Challenges in Hebrews 11 — Leonard Ravenhill

God's Complete and Final Word

God has no afterthought. He doesn't have to make any corrections. These different versions he's trying to make corrections to the New Testament, I don't think they do too much good really, but God has nothing to add.

And he says if anybody adds to the book, he'll add the plague. And if anybody takes away, they're going to be in a serious situation. And I say again, it's to me an awesome thing that if the world does last another two thousand years, which I'm quite sure it won't, not in the present setup, God has nothing more to say to mankind.

He's said it all. What more can he say than to you he has said? I remember walking into Dr. Tose's office, and it was I think maybe the most unique privilege of my life, to talk to him on many occasions just the two of us alone.

And I remember when I walked in this particular day, he said, Len, latch the door and let your hair down, and you know, relax. And he said this very wonderful, disturbing, challenging thing. He said, you know Len, not many of us are going to look God straight in the face at the judgment seat.

Most of us will hang our heads. And he said, I'm not too troubled about the things that I've done, that I have to answer for. It's the things I could have done that trouble me. If I'd been more alive in God.

You know, it's true of all of us, and Christians anywhere, that you are just as spiritual as you want to be. The truffle's in your own hand. You can talk all you like about being sanctified and have baptisms of the Holy Ghost, and all very wonderful.

But the Holy Ghost won't drag you out to bed at four o 'clock in the morning and make you pray. Even if you're getting overweight, he won't push you from the table and make you fast. The truffle's in your hand.

You're as spiritual as you want to be. It's equally awesome to me to realize that no man that ever lived, ever had a greater Bible than I have. You can think of Finney, brilliant lawyer, preacher, Spurgeon.

Isn't it amazing that Spurgeon was saved at fifteen. He never went to Bible school. And by the time he was nineteen, they had to build an auditorium that seated five thousand, and he filled it twice every Sunday.

At nineteen years of age, without any Bible school training. Some ladies in the church I'd passed had asked me to go see their mother. She was a beautiful character. She looked like Whistler's mother.

She sat in a high carved chair, and she had a little lace thing on top of her head, and a lace collar, and a footstool. She was the very essence of dignity. When I went in, I just bowed and said, well I'm very privileged to see you.

She was ninety-five years of age. And she said, you know, my daughter's come home on a Sunday night so excited, and they tried to re-preach your sermon. She preached a long while, about all she knew.

But anyhow, I said, that's right. And she said, you know, you remind me so much of Spurgeon. You must preach like Spurgeon. I said, now look lady, thank you for the compliment, but I'm sure Spurgeon was a million miles ahead of myself.

And then I said, did you ever hear of Spurgeon? Oh, many times, many times, she said. He used to go to London to buy things in the spring. He went on Thursday, bought on Friday, toured the city on Saturday, and went to Spurgeon's tabernacle on Sunday.

He was amazing. He said he would come in and say something, and people would be smiling, and maybe bring tears to your eyes, and you'd rub the tears away, and the next thing is, Silver Voice was way up there in eternity, lifting the congregation into the presence of God.

Prayer, Worship, and Entering God's Presence

I think one of the things that does disturb me in America is that there's very little pulpit praying. Spurgeon wouldn't let anybody pray in his meeting. He didn't say deacon, so-and-so, Johnny Brown.

He said it was more important to prepare what you're going to pray about, than what you're going to preach. So very often the prayer's the same. Bow your head, thank Lord, Lord we thank you we're here this morning, bless the choir and everything, and the offering, and help us with the building front, and thank you for all you've left in the day.

And that's it. You've got three problems with a congregation. One is to get them there physically. The second is to get them there mentally. The third is to get them into the presence of God. We're so attached to springs, and all other things, and from the dirty world that we've been in for a week, that it's difficult.

You usually don't get people there till about five to twelve, then they're looking at the watches, and want to get home to watch the rams play the goats in the afternoon. Hebrews 11, as we said yesterday, is an awesome chapter, and the thing that really shakes me about it, is that while they subdued kingdoms, and wrought righteousness, and obtained promises, and stopped the mouths of lions, and did all the fantastic things they did by faith, not one of them ever had a Bible.

I say again, the only proof you have that you're in deadline with the New Testament, if you say we're in the apostolic success, and there's only one way to prove it, that is have apostolic success. And then it's irrefutable.

