Revival — Gareth Evans

Missions, Compassion, and the Burden of God’s Heart

Good morning. Wow, that thing's bright. I love being on the platform with a man or a woman who has a burden, and I believe it's from God, and who is ministering in that burden. I also, like Barbara, define a moment.

I was sitting in an orphanage, also run by Compassion, in Mexico City. I had taken a party from my church here in Victoria down to Mexico City to work with Compassion for over the Christmas period. One of the young ladies from my team was sitting on a gutter in this orphanage with her arms around two little children, orphans, and she was weeping.

And Francisco, my Mexican friend, was taking photographs of the children for people in Canada to sponsor them, saw Cindy weeping, and he said to her, Cindy, our hearts break every day. It wasn't just breaks today because he's here with his children, but our hearts break every day.

And within my spirit, I heard the Lord speak to me and say, yes, my heart breaks every day. I was changed. I came back from that trip far more committed to missions than I'd ever been. A few years later, when I left the church through sickness, Youth with a Mission called me from Texas and invited me to be their pastor aboard the Anastasis in West Africa.

And I had the privilege of being there for four years in Africa. Also in West Africa where children are dying before the age of five, one in five children, 20%, same causes. And I saw and felt the heart of God for those children, for the people of Africa.

I also saw some of the great things that God was doing through people who were burdened like Bob, like the young people of the Anastasis, and lives were being transformed and changed. When I left the Anastasis, I came back to Canada and no longer took on the position of pastor in the church, but started to travel quite extensively through many countries of the world, conducting pastors conferences and speaking at Youth with a Mission schools, speaking at other churches, speaking at denominational conferences.

And that is what I've done for the last several years. And it's been my privilege during that time to come in contact with a lot of young men and women, particularly young men and women, who have the anointing of God upon their lives in ministry.

In recent years, I've been involved with a young man who was a Canadian, who has been living here with me in Victoria, and I've mentored him. He has a webpage called sermonindex .net. And on that sermonindex .net, you can listen to sermons, messages from some of the greatest preachers of the last century, many of them with a passion and a burden for revival.

And I've been asked by Pastor Travis to speak on revival to you this morning. I spoke on this message in my own Church of Buda's Christian Fellowship three weeks ago, and apparently Pastor John got onto Travis and said, you must get Gareth to speak.

And Travis was gonna be moose hunting today. And so he felt it would be appropriate for me to come and speak to you on the subject of revival. Let me tell you what revival is. Let me give you a little background.

Revival as the Manifest Presence of God

Let me give you a little definition of revival. Revival to me, for an individual, or for a church, or for a community, is when God's presence is manifest. I've been in many, many church services where I left the church service and I felt nothing as though God had been absent.

In fact, you may have heard the little story told about the Chinese Christian who came to North America and returned back home to China, and the people of his home church were so thrilled to ask him, what do you think of the churches in America?

What do you think of the churches in India, Canada? And he said, well, he said, I went to some very, very large churches and wonderful services, but he said, I'm utterly amazed at how much they can do without God, without the Holy Spirit.

And I'm fed up, to be quite honest, of being in churches that can do everything without the Holy Spirit. I want to see God's presence manifested among his people again. I come from the country of Wales.

I married a girl from the little village of Lougher in Wales. Lougher is the place where Evan Roberts, a young coal miner, was mightily used of God in 1904, 1905, in what is often termed, many people have read books by many people, many American people who write books talking about the greatest move of the Holy Spirit since the day of Pentecost.

It started in Wales in 1904, great revival. That revival has had an impact around the world since then. The church in Korea, there are Korean pastors who a few years ago were in Cardiff to thank the Welsh people for bringing the gospel as a result of the revival of 1859 and 1904 to Korea.

I was speaking in southern India at a YOM school. The young people there, about 40 of them Indians. I noticed there were three young men there who harmonized in all the singing. Of course, in Wales, we love to sing, we love to harmonize.

I went up to them, I said, how did you learn to harmonize like this? As I've always said, we have missionaries planted our churches in northern India, the Thomas churches. There were Presbyterian missionaries who went there after the revival in Wales.

Church in Thailand, a church in many countries owes its existence, so they say, to the move of God following a Welsh revival. Canada has had one certainly recognized great move of God where it's presently manifest in the city of Saskatoon in 1971.

The great Canadian revival is a move of God that are now in the northeastern Nunavut. But I long to see God's present manifest in revival. And that is where my passion is at these days. And I speak at conferences.

