The Days of Noah (Cd Quality) — Leonard Ravenhill

The Days of Noah and the Coming Judgment

I'm not playing with words, but we're going to look at Luke, Luke chapter 17, Luke 17 and reading from verse 26. And as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of Man. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage until the day that Noah entered into the ark and the flood came and destroyed them all.

Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot. They did eat, they did drink, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built it. You know what I put the emphasis on all the days in those two verses? Let's go back and read the other one again.

It was in the days of Noah, so shall it be in the days of the Son of Man. They did eat, they drank, they married, they were given in marriage until the day that Noah entered the ark. Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot.

They did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built it. In other words, God wasn't in the plan at all. They satisfied every desire that they had. And some of those things are good.

It's not wrong to get married. It is if you marry the wrong person. If you get married to the right person, it's heaven, and if you don't, it's the other place. Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot.

They did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built it. But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom, it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all. As it was in the days of Noah.

Human Wickedness Before the Flood

What was it like in the days of Noah? Chapter 6 of Genesis. Verse 3 from chapter 6. The Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man. I think that applies to individuals. I believe it applies with nations.

This week I've been thinking of that scripture which I call a limitation to intercession. It says there is a sin unto death and ye shall not pray for it. I guess you think it's nice to preach. Well it is sometimes.

But I believe in every meeting, whether there's an altar call or not, if the Spirit of God is there, somebody's born or somebody's quickened. And by the same token, I think some people cross the deadline.

God talks for the last time. As I say, what does God owe you? What does God owe America? Some of you have heard the gospel a hundred times. I doubt if one of us responded to Christ the first time he spoke to us.

We would have to say with, was it Theo Monod that wrote, I had long withstood his grace, long provoked him to his face, would not hearken to his call, and grieved him by a thousand falls. Depth of mercy, can there be mercy still reserved for me?

I'm staggered every day. I think of the majesty of God, the love of God, but right now we're living on mercy. If we weren't, we'd be burning like Sodom and Gomorrah. We've out sinned Sodom, we've out sinned Gomorrah.

I'll tell you about that in a minute or two. My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he is also flesh, yet his days shall be a hundred and twenty years. There were giants in the earth in those days, and also after that, when the sons of God came unto the daughters of men and bared children to them, the same becoming mighty men that were of old, men of renown.

And God saw that the wicked man was, wickedness of man was great in the earth. Now look at this, every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. Every thought without interruption, every thought without mixture, every thought without intermission, every thought of his mind.

If there's such a thing as pure sin, here it is. His heart meditated only on sin, and the Spirit of God ceases to strive. Verse six, he repented the Lord, he had made man in the earth, and he grieved him at his heart.

And the Lord said, I will destroy man who have created from the face of the earth, both man, beast, and creeping things, and the fowl of the air. And it repenteth me that I made them, but no found grace in the eyes of the Lord.

We find a scripture here a minute. I put markers in and then I forget them. That one I've got. I think you've got the oven up a bit too hot tonight. As I say so often, I'm not losing my mind, I'm losing some of my memory.

Wisdom's Warning and the Rejected Call

Look in the book of Proverbs, please, in chapter one. Verse 20, wisdom crieth without. She uttereth her voice in the streets, she crieth to the chief place or concourse, in the openings of the gates, and the city she uttered her words, saying, how long ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity, and the scorners delight in their scorn, and the fools hate knowledge.

Turn you to me at my reproof, and I will pour out my spirit upon you. I will make you know my words known unto you. But here's the rebuke of God. Verse 24, because I have called, and ye refused. I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded.

Ye have set at naught my counsel, and would have none of my reproof. Now that's their side. Here's God's side. You see, we're toying with God in these days. We're toying with eternity. We're toying with salvation, as the people did before the flood.

Now people say sometimes, wasn't God rather cruel to cut them off? No, he wasn't. For what reason? For this reason, before them there had been a prophet. The antediluvians, as we call the people before the flood, had been some of the most favored people that ever lived.

They had had a man by the name of Enoch. And Jude goes on to say, Enoch the seventh from Adam, because there was another Enoch before that. And Enoch walked with God. And there at the beginning almost of creation, he prophesied, the Lord shall come with ten thousand of his...

He must have had a revelation, a hole through the sky into eternity. And this man Enoch walked with God. He marched up and down the streets, he prophesied. This is the voice that we read about here in this chapter.