Hebrews 11, 24 times in that chapter, faith is mentioned. It's mentioned 32 times in the epistle. It's mentioned over 300, maybe about 330 times, in the New Testament. Only twice in the whole of the Old Testament.

Because again, they didn't sign articles of faith like we do to join a church. They acted in faith. I looked for a book for about 30 years, I got it fairly recently, called The Possibilities of Grace.

It was written, I think, by a Nazarene priesthood. Well, isn't this what it's all about? We were in a church not too long ago, and the pastor said to me, you see that fine looking man over there, with a balding head, a nice suit on?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's worth three quarters of a billion dollars. I said to him, did you see the man over there? One of the biggest imagines that because, um, tapuna, somebody gets the baptism, they give God some press feed.

God isn't looking for press feed. Sometimes I wish I could shout from the housetop, God is not looking for sponsors. Maybe a TV manager. All God is looking for is men who are totally abandoned to his will.

And for those of us to move up in simple faith, to really, really exercising this remarkable thing called faith. Which again, as I said yesterday, has been so abused. Faith can do anything, that's nonsense it can't.

It can only do what God wants. If faith can do anything, why don't you get a group of preachers together, let them fast a week, and believe God, and for the devil to get saved. That'd kill a lot of mess up, wouldn't it?

Nobody has faith to believe that. Why don't we pray the Lord would raise up, raise up Surgeon, and a few of the great saints. He doesn't do it that way. You can have all the faith in the world, and pray, and have hands laid on you, and do anything else you like.

And if you're 70 years of age, you won't wake up 25 years of age tomorrow morning. There are certain things that faith can do, there are certain things that faith cannot do. Now we said yesterday again, that the epistle to the Hebrews is really an exposition of the wilderness journey of the children of Israel, and the book of Psalm, the marvelous dealing of God, dealings of God with Israel.

Spiritual Maturity and Possessing More Land

I think if I can use this language and you understand, one of the heartbreaks of God must be the slowness by which we mature spiritually. I'm not talking about a lot of head knowledge, I'm not talking whether you know Greek or Hebrew, or you can explain and give me the structure of the epistles of Romans or something else.

I'm talking about our personal relationship, our personal development in spirituality. Remember in the uh, Ezekiel is the prophet of degrees. Everything's done a little at a time, you know. And as I said the other day, I do believe in instant purity, because there are no degrees of purity.

A thing is pure or impure, there are no degrees of purity. I believe in instant purity, I do not believe in instant maturity. Listen there isn't a man on God's earth at night now, and I don't care whose name you name, there isn't a man that's yet arrived spiritually.

There's still more land ahead for all of us to possess. I don't care what miracles you've seen, I don't care what faith you've operated, there's still so much territory. As we said yesterday, the children of Israel could have got out of, they could have got out of Egypt into the promised land, in about 10 or 11 days.

It took them 40 years. Why? Hebrews explains why. Because they um, they entered not in because of unbelief. Now Hebrews 11, the key word is faith. The key to me, to Hebrews totally, is Hebrews 11 6. He that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is, a rewarder of them that seek him.

No, of them that diligently seek him. Remember the woman that lost a piece of silver, she didn't seek for it, she thought diligently, she thought with urgency. She must recover it. And God never encourages laziness.

Sometimes I think pastors are about the laziest people in the world. You see, they don't have to get up for a certain time, they don't have to, they can go to bed when they want. But if they're just pastors, if they're disciples, they can't.

We tell people who come to the altar, you're saved, your name's written in heaven, you're going to have a five-decker crown, you're going to have a free ticket to the marriage supper of the Lamb, and a free mansion on Main Street, and oh we've taught all the blessings.

And they're not all true either. But why don't we tell them the other side of the coin? If you've really been redeemed, if you've been bought by the Christ, if he's redeemed you from your sin, if he's come to take possession of your personality, one aspect of this thing, is you're a soldier of Jesus Christ.

And a soldier has no rights. You can't find me one man in history, inside or outside of the church, who has been a success in any particular sphere, who has not been a disciplinarian. Not one. John Wesley was contemporary with some of the greatest figures in history.

And one day, one evening, he took supper with Dr. Johnson, one of the most famous men in literature. They had what Wesley had a weakness for, partridge pie. And after they'd eaten, and they talked a while, Wesley got a little disturbed, and he said, well, I shall have to go.

