Unto the Furthermost of the Gospel — Leonard Ravenhill

Father, we recognize again how much we need thy breathing upon us. We think how beautiful you made Adam. You formed him, put all the parts in his brain, in his body, in his will, in everything else. And yet you had to do the final thing, you had to breathe into him and he came to life.

The Breath of God and the Vision of Dry Bones

We think of the bones in Ezekiel's vision, a mass of bones and suddenly they fly through the air and bone fits bone. And instead of a stack of bones we have a valley full of skeletons. And then on the skeletons came the sinews, and then on the sinews came the flesh, and then on the flesh came the skin.

And yet Lord you still had to breathe. And that army of corpses, from bones to skeletons to corpses, but there was a moment when it must have been awesome, it must have thrilled your heart as a creator as you spoke the word.

And they all stood on their feet, an exceeding great army. We bless you Lord, you're still in the business of breathing on men. Breathe on us tonight, breath of God. All our hearts I believe have come out in this saying breathe on me till I am wholly thine.

Till all this earthly part of me, my body, my soul, my spirit, my mind, my affection, my will, till all this earthly part of me glows. It isn't just burning, it's glowing, it's radiant. Glows with thy fire divine.

Breathe on us breath of God until these hearts are pure. Until with thee we will one will to do and to endure. Breathe on us breath of God. This is the craving of our beings tonight. We see a world around us going back to darkness and death and destruction.

The Flood of Sin and the Need for Holy Zeal

And you said Lord that when the enemy comes in like a flood, and Lord if he isn't in like a flood now I don't want to be around when he does come. Our nation's struck with everything that's vulgar and vain and vicious, with drunkenness and immorality and divorce and drugs.

Every unclean thing has come in like a flood. But Lord as yet you haven't lifted up that standard as you want to lift it. Lord begin it tonight in some of our hearts. Put a new holy hatred for sin. Put a new consuming love for God.

That we may be on the altar a living sacrifice consumeth. Lord God get us out of mediocrity. Get us out of self-satisfaction. Get us out of indifference. Get us out of our sloth. Lord God don't let anybody in this room die bankrupt.

Don't let anybody in this room be a disappointment to you from here to eternity. Lord somehow ground us afresh tonight in our inmost beings. Lord we bless you that we do sing as our dear brethren sang so well.

Holy, holy, holy. We recognize before thine ever blazing throne we have no lustre of our own. We bless you Lord Jesus you made it possible. You came from the ivory palaces into this world of woe. From the ivory palaces to this dunghill of a world.

Christ’s Humiliation and Redemption

You came from where angels worshipped to where men would whip you and you knew it was going to happen but you came. Lord we're glad you did it. And then even being found in fashion as a man having made the great leap as it were from eternity to earth and yet being in fashion as a man you took the lowliest place.

If you'd come as you're going to come, if you'd come with ten thousand saints, if you'd come to earth in the chariot that Elijah went to heaven in, the earth would have fallen down and worshipped. But you came in through the womb of a precious little woman and without ostentation, without a royal crowd of people to follow you, just fishermen and peasants, the poor came to hear you and they came gladly.

And the rich you turned away empty, they were so self-contained and satisfied. Lord we have burning in our hearts tonight, we have the only answer to this world's problems. The one answer is the redemption of men, a radical regeneration in human heart, a radical revolution in redemption.

We bless you that the blood will never lose its power, till all the ransomed church of God be saved to sin no more. Then in the noblest, sweetest song we'll sing thy power to save. When these poor, lisping, stammering tongues shout victory o 'er the grave.

Let's sing thou art worthy, can you say that? Just before we read the scripture. Thou art worthy. We're in a hospital, not blind, not in Russia, in a concentration camp. We better value our privileges while we have them, they may not be here too long.

They're going very, very quickly. Well I'd like to sing all night, but I better talk to you a little while. If I don't I'll talk to myself. The epistle of Paul to the Philippians. Let's begin at chapter 1, Philippians chapter 1.

Paul’s Joyful Gospel in Prison

If I remember right, this epistle I haven't checked it today, I think it doesn't have one reference to sin in it. I did what I usually do, I made some nice notes and they're on my desk, I'll read them when I go home.

Maybe I'll ask Dale to preach. Remember this man is in prison. Look in those four, his affection for them, always in every pair of mine, making request with joy. He's making request for their joy while he's in a miserable, horrible prison.