In the last two years, I've spoken in conferences in Atlanta, in Canton, Ohio, in Glasgow. And right last week, there was one that I was not present at in Indianapolis. There's gonna be two in Wales and in Dublin coming up in this next month.

In June, we're hoping to bring a conference here. And that is what I'm now involved with. It's bringing a conference where these speakers come to speak on revival. It has become the passion of my heart to see and to challenge the Church of God to be praying for a sovereign move of God in revival.

While I was praying for these the other day for revival, I was really struck with a question. And I asked myself the question, why do you pray for revival? Why is it that you long for revival so much?

What is the reason? What is the deepest thing that's in you that caused you to have such a passion for revival? I came up with the conclusion that there are four reasons. And I'd like to present those reasons to you this morning.

Personal Need for Daily Revival

The number one reason that I long for God's presence to be manifest, revival, is because I need revival. I can't go one day in this world without the dirt of this world washing off of me. And I find it is so very easy to drift along with the world and with the Church.

To become a normal Christian. Or as Watchman Neco, they're a sub-normal Christian. A normal Christian is a man or woman who is walking daily in revival. I experienced, I came to the Lord when I was 17, and I experienced a mighty baptism, a filling of the Spirit when I was in university at the age of 21.

I had an experience with God that transformed my life and my ministry and my goals and my purposes. I was a physics teacher for many years, but all my spare time I lived working with young people because I had a burden of passion to serve the Lord.

Then I became invited when I came to Canada to become a pastor in Kitchener, Ontario. And then from there I came here to Victoria and Pasadena for seven years before I went to the Anastasias. But I've always had a passion for God.

I remember once walking, speaking in a little chapel in Wales, it wasn't a little chapel, it was a big chapel, but there were 25 people present. This had been built after the Welsh Revival for a large congregation, well into the thousand, 25 people present.

And the organ was behind the elevated pulpit and I had to press the keys because there wasn't an organist, we sang everything a cappella. The Welsh love to sing. Only 25 people scattered through the building.

The end of the service, a man came up to me who was sitting in the second or third row to my left with his wife, his wife came up to me first and she said, Mr. Evans, thank you. I want to apologize for my husband.

I said, why? She thought he had fallen asleep in the service. What she didn't realize, he was walking right behind her. He said, it's okay, Mary, I can apologize for myself. Forgive me, Mr. Evans, if I appeared to be asleep, but I wasn't asleep.

He said, I've been making my peace with God during the service this evening. He said, my mind is taken back to when I was a 16-year-old boy and in the very same pew where I sat today, I gave my life to Christ.

He's now in his 70s. But I've not lived for him as I ought. He said, just after you started the service, I was taken back to that moment and I've spent the rest of this evening making myself right with God.

As I remember old Elder Lewis leading me to Christ. And I do not know what it was about your opening remarks that made me think of all that. I mean, stop. He said, yes, I do. It is obvious to me that you, like he, are a child of the revival.

Old Elder Lewis had come to Christ in the Welsh Revival. He had such a passion for God that 10 years later, he'd led this 16-year-old boy to the Lord. And now 50, 60 years later, 70 years later, he sees in me and he calls me a child of the revival.

I was thrilled. I drove down the valley that night singing at the top of my voice that I should be considered a child of the revival. I was out walking with Bruce Friesen. Bruce, as you know, is a pastor here in Victoria.

He was the president of the ministerium. And he and I were out walking one day and he said, Gareth, I love being with you. He said, you've got a fire in your belly. That was meant to be a compliment. My reply to him was, well, why doesn't everyone else?

I don't understand why people who can call themselves Christians and are not living the thrill of a present, manifest presence of the Spirit of God within them is come to abide in us, to make Christ real to us, to live out the life of Christ through us as individuals.

That's his purpose. I do not understand why Christians who call themselves Christians can be walking through this world downhearted, miserable, with bent shoulders, no different to the world around them, and they call themselves Christians.

I do not understand that. Yet I know how easy that becomes because I know how easy it is to drift into that position. But normal Christianity is knowing the manifest presence of the Spirit of God within us.

And I need that. That is why in my daily devotions, I spend time each morning seeking the Lord. Each morning when I do, I seek the Lord, and I spend time just thanking Him for all years and worshiping Him because I need to live and to refresh the presence within me.

