Bad News And Good News

Tonight I would like to stand back and take a bird's-eye view of what the whole business of the gospel is all about, starting right at the very beginning, and carrying it all the way through.

As the text for tonight I would like to use Romans 5, beginning in verse 12:

"Wherefore as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon, for that all have sinned: (For until the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come. But not as the offence, so also is the free gift. For if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many.

And not as it was by one that sinned, so is the gift: for the judgment was by one to condemnation, but the free gift is of many offences unto justification.

For if by one man's offence death reigned by one, much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.) Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation, even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life.

For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.

Moreover the law entered, that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.

That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord."

May God add His blessing to this reading of His Word. And let us lift our hearts, for a moment, to God in prayer:

Heavenly Father, tonight we are getting right near the end of a beautiful conference, a conference in which we have found so many reasons to praise Thee, to magnify Thy glorious name. And who else should we praise but Thee alone, because Thou art our great and eternal God, our everlasting Father? And, Father, tonight again, as we look into Thy Word, we pray that Thy Holy Spirit will lead us into truth. We pray that, as we think about what the real message of the gospel is, and what the need of mankind is, we pray that we may see this very clearly, and that the grace and the love of God may shine through in a mighty way.

And, Father, we pray that if there is anyone who is listening tonight, anyone at all, who has still not made his peace with Thee, Father, we pray that he may find no rest until he finds his rest in Thee. Oh, Father, how we desire that everyone sitting here, everyone sitting here, might know in their hearts that they have eternal life, and might know that their sins have been paid for, might know that Jesus Christ is Savior and Lord of their life. And, Father, we praise Thee that it is still the day of salvation. And we pray that Thou wilt work in each of our hearts, so that whatever we need might be given.

Father, bless us now as we look into Thy Word, in Jesus' name. Amen.

Ever since the beginning of time mankind has been deeply concerned about who he is. Who am I? The philosophers sit in the market place, and they philosophize. And they search each other's minds, trying to think through: Who am I? Where did I come from? What is this world? The anthropologists and the scientists tussle with the beginnings of man and the beginnings of the world. Everyone is wondering, who am I? Where did I come from? What is this world? What is it all about? What is reality? Even Pilate, you know, when Jesus stood before him, said it for all of mankind: "What is truth?" Mankind desperately wants to know truth.

The amazing thing is that the very God who has created this universe, the very God who spoke and this universe came into being, and who upholds it by His divine power, the very God who is King of kings and Lord of lords, has given us a most remarkable book, in which He has spelled out for us, in which He has verbalized, He has articulated, He has laid it out for us, so that we can know precisely who we are, and where we came from, and what our problems are, and what the future is, what is going to happen at the end. Just all kinds of important information is given to us by Almighty God through His Word, the Bible. I never cease to marvel that in one hand I can hold the law book of God, given to mankind, in order that man might have a knowledge of who he is and what his need is.

I said that the Bible is the law book. Many times in my work with Family Radio I talk with attorneys. Very frequently I do. And whenever the opportunity arises, I try to bring the question around as to what the Bible is. And I tell these attorneys, "You know, if there is any book an attorney ought to be interested in, it is the Bible, because the Bible is the most super law book that has ever been written. It is a law book prepared for us by God. It is a law book in which God has laid down the basic principles of what the human race really needs. And included within those principles God has also given us all kinds of information as to where we came from and what our problems are, and so forth. And if you as an attorney are interested in trying to find out the meaning of law that has been written by our constitution, or by our legislature, and you're comparing one law with another, to find these nuances and meanings, as it applies to a particular case, do it with the Bible. Get in the habit of reading the Bible and comparing scripture with scripture. It is a law book. And as you do this, you finally will discover the most important law of God, the law that tells man what his need is, and what the solution to his need might be."

The problem, however, is that when we go to the Bible we find, first of all, the bad news. And the bad news is super bad. It is as bad as anything can be bad. And most human beings stop right there. That's something I don't want to face. That's something I don't want to talk about. I don't want to listen to the Bible any longer. In fact, as you know, we talk about this many times. Today much of the preaching.... not all, praise God.... but much of the preaching is done in such a way that the bad news is never mentioned. But as you know, and I don't have to tell you this again, until we face the law book that God has given us fairly and honestly, in its totality, we can never really realize why we need the good news, and how the good news is going to apply to the lives of the human race. And indeed, praise God, there is the good news.