And he's in a place that today, nobody on earth would allow a prison to be like that. We wouldn't even keep cattle in it. Jump down to verse 12. Remember he's in shackles, he's maybe almost without food, he has no creature comfort, possibly no light, possibly nobody else with him.

But he says in verse 12, I would, you should understand brethren, that the things which happened unto me are fallen out rather unto the fervents of the gospel. I imagine somebody said, have you heard Paul's in prison again?

You know he's so reckless. You know we talk about people having a fan, a football fan or some other fan. Well of course it's an abridgment of fanatic. You know I don't want to be ordinary, I never will be, I never have been.

Some people think I'm erratic, some people think I'm dogmatic, and some people think I'm crazy. But I happen to know I'm right. And you know what matters? Only that we know that we're in God's will. But you could be fanatic for anything but Christianity.

Reincarnation and False Religious Claims

There's a woman on TV at the 8 o 'clock news this morning, on the West Coast. She says that she's a reincarnation of a spirit of a man, Pushya, somebody who lived 3 ,500 years ago. Well first of all, the scripture kills the reincarnation theory with one scripture.

It is appointed unto man once to die, nobody comes back. I believe she has a spirit in her, it's a spirit from hell. But you know she's a fanatic. Women go, they were all women except one I think. And she said you know every religion in the world is true, Buddhism, Confucianism, Christianity, they're all true, and you're a God, you're a God.

God is in you because you have life. And so she goes on. Boy the woman's had a great time. It showed the miserable little house she's been living in, and now she's building a super mansion. And it only costs $400 a night, only cost you three here tonight.

$400 a night for a session, three or four, and she's getting 400 people at a time for 400, now that's good money. But you know it says in the last days we'll get all these people. The man who was checking with her said there are hundreds and hundreds of people in California who believe they're reincarnations.

They must be insane. Boy once I can get out of this world, nobody's going to get me back. Gabriel won't throw me out of the pearly gates. I say no, you can give me Buckingham Palace and all the gold in Fort Knox and all the tea in China, but I'm not going back.

Praise God once I get out of this dump, I'm going to stay out. You don't seem too happy about that, but anyhow. I'm going, you can all stay behind if you want. No, come with me. Let me read the verse again.

I would that ye understand, brethren, that the things which happened unto me have fallen out, rather, unto the fervence of the gospel. Well here he explains that in the next verse, so that my bonds in Christ are manifest in all the palace and in all other places.

Let me look at this a minute. Look at chapter 4, verse 22. He says in the King James Version, all the saints salute you, chiefly those who are of Caesar's household, and that was next door to hell. But go back again to that verse, my bonds, chapter 1 and verse 13, my bonds in Christ are all manifest in the palace and in all other places.

Remember he writes to the Thessalonians, he says we were shamefully entreated at Philippi. But remember the Philippian jailer had an amazing awakening when Paul was there, and he spread the news through the royal family and everybody else, everybody in the palace.

And the only way to get to the palace was to take God's man and put him in jail. You know there's some people in Russia and other countries in jail tonight, but God has a purpose in it. He says it's worked out to the fervence of the gospel.

All Things Working for the Furtherance of the Gospel

Again Paul is the best example of his own theology. He wrote Romans 8, 28, all things work together for good. He said this is going to work out to the fervence of the gospel. It's a lousy deal I'm getting, the food is rotten and the place stinks and I've no companionship and it's not, but it's going to work to the fervence of the gospel.

You put me in a dark shell, in a dark self, but the light of the world is shining on me. You starve me of food and I'm eating the bread of life. You say I have nobody around me, I'm the company of angels.

Boy this man lived in heaven before he got there. As Spurgeon said, and he must have been right, he was a Baptist, and Spurgeon said a little bit of faith will bring you to, bring you to heaven, but a little more faith will bring heaven to you.

Let me go now to chapter 3 and verse 19, we've been in this chapter as you know before. Chapter 3 and verse 10, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings.

And people say now if we suffer for him, he doesn't say if we suffer for him, he says if we suffer with him. You can suffer for him and get kicked out of a job, but suffering with him is something, it's an identification of him in Gethsemane.

It's an identification with him in rejection. It's an identification in being rebuked and refused of man. The fellowship of, not just with him, not if we suffer for him, it says if we suffer with him we shall reign.

I don't find anybody, I find people saying, I remember the day I was saved, I remember the day I got my baptism. I've never yet heard anybody say, I remember the day I entered Gethsemane. I don't remember the time when I couldn't eat, and I couldn't drink, I couldn't sleep for groaning and feeling the bruising of Christ for a lost world.