Go, go. Well, they hadn't wished what this old doctor lifted out that great big turnip that he had, and looked. He said, why man, it's only a few minutes to nine o 'clock. Fold your legs under the table, take it easy, let's talk.

Old Wesley said, I have an appointment in the morning at four o 'clock. Four o 'clock? Who are you going to meet in the morning at four o 'clock? God, he said. Meet him every morning at four o 'clock.

If you only buy one book out there, buy a treasury of prayer. Dr. E. M. Bounds, one of the great characters in American history, one of the greatest prayer, men of prayer. His daughter used to write to me, and she said, Brother Rayfield, my daddy normally rose at four o 'clock in the morning for the main part of his life, but as he got older, he rose at three o 'clock.

Why, some of you had just finished seeing Johnny Carpenter at that time, or a night show or something. Wesley rose at four o 'clock. E. M. Bounds rose at four o 'clock. John Fletcher rose at four o 'clock.

Robert Murray M 'Cheyne, who is the opposite number in English history to your very marvelous, in fact, one of the most unsurpassed men in American history, who died at the ripe old age of 29. David Brainerd rose before sunlight.

The founder of the Chandler Inman Mission, Dr. Hudson Taylor said, The sun never roars to find me in bed. Books can be a curse as well as a blessing. They become crutches. There's a hymn that talks about certain things being earth guides and not our chains.

And sometimes we reach for a book, it's served us, and we get an outline. We copy what somebody else says, and we take some second-hand theology and second-hand thinking to people who possibly read the book before you did, and said, he hasn't got much.

This is the greatest unexplored thing, I was going to say, shall we say, area in the whole world. After all, did God finish his production? Did he close the assembly line, if you want to put it that way?

Did he finish with great men when he finished with Wesley and Finney and Booth and Spurgeon and a few other fellows? Do we have to relax and say, well, of course, we're not living in those days? God doesn't do that anymore.

I think there are some of the greatest men ever on the earth today. The only thing that holds America together certainly isn't the church. There's some godly men in it. I told you the other day, I know a man in this country, he's very sick right now, maybe dying, he's 90 years of age, he hasn't been to bed one night for the last 30 years.

Prayed every night from 10 o 'clock at night till 5 or 6 in the morning, by himself. That's tremendous burden for different areas of the country or different parts of the world. No woman in Chicago looks after a sick mother, but she prays five hours a day.

No little man in Canada who's even lived in a tent through seven winters at best. In his last letter he told me, he said, they laid me out for the third time. Sent to the relatives and said, well, he is dying this time.

I know he's told us twice before, but he can't survive. He gets so weak with fasting and prayer, they find him prosperate enough to lift him into bed and give him attention like a newborn calf. And he carries such burden, he shreds and he grieves and he groans.

Now he's pretty heavy, he weighs about 95 pounds. You see, we read about Brainerd 200 years ago. We read about these other men and think, think God somehow doesn't produce men. The great men never stood on TV.

That took place for dwarfs. The men with the greatest, most profound knowledge of God and spirituality are men who are hidden away. And I say again, it's a slow business. Growth, true growth in grace is really, really, really a slow business.

When I first read E .M. Bounds, I read him in the few days I did go to Bible college. And when he said in his book, Power Through Prayer, it takes 20 years to make a sermon, because it makes, takes God 20 years to make a man.

I thought, well, I'm not that silly. Out of the window. When I get out of this place, they'll think, Virgin, I've risen from the dead. Nobody's ever thought it, but that one old woman, and she was too old to really understand.

The Kingdom That Cannot Be Shaken

But I'm saying that to say this, you see, that we've got to explore this book. And I told you that Hebrews 12 is correct. God is never wrong, as you know. And we're moving into a bottleneck in history that's mentioned in Hebrews 12, where it says that everything that can be shaken will be shaken, that the kingdom that cannot be shaken may remain.

God is going to shake every system in the world, like our financial system is like that right now. Economically we're struggling. Morally we're broken up. Everything is being shaken, just so that God can honor his Son and show the kingdom that cannot be shaken will remain.

Now this epistle is not addressed, as you know, like the epistle to the Romans. It's addressed to who? You say it doesn't carry a title. Oh yes, it does. As I said yesterday, this epistle has not one word to say to lost people.