Like Isaiah, I know how easy it is to be a man of unclean lips, of unclean thoughts, of being trapped in the things of this world. The old man rises up his head all the time. Paul tells us to consider him dead, for in Christ he is dead.

But you and I know how easy it is, he rears up his ugly head. And I need a revival. That is why I have a passion for revival, because I need it. The second reason that I pray for revival is because my church needs it.

The Church’s Need for Repentance and God’s Power

I wrote in my notes, soft pedal this one, because I think we should be ashamed in Canada so often when we look at our magnificent buildings, we look at our big wealth, and yet we are ineffective in witness.

The world doesn't even take any notice of us. We're impotent in ministry, and we're ignorant of God and His word. That may not be true of this church, it may not be true of you as an individual, but it's certainly true of the majority of churches I believe in Canada.

We support missionaries in India who are working with Gospel for Asia. And every week we get newsletters, and every week we celebrate what God has done in another family, in another life that have been transformed by the power of God.

They are planting something like 17 churches a week. I was in Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones' church in London just last November, and there was a visiting speaker, his name was Dr. Nicholas Yezgena, Yegnazar, something like that, from Iran.

He's an Iranian minister in Iran. And he made this statement, that in Iran, since the cultural revolution of Ayatollah Khomeini, they have seen over one million Iranians come to Christ. And we are seeing, he said, 1 ,000 a month.

Is Jesus Christ alive and well? Is the kingdom of God alive and well? Is He still seated upon the throne? You bet He is. I don't see much evidence in so many churches in Canada. We have built programs built upon the world's methods, we have bigger and better bands, bigger and better music groups, and so much so that our worship times have so often become nothing but Christian karaoke, a sing-along.

When was the last time you were lost in wonder, love, and praise, as Wesley says in his hymn, because of the awesomeness of the God you worship? I watched a documentary on television last Wednesday, The Life of Joan Baez.

Do you remember Joan Baez? You're all about, some of you my age and a bit younger. The protest singer. Remember Dylan, Bob Dylan? She sang with Bob Dylan, the protest songs during the Vietnam War. And as I watched her, I began to enjoy watching her, listening to her story, non-Christians, of course.

I began to realize that I'd become very much the same. I'd become a protestant, or a protester, of what I see so much of in the church. I'm a pastor. I was recently invited to speak to a leaders, 12 elders of a church here in the city.

I won't mention the name, obviously. And the email from the pastor wrote to me, and he said this, we are burnt out and weary in trying to reach our neighborhood for Christ. We tried all the programs. We need new strategies.

We are so tired. Will you please come and help us? So I asked him if I can quote his email to him. He said, yes. So when I got to this meeting, it was all day Saturday with 12 people, I took four points from the email.

We are weary and burnt out and tired of trying to reach our community. Well, I said, that's strange, because Jesus said, get yoked together with him, for his yoke is easy and his burden is light. So I said, evidently, the burden you're carrying is not his burden.

Then I find things in the scripture that Jesus says about his disciples. I spoke at the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship on Friday night, and they asked me to speak on this subject, discipleship. One day Jesus turned to his disciples and he said to them, tell me, what were you guys discussing on the road?

Because they had been discussing among themselves, which of them were the greatest. And I listened to churches and I listened to pastors, and I read my Christian, you know, the church news page in the newspaper, it used to be on the page where all the church service was, the least read page in the newspaper.

Yet you read them and you see, you begin to wonder, are we in the same family? Are we trying to reach the same community? Because we seem to be competing with one another all the time. There are pastors in the city who do not have fellowship with one another, they don't even speak with one another.

And my church, the Church of Jesus Christ needs revival, it needs God to break in upon his church. He said, I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it, but it certainly seems to me in Canada, the gates of hell are very strong against the church, we are having no effect.

And I pray, I long to see God break in upon his church, and to transform his pastors, anoint his pastors. Remember when Elijah was a beneath and he had a young disciple called Elisha. Let me come back to this IVCF thing.

I saw in the scriptures where Jesus turned to his disciples and said, what were you discussing? They said, they were silent because they were discussing which of them was the greatest. He said, let me tell you which is the greatest, he said.

He will be great in the kingdom, must be as the least, must be as the last, must be a servant to all, must be as the younger, having no inheritance in this world, must be like a child without offense.

That's what I call great, and yet we think of greatness as big buildings. Big programs, big congregations, where we can stand up and raise up and sing up, and the offerings up and everything's up, and the only thing that's up is not up is the glory of Jesus Christ.

