No Two Saints Are Alike — Leonard Ravenhill

The Sermon on the Mount and the Problem of Human Relationships

Now from chapter 5. As you know this chapter is usually termed the Sermon on the Mount. A bit noisy, too loud. The greatest sermon ever preached by the greatest man who ever lived. Not only the greatest sermon ever preached, but the greatest sermon ever preached by the greatest man who'd ever preached.

Can you remember the last word in the Old Testament without looking? It's the word curse. And the first word that Jesus preached was blessing. Christianity has not been weighed in the balances and found wanting.

It's been tried, found difficult and rejected. I don't know where men first began to dream about the utopia, but they have dreamed about it for many, many years. As I said last night, from the time of Augustine right down to Geronti on the children's level, and it's not a children's story really.

Gulliver's Travels. I can remember, maybe you can remember the first time you heard that very marvelous story about Humpty Dumpty. I don't think that's a children's story at all. I think it's a satire.

The world once fell apart and men have been trying to put it back together and they can't get it back together again. Plato had an idea of a republic. You see the greatest problem in the world today is not financial.

And in one sense it's not nation against nation. The greatest problem is the problem of human relationships. You can't get on with each other, neither in the world nor in the church and sometimes even in the home.

And this marvelous sermon of Jesus answers this tremendous problem of human relationships. We try and pinpoint all the decaying things, the things that cause men to stumble and nations to fall apart and so forth and so on.

And yet Jesus puts it all down into one thing. He says it's the heart of man that's deceitful. He says he needs a new heart and he needs a new spirit. And while these other men, Plato dreamed of his ideal state.

And Moore had his utopia, Francis Bacon had his, so on. You can write down the ages, write down to Mr. Hitler himself. I believe you have to purge the bloodstream and start rebuilding the nation from that level.

You have the communist philosophy of abolishing a flabby and weak bourgeois community of people and purging it with revolution and starting all over again and having what they call a classless society, which they do not have in Russia today.

If they do, I'll get Mr. Brezhnev as a Rolls Royce and a magnificent Mercedes Benz and three or four other very, very extremely expensive automobiles while other people are in slave camps. All you did was change the bosses.

You turned it upside down, kick one bunch out, let the others get the place of a fatherhood. Now it's obvious the kingdom of Jesus Christ is a spiritual kingdom. And I have read this story and you have many times.

There are two versions, of course, of the Sermon on the Mount. There's this one here in Matthew 5, in which you have a hundred and seven verses and then you have Luke's version for the lazy people. It's only got thirty verses.

But the long version is the best version, obviously. But not until last year when I was meditating on this did I realize that Jesus never pronounced blessing on one material thing, not one visible thing.

Nothing you wear, nothing you own, nothing you can write your name on. Everything that Jesus blessed is something spiritual. I'm wondering how much limelight in this bicentenary year, how much limelight is going to go to the great President Lincoln.

He should be in it somewhere. Dr. Kozol used to say, Lincoln was so ugly he was beautiful. Well, he had some rugged, marvelous features. Somebody said right now, the trouble with the nation is you've got a Ford instead of a Lincoln.

Well, the thing is that we have a marvelous man in Lincoln. But you know he came within a whisker of not giving that Gettysburg address. There was a great orator in this country. He was the first American to get a doctor's degree outside of America.

He got his doctorate in Germany. I would say he was the dean of American orators. He was the Demosthenes, if you like, of American orators. And everybody agreed that Edward Everett should give the speech at the Gettysburg meeting.

And then some people suggested that the President ought to speak. Oh no, come on, not that guy. Where did he come from, Kentucky? Oh, he's got more human attributes, he stands awkwardly, his language isn't that good.

I mean, look, let's face it. If Everett gets up there in the skies with his oratory and then Lincoln gets up behind him, it will sound like a rooster in a farmyard after hearing a nightingale. That's what one man said.

And when Mr. Everett got cracking he really exhaled that day. I suppose maybe he didn't polish his oratory. You know the orators used to have what they call purple patches. And he rehearsed it and he dramatized it and he knew where to put the power on and how to gesticulate.

And when he finished they thundered and stamped their feet and they whistled and they shouted and there was acclamation for twenty or more minutes. They could not get silent. And when he went to sit down the gracious man Lincoln got hold of his hand and squeezed it tight and said, Man, that was great.

He put everything into that address he wanted to and then he borrowed an immortal passage from Pericles. He has a great oration on the wars of the martyrs and Everett finished by stirring the people's blood in saying that the whole earth is a sepulchre of illustrious men.