And listen, there isn't an epistle in the whole Bible that has. After the Acts of the Apostles, the whole balance of the New Testament is to the Church, correction to the Church, ministry to the Church.

If you read the first five books of the Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Deuteronomy is a recap of the other four books. If you take the five books of Psalms, which there are five books in Psalms, the fifth is a recap of the other four.

If you take the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and then you come to Acts. What is Acts? The book of Acts is the Church doing everything that Jesus did. And until she does that, she's not a healthy Church.

The Apostle Paul did everything that Jesus did, didn't he? And the world doesn't have to believe us, because we stand up here and denounce this, denounce that, and denounce something else. Isn't it amazing that in his day, Jesus never made any reference to the system of slavery that was crippling the world under the Roman Empire?

Isn't it amazing that Paul never said, well there's a new Caesar come on the throne, and he's more diabolical than the previous Caesar. They never bothered with those things like we did. They presented Jesus Christ as the answer to the problem.

I'll tell you again, you see Paul, he was born in where? He was born in the historic capital of the world, Tartus. He ended in a military capital of the world, Rome. In between he went to the religious capital of the world, Jerusalem.

He went to the immoral capital of the world, which was Corinth. He went to the intellectual capital of the world, which was Athens. And he said he was all things to all men, and he was. If ever you can find it, I'm going to say let me have it.

But there's a poem written somewhere in the 1800s by F. W. H. Myers. M-Y-E-R-S. It's poisonous. I thought I'd found a good version just recently. It's got 72 stanzas, and it had the five stanzas I wanted were not in it.

And all it's called is St. Paul. It's one of the most dramatic things ever written outside of the Bible. One phrase of it says this, then with a rush, the intolerable craving shivers throughout me like a trumpet call, all to save these and perish for their saving, to die for their life and be offered for them all.

He talks about the world gazing at the cross with an empty wonder. Consumed with emptiness. When you think of the majesty of God, when you think of the enormity of the gospel, how in the world can we present a gospel that people can go to sleep while we preach it?

It should be the most dynamic, revolutionary thing. The old Crakers used to say that a man is his own atmosphere. Just as though you had a cup here of boiling water, and if you take tea in it, well it will make tea.

If you put coffee in it, it makes coffee. If you put beef essence, you get some hot soup kind of thing. By the same token, they said if the man is charged with God, he'll charge the atmosphere. Of course, the same people said the preacher has to give one whole day, Tuesday, when he doesn't see any faith, not even his wife, he shuts himself away to listen to God.

And he spends the whole day with God, getting his sermon for Sunday. Then he spends all day Saturday playing golf. No, they said he played all day Saturday, he was alone to prepare the man to deliver the prepared sermon.

And then on Sunday he wasn't accessible, because he came into the pulpit so charged with God. He'd been in the presence of God so much, he was so overflowing that there was such a tremendous overspend.

So three days a week he wasn't accessible. As I said the other night to the preachers, if you're a preacher you've only two things to do, not bury the dead, not go visit the sick. You've two things to do if you're going to stay by the New Testament.

All you have to do is give yourself continually to prayer and the word of God. Now if you push the sickness visitation on the elders, and other things on the elders and go play golf, they shall fire you.

But actually, if you're going to be truly a New Testament preacher, if you're going to be a true New Testament follower, in that sense, Acts chapter 6 says you've only two things to do. I went to a certain church, to be the pastor, they laid down certain conditions, offered to buy me a new house, various other things, very good, very good.

Now I said here are my conditions. Number one, we abolish offerings. There's no right to take collections from drunkards and thieves and other people. God's people should support the house. Number two, we're going to have a half night of prayer in this church every Friday night.

Number three, you elders, you're going to visit the sick. That's your job according to the New Testament, not my job. Acts 6 says I have two things to do only as a preacher, and that is give myself continually to this word of God and to prayer.

You do the rest in the church, it's not my obligation. You can't find a great preacher that ever takes around drinking tea with women and running to hospitals here there and everywhere. In fact the preacher told me in New York, in one of the very fine old churches there, he said I'd kill myself in this city.

Because one hospital is 20 miles this way outside of the city, and the other is 15 miles. And if I drive through, it takes all the afternoon. If I get the subway, I have to fight my way out. And I'm killing myself chasing people.

His church went down, down, down, down, down like that. So he left it, embarrassed. I'm saying again this, this book, nobody ever had a bigger Bible than you have. Maybe they used it better, and that applies to me as well.

