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Source: https://www.sermonindex.net/speakers/fred-krauss/2-men-in-life-in-death-in-eternity/
Well, thank you. It's good to see you tonight. Thanks for arranging that you could be with us for the gospel meeting. Now, before we open the scriptures and read their from, we shall ask the Lord to bless our gospel meeting for this is very important to get in touch with God about the meeting tonight.
Let's pray. Our Father, a great necessity is laid upon us to call upon the living God. And we thank thee that those of us tonight who are saved, God is real to our lives. We have no more fear of thyself.
We have experienced redemption and trust in Christ. We have become the children of God. And so we thank that has pleased thee to preach and reach us through the preaching of the gospel. And we commit now to thee as we think of our meeting tonight.
We pray that God will be gracious to those who are still in their sins to remove all prejudice, to remove doubts and fears, and that the gospel will go forth with clarity and with conviction so that everyone at the gathering will know and be familiar with the issues that are at hand.
We thank thee that in this world of sin and corruption, in this world of spiritual ignorance and also error, so many false sects and systems in this world governed by the prince of darkness, that in our hands we have the word of life and the word of truth.
We pray that men and women, boys and girls will recognize it, rebuke the devil who is very busy in a time like this. We are conscious of the fact we are in the last closing days of this age, and we see all around about us deterioration on a moral and a political base.
And we would seek help from thyself in this world of confusion and spiritual darkness to proclaim the words of life. Grand Lord, that it will fall upon fertile grounds, not only on open ears, but open hearts as well.
This we ask with a likewise blessing on every place where Christ is named this evening, in our Savior's most worthy and precious name. Amen. Now let's read, please, a few verses from the gospel of Luke chapter 16.
Luke's gospel, please, chapter 16, if you have a Bible. We shall look at, first of all, verse 13. Now, please remember that throughout the discourse here, except one verse, it's the Savior who is preaching.
Verse 13 of Luke 16. No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to the one or be loyal to the one and despise the other. Now, notice, please, you cannot serve God and Mammon.
Now, the word Mammon is an Aramaic word that means the God of material riches. Verse 14. And the Pharisees, religious people, they also who were covetous, they heard all these things and they derided him and he said unto them, you are they which justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts.
For that which is highly esteemed among men is an abomination in the sight of God. Now look down, please, to verse 19 for a few verses. There was a certain rich man which was clothed in purple, fine linen, fared sumptuously every day.
And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus which was laid or positioned at his gate full of sores and desiring to be fed with the crumbs or leftover, that's a proper word, desiring to be fed with the leftovers which fell from the rich man's table.
Moreover, the dogs came and licked his sores. And it came to pass that the beggar died, was carried by the angels into Abram's bosom. Another word for heaven. The rich man also died and was buried. And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, sees Abram afar off and Lazarus in his bosom.
Now this is all that I wish to read. Why did Christ ever relate the story? It's not a parable, please. Why did Christ relate the story of the rich man and the poor man? This is why I read the connecting verses commencing at verse 13.
Simply this. The Savior warns that living for this life and this life only, to live only for material things can and will obscure eternal realities. That's why. You see, say preacher, and we look at that in a moment or two, what is wrong with just living in this life for this life only?
You might lose your soul. That is, living for this life only and going in exclusively for only material things, and then millions of people are doing it. This will and can obscure eternal realities. This is why the Savior related the story of the rich man and the poor, not to teach that the rich go to hell and the poor go to heaven.
No, no, that's not the idea. So therefore now the Savior, and that's easy to remember, in the story which we read, you have two men in life, you have two men in death, and you have two men in eternity.
As simple as that. Two men in life, two men in death, for after all, you'll all have to go. There's no way out of this one. Two men in eternity. That'll keep us busy for about 20 minutes. Shall we look at the first one?
You see, as the Savior brought to the people this principle that living for this life only can obscure the eternal realities, we had religious people, and they didn't like what the Savior said, and they sneered at him.
They didn't take the truth, they fought it. And the Savior says, look, you justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. Now we have two men. Let's look at the first one. The first man that the Savior talked about is rich.