He's calling to foolish. He's calling to people that stop their ears. Then right after that marvelous man Enoch, you have another man. If I say no to you, by the law of association your mind says, arc.

But that's not what the Bible remembers him for, except on one occasion. You know the name of Noah was an amazing name. It occurs 55 times in the Bible. 45 of those times, I believe. I had some notes which are on my desk.

I can't see them right now. 45 times in Genesis. And three times, I believe, in the Gospels and once in the Epistle. What is he known on God's side? On man's side, he's known for building an ark. You get a little ark and you make little toy things for children to put in them.

But on God's side, he's known, it says, what? Noah, a preacher of righteousness. Now they'd had a man storming up and down the street. Can't you imagine him crying? It says he cried in the gates. You know, it says, the scripture says, the gates of hell shall not prevail against God.

I remember talking, Dave Wilkins and I had been talking with Miss Kuhlman. And she said, well, you know, one day, if you do happen to go past the gates of hell going to heaven, on the bottom of the gates, it says, made in Pittsburgh.

I don't know if she's right or not. Any Pittsburghians here? You won't own up to it anyhow. But the gates of hell, it doesn't mean physical gates. It says, of Lot, he sat in the gate. That's where the government officials sat.

And it says, the gates of hell, all the councils of hell, all those who lifted up their voices against God will not prevail against God. Doesn't matter what breaks loose on the earth. If it gets a thousand times worse than it is, the gates of hell will not prevail against God.

Well, they had Enoch walking. He lifted up his voice. He cried to the sons of men, in season and out of season. Then Noah comes up. The time is getting shorter and shorter and shorter. And we remember that Noah built an ark.

We say, well, God, of course, cut these folk off. Sure he did. How long was he building the ark? Pardon? How many years? A hundred and twenty. A hundred and twenty years. Do you wonder that Peter talks about the long-suffering of God when Noah built the ark?

A hundred and twenty years. That's forty-three thousand eight hundred days. God watched men rebel against him. He watched them do evil things for forty-three. You can do that with your children for forty-three thousand eight hundred minutes.

You'd skin them. Perhaps you'd put them over your lap and beat the daylights out of them nearly. Aren't you glad God isn't as short-tempered with you as you are with your children? Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, but so often we do.

We rationalize on this level. I like what Paul's kept saying repeatedly during the last few weeks. By the way, he's away. He and his dear wife have some very serious things to decide this weekend, so pray much for them.

By the way, a community Christian church next Sunday, they don't sing as well as we do, but you could go. Betty's looking at me. I won't be preaching. The best preacher, Paul's gonna preach there next Sunday morning, so pray for him.

But they've some very critical things to decide, and I want you to pray for them. And don't phone them, don't talk to them, just pray for them. It's very, very critical in their lives right now. Forty-three thousand.

I staggered. I got Martha to work this out for me today. Talks about this hundred and twenty years. Forty-three thousand eight hundred days? And God watched in patience. He didn't pull the switch on them.

He let them go on and on and on, but then eventually he dropped the boom, as we would say. Now what did Jesus say? As it was in the days of Noah. He's the teacher tonight, not me, in one sense. As it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be in the days of the coming of the Son of Man.

The Moral Condition of Modern Society

I watch very little TV. I don't think you go to hell if you have one. I don't think you go to heaven if you don't have one. It's dangerous. It's dangerous to teach your children to read. They might get pornographic literature.

It's not what you possess that concerns me. It's what possesses you. I wish, if you find one, let me know. You know we've got a birthday coming up next month, by the way. But anyhow, I'm looking for a clock with 28 hours every day.

If you find one, let me know. I want a calendar with about 565 days in the year. I don't have enough time. It's running away from us as quickly as ever it can. I know these are the evil days in which we're living.

As it was in the days of Noah, even so shall it be in the days of the coming of the Son of Man. I preached to some hundreds of preachers two weeks ago. At night, I guess, we had about 1 ,200 there. And God did some real work.

But one night, a big shot professional preacher, I won't give you his name. Anyhow, he said, oh here's a conference with about 2 ,000 people the first night. He said, there's only one hymn we can sing to start this revival.

I thought, oh he'll sing, all hail the powers of Jesus' name. You know what he sang? America the Beautiful. If he hadn't have been so big, I'd have pushed him off the platform, I think. What in God's name do you start a conference, a revival conference singing that?

