The Beginning — G.W. North

God as the Beginning of Creation

I want to talk to you tonight about the beginning. Genesis chapter 1, verse 1. In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. The earth was without form and void, but darkness was upon the face of the deep.

The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light. And there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good. And God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light day.

And the darkness he called night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. Hallelujah. I suppose you counted how many times the word God came in those verses, did you? In the beginning, God.

Praise his wonderful name. It's a marvelous thing, beloved, that there always has to be a beginning. Really, this is the tragedy with so many people's lives, because they think the beginning is conversion.

But the beginning is God. Nobody has begun until they've let God be the beginning. This is one of the real tragedies of lives. Something, beloved, that I think we can investigate in the Bible for an hour or so.

And then I trust that God will show us the importance, the all-importance of this right beginning. Amen. This tremendous truth of the beginning, as you will know, is brought out to us in the New Testament as well.

Jesus Christ as the Beginning and the End

I want to turn to the last book of the Bible. And right at the beginning of the last book of the Bible, we have this same truth brought to us. Jesus has died and risen again. He is the one who has appeared to John on Patmos, and he is giving John the great revelation that by the grace of God has come down to us, in which we rejoice, I trust.

Although we don't understand everything about it, there are some things that are so plain that he would have to be thrice dead who never saw them. And one of the things that the Lord reveals to us is this, that John has the revelation of the risen Christ.

And he says this in verse 8, I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is and which was and which is to come, the Almighty. Praise God. That's the feature of the Almighty.

He's the beginning, he's the end, he is, he was, he is to come. Praise God. What a tremendous thing. John says in verse 17, When I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead. And he laid his right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not, I am the first and the last.

I am he that liveth and was dead, and, behold, I am alive for evermore. Amen. And have the keys of hell and of death. Beloved, our Lord Jesus Christ and the Bible, of course, recording these great truths, brings to the fact that there has to be a great beginning, even where God is concerned.

And the trouble with so many of us is that we don't get these beginnings right. It really is the trouble with most people that are having aberrations in their Christian life. They haven't got the beginnings right.

They haven't understood what it's all about. The old man is an inveterate worker and a great believer. You must remember that old Adam is a very religious person. He walked in the garden with God. But he knows how to behave himself, old Adam.

Of course, he was new Adam then, when he walked with the Lord. But he hasn't forgotten his religious habits. And he knows what to believe. He knows what's right and what's wrong. He knows all about that.

And he can be a very religious fellow inside. And therefore, because he's a believer in many things, he doesn't often come to the place where he makes the correct beginning. If he told you the truth, he would say, in the beginning of God.

But under the deceptive influence of the devil, he rather makes us try to believe that in the beginning it's me. It is I. Oh, Bellamy, what a deception this is. Did you realize that, as it was in the beginning, it always has to be God?

Holy God. Let's take one more look into the New Testament, shall we? This time in the Colossians. In the first chapter, we read something wonderful about our Lord Jesus Christ. It says that, in verse 15 of the first chapter, it says that he is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature.

For by him were all things created that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created by him and for him.

And he is before all things. And by him all things consist. And he is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things he might have the preeminence.

Oh, beloved, you will know if you refer back to John's gospel now, and we'd better do it, seeing that we're looking at a series of scriptures, if we turn to John chapter 1, we're told that in the beginning was the Word.

And the Word was with God. And the Word was God. And the Word was made flesh, 14th verse. And tabernacled among us. The beginning was made flesh. In the beginning was the Word, the Logos. The Word, the Logos, was made flesh.

Hallelujah. The beginning was made flesh. This is a marvelous thing, beloved. So that we should understand what the beginning in flesh really is. And we've got a very crude and rough idea of what the beginnings of Christian or spiritual life really are.

It's Jesus. Hallelujah. It's Him. It's God. In the beginning, it's always Him. Why did He die? So that He should be the beginning. In that realm, He always must be first. He is the first. And He is the last.

So, beloved, do we need to see, and by God's grace, it's written for us plain enough, and experience teaches us this too, that He is the only beginning. And so many make false starts. Because they don't see that Jesus Christ is the beginning.

I wonder if you do really see this. We can see this. Say, if we pick up our Bibles, this time we'll go back into the old prophet Isaiah. I suppose that you love the prophet Isaiah, especially the last 40 chapters, or the last chapters beginning at verse chapter 40.

