True Gospel - Pt4 - Repent and Believe — Paul Washer

The Gospel of God: Repent and Believe

Let's open up our Bibles to Mark chapter 1, Mark chapter 1, verse 14. Now, after John had been taken into custody, Jesus came into Galilee preaching the gospel of God and saying, the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand.

Repent and believe in the gospel. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Father, I pray that you would send revival. Lord, I am not a revivalist or anything of the sort. And so, Lord, my heart cries out to you, not as one who desires to bring revival, but as one who desires to be revived.

Oh, dear Lord, Lord, just so helpless. I stand before you and your people stand before you so helpless. We not dare, Lord, do anything that would produce a fleshly enthusiasm that will dwindle away in a few days.

I have no desire, Lord, to present a great circus before people so that their flesh might be attracted. Lord, we desire that the Holy Spirit would be poured out on your people. And Lord, we know that there is not one thing that we can do.

To make that happen, Lord, we know that we have no handle on you, but we do trust that you are good and mighty. And Lord, out of a heart that wants to see you vindicated among the people, out of a heart that desires to taste even in a greater way and see that the Lord is good.

Out of a heart, Lord, that desires to see your people walking in the joy and the power of the Holy Spirit. I would ask you, Lord, that you would come. Oh, dear God, that you would come and shake this place.

Dear God, I'm afraid to open my eyes. I'm afraid to open my mouth, say anything to your people. Oh, dear God, that you would break hearts, that it would be you, Lord, that I could hide in the basement.

And that you would do a work. Oh, dear God, do a work in these days. That no man would dare claim as it is as his own. The Lord, if anyone reached out and touched the work, you would strike him dead, but you would do a work, Lord, that all would stand in awe of the power of God and flesh would be debased.

The pastors and preachers, as myself, Lord, would hide in the back of the church, be converted as children, make no great boast of any great thing. To fall before your presence, trembling, Lord, oh, God, that even now you'd sit me down and that a youngster would stand up and say a few words and the power of God would fall on this place so that everyone would see that it is God and not man.

Oh, dear God, that's the cry of my heart. And I know, Lord, that if your son asks for fish, you'll not give him a serpent. If he asks for bread, you won't give him a stone. Greater and greater measures, Lord, of the Holy Spirit, greater and greater measures of the Holy Spirit, Lord, in Jesus name.

Amen. There is so much to be done that the work is too great for words. There's so much to be done in your heart that the work is too great for words. What did you come out to see tonight? The work that has to be done in your heart is too great for words.

If you truly want to be changed, then cry out to God. Oh, that God would show you your helplessness, that he would show me my helplessness. Oh, that he would show us our need. Oh, that we would see his face.

Oh, that we would see his glory. And oh, that he himself would fill us, that he himself would move, that he himself would do a work in your life that would be undeniable. That would be undeniable here in our passage, we find something that is quite a rebuke against modern day evangelism.

Repentance and Faith Versus Evangelistic Formulas

As a matter of fact, if modern day evangelists were to write this text, they have no place with this text, they they have no way to preach this text, because instead of saying the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe the gospel, they would urge you on to do this.

The time is at hand. The kingdom is at hand. Now pray this little prayer and ask Jesus to come into your heart. That's what they would tell you, they'll substitute their words for his. And in that the power of the gospel is lost, and many times we can say that we are our own worst enemies throughout all of education, we are understanding what we call a reductionism, the dumbing down of America.

That we cannot teach certain things because not all can grasp certain things, we've got to find ways to make education entertaining, we've got to find ways to bring it down to the masses. So we are told.

But we have done the same thing in the church of Jesus Christ, no one today apparently can understand repentance, no one today can understand truly what is faith. And so we have to develop little ecclesiastical and religious formulas to replace the word of God.

And because of that, the power of God is no longer seen in our so-called conversions. I want you to know tonight. That no one on the face of the Earth has ever been saved by repeating a little prayer, they said, well, Brother Paul, I asked Jesus to save me.

Well, that's a wonderful thing. I'm glad you did. It says to call on the name of the Lord. But what you need to understand, if you were saved and there is a great possibility you were not if you were saved.

It was by a work of God creating in you a repentant, broken heart and a faith that caused you to throw yourself upon his work of salvation and Jesus Christ, our Lord. And if you did repent, then you continue repenting now.