So I had to have my penny's worth, you know, next day. I said, what do you mean America the Beautiful? Our jails are packed, our divorce courts are packed, we're broken in mind with drugs, we're broken in body with sex perversion, we're broken with drunkenness.

Where's America beautiful? Where's England beautiful? None of them. I say, I don't watch TV much, but last Tuesday night, I think it was Tuesday or Monday, there was a play on TV called Samaritan. Any of you seen it?

I think there's a book to that title. Mitch, Mitch Snyder was the fellow that it was all wrapped around. He lived in Washington. The second title to the book was Miracle on, I don't know, was it 2nd Street or 42nd Street?

Anyhow, it's just a few weeks before Christmas. Here's an ordinary man going down the street, and he went round, he saw a little old lady squatting over those grids, you know, where the heat comes up.

And he went night after night after them, until he got such a burden he couldn't sleep. And before long he started fasting. I don't know, he's the same man. He fasted 52 or 53 days, until his wife sat at his bedside, darling, take something, take something.

But he was determined to break down the boys in City Hall. Well, he gathered together 740 derelict characters. I don't know if you've seen Celia, or Cecilia Tyson. She played last year in a play liberating the slaves going to Canada.

She's a black woman. She was 103 last year, she knocked 78 years off that. But she's still an old woman. And she played the part of a little derelict old black woman. Nobody loved her, nobody cared. These were unloved, unsought.

And dear God, in the distance you can see the spire of churches. And I thought, well, what in God's name are these people rescuing the perishing? What's the church doing for them? No good giving them a tract and say, we'll be praying for you.

Forget it. We had to do something more than that. And he was determined to do it. And he went to the city fathers, and they said, you can't do this, you can't do that, you can't do the other. He said, there's a building there.

It cost 10 million. He said, what's 10 million compared to 740 perishing people? The weather's going to drop 20 degrees tonight. And some of them hadn't eaten all day. And they hadn't been in a bed for months.

And he really poured it on, you know. He told them just everything he could. Eventually, those stony-hearted old boys broke down a bit. They wouldn't give him the 11 million dollar building. They gave him the disused railway station.

It looked like, it looked like, what am I trying to say? Cathedral, Westminster Avenue, those big old arches in it, you know. And he crowded those people in. He got 500 beds, if I remember right. Got the blankets, got the food, and he set them up.

But I was telling Brother Dale, as I watched that, here are these derelicts. Doctors that got on drink. People that got on drugs. Some were shaky. Mostly were old. Over 50, if that's old. But anyhow, they got over that.

That's to get some of you off the hook. But there they were, in such awful condition. Shaky. One man is dying. The other guy has a bottle with whiskey, about so much. Take it. No, you take it. One crippled man is pushing another in a wheelchair across the road, and he falls down.

He collapses. The fellow in the wheelchair is half paralyzed. He's had no food. He dies. They give him a military funeral. Why? Because in Vietnam, he went out on the shell fire and rescued so many dying men.

And here he is, the man says, in God's name, what are we doing? The richest country in the world, and we've hundreds of thousands of people through the nation dying. But I transferred that. Instead of seeing those old shaky black and white people, and all the other people ragged, and I sat there, and instead of watching that, I was weeping, sure.

I wasn't seeing old men and women who'd had their innings, who'd had their day, and somehow got into the devil's clutch, and it stripped them and robbed them of manhood and womanhood, and some of the mentality, and virtue, and everything.

They were wrecks walking around on two legs. I wasn't seeing them. I was seeing, I was seeing Main Street in Tyler. Not with stacks of derelict folk, but young smart kids. Many, many of them, scores of them from the schools, finished, maybe graduated this summer.

They're well-dressed, they've got these fancy, what do you call these, things your ladies like to wear with a badge on? Martha, come on, help me there. No, dear. Designer clothes. My wife doesn't wear them.

We get our designer clothes that came out. But anyhow, I could see those young people going down the street, free, happy, they pocket money, they've got homes, they've had education. They're not ragged, they're not dirty.

What are you upset about? Because I was looking in their hearts. They're just as ragged as those people out outside. They're dark, they're polluted, they're in bondage, they're captives to drink, they're captives to sin, they're captives to every devilish thing there is.

But the church doesn't care. As I've told you, we're broken in our minds through drugs, we're broken in our bodies through sin, we're broken in our divorce rate. Everything's broken except the church.