And as I say they stamped and they shouted and so forth and he spoke for exactly 120 minutes. And Lincoln got up after him and spoke for exactly 120 seconds. Now do you know a thing that the first man said?

Do you know anywhere where it's put on a piece of paper and you'll stick it up in your home and read it and reread it? Have you read Pericles this morning? Have you read Homer? Did you read Screams in the Desert of Socrates?

Who said the most? The man that got everybody inflamed and passionate and stirred, speaking 120 minutes or the man that spoke 120 seconds plus 13, 133? One of the greatest speeches ever uttered. Now right before this marvelous sermon that Jesus gave he spent a night in prayer before he chose twelve disciples.

Don't you wish every church spent a night in prayer before it chose its deacons? Most of them wouldn't get in. If you read the previous chapter you discover he had been teaching. So it says in verse 23 of chapter 4 of Matthew that Jesus read about Galilee teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, healing all manner of sickness and all manner of diseases and everybody following him.

The sick, the impotent, that's what it says in verse 24. Those taken with diseases and tormented by the devil and the lunatic and the palsied. What a crowd, a stream of derelict humanity staggering in their blindness, palsied and lame.

What a gang to follow Jesus. Verse 25 says they followed him a great multitude. They followed him great multitudes of people from Galilee, Decapolis, from Jerusalem, from Judea and from beyond Jordan.

Now the first verse here of chapter 5 says seeing the multitude he went up into a mountain and when he was set his disciples came to him. I believe that the crowd left him. I don't think he preached this sermon to a multitude.

And to confirm my argument read the first verse of chapter 8. When he was come down from the mountain great multitudes followed him. Now even when he preached it says even those disciples were so startled.

But at the end of the 7th chapter it came to pass when Jesus ended these sayings, this sermon on the mount, that people were astonished at his doctrines. He taught them as one having authority. And to me that's the difference.

Lincoln you see wasn't an orator. He wasn't working like you play an organ to pull out all the stops and move people's emotions. He spoke with authority, with conviction. People felt he was as solid as he looked, like a piece of granite.

All the scribes could talk, the Pharisees could argue. But there was something about Jesus and authority that I feel is missing even in the pulpit in the day in which we live. Sometimes I listen to a preacher read the Bible.

He reads it as though it's a weather report. Bad weather at best. Sometimes I used to hear Luke Wiseman. He was a wise man. He was about 6 feet. He was like a beanpole. I happen to have a bust of Wesley in the house which was taken from a death mass when Wesley died in 1791.

And every time I saw Dr. Wiseman he had the features. He loved Wesley. He could just about quote every hymn Wesley wrote and he wrote over 3 ,000. And that of course was Charles Wesley. He played beautifully on the piano.

But one of the greatest things he could do, he could read the Word of God. Read it until your flesh would tingle. Read it until you say, please don't preach and spoil it now. I remember he wore a tailcoat.

And I remember one morning he came in and he lifted the tails of his coat like an old rooster. He had his hands behind his, you know. And he gave out the scripture and he said, Two men went up into the temple to pray.

One a Pharisee, the other a Republican. The Pharisee stood and prayed after himself, Lord I thank Thee I love Thee but I may not. Exhaustion is unjust the reason of this publican. I fast twice in the week.

I give tithes of all that I possess. And I'd heard that read a hundred times and didn't know that was in it. Somehow he, as they said of David Garrick, the greatest Shakespearean actor that we ever had in England, that he could get into the skin of the man he was representing and relive the man.

Now I don't think we should put too much pressure on drama and histrionics and so forth. But at the same time remember this is the Word of the Living God and it's ought to live when we read it as well as when we preach it.

And the people noticed the difference in Jesus when he spoke. I'm just trying to think, I don't often do, but anyhow. Let me see, it was Newman I think that wrote that lovely hymn, Praise to the holiest in the heights and in the depths be praised.

In all his works most wonderful most good in all his ways. Another stanza in that he says, O loving wisdom of our God, when all was sin and shame, A second Adam to the fight and to the rescue came. Now that is not a second Adam.

If you have a second Adam you can have a third Adam. Jesus was the last Adam. That's what the Word of God says. He was the last Adam. Now this is the Sermon on the Mount. The second Sermon on the Mount.

The Last Adam and the Call to Solitude With God

The first Sermon on the Mount. A man went up there in the loneliness with God. And however much you go along with the mob or the crowd or the fellowship in your church. You'll get to a place where there's somebody becomes special in your life that helps you spiritually.