And if you did believe, then you continue believing now and you will continue unto the end. Jesus comes and he presents the gospel before men and then he makes a demand of them, he gives a command to them, he commands all men to repent, he commands all men to believe.

You said, well, Brother Paul, according to all your other teaching, that's quite impossible. Men are spiritually dead and cannot repent and cannot believe. That is true, but neither could Lazarus obey the command and rise up and walk, except that the Lord gave him the power to obey it.

One of the things that most breaks my heart and that we're going to touch on tonight is that we have literally taken. The supernatural from salvation and yet salvation is only a supernatural work of God, we have taken the very power of God that takes out a heart of stone and puts in a heart of flesh that will respond to him, we have taken the power of God greater than the power manifested in creation itself, we have taken that power that is required for the salvation of a soul and we have reduced it down to four tiny little spiritual laws and in the end get someone to nod their head to a prayer.

And by doing so, our evangelism condemns more men to hell than any brothel in the United States. Countless and countless individuals in Bible believing churches, countless and countless individuals in Christian high schools and grade schools and Christian colleges.

And it is. That if they died, they would die in their sin and they would go straight to hell because the supernatural has been taken out of gospel preaching. And so we need to look tonight. Again, at what it means to be saved again, how is one saved?

What does God do? What are men commanded to do? Now, there's something very important in this text, and I want to get right into the text and then go to other places. The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand.

With the coming of Christ, with the coming of Messiah, with the coming of the gospel came a call. To do whatever you do, do it quickly. There is no time to waste. There is no greater thing coming. There is nothing else to be expected.

The Christ has come. The work of salvation has been done. The greatest work God has ever done on the planet and will ever do on the planet. He has done in his son, Jesus Christ. It is fulfilled. The time is now.

So act now and do not delay. One of the greatest compliments I can give a man is this. He lived until he died. Most aren't that way. Even those of you who are in college, you are waiting, aren't you? Till some certain day comes and you will start living.

So many people are waiting for something to happen. Even genuine born again Christians are waiting for a certain time to come in which they will advance in one day and then pick up the plow and do their ministry and other such things.

The time is now. The great work of God has been done. Today is the day of salvation. One day you're on campus and you think one day I'm going to be spiritual. One day I'm going to be mature. One day I'm going to take these claims seriously.

That one day may never come. It may never come. And if that is your attitude, it probably will never come. Whatever you're going to do, do it now. Stop limping between two positions. If this world you so love and drink down like water is what you want, then take it and run.

But if Christ is your desire, then the time is now. Stop fooling around, stop delay, stop presuming upon the grace of God. And whatever you do, do it now. So the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand.

What should be done? What is required when the gospel is preached after presenting what God has done for us in Christ? What should be done? We are to command men not to repeat a little prayer after me.

We are to command men to repent and believe the gospel. As I shared the other night, I heard of a seminary that actually an evangelism was teaching its young ministers of the gospel to do this. Whenever you ask someone the exploratory question, would you want to go to heaven?

You should also begin to nod your head like this so that they'll begin nodding their head and it'll be easier for them to accept Christ. Or you get this thing, you witness to someone and you say, would you like to receive Jesus?

Well, yes, I would. Well, then call on the name of the Lord. Well, I don't know how. Well, then repeat this prayer after me. Well, I kind of feel uncomfortable doing that. Well, just pray to yourself and in quiet.

OK, well, but I tell you what, I'll pray the prayer for you. And if you agree with what I'm praying, squeeze my hand. Look what we have done and it's done every day among every kind of Baptist you can count.

It's done every day by foolish little men who should spend more time studying their Bible and less time preaching. And it's being taught to you and some of you have done the same thing and you know it because I've done the same thing.

Until I began to study God's word, until I began to study church history, until I began to study the founding fathers. But more important to them, Jesus Christ himself and the apostles and the prophets.

And it's done because of the foolish men who are speaking the foolish words. What have we done because of what we've done? Because of this little systematized way of getting your ticket to heaven. We have entire campuses full of lost kids who act just like lost kids, but they're saved.

No, they're not. And no, you're not. If you live in the world and love the world and the only thing your Christianity is, is something you do on Sunday morning with your eyes propped open with toothpicks because you've been partying all night Saturday and you're not a carnal Christian.