And what he measures greatness by is contrary to what we measure greatness by, the last and the least. And as a child, as a younger, how many of us seek to be that and yes, that's what he calls great.

When Elijah was a prophet, he had a young man called Elisha following him. And he crossed over Jordan. He said to Elijah, go back, and Elijah said, no, I'm not, I'm gonna stay with you until God takes you, because he had heard that God was to take Elijah.

You know the story of the finally, Elijah says, if you see me go, then God's glory shall come upon you, the anointing of God shall come upon you. And Elisha, the young man, saw this chariot come and take the old man up in the chariot, and he cried out, the chariot of the Lord.

And as he looked into the heavens, the chariot was going up, the mantle of Elijah started floating down to earth. He's picked up the mantle, the cloak of Elijah. He goes back to join the other prophets, the other side of the Jordan.

As he comes to the waters of the Jordan, he remembers that Elijah had crossed it by smiting the water with his mantle, his robe. And the waters had parted, and they'd gone across in dry ground. And so the young prophet with the robe of Elijah cries out to the God, he said, where is the God of Elijah?

And he smites the waters, and the waters part. Maybe today we should be crying out, where are the Elijahs of God? Where are the men of the pulpit in this land who stand and preach without fear the gospel of Jesus Christ that calls men to a holy living, to repentance?

Church needs a revival. God must weep in heaven looking down upon so many of our churches. But we copy the methods of the word. David wanted to bring the Ark of the Covenant back from the Philistines.

They brought it into the land. It had been hidden under tar pollen in a cow shed for years. It had been out of the place where it should have been for almost a century since all of Saul's reign of Israel.

God's presence represented by the Ark was not in Shiloh. There's a totally secular government under Saul. And David becomes the young king. And after many years of being the king, he remembers that the Ark is under tar pollen.

He wants to bring it back to Shiloh where God's presence will be among the people again. So he calls his wise men, and they all agree, it's a wonderful thing to bring God back, isn't it? Isn't it a wonderful thing to have God back in Shiloh?

Can there be anything better? So what they do, they do exactly the same thing as the Philistines did. The Philistines had brought it back into Israel upon the ox cart. And so they prepared a brand new ox cart.

Trained oxen to bring the Ark back. And they'd gone barely five feet. And the oxen stumbled, and a young man put his hand out to stop the Ark falling. And he was smitten dead, and 70 ,000 others in Israel died.

God was patient with the Philistines. They mishandled the Ark. They put it on an ox cart. He could tolerate that, but once his own people did it, his judgment was severe. Yet in our churches, we've copied the methods of the world, in our business structures, in our programs, even in our worship.

We wonder if God is pleased, and we wonder why the church is ineffective. We need God to break in upon his church. Now we can do something about that. I can do something about myself walking in revival.

I can make sure I spend time with God daily. I can make sure I do not switch on the TV to that stuff. I can make sure I fellowship with God's people. I need my feet washed every time I come to church.

That's one of the reasons I go to church, to have my feet washed. In the refreshing of God's people. I can do something about my church. I can bring in revivalists like the Sutera Twins, who call my people to repentance and making sure there's no issues in the church.

That robs us of the glory of God. But the third reason I long for revival is this, my nation needs it. The land of Canada desperately needs God's presence to be manifested. Here in Victoria, thank God, there are many pastors who are praying for revival.

I often wonder, seriously, a little bit of cynicism, just what they're anticipating when they pray for revival. You get a phenomenon that happens down in Florida, where there are people who are very joyful in what's happening, and they call that revival.

Yet the fruits of it certainly haven't been the glory of God, so many of the fruits. Some years ago in airport Toronto, they talked about that as a revival. And I went to one meeting there, and I definitely saw things of God, no question God was doing something.

But I also saw a great deal of carnality. And I also saw some things that in other contexts we've been casting demons out. And people are celebrating it all as revival. I was at a conference in Glasgow, and one of the speakers made this comment which really struck me.

It is God's mercy, it is God's mercy that he does not send revival upon an unprepared people. Because believe me, if God broke in upon his people, many of us would be like Isaiah, oh, woe is me. The Welsh revival was accompanied by much repentance and much weeping, much sorrow before people came into to know the joy of the presence of the Lord.

Tell a little story. I led a man to the Lord in my office here, lived in Cordova Bay, his name is Les. Les' wife was a Christian, but he hadn't, he'd just come to the Lord after many years. He said to me, Gareth, he said, I do not know much of the Bible, will you come to my home?