And then the Lord will say like he said to Moses. Leave the rest of Israel. Leave the seventy. Leave the two. Come up into the mountain by thyself and I'll wrap you in the cloud. So you can't look down and see the world and they can't look up and see you.

Now if you haven't had that experience you've got it coming. You see one of the things that Jesus says here about the believers is we're the light of the world. And we put an awful lot of stress on light because we like light.

We're to walk in the light. The path of the justice is a shining light that shineth more and more. It gets greater and greater until the perfect day. But also one of the great ministries of God is to put us into darkness.

And all the people said nothing. All right. But it still do. We're living in a day when if you get saved and filled with the Spirit from there you'll prosper. You'll become richer. You'll move into a better environment.

The reverse is true in the New Testament. Read the fourth chapter of 1 Corinthians and see what happens. Paul the greatest man that lived after Jesus says unto this present moment we suffer need. He had hardship and shortage of food.

Anybody can be good when you're petted and pampered and given money. What about when you're starving. Do you remember that great man that called Abraham the friend of God. The man who's mentioned more in the New Testament than any other character from the Old Testament.

He was a friend of God. And he had a whale of a time. Man did he go to heavenly places. He went and rescued his nephew Lot. He wasn't a very good Lot but anyhow he went and rescued him and brought him home.

He got a promise from God he was going to have a son. He got a promise he'd get a nation and God gave him the boundaries of it. He even met that majestic mysterious marvelous man called Melchizedek. His cup was full and running over.

And then in the next chapter it says a horror of great darkness came upon him. Remember he made his sacrifice and then he had to beat off the birds of prey as they stole his sacrifice. This is a man who is a friend of God.

Now you may disagree with me often and as I've told you when you disagree with me that's where you know you're wrong. But anyhow I'm quite sure these days that God does not have that many friends. He's got a lot of followers.

Most of them are following that far off even the pastor can't find them. He has a few disciples. He has not many friends because God shares his secret with his friends. Not necessarily his disciples. Again he had twelve disciples.

They didn't all go on the Mount of Transfiguration. They didn't all go into the Garden of Gethsemane. God's very choosy. You can get a lot of knowledge. All you have to do is read good books like Watchman Neath and mine and you'll gain a lot of ground.

But that won't necessarily make you a spiritual person. Coming here you may get light. I hope you do. But you work it out there in the arena of life. All right. The first sermon on the Mount was on that mound up there where Moses came down with his sermon outline on two stones.

Pretty heavy pocket books to carry around that isn't it? But he came with the sermon outline on two rocks. And it was so terrible. The people of Israel were trembling. You know I hear people say sometimes you know God really tried Moses.

He was forty years in the wilderness. Well you better read your Bible. He wasn't. He was eighty years in the wilderness. He was forty by himself. Then he had another forty with the rebel gang. All the dropouts.

Spiritual Formation Through Hardship, Prayer, and Scripture

Pretty tough huh? You're trying to find a book that will make you a saint. If ever you find a book with six easy lessons how to become a saint. Will you send me a copy please airman? I'll make you a promise I won't read it.

But that's what we're all looking for isn't it? Six easy lessons how to become a saint. You know instant coffee, instant potatoes, instant saints. There isn't a clue in the word of God about it. I marvel even at the constitution of a man like that.

That he went up and he fasted and he prayed and he was there for what? Forty days? Or was it eighty? Forty. I forgot. Forty. And then he went back and did the same as he'd done before. So he fasted for eighty days.

I met a man in a conference in England. Very precious fellow. He worked in a coal mine. He worked in what they call a stream that was eighteen inches deep. And he worked on his side. They didn't have machines.

And he had to work right under that thing with the big rocks over him. Cutting, cutting, cutting. And he worked there for twenty one days. And never had a bite of food. Just drank water. The burden of the Lord was on me he said.

Again read that marvelous marvelous chapter. Hebrews 11 knocks me for a loop. What did he do in Hebrews 11? Not much. Just things like this. Subdued kingdoms. Wrought righteousness. Obtained promises.

Stopped the mouths of lions. Women received their dead race to life again. And not one of them ever had a Bible. Oh come on brother. Hang your diplomas on the wall. Maybe you get some conceit out of them.

When you preach this title and your Ph .D. from Edinburgh and what? Think it scares the devil? Brother how much of you and I, you've got the whole revelation of God. God is never going to say anything to any other man as long as he lives that doesn't conform with his words.