But this man knows them, I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his suffering, being made conformable unto his death, if by any means I may attain unto the resurrection of the dead.

Well everybody's going to die, everybody's going to be resurrected. Julius Caesar, Genghis Khan, Alexander, all the armies that ever marched through the world, all the men and women of the Roman Empire, the Medo-Persian Empire, the British Empire, the Indian, they're all going to come alive.

What does he mean when he says I might attain unto the resurrection? But the Greek says the out-resurrection. The first resurrection is the resurrection of the redeemed. It's going to be glorious. Just for one day confessing Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, that you'd no means anyway, by your riches, by your intellect, you'd no means of meriting salvation, and you sang and meant it just as I am, I come.

Without one plea. And because of that, look what he gives to us, verse 11, if by any means I may attain unto the resurrection of the dead, not as I had already attained, or were already perfect. Now if he was, not as I had already attained, if he was, you wouldn't need verse 15, or verse 14, because if he's already perfect there's nothing to reach for.

But verse 14 he says I pressed toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Now he says in verse 15, let us therefore as many of us be perfect. This always reminds me of my dear brother over, this young fellow over here, Farrar.

He loves that hymn, Blessed Assurance, you know. And we sing it. People say you can't be perfect, but we sing it over and over again. Blessed Assurance, perfect submission, all is at rest, perfect delight, visions of rapture now burst on my sight.

And when we get there, we're moving up the ladder very obviously. Let us therefore as many as be perfect. I think that translation there actually, many of us who are adults, we've grown up and we're be perfect, be thus minded.

If anything, we're otherwise minded, this should be revealed unto you. Nevertheless whereunto we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule. Let us mind the same thing. Now he's always on about the mind.

The Christian Mind and Christlike Humility

And look here, if you go back in the chapter, just mark it, I'm not going to read them all. Or maybe I will. Chapter 1 and verse 27. He says only let your conversation be as it becometh the gospel of Christ.

Your gospel, the word conversation there is not talking, it's your manner of life. Let your manner of life be such as would fit in with a gospel message. And whether I come to see you or be absent, I may hear of your affairs that ye stand fast in one spirit with one mind.

That's his goal, that's his desire. Verse 27 of chapter 1, one mind. In chapter 2 and verse 2 he says, fulfill ye my joy, be like minded. Having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind. The next verse, let nothing be done through strife or vainglory, but in lowliness of mind.

It's a mind of one accord, united in lowliness as well as in holiness. Then he says in chapter 2, oh well, verse 5, we've quoted that already. No we haven't. Verse 5, let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God.

I hear people sometimes talk about spiritual pride, that's pure nonsense. You can't have spiritual pride. Any more than you can have pure sin. It's not spiritual pride, it's carnal pride. What did the devil get kicked out of heaven for?

Beating angels up? Stealing slabs of gold off the streets? No, for pride. You see, that's why he said, you can't overestimate worship, what worship really is. Remember what he said to Jesus, you fall down and worship me.

Why? Because he was in heaven, when a multitude which no man can number were praising and magnifying the Lord. When cherubim and celiphants cried holy, holy, holy, he'd seen what worship is. There's nothing to surpass it anywhere.

He said, you fall down and worship me, just bend the knee, acknowledge your inferiority, I'll give you all the kingdoms of the world. It didn't mean real estate, the devil's smart, he knew that Jesus made the world.

I'll give you the whole world. What did he mean? He meant the military world. I'll give you the Roman Empire. He meant the religious world. I'll give you the Jews. He meant the intellectual world. I'll give you the Greeks.

I'll give you all these world systems, if you'll just fall down once and worship me. What a deal! But Jesus answered him, he said, thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. You cannot serve two masters.

Then you've got the Hebrews, one where it says, let the angels of God worship him. The constant exercise in eternity is worship. We know so little about it. I'm trusting God will lead us into it, to what it really means.

Speechless adoration. I want to go into meetings, we'll get them someday I'm sure, where we'll sing something like we sang, the men sang beautifully tonight, holy holy, and suddenly we'll all be cut off and we'll have to kneel or fall and prostrate and worship and adore him and magnify him.

I don't believe speech has words any more than true prayer has. True prayer has no language, it's groanings which cannot be uttered, not even in tongues. It doesn't say it's all prayer, you can't pray till you speak it.

There is a gift of tongues. I've got two sons who are Pentecostal preachers and I love the fellas. And I love the message, I love to hear people. I haven't heard many, I've been around the world, I haven't heard many intelligent messages in tongues, I'll tell you that.