I have so many questions to ask you. So the following Saturday we went to his home in Cordova Bay. And I and his wife had invited 14 people, 14 of us all together. And I'm sitting in the lazy boy chair, you know, with my feet up, I'm the guru, I'm answering the questions.

And Les is just off on my right, and I'm answering the questions. Some of the others are just contributing. Les said to me, tell me, pastor, he said, tell me, Gareth, how do I pray? And I said, well, Les, I said, prayer is one of those subjects that everybody who asks is gonna have a different opinion, different thought of how you pray, but basically prayer is dialogue with God.

You're talking to him and hearing him talk to you. Now, you must understand, I'm a teacher by nature. I'm a physics teacher. I taught up to university level, and so my whole teacher instinct comes out.

So now I'm gonna demonstrate to Les about prayer. So I said to the group present, I said, do you believe the Lord is present here tonight? They said, yes. I asked you here at Mission Church, do you believe the Lord is present here this morning?

I hope he is. God, I hope when I came in here, he came with me. If he didn't come with me, I might as well go home now. They said, yes. I said, well, where is he? They said, well, he's a spirit, you can't see him.

I said, like a ghost, you mean? No, they said, well, he's a spirit. I said, well, that's the same problem God had 2 ,000 years ago when he wanted to make himself manifest, known to the people. He became incarnate.

So much so that Jesus can later say to the disciples, he that hath seen me hath seen the Father. There are all the attributes of God that he wanted to manifest to the people, his compassion, his love, his justice, his mercy, was gonna be seen through Jesus.

So this group in Ledger's home, I said, I don't think it'd be wrong if we imagined an invisible man here today. And with that, I leaned back and there was a dining room chair behind me and I pulled the chair in and I said, he is seated there.

And then I laughed. I said, did you see what I just did? The moment I brought this chair in, I kicked, I didn't think, but I kicked down the lazy bar chair. God, I said, the moment I acknowledge the presence of Jesus, even my body language changes.

I said, what would you do if the queen walked in through that door today? They said, oh, we'd all stand. I said, yes, you'd all be very deferential to her. We're far, far greater than the queen is here.

Do you come to church and suddenly one is realizing that the creator of the universe is in your midst? No wonder if you do not know that and do not understand that, no wonder he's never manifest. I turned to Les and I said, Les, let's pray.

So I looked at the chair and you understand I'm just doing the teacher's demonstration. I said, Lord Jesus, I just want to thank you so much for being here this evening. Thank you so much for being my savior and dying on the cross for me.

I want to tell you I love you, Lord. I said, Les, talk to the Lord. So Les looks at this chair, he said, Lord Jesus, a week ago, I did not know you as my savior. But now you've come into my heart and to my home.

No, no, no, no, no, no. This isn't my home anymore, this is your home, Lord. I never said that to him. Then his wife talked to the chair. Then my wife talked to the chair. Then Janet. I went about halfway around the room and I felt myself getting all goosebumps because something was happening in this room.

I watched as every single face was weeping and the tears were running down, dropping off. Nobody's wiping the tears away. And Gordon, the last one, whispered to the chair. And I said, you all know what's happened, don't you?

He said, yes, the Lord is here. I said, no, no, no, the Lord has been here all the time. What has happened is that he has made his presence known. Do you long for Jesus to make his presence known in his church?

Are you praying for that? That's my longing for him to be once again manifest in his church. I want to see him manifest in Canada. When the nation of Israel, the covenant people of God turned away, the scripture said they forgot their God.

This country of Canada was founded upon Christian principles and yet you listen today to the government and to the secular media, and you'll find that there are very few Christian principles even allowed to stand in this country anymore.

We have drifted, we have forgotten our God. And history is replete with the judgments of God against his people. How much more when his church in Canada is ineffective, impotent, and God withholds his power from them?

National Decline and the Lesson of Judges

The book of Judges, the last five chapters of the book of Judges tells an awful story of the decline of the people of Israel. Starts with a young man who steals his mother's silver and makes himself an idol, worships the idol.

Then he finds a young Levi's walking around that way, a vagabond priest, if you like, looking for work. And so he said, yes, I've got an idol, you can become my priest. Wonderful, he's become the priest of a man.

