Where Is America Headed? — Vance Havner

Here at the old time camp meeting. Amen. I tell you, I still like camp meeting. I like revivals in churches and stuff like this, but there's just something about the camp meeting atmosphere that I sure like.

Amen. It's just like you can just come as you are. Just get in there and just shout and praise the Lord. Amen. Don't feel cramped in the spirit. Amen. And so we're going to have a special song for you today.

This is one of our friends, a neighbor that don't live right up the road from us, and he's going to sing a good song that I'll tell you I really love. Lately, I've got leaving on my mind. Amen. And so I want to dedicate that to each one of you.

Maybe you're having trials and tribulations and maybe sickness and might be out of work and might be, or maybe you might be a pastor having trouble at your church, maybe with a deacon or somebody like that.

And I'm sure you can say the same thing. Amen. Boy, I've got leaving on my mind, just getting out of here, bless God, and just going home to be with the Lord. That's the way we feel so many times. And then since this, the bombing of the World Trade Center, then I got a great message in there, a timely message, about one of the old war horses that preached all of them down this country we love very dearly, and he's home now with the Lord.

Amen. Now, but I'll tell you what his message still rings on. Amen. It's Dr. Vance Havner preaching on where is America headed. Amen. And so I hope, pray that you will enjoy this. Now listen, we love you folks, and thank you so much for being a part of this.

And please, if you ever think about it sometime, send down Jonathan a letter and let us know what you think about the meeting. Will you do that for us? And God bless you, and I hope, pray God will do something real special for you at this service here.

My good friends, again, lately I've got leaving on my mind, and then Dr. Vance Havner preaching on where is America headed. May God bless you now. Brother Jonathan.

There's an end to cold, cold air. So I say to myself, I'm going to fix it all, and I can't find the time. But all I'm getting lately is leaving on my mind. Lately all I've got is leaving on my mind. That's all I'm thinking about most of the time.

My troubles are behind. Somebody told me the other day I should be looking for a better place to live. You know I just can't get excited about this old world and all it can give. I couldn't care less if I could buy it all with a solitary dime.

For what good would this world to me be? Lately all I've got is leaving on my mind. That's all I'm thinking about most of the time. My troubles are behind. For lately I'm leaving on my mind.

America's Moral and Spiritual Direction

American freedom, I suppose that by now what has been called the star-spangled bonanza that we put on the first part of the year has run down a little. And maybe by now we're putting away the decorations and taking down the banners and lowering the flags and life will get back to abnormal and subnormal because it never is normal these days.

Somebody said birthdays tell how long you've been on the road but they don't tell how far you've traveled. And the big question is how far has America traveled and where is America going and where are we going because we are America.

It is not my wish to paint any brighter halo around our founding fathers than they deserve. I know that they were not perfect men. There was a mixture of the faith of the pilgrims and the philosophy of Tom Paine, Christian faith and deism and purity and austerity and the perfectibility of man.

We did not inherit an unmixed blessing but God overruled it and they did lay the foundations with the recognition of providence in the affairs of man. Today America stands alone in a hostile world, a world that marvels at the way we are hanging ourselves with our own role.

Corruption in government, the breakdown of the home, pagan education and moral putrefaction. I used to say that civilization is going to the dogs but quit that out of respect for dogs. There are plenty of people today doing things beneath the dignity of any dog and I wouldn't want to insult the canine kingdom by any such remark.

Of course all Americans were not going to Plymouth before the revolution. There was sin and corruption aplenty but most of it was changed by the great awakening, the revival that preceded the revolution.

We ought to be commemorating that but most Americans don't even know that it happened and couldn't care less. Those 56 gallant men who pledged their lives and fortunes and sacred honor to sign the declaration knew well that if it didn't work it might mean hanging.

One of them, Harrison of Virginia, a heavy man, turned to Geary of Massachusetts, a skinny specimen like I am, and said, Well, we may hang but I'm heavy and will die instantly but I imagine you will dangle around for quite a while.

That was the spirit in which they signed it. Now there were some gentlemen there, the olive branch men, who thought we ought to try to have peaceful coexistence with George III, although of course that term hadn't come into existence, peace at any price.