Now you tell me, please, preacher, tell me what's wrong with being rich? Is this not why we get an education? Come on now. Is this not why we send our children to college, university? Who wants to be poor?
We give our children a good education. After all, who wants to be poor? You say, what is wrong with being rich? I'm not too familiar with North American sports, but every once in a while, you know, these hockey players, and the basketball players, and rugby players, or football players, whatever you call it, their salary goes into the millions.
And can you explain on the side that some of them try to deal with drugs to get even more money? Have you heard of a Conrad Black, who's in a Florida jail right now? The man is a multi-millionaire. He's a newspaper baron.
He was knighted by the queen, and yet the man doubled in dishonest business by the millions. Ever heard of a casino? That's just like the magnet driving people the getting rich quick scheme. What they don't tell you, and at some meetings in Niagara Falls a year ago, there's a big casino.
The average intake of any casino is a million dollars a night. Draws men and women just like the bees to the honey. What they don't tell you, every once in a while, they have to fish a body from the Niagara River.
There's a man that year who in one night gambled $40 ,000, which he didn't have. We have a neighbor. This man is a Christian. Wasn't saved too long ago. His brother squandered the family inheritance of $250 ,000, a quarter of a million in just a few days.
Has nothing to show for. You say, Preacher, what's wrong with being rich? Is this not why we aspire to? Having meetings in the city of Detroit, someone took me to a mausoleum. You know what a mausoleum is.
This man let me into a building twice the size of this hall, earns by the hundreds in the niches, in the corners, and he let me up to the third floor, and we entered a room that is entirely Virginia marble.
There's a granite base. On the granite base, there was a granite casket. And I said to the brother, I said, why did you bring me here? He said, I brought you here because in this casket lies one of the fathers of Detroit.
The man who, and you ladies will relate to that, the man who started the Kmart chain. And I looked at the casket, and I thought of this man in the casket as a little boy who became a teenager. Because of family connections, this boy had a bright future, and the parents, they bestowed upon everything.
He lacked nothing. He entered the business world and became a multimillionaire, and there I saw the casket, and I thought, now tell me, what does it matter now? Founder of the Kmart chain, if Walmart hasn't swallowed up that, you know.
What does it matter now? You see, this man was a child. He was a teenager. He was a businessman, founded an empire. What does it matter now? He's in the casket. He's on the other side. You see, we don't often think about these things, do we?
Death bothered me when I was a teenager. Don't have to give you details. I didn't hear the gospel at the time, but it bothered me. Ever since the beginning of human history, men and women have been trying to put aside the curtains and trying to find out what's after death.
Do you have thoughts like this? Cherish them. I was bothered as a teenager. I could never accept death as absolute and final, and I never got the answer until I met the Savior. Now I have eternal life.
So see, the first man, we read, he is rich, but everything is wrong with being rich if it goes to the expense of eternal soul salvation, for you'll not take out one red copper, or they can get you a mahogany casket, $4 ,000, and funerals today are expensive.
What matters is not the casket, nor the eulogy, nor the preacher, nor the priest, nor the pastor, nor the evangelist. What matters is a person that's in the casket. Does he or she know Christ, or did they die in their sins?
Now, riches can be perfectly legal. Don't get worked up about that one. Some riches are ill-gained. Some riches can be perfectly legal, and we do not know whether this man was a business cheat. He was rich.
Notice the second thing. He was clad in purple, that's a color of royalty, possibly belonged to the aristocratic class in the Middle East. Now, most of the folks are simple folks here. Do you have a title to your name?
Young people, they adorn movie stars, and they adorn the rich. None of us will likely aspire to it, and neither do I care, because as you look at me tonight, I'm a multimillionaire. Hmm? Yeah, surprise you.
Not necessarily material things, but in spiritual things, because I outlived this whole world as it is, because I am in Christ. So this man in purple, he was dressed in fine linen. This man, he was really somebody.
Now let's go to the third one. We read that he fared sumptuously every day. You know what that means? He held back nothing. Best restaurants, best food, most expensive menus. This man lived it up. You say, preacher, what's wrong with that?