Well, let's talk about the bad news a little bit. We read here in Romans 5, in verse 12:"Wherefore as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned." That's the bad news. And when we begin to develop, through the scriptures, an understanding of what this really is saying, it gets more and more tragic, more and more terrible.

First of all, who is the one man? We know the answer, of course. Adam and Eve...way at the very beginning...because they rebelled against God. God had given them the law. Oh, they didn't have the Bible then yet. The Bible tells us that those who came after Adam and Eve did not sin after the similitude of the first man. How did He put that in verse 14? "Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression..." You see, Adam and Eve sinned before there was any infection of sin in the human race. They were perfect. There was no sin there was no taint of sin of any kind. And yet in the face of that perfection, they sinned. But ever since that time, every human being has sinned because we are infected by sin. We are conceived and born in sin, the Bible declares. That infection of sin has passed through the whole human race. As the first man has sinned, so we all have sinned.

Now what is sin? We know the definition from I John 3:4: Sin is transgression against the law. It is to break the law that God has declared. When Adam and Eve were told in the Garden of Eden, "Of every tree you can eat, but the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, you shall not eat", and they ate of that tree, they were breaking the command that God had given. They were breaking the law. And ever since then the infection of sin has permeated the human race, so that all sin.

Now we have to look a little bit. And some of you are quite familiar with this, but I am going to refresh your memories. God told Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, "In the day you eat of the tree, you shall surely die." Here it says in Romans 5 that death reigned through sin, that death came as a result of sin. And in these few verses that I read, you'll find that word sin again and again and again and again. You find the word death again and again and again. One is the other side of the coin of the other. But what is that death?

I remember, years ago, when I was first struggling with that question... 'Adam and Eve, if you break this rule and eat of the tree, you shall surely die'... Then someone would say, "They didn't die, did they? They lived for another 900 years or more, before they died physically." And all I could think of was physical death. And so I answered, "Well, the seeds of physical death were sown in their bodies, so that their bodies began to deteriorate, and this ended with physical death." And surely that is included. But the more I studied the Bible, the more I came under the conviction that the Bible teaches there is another death. There are two other aspects of death that are even more terrible than physical death.

The first part is that when Adam and Eve sinned... We talked about this in the Open Forum a couple of days ago. When Adam and Eve sinned, at that point in time were their hearts desperately wicked like we read about in Jeremiah 17, where it says that the "heart of man is desperately wicked"? The answer is, no. They were perfectly good. And all we find is one little defect. They obeyed God in every way, but Eve ate of the tree - one tiny little sin.

But you see, God laid down a principle in the Bible, which says that if you have broken one point of the law, you are guilty of the whole law of God. And we find that applied right herein the Garden of Eden: "The wages of sin is death." At the point that Adam and Eve rebelled against God, God put a curse on mankind so their hearts became desperately wicked. They were cut off from the blessing of having a desire to be obedient to God.

Now only God could do this because God is absolutely holy and righteous, and sin is so terrible that this result had to come. And so from that point on, when we read about mankind, we find that it is all bad. The heart of man is bad. The heart of man is wicked. Out of the heart of man comes murder and adultery, and all of these things.

I marvel, I really marvel when I see mankind, men and women and children, who are decent moral citizens, who have no relationship to Christ. I remember a missionary who went to China back in the 1920's. I still remember him from when I was a youngster. He came back, and he would say, "I lived there in China with these Chinese who worship false gods. And yet I saw the inherent goodness within their lives, and it really puzzled me. How could they be so good when they didn't have the Lord Jesus Christ?" Well, how is it? How is it? Why aren't we all Hitlers and Stalins? The Bible discloses to us that it's only because God restrains sin in our life. Otherwise we would destroy ourselves and this world as quickly as possible. And so we see the milk of human kindness in mankind. We see the love of the mother for the child, and soon.

But if left to our own, mankind's heart is desperately wicked. We are dead, spiritually dead. Spiritually we are a corpse.

Number two, we are dead in the sense that we are subject to eternal damnation, to the second death the Bible speaks about. That curse of sin, and the fact that we have rebelled against God, brings about eternal banishment from the presence of God. And when we look at eternal damnation in the Bible, it is a horror story to end all horror stories. I don't have the heart to do this, but if you would take the Bible and start right at the beginning, and take every passage that is typifying hell, or speaking about hell, or focusing our attention on eternal damnation, you could go on and on and on for a long, long time, and the language is super ugly. It is super terrible. Through it all God is painting a picture of how terrible it is to be banished to hell forevermore.