Oh, you're carnal, but you're not a Christian. What is required when the gospel is preached? First of all, what is the gospel? We had to nail that down Sunday night. It is not that God has God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.

And that's it. It's not that just that you're separated from God because of your sin and Jesus died and somehow through that death, well, you can come back. No, the gospel is this, my friend. God became a man to redeem a sinful humanity, to call forth a people from a depraved lot.

And in becoming a man, he lived a perfect life. And then, according to the foreordained plan of the father, he went to the cross. On that cross, he bore your sin. And as bearing your sin, the father in heaven crushed his only begotten son under the weight of all the wrath that should have fallen on you.

Someone had to die, separated from God, forsaken of God and crushed under the wrath of God. That's what the son did. And that cup he drank, it wasn't a wooden cross and it wasn't some little spiky nails.

That cup he drank was the wrath, the furious, holy hatred of a just God that was directed towards you. And when he was on that cross, he drank that down. And when he cried out, it is finished, he turned that cup over and not one drop came out.

That is the gospel of Jesus Christ. The gospel of Jesus Christ is, my goodness, the most offensive thing on the face of the earth to an arrogant humanity. And all these preachers doing their best to clean it up so as to not make it offensive.

To make it acceptable to seekers. Blasphemers and traitors they are. Preach a gospel, then preach a gospel. A good news, mighty to save. Blood flowing from a tree, the wrath of God flowing from heaven.

And a resurrection. My dear friend, one thing we have forgotten is that men are not simply saved by the death of Christ because a dead Savior is no Savior at all. Men are saved by a resurrection. They are saved by a vindication.

When Christ died on that cross, He vindicated the Father, proving once and for all He is just and holy. And the Father vindicated His Son by raising Him from the dead. And now He is seated at the right hand of the Father and He reigns.

He will not someday reign. He is reigning now. There is a King now. Now there is a King. I am so tired of people waiting and waiting and waiting for a day when He will come back and reign. He reigns. He reigns in glory and power and majesty.

And the room where He sits, angels fear to enter. But then again, because of our lack of theology, we foolishly run in where angels fear to tread. Never forget, as I have always said, this God of ours is as terrible as He is wonderful.

He is as majestic and mighty as He is compassionate. He is not a lopsided God. He is not a politically correct God. He is a God who will take the most vile and filthy sinner and touch them and make them clean.

But He is also a God who will take the arrogant and the religious and dash their souls into an eternal hell. Practicers and players of religion and mouthers and confessors of Christ that do not do the will of the Father will find their home in the deepest part of hell.

Repentance as a Lifelong Work

The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent. What is repentance? Days and days of lectures could not tell you all that is in this word. But it is an important word and you are called to do it.

And if you have not done it and do not continue doing it, it is the evidence you have never known the Lord. I was preaching at a very large youth conference, about 5 ,000 young people, several months ago.

It was the most frightening thing I have ever seen in my life. The preacher that preceded me got up and proceeded for the next hour to make fun of sin, to tell jokes, to cackle and do absolutely everything that a man of God should never do in a pulpit.

And then he gave the invitation and 3 ,000 kids came forward, popping their gum and giggling and poking at one another and they went back into the counseling rooms and people were declaring it to be one of the greatest moves of God they had ever seen.

It was just a bunch of kids doing what they have been trained to do ever since they were in Sunday school. No tears, no repentance, no broken hearts, no weeping over sin, no self-hatred, no realization of offenses against God given, nothing.

A move of, I think not. Because when God moves, and particularly when God moves to save, there is repentance. Now what is repentance? The word means to change. Let me ask you a question, have you changed?

And here is something very astounding about this word that we are going to talk about quite a bit this evening, is that it is a present tense imperative, repent, and so is believe, a present tense imperative.

Do you know what Jesus is actually saying here? The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. Now spend the rest of your life repenting and believing. Do you know that most people, and many of you, you treat salvation as though it were a flu shot.

I did that. If we were to go around today and visit homes of all kinds of fine Baptists and Methodists and other Evangelicals, we would find that they had done, did that. Preacher don't worry about me, I did that.

What did you do? Well I did that, I repented and I believed. My friend, if you repented and believed, only in past tense you are lost and going to hell. There is an initial work of repentance and an initial work of faith that continues on for the rest of your life and that repentance grows deeper every day and that faith grows stronger.