And we still have their kind among us like the Israelites in Exodus who said, We were better off under Pharaoh. We did have security and you have it today in the better red than dead talk. Everything is secondary to biological survival now.

The main thing is to stay alive. Somebody asked a boy the other day, What do you want to be when you grow up? And with Adam Balmes in mind he said, Alive. Well, that's a pretty good wish. Peace at any price better than no peace.

Life at any price better than no life, they tell us. We're willing today to risk our honor to save our hides and from the way things are going, we may end up with neither hides nor honor. We tell the world that America is a great place with two chickens in every apartment, two or three cars in every garage, and a fair land of plastics and gadgets and giveaway shows, and almost every other citizen living on a handout from Washington.

If that's all we've got, we're out of bag. We ought to tell what it really means to be an American, the price our fathers paid in blood, sweat, and tears to make this the land of the free and the home of the brave.

George Washington's foot sore soldiers didn't stain the snow at Valley Forge just to create a politician's paradise, and Abe Lincoln didn't walk the floor all night long at the White House to pass the time away.

It costs a plenty to purchase this freedom, and it may cost more to keep it. It's no time to discuss our American birthright and make light of our liberty. One good way to appreciate this country is visit some other one, and then come back.

I like it here, and some of these gentlemen who say they like it better somewhere else, I would be happy to accompany them to New York and load them up in a boat and wave after them just as far as I can see them as they depart to the land of their heart's desire.

We're living in an epidemic of mudslinging and milk-raking and character assassination, and the assassins are having a field day defaming both the dead and the living. At least vultures feed only on the dead.

Every great American from Paul Revere down has been vilified and scandalized. It has become a disease. It's about time we had a kind word about what is still good in this country and what was good about our forefathers and what is still right in the nation they founded.

I don't intend to waste my time on this smelly business of specializing in scandal. It rubs off on you, for one thing, and it's a waste of time. A bulldog can flip a skunk any time, but it's not worth it.

And it all boils down to this, that there'll never be a better America until we have better Americans, and that means a better breed than some of them are today. How are we going to have patriotism and honor and decency and integrity and morality and character if we live as though there were no king in Israel and every man can do that which is not right, but what he wants to do?

America’s Need for Spiritual Redemption

In the last days, Woodrow Wilson, broken and disillusioned, said, "...the sum of the matter is that our civilization cannot survive materially if it is not redeemed spiritually.". And Douglas MacArthur, in the latter part of his day, said, "...the problem is basically theological.".

Now, that's a tremendous statement for a general to make. It must be of the Spirit if we are to save the flesh. And I think it's significant that near the end of their careers, one of America's top statesmen and one of her greatest soldiers carried the decision to the public that sounds like a preacher talking, "...the problem is basically theological.".

Freedom Through Continuing in Christ's Word

There was read to you a moment ago those words of our Lord, "...you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.". We're hearing a lot about freedom these days, let freedom reign. But although we hear sermons on this text, it is really not right to take a text that starts with the word, "...and," and use it as a complete statement of what God is trying to say in that particular case.

When Jesus said, "...you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free," that was the emancipation proclamation for all mankind. But if you take it without its context, just that one verse, you only have two abstractions, truth and freedom.

The first word in that verse is, "...and," and so that makes us look up a verse, "...and he said, ye shall know the truth only if ye continue in my word. Then are ye my disciples indeed, and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.".

Now, don't you see what a difference that makes? It's like Romans 12, 1 and 2. I hear preachers sometimes preach on, "...be not conformed to the world, but transformed by the renewing of your mind," and that's good advice, yes, and it's the word of God, but the first word is, "...and," and you need the first verse.

"...I beseech you, therefore, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, and be not conformed to the world, but transformed.". Now, that's the whole message. And if you go back still one verse further up, we read that many believed on Jesus when he said some of these things.

However, it was a superficial faith because a few verses further down he called them the children of the devil. Just as in John 2 where I read that many believed on him when they saw his miracles, but he did not believe in them.

It's the same word in the original. They believed with a superficial faith, and Jesus knew it was superficial because he knew what was in man. Now, the sequence is this, if you get it all. We believe, we continue in the word, we become disciples, we know the truth, and we are set free, and that's the only way to freedom.