Isaiah's Prophecies of Christ and the Spirit

Where God is coming in in a marvelous manner. He has had to say so many things. Prophecies of destruction of this, words against that place, this nation, something else like that. Terrible things God has had to say.

Mind you, He has foretold the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ as we've been singing about Him twice tonight. In that first hymn from the Red Book, Wonderful Birth, To a Major He Came. And latterly, out of this blue book, that masterly poem on the birth of the Lord Jesus by the master of poetry in this realm.

And it's wonderful to see this, that this is inscribed in the book of Isaiah. That parallel with the great denunciations that have to be made, parallel with the prophecies of doom that must come against ingrained, implacable, imbetterate sinners and nations that will not by any means change their ways or have God change them.

So the great prophecies have to continue. But side by side with it, we have the great story of the birth of Jesus Christ. You see, you've traced it through, haven't you? You know the chapters in which to find them, don't you?

Chapter 7. Chapter 9. Yes, that's right. Chapter 11. And away we go on the development of the life. Have you ever done this? Start in chapter 7, that a virgin shall conceive. And you go through the development of the life.

It's all there as the Lord grows up through the young man. Have you ever done this? This is what you've got Bibles for. You must do this. And you will see this thing. And then the chapter, the books, the book unfolds and the chapters come one after another until you get to chapter 40.

And then God's got a further revelation to make. He's moved into the era of the Holy Ghost. First Jesus. Then all about him. Then comfort ye, comfort ye thy people. Speak ye comfortably unto Jerusalem.

And cry unto her that her warfare is accomplished. God, you see. Now Calvary in the move is behind, though we have to have the great descriptive chapter of 53. Yet in the great move of God now, the blessed Spirit is coming.

Hallelujah. The great word of comfort is introduced. The marvelous comforter. And God is moving on into those great times when there's going to be an outpouring of the Spirit. And this the Lord is making more and more plain to us.

All right. And then, and I hope you've noticed this blessed consistency in the Bible. It really is a very, very wonderful book. God takes up words like this in line with the great teaching of him being the beginning.

Keep silent, chapter 41, before me, O islands, and let the people renew their strength. Let them come near. Let them speak. Let us come near together to judgment. Who raised up the righteous man from the east, called him to his foot, gave the nations before him, made him rule over kings.

He gave them as dust to his sword and as driven stubble to his bow. He pursued them past safely, even by the way that he had not gone with his feet. Who hath wrought and done it? Calling the generations from the beginning.

I, the Lord, the first and the last. I am he. Who's he been talking about? Who's this righteous man from the east? Well, if you pick up your map of, in the back there of your Bible, I hope you've got one, you'll find that the city of Ur of the Chaldees is right dead east from the land of Israel.

And it's Abraham he's talking about. He called Abraham. He said, I did this. I began it, you see. This is, you see, in Genesis 1, you have God beginning in creation. You have the record of Abraham, of Adam.

How God made this man from the dust of the ground and breathed into him the very breath of life. And then we have the story of the great desolations because of sin. So God, nothing daunted. I'm the first.

I'm the last. The word having gone forth out of his mouth, his heart being made up from all eternity, he calls a man right down there from the central citadel of witchcraft and black magic and devil worship.

The lowest of the low, you might say. God calls this man Abraham and out he comes. Hallelujah. He's the righteous man from the east. He was righteous because he believed God. He was righteous because he stepped out on God.

Don't think you're righteous just because you believe God in the sense of I just believe in but I'm going to stick tight. When Abraham believed God, he was a moving man. He was moving in his faith. It's moving faith that's the real thing.

Not sitting down, holding tight kind of faith. Abraham, if you read it back there in Genesis, he was a man that was already moving to God. God said, now come out here. Come on. He called him again. It always comes with the call of God.

So he gets up in the middle of the night. I expect it was. It was all dark. And out he goes. He's walking. He's walking with the Lord. And God says, please read your Bible carefully lest you imply something to people who are going to remain static just believers.

It's very understandingly when you read your Bible lest doctrinally you preach something that isn't right experimentally. Beloved, he called him. And God started again. I'm the first, he says. I'm the last.

I'm the beginning. The devil thought he'd got God. The devil thought he'd ruined God's handiwork. But there's a handiwork of God that the devil can't touch. There's a beginning of God in lives in his grace that the devil can't touch.