And this Levi becomes the priest to worship this silver idol. Then the tribe of Dan is coming along that way looking for pasture lands, and they hear about this young priest. And he says, oh, my master's got this idol.

He said, why be a priest for a man? Why don't you become the priest for a whole tribe? We'll give you 10 shekels and a shirt. And for 10 shekels and a shirt, he sold himself out. I mean, that's five chapters read about the whole nation of Israel have gone into terrible decline.

But in each of those chapters, there's one verse that is repeated, and it says these words, for every man did that which is right in his own eyes, because there was no king in Israel. The religion of Canada today is secular humanism, where man has placed himself on the throne.

It's almost a joke, and I've seen the newspapers, people complain about religion being the former cause of all wars. Every man has a religion, whether it is communism, which is a belief system, it's a religion, or whether it's secular humanism like Canada has.

And you and I have to decide whether we're gonna be Christians with a capital C in the midst of a secular humanistic society. And my nation of Canada needs God to break through again sovereignly in this land so that the people of this land will come to know him, and this land will once again get its focus upon God.

And the millions of unborn children who are being massacred in abortion clinics, maybe there'll be something done about that. It galls me when I see Christians waving placards and screaming outside abortion clinics when they could be spending their time on their knees and seeking the sovereign God to intervene.

Why are you surprised when the world acts as the world? I'm not at all surprised that the Canadian government does the things it does, or the American government, or the governments of Europe. I'm not at all surprised when the world acts as the world because they have forgotten God.

I'm very surprised when the church acts as the world. And I pray for revival because my nation needs revival, desperately needs revival. But there is a fourth reason. And this is the most important of all.

The Worthiness of Christ and the Call to Worship

I pray for revival because he is worthy of revival. The book of Revelation, I read that John is seized into the heavens. She's the one seated upon the throne, the awful, majestic creator of the world, God himself.

For all eternity, all of heaven has worshiped him. John sees the angels bowing down and crying out, holy, holy, holy. He sees the four and 20 elders representing the church and representing the tribes of Israel, worshiping and bowing down before him upon the throne.

And they cried, holy, holy, holy. At thou, God, for you have created us for your own being. Holy, holy, holy. And John saw there was one there had a book. He had a book, one upon the throne, had a book in his hand.

It was bound inside and out, seven seals. A voice cried out, who is worthy to open the book? And there was no one found worthy. John began to weep. Yet is there none worthy to open the book? And the angel said to him, behold, the lamb.

Behold, the lion of the tribe of Judah has prevailed to open the book and to loose the seals that are of your destiny and mine, the destiny of all eternity. In that book, only one was found worthy. He was called the lion of the tribe of Judah.

And John looked for a lion. What he saw was a lamb that had been slain. And all the angels of heaven, the four and 20 elders, the beast before the throne, all for the first time in eternity, took their focus, their attention off the one upon the throne and they centered it upon the lamb.

Can you imagine what a defining moment that was? For all eternity, they'd worshiped God upon the throne. And now they turn and worship a lamb that had been slain. And they cried out, worthy, worthy, worthy art thou to receive honor and glory and might and majesty and power.

And a wonderful, wonderful hallelujah chorus handles Messiah as birthed from this moment. How all of heaven cried out worthy. The apostles saw the scriptures declare he is worthy, says Peter, says Paul, says John, he is worthy of our praises.

Paul writing to the Ephesians says this, in chapter one, he said, God has centered all things in him. And in him, you have been saved and have been redeemed and purchased in him. And God has sent because all things in future and all of eternity shall be gathered together in him.

This is the center of God's will. This is the apple of God's eye. God has existed for this one. And the writer Paul of Ephesians says this, and we are to be to the praise of his glory. Does my life bring glory to the one who is worthy?

Does your life, does your church, do you honor him and recognize he is worthy? I like thinking of that day when Jesus conquered death upon a cross. Satan had tried for years and years and years to destroy this manifest presence of God.

And I can imagine the day that Jesus was put on the cross and he cried out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? As he felt the awful, awful pain of the judgment of God. Satan gathers his henchmen together into the caverns of hell.

And there they begin to celebrate what they think is Satan's greatest achievement. I'm sure there are balloons, all black and purple balloons, and they got a party atmosphere. And his lieutenants and his captains of his hosts are there and all the demons are there and they're celebrating.

In the midst of their celebrating, they hear some strange noise outside the door that sounds like footsteps. They look around to see who's missing. The footsteps come closer and closer to the door of hell.