And so I would call it, if you want to use alliteration, freedom through faith that follows. The Bible has a lot to say about keeping this thing up once we make a profession of faith. "...If ye continue in my word, patient continuance, whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein.".

Obedience as the Evidence of Genuine Faith

After the day of Pentecost, they didn't try to stay on the mountaintop all the time. They didn't try to go through this world singing hallelujah and patting their feet all the time. They continued there.

"...It has been said that nothing is more harmful to spiritual experience than too many spiritual experiences.". Now, that may sound contradictory, but it isn't. Paul went up to the third heaven, and he never could tell what he saw after he got back.

A great trip, I suppose, and if some folks had gone there, they would have got it in Technicolor and got out posters, and gone everywhere lecturing on my trip to the third heaven. But God gave him a thorn in the flesh to keep him from getting proud about it, and he learned that the thing that really matters is the sufficient grace of God from day to day.

The New Testament doesn't have much to say about special experiences. Of course, nowadays we are hearing a great deal about certain subjective experiences that seem to take care of everything once and for all and rule out much growth in grace.

We read, "...Ye are my friends, if ye do what I command you. If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them. He that doeth the will of my Father, the same is my brother, sister, and mother. Why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not what I say?

He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me, and I will manifest myself to him. He that heareth my words, and doeth them, shall be like a man that buildeth his house on a rock.

Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, but he that doeth the will of my Father. Blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it. Be ye doers of the word, not hearers only.". And then the Great Commission, and many times I have read it from the pulpit and left out two words on purpose.

Then I've asked the congregation what two words did I leave out, and nowhere in this country have I found more than three or four who ever noticed a difference. I don't know whether they weren't listening.

I thought we'd all know it by now, but the two words are to observe. Teaching them to observe, to do it. You haven't taught your class anything until you've taught them to do it, and we haven't learned anything until we've learned to do it.

Charles G. Finney, the great revivalist, said, A revival is a new beginning of obedience to God. Now that sounds very trite, and there isn't much to shout hallelujah about in that, but that's what it is.

Revival isn't a lot of hooping and hollering and folks joining the Church. It's a new decision to get right with God and with people. We need to restructure our thinking today, both about the country and about the Church.

We've had enough oratory and celebration. It's time to be what we are. We ought to be Americans. The word American is an adjective and a noun. We say so-and-so's an American, that's a noun. We say he's an American man, that's an adjective.

And the same thing is true of the word Christian. It's time to be what we are and be Christian Christians. Jesus didn't say, Be the soul of the earth. He said, That's what you are. He didn't say, Be the light of the world.

He said, That's what you are. He didn't say, Be my witnesses. He said, You are my witnesses. If we ever have another real revival, it will be spirited by a persecuted minority, scorning the values of this world and living by rigid discipline.

Christians as Soldiers in a Spiritual Battle

Anybody can look well at a dress parade. Too many of the Saints today are out to wear medals and not scars. Too much of Americanism and too much Christianity is like the Reubenites over there in the book of Judges when Deborah and Barak won the battle and the tribe of Reuben stayed at home.

They were patriotic, but they didn't go to the battle. And as the context bears out, they played little tunes on their shepherd's pipes and didn't hear the trumpet call to battle. And sometimes watched Sunday morning crowds of well-fed, well-clad, well-housed church members saying, The Son of God goes forth to war, Honored Christian soldiers hard to resist the desire to march down through the crowd and say, Now hold everything.

That's good. But just what battles have you been in? Are you wearing medals or scars? Amy Carmichael had it right. You haven't followed Jesus far. If you have no wound, no scar. Last winter I was down in Florida preaching for about 10 weeks in a row and I was out at Shell Point at Fort Myers, a lovely retirement center.

And on Sunday morning there was an old general, 88 years of age, who came to the service and then he came over to talk with me one afternoon. He was a walking encyclopedia of information. He'd known every president since Theodore Roosevelt.

He'd been a general with Patton in the Second World War. And he told a story that I can't shake off. He said, In the Battle of Normandy I was standing with Patton and it had really been tough. He said, Here came about 30-odd boys who had been all shot up.