The church isn't broken-hearted about it. Jesus is, but we're not. Well, here's some statistics for you. A brother down in El Paso phoned me tonight. I asked him for these statistics. They come from a paper, I think it's called, is it New Morning Ministries?

And it's associated with the assemblies of God, so it must be true. Come on now, this is America the beautiful. Forget my English tongue. Statistics. There are one million runaway teenagers every year in the U .S., but the majority of them are never reported by their parents.

Thirty-five percent of the runaways leave home because of incest. You know what that is? You're telling me America's a beautiful? Do you think God doesn't look down on every home where a man is fooling around and having sex relations with his daughter?

Come on, it's the same in every country. Everybody saw the flood coming on Noah's day. What do you think they did? Sat down and waited for it? Forget it. As soon as the clouds darkened, the heavy thunder rolled.

What did they do? I believe every man jumped on a horse and got out of town. They'd been warned day after day after day, year after year. They'd gone up and sneered and scorned and ridiculed the man who was building the ark.

And then when the heavens broke and the water came from beneath and water from above, I guess they jumped every horse and camel and elephant they had to try and beat it out of the town. But they saw the water coming in.

Christ as the Ark of Safety

Noah had built an ark. What did he do? He cut himself off from the rest of the world. When he got in that ark, that ark had to be his entertainment, his joy, his peace, everything. Well come on, if it's a type of Christ, why in God's name doesn't it satisfy people?

Why isn't Christ your all in all tonight? As it says in Philippians, he is all and in all. Why isn't Christ all your joy? Why isn't Christ all your peace? Why isn't Christ all your happiness? I guess if you had a favorite aunt and she was wealthy, and some of you young guys that like nice cars, she has two Rolls Royces and she said, you know dear, I'm gonna leave them both to you.

And of course this mansion with all its antiques and my yacht that I anchor outside of New York somewhere, it's all gonna be yours. Don't you think at times you'd have a little emotion and ecstasy? Well come on, have we lost sight of eternity?

Is it true you're going to prepare a mansion for us? It doesn't matter how poor you are. It doesn't matter how uneducated you are. It doesn't matter if you don't understand all the Bible. I don't. I don't know anybody that does.

But if you know, if you can say, blessed assurance, Jesus is mine, then you've got your name in the Lamb's Book of Life. You know, believers say, well of course in Revelation 20, it talks about the books being opened.

But that's written to unbelievers. Sure it is. Oh, there are no books open for sinners, for believers. Are you sure? What about Malachi, where it says a book of remembrance is written? There's another thing you've done today you've got away with.

You've got away for now, it's judged up there. What about this book, as Paul has kept saying? We're gonna face this book. I don't know how you'll get on. Maybe you feel pretty cocksure in your particular denomination of theology.

Well, read Hebrews 11 and get your nose rubbed in the dust. Doesn't matter whether you talk about Finney or Wesley or Savnerola, a man that never claimed to be filled with the Holy Ghost. Savnerola shook a whole city from center to conference.

He toppled the papacy. He toppled corruption. He toppled the leaders. He toppled the magistrates. He toppled the noblemen. He made the king in his castle to tremble. Just one man, one man. God doesn't raise up denominations, he raises up men.

Then out of the men maybe something grows. God raised up Wesley, Charles, and John. Before that he raised, of course, George Whitefield, who was the torchbearer actually. But look what happened, they shook the world.

Luther, he shook the world. Kerry went to India when the Baptist stroked their beards and said, no, young man, when God wants to save you, he's omnipotent and sovereign. He'll save them without you. Don't believe that.

God is sovereign, but he works through human agencies. I believe if he told the angels, Gabriel tonight and the rest, you can go to earth just for two years and labor, I guess they'd dive over the parapets of heaven and be down here in five minutes.

Paul says we're going, and I keep telling you, dear friend, I'm not going to heaven for the weekend. And you're not going to go to hell for the weekend, if you don't say. We're going forever and ever.

And Paul says, I want to tell you the things that motivate me, I have a home eternal in the heavens. I have a home. Can you imagine walking down the street one day and meeting the apostle Paul? Gold streets.

You'll be able to tell the evangelists, they'll be digging the streets up. Can you think of us in eternity? Everlasting bliss, everlasting joy. As the hymn says, it will be worth it all when we see Jesus.

Life's trials will seem so small. We'll see that we fell over matchstocks. We thought they were redwood trees when we bumped against them. We'll wish that we carried heavier burdens. We'll wish that we'd lived more sacrifices.