Praise the name of the Lord. And Isaiah, he starts this thing and he continues to unfold it. And he speaks more about this in another chapter. Here then he starts with the great beginning in chapter 41.

And then we come to chapter 44. And in the 44th chapter, having told us about the righteous man, I don't know whether you are one of these righteous people, that you really let God begin in your heart.

I want to come back to that a little more plainly and fully a little later. Whether you really let God begin. One of the tragedies of our modern thought and approach to these things is that we will persist in just preaching imputed righteousness.

And it's so true. It's so absolutely true. It's so fundamentally true. It's like old Spurgeon once said about people. He said, talking about a church, he said, it's so sound, it's sound asleep. That's one of Spurgeon's great sayings.

These people, they're sound, absolutely sound, sound asleep. That's the trouble with them all, you see. We believe in these great fundamental things of imputed righteousness, but imputed righteousness, as far as God was concerned, was only a means to an end.

And the end in view was to impart righteousness to you and make you righteous, not just think you are by closing his eyes about your sin and imputing something over to you. That's a lot of nonsense. Imputed righteousness must lead to imparted righteousness unless you're still a sinner.

And God imparts righteousness to us. And he declares and makes us righteous. Praise God. This is the great glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is the wonder of it, that he is so righteous, he so overcame sin by his own righteousness, you must see this, that Jesus Christ wasn't some sort of dead lamb upon which God laid sin.

And your mind is thinking back to a Jewish altar. He was a living, overcoming, gloriously almighty being that could take sin and destroy it. Stand there. It wasn't a passive doing or something like this.

We seek to illustrate it so much, we say, he took sin and he put it on him and that was that. There was nothing passive about it. It was the almighty God coming up against a fallen, terrible nature, an infiltration from the devil, the working of a power from the pit, from below.

You're from below, he said, beneath. I'm from above. This is what he said in John chapter 8, you see. This great working principle, this destroying, damning thing. And Jesus Christ came into the world, lived his perfect life, showed himself fit to be a redeemer, took that sin while yet alive in all his glorious manhood, suffering at the extreme end where suffering can be bought, and taking it and destroying it by the overcoming nature of his power and of his love.

Do you see this? That's what Jesus Christ did. The active power of God destroyed the active power of Satan. Hallelujah! That's right. And he imparts this to you and to me. A great destructive power as well as a great life power.

Oh, how can you describe this thing? Where can you find the words? How can the human mind embrace it? This thing that God has done. It's in the realm of faith. You can't think it out. You have to come to a place where exhausted almost, at the end of your tether with your mind going round in circles and your sin just beating you.

You have to come to the place where you fall down and say, Lord, I believe, I believe. That's it. That's what it's designed for. To get you in such a muddle and get you up in such a corner and make you know that you're no good and your brains are no good and your theology is not much better.

That's right. And he gets you into a corner and at last you're in the state where you're ready to let God do something for you. That's why so many people, God has to let them go 40, 50, 60 years till at last they prove to themselves and everybody else has got an eye to see that they're just in a big enough muddle to go straight down to hell and live a deluded existence forever.

Out of your mind. Out of your true self. Given over. Oh, how can you explain it? Beloved, the reverse of death is so wonderfully true that in our right mind and given over entirely to God, we can live within this marvelous eternal life.

Hallelujah. You know, of course, that hell is God's madhouse where he puts everybody that's been too mad to come to him. That's what it is. They don't really know what madness is. You can ask any doctor.

They don't know what it is. Something's gone wrong in the mind. So, I mean, by human standards, what we consider insanity and what we consider is insanity. We know, beloved, but God has defined it for us.

I don't want to stay on that now. The whole glorious truth, beloved, is that God imparts this mind. We become men and women of righteousness. What's the next point when you come to this place where you really have come onto justification by faith?

The Outpouring of the Spirit and Righteousness

Well, here's the next one. Let's have a look in chapter 44. First one. Yet now, O Jacob, my servant, and Israel, whom I have chosen, thus saith the Lord that made thee, and formed thee from the womb, which will help thee.

Fear not, O Jacob, my servant, and thou, Jesus, whom I have chosen, for I will pour water upon him that is thirsty and floods upon the dry ground. I will pour my Spirit upon thy seed and my blessing upon thine offspring, and they shall spring up as among the grass, as willows by the water courses.