And some of them would die in just a little while. He said, The general went over to them and said, Boys, how are you? And everyone who could get his hand up to his head saluted. And they all said, Fine, General.

Most of them nearly dead. He said, We walked away from there and I noticed he didn't say anything and I didn't say anything. And finally I looked out of the corner of my eye and the tears were streaming down his face.

They called him Old Blood and Guts, but that got him. And when I read that, I wonder if we're growing that kind of Christians today, not just the Christmas and Easter kind, the Sunday morning kind, fair-weather saints.

Long ago an old warrior wrote to a young recruit, Thou therefore endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. He knew what he was talking about because he had been all shot up. Five times beaten with 39 stripes, three times beaten with rods, once stoned, three times shipwrecked, He could still say, I fought a good fight, I finished the course, I've kept the faith.

I've been faithful to the fight, I've been faithful to the faith, and I've been faithful to the finish. And I'm looking for my reward. He sat in a Roman jail. He wasn't writing his memoirs in a villa down on the French Riviera.

He was in a jail in the middle of Rome, waiting to have his head shot, though. He had stocks and bonds, oh yes, stocks for his feet and bonds around his wrists. And he looked to Timothy and said, Bring that old coat of mine and my books.

That's about all he had. And yet I think if Almighty God had called over the parapets of heaven and said, How are you doing, Paul? I believe he'd have saluted and said, Fine, Lord. My friends, the taste of this business is not enough.

We need to get into it. And the taste of this business is whether you're just a good soldier when the bands are playing and the bugles are blowing and the flags are waving. But when the fighting is at its hottest and your comrades are being killed around you and you're battling with the stub of a sword, no man forsake you.

Christ’s Victory and the Christian’s Ongoing Fight

When the great general calls, and we do have a great general. The other day a chaplain said he was with MacArthur on Corregidor and he said the general attended every service I held. And one day I congratulated him on it and General MacArthur said, I'm the commanding general here, but one of these days I'll not be here.

I shall have gone the way of all flesh here today and gone tomorrow. He said, Chaplain, you are not serving that kind of a general. You are serving no ordinary four-star general. You are serving the seven-star general described in the book of Revelation who has seven stars in his right hand, who is alive forevermore, and whose kingdom endures forever.

That's your general. And when that seven-star general calls down to us and says, How are you doing? I wonder if you're able to say, Everything's all right, Lord. There are a lot of things I don't understand.

But the strife will not be long. Today the noise of battle and the next the victors' song. This is a strange war we're in as Christians. It's already been won. Jesus won it, you know, on the cross and out of the oak and grave.

Our water is back this way. We're just engaged in mopping up operations. But it's still a fight of faith, and it's a time for renewed pledges of allegiance, and it's about time. There are too many faded documents and declarations grown dim.

Not only the Declaration of Independence, they're doing their best to preserve it, and it's barely legible. As you know, even John Hancock's bold signature will fade in time. But the worst of it is not the fading of a paper, but forgetting its original intent and ultimate purpose.

Renewing Covenants in Marriage and the Church

We need some new editions of it in human flesh. And then there are too many marriage certificates that are losing their significance. I had a million divorces last year in this land. The other day I heard of two old folks in a restaurant.

She couldn't hear well, and he thought he'd cheer her up, and he said, I'm proud of you. She said, Eh? He said, I'm proud of you. She said, I didn't get it. He said, I said, I'm proud of you. She said, I'm proud of you, too.

Now, there are too many that are tired of each other today. I don't know. I wonder if we got some here this morning. You wouldn't admit it, but the certificate's getting dim. We need to renew that covenant.

Let me say to you, you never miss the water till the well goes dry, and you'd better make most of the fact that your dear one is probably by your side this morning. Then when the day comes that you would give just about everything you have for one day, any old day, for the touch of a vanished hand and the sound of a voice, it's still.

We take each other for granted more ways than one today. We do it in the Church. Church covenants don't mean what they used to. Any other organization with no more loyalty to its founder, no more joy in its program, and that uses as much raw material and turns out as poor a finished product as the average Church would be out of business.

If I dropped into the average Church today as a non-Christian and watched a handful of Church members during a so-called revival trying to get more recruits for the Army of the Lord than most of the outfit they already had, it's gone A-W-O-L.