If this is all people have, they're going to miss eternity, because they'll never think about eternity. They all think about time. Now, something just comes into my mind. I'll tell you what I mean. During a series of gospel meetings a number of years ago in the northern prairies, a large assembly, there was a young university college girl who was a Christian, and one night she brought out six or seven of her fellow students.
They sat over on the bench, and they looked like judges, and they listened very good to what we had to say. Now at the end of the meeting, and I'm going to tell you in a moment or two what the spokes lady was like, she was the daughter of the local church minister, a very attractive young lady, very well spoken of, and extremely intelligent.
So she tackled me at the back door, and she said, preacher, something in her voice made me, and she was only in her late teens, 18, 19. Something in her voice made me sort of perk up. You see, I'm not a psychologist, but you know sometimes you can tell people by the way they talk.
She said, preacher, what have you got wrong against dancing? You know, that took me perfectly by surprise, because I hadn't even mentioned in my sermon dancing, and I told her that. She said, I had the impression tonight that you are against dancing.
Have you ever heard their dodge to take a bull by the horns? Well, this time it was a young heifer. I made eye contact with this young good-looking lady, and you know she was the daughter of the minister.
Good-looking, she had the boyfriends just eating of her hands, and the dance floor on Friday and Saturday, that was her life. I'd never mentioned it. I said, young lady, if dancing keeps you from Christ, that's the issue, then everything is wrong with it.
Get the point? If your legal or whatever pleasure you look at, if this keeps you from Christ, this is the issue, then everything is wrong with it. She never came back. A year and a half later, I went to the same area for a conference.
Brother called me aside. He said, I want to have a word with you. What's up? He said, you remember the night when this young lady challenged you? I said, who could forget that one? He said, I met her in the town near a border, the American border, and we had a dialogue.
She said, among other things, she said, Mr., and quoting his name, have you ever met this preacher, Mr. Kraus, that had those meetings a year and a half ago? Oh, yes. He said, I know him. You know what she said?
I want to do her favor. Next time you met him, tell him, please, that from that night, he talked to me like this. I had no rest until I trusted Christ. Get the point, don't you? Here's a young woman totally obsessed.
Oh, she thought it's legal, and I didn't say it's wrong. Totally obsessed with the social aspect of life, the enjoyment with the young people. But she recognized while she pursued this and this only, she had no time for eternity.
Never thought about it. Not interesting. You see, you get the point, don't you? Occupation alone with things of time and sense can and will obscure eternal reality. They may be perfectly legal. Let's look at the other men.
It's evident that what we call fortune was against him. His health was poor. There was no social insurance. There was no health care in those days. And because of a lack of vitamins and a lack of proper food, the man burst out in boils all over the place.
And the only friends he had were dogs. You haven't reached that low, have you? Being deposited, likely the man couldn't even walk, being deposited at Richmond's gate. He looked for the leftovers. Oh, look, friend, this is Bible story.
Can I tell you something else? In the city of Toronto, today, there are a few thousand teenagers who run away from home and they feed on garbage that the supermarkets threw out. Today, don't get along with the parents.
Tension at home, stepfather, stepmother, the children are looked upon as super flues and out they go in the streets. That's what they live on. It's not just in the Bible. Seriously, Lazarus, what a contrast to the rich man.
He didn't have a dime to his name. But, you know, Lazarus had something in his soul that the rich man never had. I do not know what synagogue he attend to. I do not know he would not be allowed in the temple because of his condition.
But Lazarus heard the good news of salvation and Lazarus yielded. Have you? Come on. Oh, Lazarus knew Christ. Now, two men in death. I do not have to tell you that every one of us, should the Saviour tell you, represents a funeral.
Rich men die. Poor men die. I remember 1963, I worked for this year's company. I made a call in one of the homes and a woman came out. She's weeping. And I said, tell me, what's wrong? She said, I just heard on the radio that they shot President Kennedy.
