re going to have. Because there will be a time of Jacob’s troubles, such as never has come upon the earth before, that they’ll have to go through yet, with the purging, with the trying of them. But He will purge them and He will bring them through the fires.

But there is a remnant all the way and there has been. Even in Paul’s day, he could cry out for this remnant. He said, “There is a remnant according to the election of grace.” Even here now, that….

And even as Elijah had cried out and said, “Well now, I’m the only one that’s left.” And the Lord said, “No, there are 7,000.” So they were a remnant in that day, just he didn’t know them. And because he didn’t know them, he became saddened or disconsolate and thought, “Well, I’m the only one that’s holding up the banner for God.” But he wasn’t.

And though we don’t see all these things that are taking place, we know that this is taking place. We know. We know by the word of God. We know by the Holy Spirit’s cry that even came forth today, “My people, my people.” And He has not cast them off. St. Paul writing to the Romans in the 11^th chapter said, “Hath God cast off His people, whom He foreknew? God forbid.”

And it’s only in the interim; it’s only in the meantime, we could say, that God has dealt with us the Gentiles, and we now have become recipients of that which they refused. They refused, they refused. And absolutely, they refused Jesus Christ, and even Paul that talked to them. He said, “From today on, I won’t be able to do anything with you anymore. I will now go to the Gentiles.” And the Gentiles were glad. But there was a day that he had to say, “I cannot do any more with you.”

But then God turned to the Gentile nations, and that’s why we’re in it. Even the casting off of the Jew was the salvation of the world. The casting off of the Jew, as Paul writes to the Romans in the 11^th chapter: it is very interesting to hear about and read about and understand it. The casting away of the Jew was the salvation for you. If you have salvation today, it’s because the Jew, you could say, refused. And God turned to the Gentile, and we have come in. But this will not be forever.

“The Lord is not slack concerning his promises.” “The gifts and callings of God are without repentance.” He’s “not slack, as some men call slack.” “He’s not a man that He should lie, or the son of man that He should repent.” He has never repented. A way promised Abraham, and that which He told him He would do, He will do.

And so “out of Zion, out of Israel shall come a deliverer,” says Paul, writing to the Romans. And so out of Zion…. So what—if the casting of them off and having to cast them off because they refused and it meant the salvation of the Gentile. All other nations that aren’t Jewish are Gentile—no matter if they be Buddhists, no matter if they be Moslems, no matter if they be us in the United States, it wouldn’t make any difference—we here are Gentiles, that is, if we haven’t got the Jewish blood. And yet God will in His mercy and love turn to them.

Now, what will that be but “life from the dead”? There will never be a day like it. If the casting of them off was such a wonder…. And it says, “what will be the gathering of them back” and putting them into His plan again? Because His plan has not failed. God’s plan does not fail and never will fail. And though we say, “Oh, well, 2,000 years now, it’s a terribly long time.” It is. But it’s not for God a long time at all. “A thousand years are but a day, and a day is but a thousand years” with God.

With us, it’s just a short time and a lifetime is over. But God in His planning and in His purpose… And thank God that we live in this day. We say sometimes, “Oh, would God that I had lived in a day when Jesus was here.” But God knew that you would be born in this generation. God knew that you would come into this time. And thank God, welcome this day, embrace this day, the day of 1966, that you are living and that you have your generation to serve, and you have the will of God to do in you and for your life, and that you won’t fail God. That you won’t fail God.

We sing, “Lord, help us not to fail,” and we say, “Jesus never fails.” Well, I sing that over again, “Help me not to fail.” Jesus never fails. But sing it again and say, “Lord, help me not to fail.” Because we can fail.

We can take it all the way through here. Take it all the way through here of those that didn’t make it. They could have made it as well as anyone. But they didn’t make it. And we have here, just say, you can come into the Kings or the Chronicles and find there: “And this king did wrong. He did not do right in the sight of God. And he died and he was buried with his fathers.” Nothing but the name there; that’s all. Very few times that that ever comes forth, that this king “did right in the sight of God.” Very few times do we read this. Because they did not tear down the high places of the false gods. And they didn’t destroy that which Israel had mixed with and the false gods, and it just ends with the sepulcher, that’s all.

And is this what’s going to happen to you—you’re going to end with a sepulcher? Are you going to end with a tombstone that says, “Here lies Mary Ann so-and-so or John somebody”? And that’s the end of you: you did not serve your generation. Is this how it will end? When we go back by the cemetery, we see there the tombs and something written on them. Well, maybe there was a father of a family, maybe there was a little child. But nothing only that they have a little verse there or RIP, you know what that means, Rest In Peace or something, and that’s all there is to it.  But we are called.

What would one give to come back again? You read what Jesus Christ said. (What of sleep, son? You’ve come a long distance to hear this, and so we want you to make an A while the sun shines.) Jesus Christ… we say, “Well, what happens after death anyhow? What happens?” We only know what Jesus Christ himself said.

And He said there were two men—one man was a rich man, one man was a poor man. Remember, the poor man had leprosy or something similar to that, and every day they had to take him and put him at the rich man’s gate. And he was satisfied with the crumbs that fell from the rich man’s table. And the dogs had more mercy on him than the rich man. And there they just licked his sores.

But both died. And Lazarus—what does it say?—the angels came for him. And what does it say about the rich man? It says that he was buried. You can imagine a pompous ceremony. You can imagine the best burial they could ever give him. It would be today the best limousines and the lights would be on as you go through the street, you make way for him, because he was somebody. And in Bogotá, they have your name, and they have a purple ribbon, they have in gold your name on the back of the hearse. You know who’s ahead of you, if you’re on the side.

And he was buried; buried, had a sumptuous funeral, without doubt. And yet the poor man—the angels came—he didn’t even get a burial. The angels came and got him, but praise God.