It's too late. There's no u-turn before the throne of God, remember that. Whether you're a sinner going to the judgment seat, there's no u-turn. You'll wish to God there was, but there won't be. There's no u-turn for the believers either.

I'd better get on with this, or I'll be here longer. The majority of this million of runaways are never reported by parents. 35 of the runaways leave home because of incest. 33 because of physical neglect.

The rest are throwaways or abandoned by parents. This young man said to me tonight, the police called us down to the airport. They found a little boy from South America, retarded, very severely retarded.

A little Mexican. He's dumped in a corner. His parents left him and fled. They don't know who he belongs to. There he is. He's a throwaway. And he says, we're constantly facing this. Many of the runaways do not live long.

A hundred and fifty thousand of them a year disappear, disappear. We don't project that. People sit all night looking at junk on TV. What about the undercurrent? Not just the underworld. What about the undercurrent of sorrow and misery and tragedy and broken hearts?

We don't see it. And yet isn't it our business to bind up the brokenhearted, to let the oppressed go free and break every yoke? We're going to do something about it. I am, by God's grace, within a month or so, do something about this youth business here in Thailand.

250 ,000 teenagers attempt suicide each year, which is nearly, it's nearly a thousand a day, a bit less. But look, these kids have the nicest homes, the nicest houses, the best education, they wear the best clothes, they ride the best cars.

But what in God's name is missing? I don't like much that H .G. Wells said, but one thing he did say sticks with me. He said this in 1912. He said, there is a God-shaped blank in everyone. You know, in 1912, he and a few other guys got together and formed what we call the Fabian Socialist Society.

And they laughed at the church, they laughed at Christianity, they laughed at the Bible. They said, we can produce a new race of people. They were talking about England mainly, but they meant in the world.

We can produce a new race of men by intellectual and biological processes. The idea of some of them was to squeeze out those who were born weak. They were singing Swinburne's story from the last century, glory to man in the highest, for man is the master of things.

But right after they sung their song, World War I came, followed by World War II, followed by the debacle of course of Vietnam. And man just gets more and more depraved and more and more wicked. 250 ,000 attempt suicide each year.

15 to 20 ,000 succeed. Well how do you know that it wouldn't be the most promising scientists in the world? How do you know they wouldn't be the best surgeons, but the devil stopped them? How do you know they wouldn't be the best Christians or preachers or something?

Now you can hang over that some Calvinism and say, well it's in God's order, okay. A man told me in my office, well you see, everything's destined. I said, you're telling me that a hundred thousand babies when they were born, when they were in the mother's womb, were destined to be flushed down the john as soon as they were born?

Get out of the office. I don't believe that. I'm a little angry tonight. I've got a right to be. 15 to 20 ,000 young people. Didn't they have this trouble in Plano last year? Five or six or seven teenagers living in the best parts of Dallas with lovely homes.

Didn't a boy stand behind the door when his daddy and mummy came from church? He was 14, he killed a pair of them because he hadn't been getting his own way. See the breakdown is not in government merely, the breakdown is in the home.

It's the home where the seeds are sown. In one year, one million teenage girls will become pregnant and of them, 200 ,000 will be aborted. I'm not reading about Sodom and Gomorrah. I'm reading about America where you can't get a prayer meeting going hardly in any churches.

Young guys phone me and say, Mr. Rayleigh, I'm trying to get a prayer meeting in the church, but they don't want to come. They don't want to pray. Do you know why they don't come? Because they've no prayer life at home.

If they had, they'd come with something kindling in their hearts and want to explore, then they go to a prayer meeting. You don't have to grind something. I want to come every night with a burdened heart.

I want to live with a burdened heart. I can't live otherwise. As I say, I'm sick of the mediocrity in the church. I'm looking for God to start a fire. You better hang on with me, Brother Farrar and his wife and Betty and Dave.

I believe God will do a thing, something entirely different in the next six months, less than six months, here in the Tyler area. Two hundred, one million teenage girls will become pregnant. Of that number, two hundred thousand will be aborted.

Think of that. Two hundred thousand girls, teenagers, sixteen and under, aborting their babies. Why? Because many of them now at twelve years of age are getting pregnant. They're only girls. They're only children bringing to birth children.

They've no qualifications to handle children. God didn't intend it that way. Now it says fifteen percent of all teens, whether it's teens, what it is anyhow, I don't know the grades in America like England, but fifteen percent of all grades from ten to twelve and eleven percent of all others from seven to nine are classified as having a drinking problem.