Once in a while you hear somebody who has gone through a really terrible experience, and he will say, "Boy, I suffered hell." They don't know what they are talking about. They have no idea what they're talking about. Anything on this earth, first of all, is in time, and it's for a period of time, and then there is relief. On this side of the grave we're always under the gracious mercy of God to some degree. He still upholds this world by His power, and lavishes His love, both on the saved and on the unsaved, in many ways.

But hell is something that goes on forevermore. For example, in Deuteronomy 28, where God is giving us a picture of hell, He uses the language that in the morning you will wish that night would come, because of the agony of your heart, or words to that effect. And at night you will wish that morning would come, because of the agony that goes on. And this is just a continuation that goes on forevermore, of weeping and gnashing of teeth, and "the worm dieth not", and "the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever". Bad news, isn't it? Bad news. But that is the death that has come into the human race, and we better listen to the Bible, because God has given us this information so that we can know who we are and what our problem is, and so that we can know how desperate our need is for a solution to this terrible news.

Now God also introduced physical death into the world, and physical death is a reminder that hell is coming. It's a reminder that eternal damnation is the next giant step. Physical death is suggested in the Bible as the first step, and eternal damnation is spoken of in the Bible as the second death. The second death implies a first, which is physical death. And so every time somebody dies...and you know that people are dying at the rate of a couple of hundred thousand every 24 hours...every time somebody dies, it's a reminder to the human race that eternal damnation is coming. Don't you realize, eternal damnation is coming?

Well, that's pretty bad news. That's pretty bad news. And to complicate matters further, when we study the Bible we find that it only takes one sin to send us to hell. Read Ezekiel 3, or Ezekiel 18. Hypothetically, if you could find a righteous man, and he would commit one sin, all his righteousness is as nothing. Sin is so heinous, it is so terrible, it is such a grievous thing against the almighty God who has created us perfect in the first place, that God's perfect righteousness, His perfect justice, His perfect wrath, the very perfection of His being, demands that that penalty be paid.

And God declares, as you know, in II Corinthians 5:10, that we must all stand before the judgment throne of God, and give an account of all the things that we have done in our body, whether they are good or bad. That is because God has created mankind accountable for the way he lives. We have been created in the image of God. We are a different creation altogether than the animals. We are created in the image of God. We were created to live perfectly before God and worship Him perfectly. And yet we have rebelled.

Now don't misunderstand me now. We do not go to hell because of the sin of Adam. God laid down a principle in Deuteronomy 24:16, amongst other places, and God very carefully announces to us, and sets forth the law by declaring in Deuteronomy 24:16, "The father shall not be put to death for the children; neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers." Everyman shall be put to death for his own sin. We don't go to hell because Adam sinned. We go to hell because we sin. And is there anyone present here who can hold us his hand and say, "Well, I am one who has never sinned"? Is there anyone who would dare to hold up his hand and say, "I have not sinned"? Well, the very fact that you and I have to confess that each one of us has sinned again and again and again and again indicates what God is saying, that we must all stand before the judgment throne of God, and that hell is going to be the outcome. We're going to be found guilty. And God's perfect righteousness demands that we go to hell.

But marvelously there is the good news. There is the good news. And oh, is it good news! Hallelujah! Praise God, there is the good news. And we can't really realize how good the good news is until we first saw how bad the bad news is. But we read here that God "commendeth his love toward us, that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." Now what does that mean?

Well, you see, let's think about this very objectively now. You have heard me use this illustration, but I'm going to use it again. Suppose that you have committed a crime. No one here would have done this now. This is a special audience. But just assume that some of you are bad enough to commit a crime. And you were found guilty. And the law of the land said that you had to go to jail for 20 years for that crime. You're guilty. The law declares that you've got to go to jail for 20 years. So you are guilty, and now you spend 20 years in jail. After 20 years the jailer comes along, and he opens the door of the jail, and he says, "Man, you're free." According to our law of the land, never again can that crime be held against me. I have fully paid for my crime. Is that true? Oh, I might be guilty of other crimes, but not that crime. That crime has been fully paid for.

All right. God has declared that the wages of sin is death, and the death that He has in view, as we've already seen, is eternal damnation. And if I could only spend an eternity in hell, and come out at the other end, then I could come into God's holy Heaven. I have fully paid for all my sins. Isn't that true...if I could spend an eternity in hell?