She's weeping. G .F. Kennedy went into eternity. You know, he was a leader of this nation. Just like that. Not a moment to repent. Rich man died. Mao Zedong, the Chinese leader, a mass murderer. He has on his hands the blood of millions of Chinamen.
And so did Stalin, so did Hitler, Mussolini. Men who were influential, men who were dictators, ruling over millions of people, and it looked as though they're totally invincible. They had to die. Today, thousands of Chinese pass by Mao Zedong, whose body's embalmed there in Peking.
Yes, rich men die. Poor men die. Two men in death. There's no escape from this one. No matter how you wiggle, no matter how you resent, no matter how you oppose the truth of God, death is a bigger preacher than myself.
No escape from death. You see, you have to face it. And face it like a man, will you? It's not just physical death. It's a judgment after. There's life after death. Two men in death. Oh, I could tell incident after incident.
I've taken a lot of funerals. The youngest funeral I ever took was a little girl. She died about five weeks of age, and this little girl died of a heart attack. Five weeks. Six-month-old boy died a crib death, plastic around his face.
He suffocated. I've taken the funeral of teenagers, and some of them were abusers of drugs. Can't go into detail. I've taken the funeral of a man who was in his 90s. Never met him in life before. And the daughter says, as I arrived at the funeral parlor, I wanted to see my dad.
Look, you did not have to tell me that this man was a Christian, 92 years of age. His faith in death showed it. Something just flashed again in my mind. Two men in eternity. Two men in death. Quite a number of funerals I've taken from a large funeral home in the city of Toronto.
It's called Trolls Funeral Home. That may not mean anything to you. The funeral parlor, or mortuary they call it, they have sometimes a dozen funerals a day, and a lot of believers have been buried from this particular parlor.
They have six directors, never mind them bombers. You know what one director told me once? I did not solicit his opinion. I did not coerce it, but he said this to me. He says, we can always tell when we got one of your kinds.
You know, Christian. He didn't say Christian. One of your kind. We can tell. Because their faces has acquired a resignation about them. Oh, brother, what a testimony to grace. And then he said something that made me still shudder.
We also can tell when the other kind comes in. He said, it takes our embalmers. And again, I say, I didn't ask him for his opinion. He offered it freely. It takes our embalmers all the skill they've got to remove from their faces.
The expression of fear and even horror. Tell me, which way will death meet you? Two men in eternity? Now? Two men in life? Two men in death? Two men in eternity? And how can I possibly describe to you this tremendous concept of eternity, but I'll try my best.
See this water? I'll do something unorthodox. Can you see where he sits from? What dangles from my finger? A drop of water? Now, Iowa has a lot of water. Minnesota more. In Ontario, we have a quarter million lakes.
And we don't even count the little ones. There's plenty of water. If you could somehow empty all the water in Iowa, the Iowa River, the Mississippi River, drop by drop, eternity will have just begun. That's eternity.
Do you have beaches along the river? In the West Indies, there's an island called Antigua. They have 365 beaches. Go to the Gobi Desert. Go to the Sahara and empty the desert one grain after another and do it 10 times over.
Eternity will have just begun. Grass, nice to see it greening up again, you know. Cut the grass all here in Stout, Grundy County, Butler County, not by lawnmower, cut it with the pincers. Every blade and once you're finished, do it all over the world and eternity will have just begun.
That's the only way it can convey to you eternity. So here, my friend, two men in life. Oh, two men in death. They've been gone for 2 ,000 years. Two men in eternity. There's something that every little village has in common and that's a cemetery.
Tell me, when death comes, how will it meet you? Will it meet you as a child of God, knowing Jesus Christ as Savior? Who died that you might be forgiven? Who loves you? He hates your sin, but he loves you and he died that you might be forgiven and be with him in heaven.
Oh, that's a real thing, you know. Oh, will it meet you through the eternal ages amongst the lost? See, friend, we have to think about these things. And I trust that you will as the gospel continues tonight.
You know, the Lord will, he's only too willing to save you tonight, if you just bow your stubborn will as I did so many years ago in the city of Toronto and receive Christ as your own personal Savior.