One shall say, I am the Lord's, and another shall call himself by the name of Jacob, and another shall subscribe with his hand unto the Lord and surname himself by the name of Israel. Thus saith the Lord, the King of Israel, and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts, I am the first.

Connected with the outpouring of the Spirit. This great beginning. I am the first. I am the last. I want to ask you, beloved, when did Jesus Christ begin to be your righteousness? Not just sin. When did he begin to be your righteousness?

So that you're just full of, and everybody sees it and knows it, the righteousness of God. This is what the Bible is all about. He said, He hath made Him, Jesus, to be sin for us. You know sin. That we might be made the righteousness of God.

You and me made the righteousness of God. The righteousness of God. Not the righteousness of Christians, however you may attempt to describe it. It's the righteousness of God. Are you the righteousness of God?

Or are you the sinfulness of the devil? What are you? These marvellous things of His own character and nature. These are our salvation. They're not just our beliefs. They are the Spirit of God. You see, people just won't let Jesus Christ be the beginning in their lives.

They don't even see where it is Jesus Christ has to come. I mean, they hear these evangelical terms, these marvellous phrases that we use. And they're Bible based. God alone knows Himself how wonderfully Bible based they are.

And we talk about, we say, let Jesus Christ. You know, we quote Revelation 3 .20. We say, behold I stand at the door and knock. If any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come in and sup with him and he with me.

He that overcometh the way he goes, I will give to sit with me in my throne, even as I overcame and sat down with my Father in His throne. And we open up this blessed thing to us. But what do you mean when you say, let him come in?

When he says he's knocking at the door, what door is he knocking at? Where does he want to go? Where to have I to receive him? Where must I receive him? Now, my beloved, if you read again Revelation chapter 1, this is what you find.

He says, I'm the beginning. I'm the beginning. Did you realise, and if you realise this tonight, if God only just gives you to see this, and you act on it, beloved, you will find your life of sinning will cease.

He's the beginning. In other words, he's got to be the beginning in you. You've got to let him into the place where your thoughts begin. You've got to let him into the place where your desires begin, where you start to think your thoughts.

He's got to be the beginning, not you. He's got to come in where you lust your lusts. He's got to be the beginning of it all. He's got to come there where your affections start. He's the beginning. When he's the beginning there, you'll begin righteously, properly.

You won't be reaching out through some miasmic darkness, groping to see the light, to find the truth, believing in Jesus afar off. It'll all be here. The Creator's come in. In the beginning, God. And he's going to newly create your thought life.

Ah, your appetite life. You live by your appetite life. You're either a beast or a decent person by your appetite life. He's coming there. We won't desire drugs anymore. You won't desire to fight and squabble anymore.

You won't desire to do it. He's got to come into the beginnings. You won't desire to be proud anymore. You won't desire to be served. You won't desire to take offense. You won't desire that. Hallelujah.

He comes into the beginnings. You haven't realized it. That's where he's coming. If you don't receive Jesus Christ as the beginning, you'll flounder about in your own rottenness and call yourself Christian.

And you'll wait to go to some convention where they preach full salvation and you'll go out the front and consecrate yourself and you'll think you've come into something. Ten, twenty years gone by waiting for some right word to drop into you because you haven't seen the beginning.

And the word is God because God's not like human beings. He doesn't talk a lot of trivialities and crap jokes. When he speaks his word, he speaks himself. It is him. Him. He doesn't talk a word except it be his life and his spirit.

That's why his word is spirit and life to you. Because he talks his spirit. He talks his life. He talks himself. He doesn't go in for bad image and empty exchanges. He doesn't go in for cheap talk. In the beginning is the word.

You see, God's tied himself to that. He didn't have to tie himself to it. He's naturally that. But in putting it in print, he's bound to act according to what he says. You cannot change from it. Hallelujah.

And unless you see that he's got to be the beginning. He's got to be the beginning in your sexual life. He's got to be the beginning in everything. He's got to be the beginning in everything. Everything's got to come to the beginnings.

He is life. Originally you were patterned on him. He is your life. That was the life that was lost. The devil became the beginning. The devil became the beginning because he spoke his spirit and his life into Eve and into Adam.