Unfortunately, eternity is forevermore. So if I tried to get into Heaven by that task, by trying to pay for my sins myself, I'm never going to get to the end of paying for it. And so I'm going to spend an eternity in hell.

One of the things that has really impressed itself upon my mind as I've been studying the Bible very diligently, from many vantage points I have seen is that there is no parole. There is no plea bargaining. There is no way of bribing a judge. When God, in His perfect righteousness, has decreed eternal damnation, He means eternal damnation. There is no short-cut. It must be paid. Eternal damnation must be paid.

So my condition is hopeless because if I try to pay for my sins by going to hell, I'll never get out of hell, and I'll never get into Heaven. My situation is absolutely hopeless, unless.... unless I could find somebody.... somebody who loves me so much...who loves me so much... And how could I ever find anyone like this? Someone who would take all of my sins, and stand in my place before the bar of God's justice...stand before the judgment throne on my behalf...and be found guilty in place of me, and allow God to send him to hell forevermore, so that God's law has been completely satisfied on my behalf. Then I wouldn't have to go to hell. That would be a neat arrangement, wouldn't it, if we could only find somebody like that, who loves me so much?

Well, let me see. Tom, do you love me enough? Would you go to hell for me? No, Tom, you won't make it. You've got sin in your life. Todd, would you do that for me? You might love me that much, but you've got sin in your life. You won't make it, either. Raquel? No, you've got sin, and so you won't do, either. Does anyone here love me enough to take my place? And so, you see, what am I going to do? There is no human being, even though one of us might love another enough so that in principle we would want to do it, the fact is, we are unacceptable substitutes, because we have to go to hell for our own sins.

Well, maybe if I could find a thousand lambs, or ten thousand cows, and offer them as a sacrifice.... Well, that won't pay for it, either, because it's mankind who has sinned. It has to be man that must pay for the sins. Maybe I could find an angel that loves me enough. Yes, there are angels that have not sinned, but they're not mankind. They're an entirely different creation. And so they won't do, either, in being a substitute. We've got to find a perfect man. We've got to find a perfect man.

But wait a minute. If he was just a man, it might be enough for him to pay for my sins, and then he could roast forever under damnation on my behalf, and I get to go into Heaven, but what about you? By the time we tack on your sins on top of my sins, they're already mountainous just because of all of my sins, and by the time yours get on...phew! This is getting bigger and bigger. And by the time we talk about the sins of anyone in the world that really is desiring to escape hell, it just goes on forever.

So we have to find a man that is capable of bearing the wrath of God to such a degree that God could intensify His wrath so that it would be sufficient for all who would believe on him and want to see him as their substitute. And that's precisely the kind of a person that God has provided. And the only one that could do this is God Himself. Oh, you know, we talk about Almighty God. We talk about God who builds the earth, who builds the universe. We talk about God who is from everlasting to everlasting. We talk about God who created the universe by speaking. And yet we don't see God in infinity. We don't see God in the magnificence of the greatness of His presence until we see God in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, who was sufficient to pay for the sins of all who would ever believe on Him. That is the love of God.

Now notice. Notice. In order for Jesus to be our Savior, again there could be no short-cuts. God couldn't come to the Lord Jesus and says, "Well, you know, this is going to be the way of escape now, but because you're in the family, you are God Himself, we're just going to cut this back quite a bit. We'll just kind of pay lip service to the idea of you paying for sins. By divine fiat, by divine mandate I will simply declare that you have paid enough, and that will be it." It won't work. It won't wash that way. Why?

There can be no limitation, no drawing back, at any time. Can you see why Almighty God, in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, is there in the Garden of Gethsemane, when no one had laid a hand on Him, and there He is, crying out, throwing Himself to the ground with loud cries, "Father, is it possible that this cup might pass from me?" Eternal God, Almighty God, there, crying out piteously... Oh, I get so tired of those who can only see in the atonement the nails that were driven into His hands. Hey, look...there were thieves next to Him. They had nails driven into their hands, too. All they can see is the horror of crucifixion. There were two thieves next to Him who were crucified exactly as He was. And they even had the added pain of having their legs broken, in order that death might be completed in them. No, that wasn't the suffering of Christ. That wasn't the suffering of Christ. That was just an outward expression of the suffering. The real suffering was manifested when the cry was wrenched from His lips, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" He is enduring the equivalent of you and me and all who ever believe on Him throughout the history of the world, of us spending an eternity under that immense horror story of the wrath of God being poured out forever and ever and ever and ever and ever on. And because He is eternal God, as well as man... As man He could be a right substitute and pay for our sins; and as eternal God, God could so punish Him that it became a complete sacrifice for our sins.