Nobody ever had a private way, a back stair up to God. There's only one way. Nobody ever had any more anointing of the Holy Spirit than you, if you really desire that anointing. Whether you're a priest in the pulpit or sit in the pew or teach at Sunday school class.

As I meditated this morning, I remember a friend who said, you know, I wouldn't like to inherit a million dollars, I wouldn't know what to do with it. Now God says he not only gave Jesus Christ, but with him he has freely given us all things.

What are we doing with it? Again, I tell you this again, because I want to drive it like a nail in a sure place. But God has nothing more to say to humanity. He finished talking 2 ,000 years ago, and we haven't caught up with him yet.

And if the world lasts another 2 ,000 years, God hasn't another word to say to us. It's all in this book. What more can he say than to you, he has said as we sang a few minutes ago. All right, Hebrews 11 6, you come to God and believe that he is, he is what?

He's everything he said he is. One of the great things in the beginning of this book is that he says of the Son, thy throne, O God, is forever and ever. A scepter of righteousness is the scepter of thy kingdom.

God will never abdicate. God can never push him, no one can push God off his throne. God doesn't change his mind. He said it, it stands, it's immutable as God is immutable. And I've said sometimes it's so facetiously that someday somebody's going to pick up the Bible and read it and believe it, and when they do we'll all be embarrassed.

That's what happened with a lot of people in Indonesia and in other countries where they're not so sophisticated. And the truth hasn't been watered down. They read it and they bump into it. Isn't that amazing?

The Danger of Neglecting Great Salvation

You say, well go back a minute, what does it say there in Hebrews 2? Well it says, if the word spoken by angels was steadfast, well was it the word spoken by angels steadfast? When the angel came and spoke to Abraham in the door of his tent, was that word steadfast?

When the angel came and pronounced judgment on Sodom, was that word steadfast? When angels appeared to men in the Old Testament, when they appeared to the Son of God, was their word true? Well if the word spoken by angels was steadfast, what about the word that God has given?

And immediately it says, how shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation? And we go drumming a poor sinner and we thump him and say, you won't escape if you neglect salvation. He's not talking to sinners, he's talking to us.

How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation? How great is it? Well you better read the context. What does it say? The great salvation, which at the first began to be preached, verse 3 of chapter 2, which first began to be spoken by the Lord, was confirmed unto us by them that heard him, God also bearing them witness.

Now here's your great salvation. Bearing them witness with signs and wonders and divers miracles and gifts of the Holy Ghost. You go to a church like that, that has signs and wonders and divers miracles and gifts of the Holy Ghost.

I've been reading Chantry's little book, an abominable thing, Signs of the Apostles. He sweeps everything, Pentecostal, under the rug. Get out, it's all false. He says there are no apostles these days.

All right, if there are no apostles, there are no evangelists. Because he made some apostles and some prophets and some evangelists. If you're going to be consistent, be consistent, but don't fool with the word of God.

Cut it out. Just to tell the story of an old lady in England who went to a church, very fundamental, and then a young college fellow came along and he told them you couldn't believe this. And every time she went home and she cut it out of the Bible.

About five years after she was terribly sick. Thought she was dying. The young preacher went along and said well you've been such a blessing in the church. People talk so well about you. But remember the comfort of the word and she said well read it to me.

And he picked it up and it was all cut out. It was about three or four pages. Oh he said this is fabulous. Have you been cutting pages out of this? Yes, every Sunday you said we couldn't believe this.

I cut it out. Because I might get confused you see. So I cut it out, I cut it out. What does God talk about? His word that if, if we take anything from the book. Well what do you have to do? Cut it out?

No, cease to preach it, that's all. And by the fact you will not preach it to the people, you cut it out of their thinking. Our people are no more spiritually educated than the man in the pulpit. And if he's got a bias against this and he won't preach that, he withholds it, he cuts it out.

You see we isolate things. If you say to somebody, well we're not to be unequally yoked together. What do they think about? Oh well that boy's courting a girl that's unsafe. He's going to be unequally yoked.

Well that may be one application. Do you know half the preachers in the country have got a millstone around their neck? Do you know why? Because they're unequally yoked ones, spiritual deacons in the church, that's right.