No, there's nothing here. Eighty percent of all boys, seventy percent of all girls will have sexual relations before they leave the high school. Sod them. Fifteen percent of all grades from ten to twelve and eleven percent of all others from seven to nine are classified as having a drinking problem.

No, there's nothing here. Eighty percent of all boys, seventy percent of all girls will have sexual relations before they leave the high school. Sod them. Approximately 300 ,000 female prostitutes in the country, teenagers.

Do you think this doesn't make God sorry and angry? Do you just pass it over? Statistics. Well that's not the worst. Two nights ago, I don't listen to much TV but I like to check where, because the boys are on three different continents so I want to know what's happening.

Riots, earthquakes, what? Two nights ago, or was it last night, I forget, when Peter Jennings, he was talking about the, what do you call them? Contras, you know what the contras are? He's talking about the contras and he called a man handsome, well-dressed, smart, well-groomed, charming guy.

I said that guy's well-educated, he's well-fed, he's well-clothed, he's got a well-stored mind. He said you were in it to see the contras, weren't you? Yes. What do you see? Now listen, this is horrifying and I couldn't sleep.

It sounds pretty vulgar but come on, I'm telling you, we're back to Sodom. This well-dressed man said in the street he watched 20 men rape a 12-year-old girl to death. Well, what in God's name did he stand there for?

I mean, I'm not a, I don't believe in shooting and killing people. I couldn't, well, one, if one man raped a little 12-year-old girl, somebody should have gone and dragged him away and dragged the girl away.

But he stood there and watched 20 do it, and he's educated. He's a product of an American university, an English university, otherwise he wouldn't be in that capacity that he was reporting there in that country.

But Jennings wasn't moved when he read it and the guy wasn't embarrassed when he said it. Do we have hearts of flesh, or stone, or what? You see, if you only see people with a body, if you only see them on a social standing or an intellectual standing, you're missing it.

I tell you, I just can't go down the street now in Tyler without seeing those teenagers. Some come from Christian homes. Many of them have been to church, they made a confession, the preacher got baptized, they're going to hell fire as much as they were before.

New Birth, Holy Living, and the Call to Action

Born again is a miracle. A man becomes a new creature if he doesn't born again. He may go tithe, he may take sacrament, he may get baptized, but as he had changed heart. When he gets up from that altar, he should have a changed heart, a changed mind, changed appetites, changed desires, changed vocabulary.

A man is a new creation. God doesn't patch him up where he's leaking, he makes a new man. And the same Spirit that put Jesus in the womb of the Virgin Mary, the same Spirit creates us. We're regenerated, we're forgiven by the Father, we're cleansed through the blood, we're regenerated by the Holy Spirit.

I don't know what's being taught in Bible schools today, but I'll tell you we need to go back to basics. We need to stop people going out. I saw you kneeling there, what happened? Oh, I got saved. How do you know?

I feel better. Well, you may feel in hell tomorrow morning. If you live by feelings, boy, you'll perish. John Wesley preached on Roman 8, I forget the verse, is it 16? The Spirit beareth witness with our spirit.

He preached on that more than any other thing. The Spirit bears witness. You can't depend on your feelings. You can't say, I started a new leaf. It's not a new leaf you need, it's a new life you need.

Christianity is not just a religion, it's a life. And let me tell you again, Christianity is not being weighed in the balances and found wanting, it's being tried, found difficult and rejected. When Jesus calls a man as Bonhoeffer, I was reading a bit of Bonhoeffer yesterday, you remember he was delivered in Germany.

Three days after they hung him, the prison was released, everybody was released. But Bonhoeffer said, remember when Jesus calls a man, he calls him to die. We say, come and get a new life, he calls you to die.

Die to the old life, die to the old man, die to your own old interest, die to your old appetite. Cut yourself off. Again, no goes in the ark and he's there for years. Up to that time, the preparation time, he's scorned, he's ridiculed, they laugh at him and they'll do that with you.

But what do you think happened five minutes after the door was shut? Remember he put everything in the ark but one thing. God says, you put a light in the window, put the animals, but there's one thing you can't do, I shut the door.

And when I shut the door, no man can open it. But once he got inside that ark, inside that door, he had no fellowship with the world, nobody visited him, he didn't visit anybody else. Even before the flood came, he was shut up there.