And besides, tongues are not a message to us, they're a sign to the world. What happened after the gift of tongues? The year 70, Anno Domini, 70, Titus came and he wiped the city down and blood was up to the knees of the horses, but the warning was through tongues.

I don't remember any visitation until about the 1600s, the bloody massacre that swept the monarchy into the garbage can. And in the revolution, the Spanish revolution, the French revolution, right at that time the Huguenots, one of the finest breed of men, they were kind of super edition of Quakers if I may say that.

They had such marvelous men as John Follett, some of you have seen Follett's books, they're published in this country. He was the stock of the Huguenots, the Huguenots. But right after the outpouring of the spirit there, what happened?

He had the French revolution that swept that whole country into the garbage can. I don't remember any, there was never any manifestation of tongues in Wesley's days, so that's okay. But I'll tell you what there was, just before the turn of the century, there were men in England that began to exercise these gifts.

Prior to 1930, there was a little Welshman about this height, and all he had that was clerical was a clerical collar he bought in a store. And he got his Bible and he went through the country, and you talk about Stephen, his name was Stephen, he was like Stephen, signs and wonders and mighty works were done.

People lined up round the huge auditoriums in England all night, in the rain, to get a seat in the afternoon meetings. And then they went home if they could get out and let the other crowd come in. Big halls at least, seating 3 ,000 people, and that man went in the power of the Spirit of God, and he had been anointed, and he spoke in tongues too.

Then he had a step-brother by the name of George Jeffreys, you remember him maybe. George Jeffreys founded the healing movement. And then they had a, he had a son anyhow. But you see these men ushered in right before 1914.

Then 1914, 4th of August 1914, war was declared, and there was a great manifestation of God in tongues and miracles, as a sign to the world that God isn't dead. It's not that God can't do it, he won't do it.

It doesn't work to our timetable. People think God's on one side. What a week of tragedies have been. That air crash in California, 91 people perished. People tonight being pulled out of a wrecked Pan Am plane, and maybe dozens dead.

A Russian boat went down with a thousand people on it. It's been a week of tragedy, but the thing when I hear that, I wonder where did it go? To hell? They won't even say. Those Russians were as lost, and went into a lost eternity.

91 people perished. Can you imagine falling from 20 ,000 feet all the time, and just knowing you'd go to your death? It must have been a screaming, terrified, horrifying thing. Children there, women frantic, no sign of anything.

Just falling on top of each other, and going to certain death. And you think of the calamity around us. You know, they've been saying this week about the fact that there are 23 million Americans who cannot read or write.

And most of them got diplomas in high school. So what? Isn't it terrible? Surely, I'll tell you something worse. There's a hundred million people got certificates to say they belong at church, and they'll go to hell.

It's not just normal intellectual illiteracy, it's spiritual illiteracy that's crippling the country. There's no prophetic sound. I'm not thinking of saying prophetic things, which often are just guesswork or opinions anyhow.

I'm talking about men who stand in the stature of the prophets of old, or in the prophets of the New Testament, with a holy indignation. I've been asking God almost every day this week, give me a baptism like Moses had.

Remember he was on the mountain with God, and God was angry, and Moses said, turn from your fierce anger. Lower down in the chapter Aaron says to Moses, you turn from your fierce anger. Why was Moses angry?

Because they'd built a golden calf. Because they were naked. Because they'd rejected, they'd failed God, he'd delivered them. He's delivered America out of two world wars. You haven't shed a spot of blood in two world wars in this country, but you'll shed some in the next, I'll tell you that.

And yet are we grateful? Sure we're not. Where's the gratitude? For the mercies of God. Go over to this while I've got some time left. Let me go back to that in a minute. I count not myself to have, verse 13, I count not myself to have apprehended mercy on us.

For getting those things which are behind, and reaching forth to those, I press toward the mark for the prize of high calling in Christ Jesus. I've, he's not apprehended that which God has revealed. If I'd had all the epistles, revelations, he has, 14 if you count Hebrews, man I'd be staggering around, I'm sure I'd be swell-headed and thinking, I've had more revelation, I've seen more miracles, I've stood before more kings, and this is a man that begins the epistle and says, these bonds, do you remember when he stood before a gripper and gripper was startled?

He said, I wish you were like I am, except for these chains. Keep your wealth, keep your coronation, I've got more inside of me than you've got in your vast empire. And now he talks about bonds at the beginning of this chapter, which means the same thing in chains, in fetters.