I get sick in my stomach when I remember that God hasn't spoken to the world for two thousand years. He said his last words. Yes there are things God will emphasize and whisper in your heart. The secret of the Lord is to them that fear him.

I remember a doctor who came to a church I'd pastored in England. And going out one Sunday morning he said, Pastor could I talk with you a minute? I said yes. So when everybody had gone he looked me straight in the eye and said you're a fool.

I thought I had a great time preaching. Man that really cut me down to size. He was one of the dearest most spiritual men in the church. And he said you're a fool. Hmm. Thank you. Well he said didn't you tell the congregation this morning you wanted to share with them a secret God gave you?

Oh yeah I did I said that. Well he said if I gave you a secret last Wednesday and you told everybody this morning do you think I'd give you another? I said no. Well then he said if God ever gives you a secret keep it.

Have you ever thought that Joseph might have become suspicious there was something wrong with Mary and she wouldn't open her mouth and tell him what was wrong? He didn't say well darling I'm pregnant but of course I don't know any other man and I've not known you and it's a miracle that God wouldn't let us talk.

As I said yesterday that wonderful little man 22 years of age that had the revival in Wales in 1904 and 5. Evan Roberts. In the middle of the revival God told him to fast. Not from meals but from speaking.

Do most of us do that? Wouldn't your husband be amazed if he didn't speak for a week? I mean apart you know maybe you don't do that but when you have a husk. When you're mad with him. But I mean when you're really sanctified and the Lord says be quiet and you write on a bit of paper darling the Lord has padlocked him.

He says I haven't got to speak. You see God never makes two saints the same way. Again read Hebrews 11. It's a fantastic study. Well God makes this man on the mountain alright. He gives him this what I call the first sermon on the mountain.

But it was so terrible that even if a beast went near the beast died. There were lightnings and thunders and the people were terrified. What's happening up there? He'll never come down. How different this second sermon on the mountain.

The multitude that comes to the edge of the mountain. Even if they were listening at the edge there I don't think he was addressing them. He certainly was not. You see the sermon on the mountain is a manifesto of the kingdom.

You can't divide anything by one. You can't multiply anything by one. You can divide by two. You can multiply by two. And in the New Testament you find there are two ways. There are two masters. There are two kingdoms.

Matthew sets Jesus forth as a king. Mark sets him forth as a servant. Luke sets him forth as the son of man. And John sets him forth again as very God of very God. As I said the other morning the whole gospel of John is capsuled into that first verse of the first chapter.

In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God and the Word was God. In the beginning eternity. The Word was with God. Equality. The Word was God's deity. Now here Matthew emphasizes over and over again.

The Kingdom of God and Christ’s Kingship

As a matter of fact in this particular gospel of Matthew. You discover that the kingdom is mentioned 55 times. In Luke the kingdom is mentioned 44 times. In Mark 20 times. In John 5 times. Now obviously a kingdom presupposes a king.

The other Sunday I talked to my church. I got, as I keep saying, two dozen members. And it was Palm Sunday. And for once we fell into the calendar of the church. And we thought about the history of Jesus.

And we thought about Jesus. Going into the 50 on the back of an ass. The 50 likened man to a wild ass. That's what John said. He wouldn't change his opinion if he came back today for sure. Except you might say it's a wilder wild ass than it was when he was around.

Man is rebellious. He's like a wild ass. And an old man up there in Kentucky told me. Told a friend of mine that when he was a boy. In some of those woods up there they had a lot of wild asses. And he said when you get a colt.

A young colt that hasn't been broken in. Man, man, man. It's a tremendous job to break him in. But do you remember what Jesus did? Jesus sat on him and immediately he was docile. How do you know when an ass has been tamed?

You can beat him with a two by four. You can whip him. You can do all kinds of things. But the only way to prove that an ass has been tamed. Is you sit on him and he doesn't kick. And the scripture says that the ass.

What does it say? Thy king cometh unto thee meek and lowly. Which is part of this Sermon on the Mount. And sitting upon an ass. Sitting. And until Christ sits on the throne of your heart. You're not in subjection.

He isn't king. You may have got rid of your lousy sins. You may have quit smoking and doing a lot of things. That were bad and injurious to your health. As well as eternal life. But. Until he sits. On the throne of your personality.

You're not subdued. While ever your will is in rebellion. While ever you kick. When he makes demands. Now. I say men have dreamed about establishing a utopia. The amazing thing to me is. That when we've reached the highest standard of living in our history.