He said repent, now what did he mean? He meant change. Change. Change from what? From a life without God. Do you realize that most people, even most professors and confessors of Christ, are practical Atheists, which is the worst kind of Atheist.

They are practical Atheists. They would never stand up in a congregation and say, I am an Atheist and I deny the existence of God. But their life, their life is a manifestation that they really do not believe.

They do not believe that there is a God before whom they stand and to whom they are accountable. Do you call yourself a Christian and yet God is nowhere to be found in your life? You live in absolute independence in your own mind from God.

God is not in your morning, He is not in your afternoon, He is not in your evening. God is not in your thoughts, He is not in your heart. God is not before your eyes. He is not making decisions for you.

He is not directing you, leading you, guiding you. He is not convicting you, disciplining you. No, you run like a wild dog cut off from a leash with no one to reel you in. My dear friend, that is evidence that you have never been born again.

You have never been born again. He said, repent. We do not know ever since Adam, our father, what was his great goal, that Adam of ours? Why, it was to be God. It was to be independent of God. How many people today treat salvation and Christianity like some accessory that they wear with the rest of their clothes?

Only to be put on on Sunday morning or during some religious activity. That is not Christianity and that is not repentance and that is not faith. Not at all, not at all. You see, we are an independent lot.

We walk in our independent arrogance, in our arrogant independence. Is his word a lamp unto your feet? Does it direct you daily? Is the Spirit leading you? Because that is one of the evidences of the sons of God, is that the Spirit leads them.

Have you repented from independence and are you clinging unto God? It means to change your mind and your attitude towards sin. To change your mind and your attitude toward God. Have you done that? The sin that you once loved, do you now hate or do you still love sin and practice it whenever you can sneak out from the view of another?

Has your mind changed with regard to sin? Do you love all the stuff the unbelievers love? Do you? And do you practice it in the name of Christian freedom? And if anyone ever comes up to you and tries to correct you, do you call them a legalist?

Of course you do. That is your greatest defense, isn't it? Have you repented and are you repenting? But to me, the greatest definition of repentance in the entire Bible is found in Isaiah. And I want us to go there for just a moment.

In Isaiah 66, verse 2, For my hand made all these things, thus all these things came into being, declares the Lord. The Lord needs nothing from man. God needs nothing. Let me give you a quote from Tozer.

It won't be quite direct, but it's from Tozer. He said, If every man, woman, and child on the face of the earth were to go blind, it would not diminish the glory of the moon, the stars, and the sun. And if every man on the face of the earth denied God and was an atheist, it would not diminish his glory one bit.

He needs nothing from men. Nothing! But he has granted unto men salvation. And he says, look here, he says, For my hand made all these things, thus all these things came into being, declares the Lord.

But to this one I will look. To him who is humble and contrite of spirit and who trembles at my word. Repentance is a giving up and a falling upon God and God's mercy as your only hope. And staying there.

And staying there. Like a man who's walking on the edge of a cliff. Snow and wind and rain and sleet. And he's on a ledge of no more than six to three inches. And he's barely holding on with all his might and he's trembling with fear.

And then when he reaches his hand one step further, he finds a hole, a larger hole. It's a cave. And he leaps inside that cave. A team of wild horses could not drag him out of that cave. Repentance is when a man has a confrontation, an encounter with God.

And I want to tell you something. There's no such thing as a godless salvation. These little salvation things, packets and such things that they give you at all your conferences, where they can get you a ticket without you ever having to talk to the Savior.

I want you to know that in every work of salvation, God is present and God is manifested. And no one has to tell you you're saved. Because that's God's job. But what happens, what brings repentance is when your eyes are open to who God really is.

And then your eyes are open to what you really are. And then your eyes are open to the judgment that awaits you. And with terrifying fear you grasp ahold until you find that the ground underneath you is breaking away.

And the roots to which you're clinging are too weak to hold you. And you're about to fall. And you throw yourself upon the mercy of God. And you throw yourself upon Christ. And you throw yourself upon what He has done for you.

And if anyone told you to break off once more in independence, you would die first. Because you fear to come off that one foundation that is the only foundation that does not quiver and does not shake.