By the same token if you say, choose you this day whom you will serve. Well, oh well that Joshua standing his foot, no sorry. Every morning you get out of bed that text should hit you right between the eyes.

Choose you this day what you're going to do, because it'll never come back. You want to waste it, waste it. If you preachers want to go golfing and goofing, go do it. But remember it's going to, it's going to meet you at the end of the line.

Choose you this day, it's never coming back. People say, oh well I won't do much today. I'll do two days work tomorrow. Well then if you do that, you lost two days today. Because if you can put two days work in tomorrow, you can put two days work in today.

So you don't win anyhow. But you see life is a one-way street. And you can suddenly discover your spiritual barrenness and impotence, and you can't backtrack. There's no such thing as praying and somebody laying hands on you and making you 25 years of age again.

What a great salvation we have. He that cometh to God must believe that he is. He is what? That he's able to save to the other one. He is able to make all grace abound to you. He is able to keep you from falling.

You've got an outline for somebody who breathes his mouth. He is. Preach on the he is of God. He is. He is. All right let's look at the watch. I don't want you all to get parking tickets. Let's look at Hebrews 11 here.

Faith's Heroes Were Broken People

Let's start at the beginning of the chapter. Let me just say this quickly again. Remember this, don't get terrified when you walk into a Hebrews 11. And stand back and say, oh look at Moses how high he is.

Oh look at Abraham how tall he is. Oh look at this man how vast he is. Look at the other side and say Moses, man of faith, he was a murderer. Noah, he got drunk. David, he's an adulterer. Samson, got messed up with some, a woman in some clothes.

He's got a bunch of robes. Again do you think if I was trying to prove what faith could do, I'd quote a prostitute. But God does in Hebrews 11. He talks about Rahab the harlot. This is not to show us these supermen that God used.

It's to show us that even if your life has gone to pieces. In other words like uh what Jeremiah 18, I went to the house of the potter. The vessel was marred. That God can take that vessel that's marred and still make it a vessel sanctified and meet for the master's use.

It's not what there is in you. If you're a young person don't back off and say I don't have many brains. I've not been to school. That's not the point. It's not what you have and bring to God. It's what God can bring to you.

If you submit yourself in his will and follow the path of obedience through his word. All the possibilities of grace are there. Now there's a pattern here in Hebrews 11. I'll tell you this honestly it took me years to find it.

There's an order. God is a God of order. He's a God of law. And the first characters mentioned here. Faith is a substance. All right let's go to verse 4. By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain.

By which he obtained witness that he was righteous. God testifying of his gift. And by it he being dead yet speaking. Is God arbitrary? Why did he accept the sacrifice of one man? They both did as well as they could.

But he accepted one sacrifice. One was the labor of the man's hand. God had already given a pattern because blood had already been shed. Isn't it amazing that when man got into the garden of Eden he stopped at the tree of knowledge and he still stuck there.

He hasn't moved since. He never went on to the tree of life. The first Adam what a marvelous character he must have been. Perfect in every way. And Jesus Christ was not as uh was it Faber? No. Newman I think that said in his hymn.

All loving wisdom of our God. When all was sin and shame a second Adam to the fight. No third of no second Adam. Jesus is not the second Adam he's the last Adam. If you have a first Adam and a second Adam you might have a third Adam.

But Jesus Christ is not the second Adam he's the last Adam. He is the author and the finisher of our faith. And because of Adam's sin his nakedness was exposed. Started to cover himself with his pig leaves and God shed blood.

It was God that prepared the covering. It was God that took the animal skins and covered his nakedness. So then there is no covering before God except the covering of blood. If the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean sanctify for the purifying of the flesh.

And that's what it did in the old testament. If you touched a dead bone in the garden while you were digging you'd immediately touch death. You have to run to the sanctuary to be cleansed. And the blood of bulls and goats sanctified for the purifying of the flesh.

But it couldn't purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God. Like the blood of Jesus Christ God's son. You see the blood of when this man committed his murder, which he did there at the beginning as you know.

He slew his brother and hid his brother. And God said your brother's blood crieth to me from the ground. Now one man brings his offering, oh beautiful attractive lovely fruit. The other man brings an offering, a lamb.

We figure a lamb was slain and it was accepted. And his brother was immediately angry. People are still angry when you talk about the blood sacrifice. Still gets the liberals pretty mad. They call it a butcher shop religion.