And the highest standard of education. We're more immoral at this moment. The things we did. Behind closed doors we shout from the house up. I went in a store the other day to get a certain book. And when I get in it was full of girly magazines.

And they were most obscene things. You dare not even put them inside the covers a few years ago. They're on the covers now. We pass hotels on the road. And it says. You're room free and x-rated films.

And all you do is press a button and put something in. And you can see every sex perversion. In your hotel room. Despite all the things we've struggled for. We got rid of the sweatshop. Unions tried to get the bosses.

Now the bosses are trying to control the unions. I'm not too sure if Meany doesn't run the country. Either he or Kissinger. We've got everything we were striving after. Why is Transcendental Meditation so popular?

Because people want peace. And the emphasis of Jesus is not peace. It's purity. The emphasis in preaching the Holy Spirit these days. Is Jesus received power. But Peter says that their appendix after him wasn't power.

It didn't just make him an orator. In Acts 15, 8 and 9. Where he's reporting to the house. Pardon me, to the big shops in Jerusalem. What happened in the house of Cornelius. He says. And God who knows the heart.

Bear them witness. Giving them the Holy Ghost. Even as he did unto us. And put no difference between us and them. Purifying their hearts. Out of him. The arrogance went out of him. Everything was purified in him.

You see you don't have an appetite in you that's wrong. They're all good appetites that got corrupted. Temper is a terrible thing. Anger is a beautiful thing. Jesus got angry. You say I like Ephesians 5, 18.

Be filled with the Spirit. Well the same scripture says be angry and sin not. When did you last get angry in prayer? When did you get your fist up against the rascals? We blame the teenagers for all this.

Teenagers don't publish the immoral pornographic stuff. The old boys produce it for us. Teenagers don't produce the liquor. The Kennedy's produce it. Teenagers don't produce drugs. The older people produce them.

Everything is manufactured to send the kids to hell. And we blame the kids for going. And we make the stuff for them. All right let's step back. When I was a youngster. There were some men there. They were called famous.

The Arabian socialist. The red bearded Irishman was one of them. The man that wrote Pygmalion and didn't make much out of it. And it made millions when they changed the title to My Fair Lady. George Bernard Shaw was one.

H .G. Wells was one. Well they sneered at Christianity. Don't need the Bible. Don't need the church. Don't need Jesus Christ. We can bring in the millennium by an act of prominence. We can pull down the hills of wealth.

Fill in the valleys of poverty. And we'll build a kingdom of God on earth. He said that two years before World War I. So he said it in 1912. Now the first world war. Two years before the second world war.

A woman made a prophecy. It was wrong. What did you expect? A woman made it. But anyhow. The woman in 1917 said there would be no world war for at least 100 years. And we had one two years after she said it.

She's only 98 years out which isn't a bad shock. But you see between those two periods. I'm convinced of this with all my being. Between World War I. Have you ever thought that World War I ended at 11 o 'clock in the morning.

On the 11th day of the 11th month. 11 months from the signing of the armistice with Turkey. And 11 months from the time that Alan entered into Jerusalem. You've got a series of five 11s. And I suggest that God was knocking at the door of the church and saying.

You're entering the 12th hour. Get up and go. And from 1919 when that declaration was made. Until 1939. We had the 20 most golden years the church had ever had since Pentecost. We messed it like we do everything else.

H .G. Wells was going to build a new world in two years before World War I. H .G. Wells saw the horror of World War I. He saw the horror of World War II. You see he had no hope in the church. He'd seen no life in it.

He didn't talk about repentance. He didn't talk about God. He was a top-shore little, strutting, self-conscious, self-anointed prophet of a new world order. And H .G. Wells said, again we don't need the Bible.

He talked about the adequacy of materialism. He talked about the sufficiency of man. He talked about the inevitability of progress. We've entered a new world he said in 1912. Seems impossible 60 years ago.

Well he went through World War I. He went through World War II. He wrote his history of the world. He wrote his truck transporter that got him into trouble with the Roman church. And when he finished it all, and he'd seen every devilish thing that came out of World War I and World War II, and the collapse of nations, he wrote his last book.

What do you think it was? The Millennium Ground Atomic? No, nine at the end of its tether. He says there's no way out of the dilemma. The men are still trying to put Humpty Dumpty together again. Life would only work one way, and that's God's way.

He made man. Just one thing I think. H .G. Wells was writing. He says you have a God-shaped blank in your life. A cavity in your personality that only God can fill. You go a bit further back, wasn't it Augustine that says we're made for God and so forth, and we'll never be at rest until we find him.