Remember, my dear friend, once again the Lord will shake both the heavens and the earth. And the only foundation upon which you may be sure is Jesus Christ. It is collapsing. I can remember one time in Peru I was...

The Sendero Luminoso, the Shining Path, was considered one of the most dangerous terrorist organizations that's ever existed. They put out a threat upon my life. They said we're going to kill him. And I can remember one night hearing a noise downstairs in the church and going down and seeing two men through the glass trying to make their way through the door.

I can remember being absolutely paralyzed with fear. Paralyzed, immobile. I could not move. In a sense, that's repentance. When you give up all hope in self. Having seen the holiness of God. Having seen your wretched vileness, your depravity, your iniquity, your filth.

Knowing that the foundation has been cut out from under you. You throw yourself upon Christ. You cling to Him. And you do not move. You are immobile. You will not move a foot to the left or the right knowing that you could perish.

That it is only Christ, only Christ, only Christ that saves you. And you cling to Him. The old preachers used to talk about a repentance from good works. Something's not mentioned much anymore. What does it mean?

If man has one banner that he constantly lifts up in the face of true religion. It is his own self-worth and the worth of his deeds. But when God is truly revealed to a man. As I have been taught by a dear friend.

Those deeds will melt away like little tiny figurines of clay before a blast furnace. It is to repent of all the hoping you have ever done in yourself. Repent of trusting in any value, merit or worth you might have thought of about yourself.

It is throwing yourself upon Christ and Christ alone. Christ is everything. Absolutely everything. And your heart is in such a way that you are contrite before God. And that you tremble at His Word. It amazes me as I stand in pulpit after pulpit throughout this nation.

And I preach. And I know that I am telling people things that they know. That demonstrates that they are directly contradicting God's Word. And yet they do not tremble. They do not tremble. They sit there with faces like stone.

They sit there as though they were blind. They sit there as though they were deaf or even worse. They sit there with a smirk of arrogance on their face. Even before the Word of God. Their pride and their self-righteousness and everything else treats the Word of God with disdain.

It is one of the greatest passages of the Bible to me. Isaiah 66 verse 2. Because it demonstrates something that is a reality in my life. And if you are a true believer, it is a reality in yours. If He had said that He esteems the One who is perfect in all His ways, where would I go?

His eyes would never be upon me. But what does it say? He doesn't say that. He says He esteems the One with a broken and contrite spirit and trembles at His Word. Does that describe your life? When you had your so-called conversion experience, was there a reality of the holiness of God?

Was there a reality of your sin? Was there a reality of judgment? Did you tremble with a contrite heart before His Word? Or did you just do some little oral agreement with God? Because some silly little preacher led you into it.

What happened that day? What happened that moment? Was it God? Was it God? So I don't know if it was God or not. If it was God, you would know it. And then we get back to the idea of this continuous work of repentance.

It is not that, oh, 20 years ago one time God showed me my sin and I repented and I trembled at His Word. But since then my heart is closed and I no longer tremble at His Word and I'm no longer contrite.

No, I live in sin with a boldness in my face that is frightening. I can do all sorts of things on the campus. I can go to all sorts of parties, do all sorts of things. And I can be in church on Sunday as happy as a lark.

What does that describe? Your lostness. Because this initial brokenness of spirit, this initial contrite heart, this initial trembling at God's Word continues on in your life. And it does not grow lighter, it grows deeper.

Sanctification, Perseverance, and the Evidence of Salvation

When I'm teaching on the Christian life, many times I'll use this illustration. When I was a new Christian and a new preacher, I was so much holier than I am now. I was just so on fire for the Lord, so holy.

Because what had happened? I'll tell you what had happened. I had a revelation, as anyone would when they're saved. A revelation of the holiness of God through the preaching of His Word. A revelation of my sin.

A revelation of Christ and His atonement. And so my heart was broken and yet I was filled with joy because Christ had died for my sins and now I'm saved. But when I began to preach and I began to walk, I thought, well, right am I before the Lord.

One of His chosen. Oh yes, I witness and I preach and I do all these things. And people laugh at me and scorn and mock. But then what happens as life goes on and you continue walking with the Lord? One day you see a greater revelation of God's holiness than you had previously seen.