Isn't that wonderful news? Isn't that wonderful news? And we wonder, why don't people just stumble all over themselves in their desire to come to that kind of a Savior? Why don't they just run in droves to get on board, crying out, "Oh God, I want Him as my substitute"?

Well, the whole problem is that mankind is dead. Man doesn't want this kind of a Savior. Man doesn't want this kind of a solution to their problem. In his pride, in his arrogance, he is trying to figure out how, through his philosophy or through his gospel, or his religion, or his good life, or whatever he is doing...he's trying to find a way back to God by himself, so that his ego, his self-respect, his self-esteem will remain intact.

But only when we come to that place where we realize that there is no other solution, there is none whatsoever... One sin is enough to plunge me into hell. And so I'm damned. I am under the wrath of God, no matter how much good I do. If I were able to live a perfect life from now on, I'm still going to end up in hell. As you've heard me say many times, those who retrying to get into Heaven by living an exemplary Christian life are going to end up in hell for sure, because everything that we do is further tainted by sin. And no matter how good we live, we still have to face the fact that the payment has to be made. The wages of sin is death, and remember, it includes eternal damnation.

Well, that's the message that we want to present to the world by Family Radio. That's the message, the wonderful message, of the gospel - that there is a way of escape from our sins, the message of God's love, God's magnificent grace, that whosoever believeth on Him, whosoever hangeth his life on Him, whosoever humbleth himself and recognizes that in myself there is nothing ("Oh God, have mercy on me!") can be saved. He shall not perish, but shall have everlasting life.

And then, you know, the good news just keeps going. Oh, the good news just keeps going. Every time in Open Forum, or Family Bible Study, or wherever the subject comes up, and we start talking about Heaven, when we start talking about our resurrected bodies, when we start talking about the New Heaven and the New Earth, when we start talking about being joint heirs with the Lord Jesus Christ, we start talking about being His children, we start talking about reigning with Him, you know, we just stand in absolute awe. How can it be that God not only pays for all of my sins, so that I'll never be faced with hell again? But then He just lavishes all these other good things upon me, like there is no end to it. Oh, what a magnificent salvation! What a magnificent Savior we have! Just to contemplate this, and meditate on this, and chew on this in our minds... It just should thrill us right down to the soles of our feet.

But now all of this is excellent in theory. It's all true, absolutely true. It's in God's law book, and God will not lie. God's law book declares it absolutely. We are on absolutely solid ground in all of these things that we've been saying tonight. There's no question at all about it.

But until I have come into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ myself, it's not going to bless me at all. And the big question is...and it's the question that every one of us must face...if I would die tonight, what about me? There is at least one church that's got it all figured out. If I die tonight, maybe certain sums of money can be paid, or certain prayers can be said, and maybe we can still help that person. Not according to the Bible... The Bible says that it is appointed unto men once to die, and then the judgment.

How many of you know that you are going to be alive tomorrow...know absolutely that you are going to be alive tomorrow? Does anybody know that for sure, absolutely certain that you're going to be alive tomorrow? There is not one of us that knows that. Not one of us is guaranteed by God or anybody else that we'll be alive tomorrow. Now it's true that you've lived for 20 years, or 40 years, or 80 years, whatever your age may be. Some of you are approaching89, like I am. I said that to my Sunday School class one time when I had a birthday, and a dear old lady came out of the Sunday School later on, and she said, "I didn't know he was 89." And I tapped her on the shoulder, and I said, "Did you listen to me very carefully? I said I was approaching 89. I didn't say how close I was."

But the fact is, just because we have lived so many days or so many years, and we have such good health, and we've made all our plans for tomorrow and the next day and next week, we still have no guarantee we're going to be alive tomorrow. We can be taken out in a mysterious illness; we can be taken out in a heart attack. A plane could crash on your cabin tonight. There are a thousand different ways in which any one of us could be taken out.

Now at one point in our life, at what point do we have to face this question about our eternal destiny? Can we just put it off day by day, day by day, figuring that tomorrow I can take care of it, or when I get a little older I can take care of it, or when my children are grown I can take care of it, or when I retire, then I'm going to really face the question? At what point are we going to be able to face this question? Maybe on my death bed. Maybe then it will still be time to say, "Oh God, have mercy on me; I'm dying. Take me into Heaven." Most people, when they're dying, are so busy with dying, they're so busy with their illness, with their coma, with their pain, with their medicines, and all the other things, that they can't even think about these kinds of things. The Bible says, "How shall ye escape if ye neglect so great salvation?" And the Bible says today is the day of salvation, not tomorrow, because tomorrow may not come for you.