And yet you can't put him down. There used to be a song, I don't know who it's about. In America you sing about somebody, the unthinkable Molly Brown, who in the world was she? It wasn't Betty Brown, we know that.

Unthinkable Molly Brown. This is the unthinkable apostle. Doesn't matter what, hell wasted all its ammunition on him. I believe hell had a celebration when he died. We never see a fool like this. Come on, you know your Bibles.

Where is the script that says, be ye followers of me, even as I am followers of Christ, is it in this epistle? Pardon? Oh thank you, 317, okay, yes, yes, yes, thank you. Brethren be ye followers together of me, and mark them which have us for an example.

Listen, this is a sarcasm that men used to say in the factory, oh that man preaches but he doesn't practice what he preaches. Nobody could ever lay that to, the apostles charge. Everything that he believed, he practiced.

He was a living phenomenon, if you like. How comprehensive is this? Come on brethren, be ye followers together with me, and mark them which have us for an example. What does he mean? Are we left to guess?

Well I'll tell you what he means. Look in verse 9 of the next chapter. Look at this summary. It says, you be followers of me. Now look at verse 9. Those things which ye have learned and received and heard and seen in me do, and the God of peace be with you.

Now isn't that a standard? He says you follow me, and when you get to the pearly gate, I'll be glad to say Lord I led them this way. What does he mean by be ye followers of me? I believe the whole explanation for his life is in verse 20 of the first chapter.

According to my earnest expectation and my hope, that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but with all boldness as always. Listen to it. So now also Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it's by life or by death.

Christ magnified in my body, whether by life or by death. How was Christ magnified in him? Well by his preaching. Because he says in 1 Corinthians 9 and verse 16, woe is unto me if I preach not the gospel.

This is not a mantle he puts on at the weekend or goes to a conference, this is his lifestyle. He lives and moves and has his being in God, he says that to the most intellectual men in the world. He says I live and move and have my being in God, the God that made this vast universe.

And I can't help but think of F. W. H. Myers here when I think of him preaching. He says of the apostle, then with a rush the intolerable craving shivers throughout me like a thunder roll, oh to save these, to perish for their saving, to die for their life, to be offered for them all.

With a rush the intolerable craving shivers throughout me. I believe every birth pain that Jesus had, this man had. Every anguish that Jesus had for a lost world, this man has. He died, he has no rights of his own.

He's completely sold out to God, it's going to take that to move this generation to God. I'm going to read that 17th verse again of chapter 3. Brethren, be followers together of me, and mark them which walk as ye have for as an example.

For many walk of whom I have told you, and tell you now even weeping, that they are enemies of the cross of Christ. Now I mentioned this the other week, that these religions today, they're not enemies of Christ, they're enemies of the cross of Christ.

Enemies of the Cross and the Pursuit of Holy Character

The Roman Catholic Church is not an enemy of Christ, it makes millions of dollars out of him, a plastic Christ on a plastic cross. They tell me in South America they talk about Jesus as a dead man on a stick.

The Roman Catholic Church makes its money out of Jesus' bleeding and suffering. They're not enemies of Christ, they're enemies of the cross of Christ. Because they say Mary is co-redemptrix with Jesus, that she is virtue in her dying.

The Mormons are not enemies of Christ, they're the church of the Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints, but they're enemies of the cross. Many of these make it and claim it in the faith boys in Dallas, they're enemies of the blood, they hardly ever mention it.

There's a great enmity against the cross of Christ in the day in which we live. And Paul says, I tell you even now weeping, that they're enemies of the cross of Christ. And he says, whose end is destruction.

I read, I don't usually read translations, but I like this one of Phillips. Not because it's English either. But he says of these men in verse 19, these men are heading for utter destruction. Their God is their own appetite.

Their pride is what they should be ashamed of. And this world is the limit of their horizon. When it says here in the King James Version, they mind earthly things. Sure they mind earthly things, they mind earthly honors.

They mind, or they like earthly honors, they like earthly titles. Somebody asked me to preach next year, so I said, well if I'm around maybe I will. Don't advertise me as Dr. Ravenhill, Lord, no, Reverend Ravenhill, no, just put Leonard Ravenhill, that's all.

These flattering titles that men have, they don't mean a thing. Look at John 5 .44 there for a minute, and write this and give it to your pastor. All these big shots, how can you believe which receive honor one of another, and seek not the honor that cometh from God alone.

I see some of these guys on TV and they're plastering this man, who he is and what he's done and what he's built and everything else. He won't mind a hill of beans in that great day. What God is looking for is holy character.