He's the beginning. But Jesus Christ has got to be seen as the new beginning. I'm the beginning, he said. I'm the beginning. God's written this book to tell us that the devil isn't the beginning. He's written to tell us this book that our mothers and fathers aren't the beginning.

He's written this book so that we can see that he's the beginning. Hallelujah. And he came on that vetted cross, beloved. And that word was made flesh simply for taking all things that had logged up in the flesh for thousands of years.

And he hound the cross in one mighty offering to God. Bless God. It was just about a tick in all eternity. It didn't take long. He just dealt with it like that. That in every realm he might have the preeminence.

Hallelujah. The devil's got nothing on God. Hallelujah. Jesus Christ is the new beginning. He's the new beginning. And when we talk about receiving Jesus Christ. Where your thoughts start. Where your imaginations.

That's you. You aren't that lump of flesh. Don't you think you are? You might be pretty or ugly. Someone might think you're wonderful or might think you're terrible. But that's not you. That's only a means of the expression of you.

And how you live yourself. And he's got to come in there and be the beginning. He's got to be the beginning of your tears if you cry. He's got to be the beginning of your laughter if you laugh. He's got to be the beginning of your joy.

He's got to be the beginning. Did you know? Had you a clue what it was all about? Did you see that to which God had called you? Do you know what it's all about? How can I, a sinner, come to know it's worth?

We sang about Jesus. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus loved me in my shame. Oh, the joy of wonder. You see, beloved, this is where people have all missed it. And this is when we talk about the heart. This is what it's all about.

When you say you let Jesus into your heart. You've got to let Jesus in there. Right now. You've got to open your secrets. You've got to open your secrets. Where it all begins. You may hide them from your nearest and your dearest in the flesh, but you mustn't do that with God.

You haven't just got to open up your treasure house or your charnel house of sin and confession and say, Lord, just forgive me. You've got to do more than that. You've got to let him come right in. It is self-abdication.

It is you getting out. It is you coming to the complete understanding that you step off the throne and you come out of the control room and you've got no buttons at your fingertips because you're not in an electronic age.

You're in something that's far more powerful. You're in the age of the Spirit. Hallelujah. You see, you remember what it says here in that 41st chapter. It goes like this. It says, Who hath wrought, we read it in verse 4, and done it, calling the generations.

Do you see what he said? Calling generations. How many generations have we removed from Abraham in the flesh? He called you when he called Abraham. It's all on this call. If you don't hear the call, you'll die eternally.

It's the call that breaks into your death. It's the allure of Jesus. Bless him. He'll forgive you. He'll do all sorts of things for you. But somehow, how there has to be a blessed allure about Jesus, himself, his personality, his glorious qualities.

There has to be something about him that charms you for which you leave everything and every body. It doesn't matter. Yourself chiefly, the devil and everybody else, you've got to be drawn by his charms.

You can hear it. It comes out. It's breathing through the scriptures. Everywhere you turn, if you have an eye to see, it's there. Hear the virgins, will you, in the song of Solomon. Draw me. Draw me. It's no good trying to force me, Lord.

Draw me. I can't be driven. Hallelujah. It's the devil that drives. But there's something about this charming man from heaven. This glory of God made manifest in the flesh. This something that rises up and draws me, draws me, draws me.

I'll leave everything from the very beginning. I'll be there, right in. Right there. It's no good you just trying to make him a sort of an escape hatch. It's no good, to quote Oswald Chambers again, trying to make him a moral lavatory to get rid of your filth.

If you don't see that he's the man, he's the first, he's the last. If you don't see that he is you and he's got to be you, but he can't be a second-hand you, he's got to come in and be. And you've never begun until this is.

God's begun with you, done lots of things for you, but you've never begun until this has happened. Then, of course, you can pass on to this great, tremendous thing that Isaiah is putting out here. He's the first, I'm the last.

Flooded Lives and the Outpouring of God's Love

Oh, Isaiah, you go and tell all these people where they are that there's another company. You tell them that their warfare's accomplished. You tell them and talk directly to their heart. He said floods, a flooded life, flooded life.

Are you flooded? Eh? Well, that's why you have to have a beginning. When a river begins, it's never a flood. It starts as a spring. Oh, when the floods come, when God pours the water, the second, if you like, the second great flood, you know, when he opened the windows of heaven in Noah's day, do you know what it was for?