I think of the China man who was asked, since he was a great scholar, how much of the New Testament he'd read. And he said, well I've read a lot of it. You've read the Koran. Yes, I've read the Koran.

I've read the Vedas. I've read all the sacred books of the world. Is the New Testament better? Yes, yes, it's the most unique book in the world. Why? Well, he said, are you a Christian? Yes. Oh, you're a Christian.

You're the most wonderful person in the world. Now, you know, the old, old story that we say makes us so humble. I'm only a sinner saved by God. We tend to think that gives God an awful lot of credit to say I've no righteousness in me.

I'm just a sinner. Now, how can you be a sinner saved by grace? I saw the pastor and his wife coming round the back there yesterday with their arms round each other, and I said, no coping on the planet earth.

Well, that's nice. But if I said to you, you know, you better take it. I think he is a wonderful man of God. But he's a very unique man. He's a married bachelor. Now, come on, you say. He's a bachelor.

Well, how can you be a sinning saint? If I tell you I have a friend, he's a lovely man. He's a truthful liar. And I know a lady, she's very sweet. She's an honest priest. Oh, come on, you're fooling with words.

So are you. Now, doesn't the scripture say, we, you know, well, we are, what does it say, you know, the filth of our own righteousness. Our righteousness is a filthy right. You know what it also says?

He that doeth righteousness is righteous even as he is righteous. Can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit? Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles? It sounds too arrogant to say that you're living a holy life.

Well, I want to tell you, that's the norm. Jesus didn't die for the backslidden state of the church today. People say, Jesus may come today. No, sir, for two reasons. Number one, the gospel hasn't been preached to all nations.

Number two, when he comes, he's coming for a bride. He's not coming for a cripple like the church is today. The Holy Spirit is preparing a bride. No, it isn't the Holy Spirit, the word of God says. Sure, he works.

Like Eliezer. You remember after, after Isaac was sacrificed, he disappears out of the picture. You don't hear of him anymore. You'll hear of Eliezer. Boy, what a job he had. Timing and wise for another man.

That must be the greatest risk this side of eternity. Timing and wise for another man. I wouldn't like to do that. Boy, aren't you glad? We pastors get some jobs, but boy, I'm glad that's not one of them.

Ever try your hand at matchmaking and it didn't strike? Excuse me. But Eliezer, Eliezer went to find a bride for Isaac. You remember when he got there and he saw this beautiful young woman, the Lord says, that's her, and he went up and spoke, and immediately she said, what?

Yes, I've come to tell you that he wants you. And how many camels did he have? Was it seventeen? And he said, just bring that bag off that camel. And he opened it out and she nearly swooned. Oh, this is for me?

No, no, this is the foretaste of glory to God. Sixteen other camels loaded up there all for you. And the father says, now you better not go. And other people said, now watch out here, because there's a trick in this, you know.

Doesn't it remind you of the scripture, whom having not seen, we love? She hadn't even seen him, but she heard so much. She says, listen, I'll do anything for a man like that. Goodbye mom, goodbye dad, let's go.

Put the camel in top gear and let's get there as quick as we can. And when she saw him, well there's a little difference, because you see, I don't believe the Holy Spirit is looking for a bride. As the way I read Revelation it says, the bride has made herself ready.

Readiness for Christ’s Return and the Bride Made Ready

I remember in World War II, when a young man in England didn't expect to go to war anyhow. He was sure he wouldn't have to go, but he had to go. And he said goodbye to his girlfriend, but before he said goodbye, the last day at home she went and bought her a wedding outfit and everything in all the trimmings.

Beautiful. She put them away in a drawer. And he wrote to her every week for three years and then suddenly no letters. His mother got a letter from the, a telegram from the government to say that George was missing, Billy killed, and they were sorry.

Two more years, there wasn't a letter. There was no sign of this fellow at all. One day the girl came home from work. She was awfully tired. Wasn't feeling too good, and she should have gone to church that night.

She said to her mother, mother I'm just going to have my supper and bathe, and I'm going to go upstairs. Don't, don't, don't interfere. Don't interrupt. Don't, don't let anybody see me. And she hadn't been upstairs very long when there was a knock at the door and the, the mother opened the door, there was a young soldier and he went, he looked round.

Where, where, where's Mary? She wasn't there, is it? No. Oh, she's gone to church. No. Vacation? No. Where is she? Oh, she's upstairs. Not feeling too good, and she doesn't want to be disturbed. Not unless it's very important.