We are his workmanship, he doesn't make buildings. He doesn't dwell in temples made with hands. Whether it's Schuller's old place over there, that old glass house he has, I think he should grow tomatoes in it.

Or whether it's Westminster Abbey or this new $34 million place down in Houston. God occupies human personality. Men. There's nothing more wonderful in my mind than scholarship on fire for God, like the Wesleys had.

Scholarship without it, take it to the morgue, that's where it belongs. These men are, and that's a destruction, reading Phillips again, that their God is their own appetite. More, was there ever any more celebration of food?

You go down Main Street anywhere, it's either a eating house or a gas station, eating house or gas station, everywhere you go. Every city in America is the same, there's a uniformity. And he says their God is their belly.

Their pride is what they should be ashamed of. And this world, isn't this something, this world is the limit of their horizons. Or if you want it again, let me read it here in the King James, whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is their shame, and they mind earthly things.

But whether they're the opposite of that, here you get the idea, the mind that is dwelt on so much here. He says in the 8th verse of the 4th chapter, look at this gorgeous summary of the Christian life, watch whether things are true, watch whether things are honest, watch whether things are just, watch whether things are pure, watch whether things are lovely, watch whether things are of good report.

If there be any virtue and if there be any praise, think on these things. That's the very opposite to the world. The world loathes everything that's vicious and vulgar and full of vice, and we're the very opposite of that.

Citizenship in Heaven and Separation from the World

Now I'm going back to, no let me go down into the same chapter 3 in verse 20, for our conversation is in heaven. Our conversation is in heaven, okay. I look up that word, one person translates it, our citizenship is in heaven.

Now it's a privilege to be a citizen of a country, but if so you're in subjection to all the laws. And if we're in subjection to heaven, if heaven is our country then we ought to live according to the laws of earth, not the laws of men, not the laws even that the body demands.

Their glory is their shame. Our conversation is in our citizenship. One translation I look like so much is, we are a colony on earth, we're a colony of heaven. If you go to Washington, there's a little piece of area there that even the FBI can't get in, and the government, because it's owned by Great Britain, it's a British embassy.

And everything that's done in there is done according to English tradition. They don't keep the 4th of July, they don't keep other things that we keep. But if you go to England, there's a little area there, and you see a great big enormous stars and stripes hanging out, and it's the American embassy.

And the British government can't go in, the lawyers can't go in, the law can't go in there, the famous Scotland Yard can't go in there, nobody has access because it's a piece of America outside of America.

You'll find the best hamburgers in London there, and all the other ways. But you know what, this has a special appeal to me, it says, we are a colony of heaven. If you go to England, you'll find there's a city called Chester, it's a beautiful city, it has a wall around it.

It has a great gate, there's a huge church there, and there's a clock, and on the clock it says, what was it, I can't remember it totally, when I was a child I slept and wept, time crept, but when I became a man, was it time ran?

No, when I became a man. OK, it's part of that anyhow. When I became a man, time flew. But as I older grew, time flew. Pass it to me, can you read it? Time ran. Good, thank you. Well there's a big clock with that sign written under, from the original statement that was made about it.

But you see, the city still has a wall. You have Chester, you have Manchester, you have Chichester, you have a dozen cities, and you know whatever the Chester, at the end of the name, it was first a Roman colony.

And they built a wall around the cities that they, where they colonized. And people climbed trees and looked over to see the strange ways that these people ate. To see the way that they ploughed their fields.

We're thinking now of 55 B .C., 55 years before Jesus Christ was born. We used to live in the city of Bath, and that was established by the Romans in 55 B .C. But you see, everybody inside of that wall, that colony, they did exactly as though they were living in Rome.

And Paul says here, we're a colony of heaven. We should live like heaven and earth. Our language should be heavenly. Our attitude should be heavenly. The laws of the kingdom, which again are given by Jesus therein, the Sermon on the Mount, should be active in our lives every day.

You know what? If the church of Jesus Christ would follow unlike the acts of the apostles, communism would never have risen its head. But somewhere selfishness got in. In the New Testament, whatever they had, they shared one with another.

It was heaven on earth. They didn't go to worship on Sundays. They went every day. They met together. The glory of God filled the temple. They were poor. This blessed man here, with all his mighty authority, he says, I have nothing, but I possess all things.

I am poor, yet making many rich, yet having nothing, yet possessing all things. You see, he says about these people here, they mined earthly things. Well, doesn't the scripture say, don't set your affection on things which are above?