I'd say either Christianity is not what it's supposed to be, or we've been sold a cheap brand and inoculated with a mild form, or we've been immunized against the real thing. Joel said, I'm tired of the pagans going around saying, Where is your God?

Where is the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob? And I'm embarrassed that the pagans walk by our churches over America and sometimes watch our feeble ceremonies moving corpses from one mortician to another, sometimes preaching a dynamite gospel and living firecracker lives.

It's time to be what we are, or take down our sign. We need to renew our covenants of dedication. If you're a Christian, Romans 7 says you're married to Jesus Christ. And James says that if you're a whirling, you are an adulterer and adulteress because you are married to Christ, because that verse doesn't apply only to physical adultery.

Have you noticed there never has been a culture since Christianity began where a New Testament Christian can feel at home? There never has been a culture where a New Testament Christian can be at home.

If you feel at home, you belong to the culture. You don't belong to Jesus Christ. Birds of a feather flock together and that's your native habitat in the world if that's what you love. The professing church today is like the Jewish exiles in Babylon in Psalm 137, captives of this age without a song and saying, How can we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?

Making Jesus Christ Lord

The only way you can solve this problem is by making Jesus Christ your Lord. When you do that, you will be a better American and a better citizen and a better church member and a better husband, father, mother, young person, businessman, whatever you do.

But that making Jesus Lord must be visible because he said before man. It must be audible because he said with the mouth and it must be credible because he said with the heart. When it's credible, when it's real.

And when you're not ashamed to confess him before people and when you're not ashamed to confess him with the mouth, the Bible says the way to be saved is to believe that God raised Jesus from the dead.

That's the first move. And then confess out loud with the mouth, Jesus Christ as Lord, thou shalt be saved. I hope you don't go out this morning accepting this sermon as information. I hope it hasn't gone in one ear and out the other.

As I said at the outset, one thing is worse than not going to church. And that's going and not doing anything about what we hear. Some of you have probably read the autobiography of Elton Trueblood who preached here not too long ago.

And he says, and makes an amazing statement, that his liberal views were changed by C .S. Lewis rather lately. And Lewis said, A man who is merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus Christ said would not be a great moral teacher.

He'd be either a lunatic on the level with the man who says he's a poached egg or else he would be a devil of hell. You must make your choice. Either this man is the Son of God or he's a madman or something worse.

You can shut him up for a time and spit at him and kill him as a demon, or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come along with this patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher.

He didn't leave that open to us. He didn't intend to give us that option. And Chuck Colson, you've been reading his book Born Again, he was also moved mightily by this testimony, and he said of Jesus he was either a god or a raving lunatic.

There is less heresy in rejecting him altogether than to remake him into something he wasn't, something he isn't. If anybody listening to me now is saying, Well, I'm willing to accept him as the greatest moral leader of all time, yes, he didn't ask for that.

You don't have that option. He said, I'm the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to God but by me. No man can say that. Before Abraham was, I am. No man can say that. All things have been delivered to me of my Father.

No man can say that. All authority has been given to me in heaven and earth. No man can say that. I am my Father alone. No man can say that. He's either what he said or he's an imposter. And you take him all out once more, he doesn't want your compliments, he wants your commitment, total, utter, absolute.

I get a little tired sometimes of this habit of inviting folks down the aisle in a sort of an apologetic way, as though Jesus Christ were standing with his hand waiting to be accepted. I don't find that word much in the New Testament, but I do find believe, receive, trust, obey, follow.

That's what he wants. And I wonder if everyone listening to me has done that. No mortal can with him compare among the sons of men. Fairer is he than all the fat that fell to heaven and train. I'm glad I can preach a Christ who was what he said he was and is what he says he is, and he's the same yesterday and today and forever.

And he wants you to come just exactly like you are. You can't come any other way, and that's why we're going to sing just as I am, without one clue. And I give you the opportunity this morning to do whatever the Holy Spirit tells you you ought to do.

If it's to lay aside all your excuses and all your doubts and say, I'll take Jesus Christ this morning for what he came to be, our Savior and Lord. Or if you wish to rededicate your life, or if you wish to come into the fellowship of this Church, opportunity is given as we sing this wonderful song.