Now this is Jesus talking. What happens after death? And Jesus said, the rich man in hell in torment… Now this is Jesus talking, you know, he lifts back the curtain. You say, “Well, what happens?” Now the curtain is lifted back and you see eternity. It gives you a picture of eternity.

Some people go to fortune tellers, some people go to spiritists, some go to one thing and say, “Well, now, what will happen to me or what?” And you see this is all from the pit. This is all lower realm. This is all from the enemy. Anybody tampering with fortune telling or anything of witches. This is witches.

In our day… When our nation began, these people were burned at stake. Today, we have one that’s giving out something, a prophecy, and she’s in Washington and she’s written up in books, she has a book, she’s written up in the Reader’s Digest. But in other days, she would have been burned as a witch, and she wouldn’t have been allowed to prophesy at all.

Because there is the supernatural of God, where we have the gifts of the Spirit. We have the tongues and the interpretations, the gift of the word of wisdom and the gift of the word of knowledge. And we have prophecy, miracles and faith and discernment, discretion, discernment of spirits, and all of those things. But there’s the under, the copy of this, the imitation of this that’s from the enemy, supernatural as well.

But we find that today all of these things are just taking over. And Jesus Christ gives us what will happen after death, after death what will happen. And there’s Lazarus up there, safe on the bosom of Father Abraham, the father of faith. And the rich man in hell in torment lifted up his eyes and said, “Father, send him to just take a little bit of water and put it on my tongue, because I’m tormented in these flames.” And the answer was “No, you had good things in your life, he had bad; now it’s all changed.” And said, “Besides there’s a gulf.”

So you see the doing away with purgatory, don’t you? There’s a gulf. When you die, your state is fixed. You’re in a fixed… you cannot move from one side to the other. There’s a gulf between you and him, us and you. He cannot come over that to do anything for you. But he said, “Oh, then let him go to my five brothers. Talk to those five brothers that attended the funeral”—naturally his five brothers were there—and he said, “Let him go to my five brothers then, and let him tell my five brothers.”

And he said, “No, because they have Moses and the Prophets,” meaning they have the Torah or the Word of God. And he said, “But no, if someone would come from the dead and would tell them,” and he said, “No, they wouldn’t even believe if anybody came from the dead.”

You see this one even below had his memory, he had his eyes, he could see, and he could feel that he was in torment, and he could even recognize Lazarus, who had been taken at his gate every morning, every day there. And all of this, he had his faculties, just the same as he ever had.

And there’s the after of it all, that we would wonder. If you wonder any more what’s going to happen, there are Jesus’ words. And He said that there will be those that will be joyful and happy forever, and there will be those that will be tormented even in flames. So we don’t have to ask anybody, “Well, is there such a thing as a hell?” So many people say, “Well, you know you can’t believe in a hell.” And, of course, we have all the proof of it. But here is Jesus Christ talking and lifting the curtain of what happens in eternity. And this is what he tells. So we have to believe what he says. Praise the Lord.

And so today we have this, that God has had mercy upon the Gentiles and has taken us—we that were the children of wrath—and given us an opportunity that we might come into the light. And then the Jews will be brought back into the light. And I just don’t know when they’re going to go through this terrible suffering, I don’t know. I know that they will go through this awful suffering with anti-Christ. Anti-Christ will take over on this earth. And all those who do not have their names written in the Book of Life, all those that have the mark of the beast in their hands or in their foreheads, it’s said, will worship the man of sin and will go to him.

So what we mean to do today is to serve our generation and that we will not go down and just be as one that is said, “Well, she was a nice woman or a nice lady and she helped us,” or something.

Are we willing, are we able, are we going through with God to serve our generation? Are we going to serve our generation? Or are we just going to let it go like that?

31: Lazarus served even though he was a cripple, even though he was sore-ridden, though he was sick, everything. He served as the sample throughout the ages, we could say, as one that somehow made it through with God. We don’t want to make it through by the skin of our teeth. We want to make it through so that not just our name, because our name is a certain thing, but because we’ve given ourselves. How can we give anything less than everything that we have?

And there are so many people that will give all they have, but they won’t give themselves. They won’t give themselves. It’s something, that you can just start to give.

It reminds me of that Indian that was listening to an evangelist, remember that? And he was listening to the evangelist. The evangelist was preaching and preaching and here this Indian rushes to the altar and he says, “Big Chief”—he was Big Chief with feathers—“Big Chief gives tomahawk,” and so he puts it on the altar, and so the evangelist does not pay any attention. And he goes back, “No, he didn’t like tomahawk.” And “Big Chief give blanket,” and he went up and a blanket. And the evangelist didn’t stop, he went on, he didn’t pay any attention. “I give blanket.” “Big Chief give bracelets, Big Chief give neck chain, Big Chief give all the….” The evangelist didn’t take any…. Then he thought, Well, now, what is it? And he rushed to the altar. And he threw himself on the altar, “Big Chief gives Big Chief.”

That’s what the Lord wants. He wants you to give Big whoever you think you are. You might think, let’s add to it. Big Chief gave Big Chief. So that’s what the Lord wants you to do. Whatever, whoever you are today, God wants you to give yourself on the altar. He’s not interested in your gifts. They all come in and work in, because they all will be at his orders and will all be for him. But God wants Big Chief Sally or Big Chief Hannah or Big Chief Frank or whoever it might be, and He wants that one on the altar before Him, that our names, not just because it’s a name. But He that doeth the will of God abideth forever. Hallelujah. Praise His name. That we will be able to be heralded down through the histories, “Lord, we served our generation. We did Thy will, we did Thy work and without any slackness.” Hallelujah. Praise God.