It did two things. It saved those that were in the ark, and it utterly destroyed the depravity and the fleshiness and the rottenness. Isn't that so? That's why when the raven came out of the ark, it never came back because it could rest on the floating death and could eat the death, the flesh of dead men and dead animals, but the dove couldn't.

He just went, he couldn't rest on the flesh, on death, so he went out and came back again. So he let him out again. A few days later, he didn't settle on the dead flesh. He settled on the oil tree, and he brought back this mouth, this blessed dove.

Glory, glory be to the name of the Lord. It is a marvelous thing. And when old Noah touched down, he touched down on a mountain. Hallelujah. He touched down on a mountain. Praise God. Hallelujah. He said, I am going to send floods, floods, floods, cascading, outpouring, flooding, spreading, coming through the water courses, spreading out over the dry and thirsty land.

This is the conception that God has. He hasn't got a mean, narrow little thing in his mind. If you're a river, you're too narrow for God. You've got to be a flood. Your life's got to be flooded, flooded.

There aren't many people who are living in a flood. Not many. Do you know many people that it's absolutely flooding through them? Perhaps you don't like flooding. Do you like flooding? Flooding. That's what that word is in Romans 5.

Where have we spoken about the Holy Ghost? For the love of God is flooding our hearts by the Holy Ghost, which he's given unto us. Are you a flooded person? You know, when the flood comes, it not only just covers the ground, it covers the little hills, it covers the trees, it covers, everything covers the high mountains when the flood comes.

Hallelujah. And you're still floating on it. Are you there? Really there? Eh? He says, I'm the first. I'm the last. I'm going to pour water on him that's thirsty and floods upon the dried ground. And that's the time when he said, your sons and your daughters are going to spring up.

Praise God. That's what everybody's wanting. There's a parent in this room. Yes, they've got unsaved children, but that's the very thing they want. They want the son saying, I'm the Lord's. Don't you?

That's what you want, don't you? Praise God. I'm the Lord's. Amen. Perhaps if they see Mummy and Daddy flooded, they will become the Lord's. Yeah. Perhaps they will. It seems to be a pattern. We're living in an age, beloved, when young people are no longer settling in the old ways.

I suppose you realise this. It's no good you sticking back in your old sort of Presbyterian background and plodding on any more than it was any good or me setting you back in the Brethren background and trying to plod along.

Beloved. Hallelujah. I tell you, we're moving into the days with the outpourings of the Spirit and your young people will very soon size you up. It's when they see your flooded glory, when Jesus has not only been the beginning in you, but he's just about captured everything of you.

And your whole humanity and your whole life is just one vast expression, continuous day and night, week in and week out and year in and year out of the love and glory of God. When we were praising God a little earlier, you know, and hearts were really beginning to rejoice in God, my mind went back, I don't know what, you know, the mind's a very funny thing, at least mine is.

I suppose you've discovered it. It does all kinds of things. And my mind went back to a certain conference I was in years ago now and it was at that famous place called Cliff. You may have heard of it.

And the Lord was there and the saints of God were just about rejoicing. I mean, what was happening here tonight was sort of a whisper. You get this multiplied about 10 or 15 times, this company of people, and they're all there and they're rejoicing in God.

And at the back, you can always tell, they sit at the back, you know, these people. And this person told me afterwards, well-known in the right circles, editor of a certain magazine, which I won't mention, had come along and was sitting and was observing, you see, and these young people had just about lost him.

Oh, praise God. You know, it's marvellous. When souls erupt and they erupt pure, what comes out of you when you erupt? When you blow your top, what comes out? Go on, be honest. You'd better be. When they erupt, it goes on and on and on.

I thought it might tonight. I thought, well, I'm sure I'll preach tonight, Lord. I didn't promise him that. That's what I was thinking. I mean, this went on for a whole week. You see, and at the end of the week, this person said, well, some of these young people are going to come down to earth with a bump.

I said, do you really think so? Well, yes, that's what's going to happen to them. And came back next year. And then this person said, I discovered that what they'd got was what I needed. You can have it.

You can have it. Do you want it? Oh, yes. And I was there when it was received. Hallelujah. And the transformation. Praise God, the transformation. When at last their heart realises that Jesus Christ is the beginning.

He's the beginning of it all. Now I'll ask you a question. When after Calvary he died and put away sin by the sacrifice of himself and went down into the grave and rose again, where did he go after that?