Now you're saying, "Well, Brother Camping, boy, you really are trying to scare us tonight. Are you really trying to put a guilt trip on us tonight?" Well, yes, I am. I don't mind admitting that. And then maybe you're saying, "Nobody is going to force me, nobody is going to scare me into Heaven. Nobody is going to scare me into repenting of my sins." Well, OK. If you really don't want to be scared, then go ahead with your sins. But if the Lord takes you out, and you're unsaved, it is guaranteed that you're going to spend an eternity in hell.

Hey, look... Why do you think God tells us so much about hell in the Bible. Why do you think He spells all that out in the Bible? Is it because He's filling in space in the chapter, that He didn't know what else to talk about? Is that what it's all about? Is He putting it there just so that we can think, "Oh, I see. National Israel - they were such nasty people - they should know about it. But we're good people. We don't have to read that. Or maybe the Pharisees...you know, they were white-walled sepulchers and full of dead men's bones. And they were a particularly bad breed of people. And Jesus said all that for their benefit."

Remember, the Bible is God's law book for the human race. And in it God, in His mysterious love and graciousness and mercy, has opened the book so that we can see clear as crystal what the problem is. And He has done it because He loves us. He has done it so that we might know our need, so that we might go to God and begin to cry out, "Oh God, have mercy on me."

I want you to do something tonight. I want you to do something tonight before you go to bed. I want you to ask yourself this question very seriously. What if tonight were my last night on this earth? Try to walk in those shoes. What if tonight were the last night of my life on this earth? Do I know where my eternal destiny is to be? And if you cannot answer forthrightly, and clearly in your soul, "I know that my Redeemer liveth, I know that Jesus is my Savior, I know that I'm a sinner and Christ has paid for my sins, and the evidence is in my life because I love what the Bible has to say, and I want to serve Him with my life, and as I read the Bible and I read about these things, I'm not afraid to face them, because I know my sins have been paid for", if you don't have that assurance, spend the night praying, "Oh God, have mercy on me. Oh God, have mercy on me. Oh God, have mercy on me." Let me tell you. It's so marvelous, the love of God, that in spite of the fact that we're dead in our sins, we're in total rebellion against Him, that God promises that if we seek Him with all our heart we will surely find Him. If we seek Him with all our heart, we will surely find Him.

You know, people talk about the election program, that God has elected some to salvation. And they argue with themselves, "Well, maybe I'm not one of God's elect. Then what? I'm not one of God's elect. I have no chance." Hey, look... Don't worry about it. That's God's business, who is elect. If you recognize that you're a sinner and you're going to hell, that's enough. That's enough right there. And then ask yourself the question, "Do I really want to go to hell?" Once in awhile I'll talk with someone, and they'll say, kind of flippantly almost, "I'm unsaved. I'm going to hell. What else is new?" I think, "Man, you don't know what you're saying. It hasn't really hit you to the core of your being, because if you really knew what you were saying, you are telling the truth, but it is a horror story that you're facing, a dreadful horror story. And you wouldn't be sleeping tonight. You'd be in anguish, 'Oh God, have mercy on me.'"

Well, that's the message that God gives us, the bad news and the good news. The bad news is terrible; the good news is so wonderful that words can't describe it. And I hope that there will be, in the life of everyone here, a conviction tonight, "I know that Jesus is my Savior," and if that conviction isn't there, that even before you leave tomorrow, because you have agonized before God, God will give you that trust in Him, so that before you leave you can know, "Jesus is my Savior." Let us pray.

Heavenly Father, as we recite again the whole message of salvation that Thou hast laid out for us in Thy Word, we are faced again with the immense horror story that this world is facing, and we deserve it. We deserve it because as we look at our lives, we admit that by nature we're in total rebellion against Thee. And yet at the same time, Father, as we look at Thy Word, and begin to realize afresh the wonderful, the marvelous, the magnificent, the fabulous love that Thou has bestowed, in that Thou hast provided a way of escape through the Lord Jesus Christ, that God has taken upon Himself the sins of all who would ever believe on Him, then we stand freshly amazed and gratified and joyful. Bless us now in this night. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Harold Camping

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