Which led to a greater revelation of your own sin than you had previously seen. Which leads to a deeper repentance than you ever thought possible. And the Christian life is a continuation of that on into glory.

Greater and greater revelations of the glory and power and holiness of God. Greater and greater revelations of our sin. And greater and greater and greater works of repentance in our heart. Until the end when you're ninety years old and you're a thousand times more sanctified than when you began.

And yet you count yourself a thousand times more like dung in as much excrement. You say, but that would lead to depression. That would lead to so many terrible things. Not at all. Because with the greater revelation of God's holiness comes a greater revelation of our sin.

And the greater revelation of our sin comes to a deeper work of repentance. And in that deeper work of repentance comes a greater revelation of the grace of God in Jesus Christ. And we're lifted up with joy unspeakable.

Not because of our ability to obey, but his ability to save. A young man wrote me a while back and he said, I'm so holy. I'm so unholy. And I'm so ignorant to preach. I'm so miserable. And I wrote him back.

I have the gift of encouragement. I wrote him back and I said, young man, you are much more unholy and much more ignorant than you now realize. And I said, young man, I know your life. I've seen you. I admire your walk with God.

There are things that you have gained in the little time that you have walked with him that I have yet to accomplish. And I admire that work. But I will say this. Although you may be holier than I, I am happier than you.

Because your joy is coming out of your ability to do the right things before him. And my joy comes from the fact that I am gloriously saved by a mighty redeemer who not only saves me, but keeps me by his power.

You see, and this is what we need to see. The Christian life is almost a stepping down in death. Each new revelation of the holiness of God brings a greater realization of what we are and a greater work of repentance.

But oh, he never leaves us discouraged, does he? He never leaves us downtrodden. Even when the prophets came to Israel with some horrendous, horrible message of wrath that was spoken in such a way it would be offensive and even frightening to share in mixed company some of the things those prophets said.

And yet, no matter how hard the rebuke, they never left the people of God without hope. Turn to him and you'll be saved. Turn to him and you'll be saved. He is a glorious redeemer. So you see, my dear friend, salvation, the repentance in salvation, it's not just an initial work that stops there.

You were saved, you are being saved, and you will be saved. It is a continuous work of God unto glory with continuous revelations of its truthfulness. Now, what do I mean by that? If God begins a work in someone, a genuine, true work, he will carry it out until it is finished.

As I taught last night, he'll not lose anyone in the middle of the sea. He didn't tell the disciples, let's get in the boat and drown halfway through. He said, let's get in the boat and go to the other side.

I had a young man come up to me last night, and I would die before I would let it be known who it was. But he came to me with such a deep, abiding hatred for his sin, a worry over the condition of his heart, a desire to be holy, trembling and asking, is it well with me, this struggle and fight I have against sin, this breaking of my heart, could it be an indication that I do not know him?

And in some cases it could, but not in this case. I said, young man, listen to me. The fact that you're broken over your sin, the fact that you're wanting to be holy, the fact that you're desiring righteousness, the fact that you're seeking to be free and more free and more pleasing and more pleasing, with this broken and contrite spirit of yours, with this trembling at the word of God, this is not evidence of lostness, it's evidence of salvation.

But for all the bold-faced ones that left as though their hearts were hard as stones and went out and committed sin even after hearing the preaching of the gospel, yes, my dear friend, that is evidence of something, evidence of a lost state, of a lost soul.

Those of you who call yourself by the name Christian, let me ask you a question, Christian. When was the last time you found yourself alone, weeping over your sin, weeping over your lack of devotion, weeping over your lovelessness, weeping over the hardness of your heart, weeping over participating in works of darkness, weeping over being drawn in by other students into things that were ungodly?

When was the last time you did that? Because if it hasn't been in a long time, there's only two possibilities. One, you've reached sanctification and have no more need of confession or your heart is as cold as a stone.

You see, this work of repentance that begins in God's work of salvation will continue on until you are taken into glory. You are taken into glory. If you have truly repented, you have a different relationship with sin.

Am I describing you? Am I describing you? Or am I speaking about things that are completely and totally foreign to you and to your brand of Christianity that comes so easy through those little tracks?

He said, repent. Now, what could bring about such a work of repentance in the heart of men? Only a magnificent vision of God. A magnificent vision of who God is. Let me read a passage to you. Just listen.