THE DAY OF THE LORD
Dr. W. A. Criswell
1 Thessalonians 5:1
02-09-58
I could so earnestly wish that all of our people who
listen now could have listened to the first part of the sermon last Sunday
night. It is not possible for me to
encompass in one message this subject, so it was divided into two parts; last
Sunday night, the day of the Lord, and then this Sunday morning.
The day of the Lord plunges us
immediately into a vast literature. The
Old Testament is filled with it. The
prophets stood, and as they could see, under the unction and direction of the
Holy Spirit, they revealed great epochs in the destiny of the race of
mankind. And they had a phrase by which
they referred to the Day of Judgment, the day of the wrath of God, the day of
visitation from heaven, the perdition and damnation of an ungodly earth, and
they called it: The Day of The Lord.
There is no place in the Old
Testament, nor in the New Testament, where that phrase refers to any other
thing but the day of tribulation, the day of wrath, the day of visitation, the
day of judgment of Almighty God, The Day of The Lord. You read in your scripture reading this
morning, in the sixth chapter of the Revelation, a portrayal of the beginning
of that final and terrible day, the great men of the earth and the bondmen,
from the slave to the king, crying for the rocks and the mountains to hide them
from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of His wrath has come: The Day
of The Lord. And who shall be able
to stand?
But I have not the beginning of
time, even to review, last Sunday evening's sermon. We begin this day, this hour, with the finishing of that
message. We have come in our preaching
through the Bible to the fifth chapter of the 1 Thessalonian letter. And Paul, having told here—in the fourth
chapter—of the day of Christ, the day of the gathering of God's chosen home,
the day of the resurrection of the Lord's people's, they who sleep in Jesus,
having described the translation of the saints of God who abide and remain unto
the coming of the Lord for his saints.
Then, in the fifth chapter, he
speaks of the time of that coming, the relation of The Day of The Lord to
the day of Christ, to the taking away of His people. And he says:
But of the times and the seasons,
brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you (he'd already told them about
it).
For yourselves know perfectly that the
day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night.
For when they shall say, Peace and
safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with
child; and they shall not escape.
But ye, brethren, are not in darkness,
that that day should overtake you as a thief.
Ye are all the children of light, and
the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness.
Therefore let us not sleep, as do
others; but let us watch and be sober.
For they that sleep [sleep] in the night; and they that be drunken are
drunken in the night.
But let us, who are of the day, be
sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for a helmet, the hope
of salvation.
For God hath not appointed us to wrath
(to that day of the Lord) but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ (To
the day of Jesus).
He who died for us, that, whether we
wake, whether we are translated, whether we abide and remain unto his coming or
sleep, whether we are in the heart of the earth, in our bodies, we should live
together with him.
Wherefore comfort yourselves together,
and edify one another (speak of it), even as also shall ye do.
When our Lord began His public ministry,
He was baptized in the Jordan River.
And according to the story of our Master—by Luke—baptized of the Holy
Spirit, baptized in water, tempted of the devil, then straight to
Nazareth—where He grew up—there He began His public ministry. And the story is in the fourth chapter of
the gospel of Luke, that there was delivered into the hands of our Savior the
scroll of the prophet Isaiah. And He
turned to the place in the scroll where it read—now this is the beginning of
the fifty-first chapter of Isaiah—the Lord turned in the scroll and read:
The Spirit of the Lord (God) is upon me,
because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath
sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives…
To proclaim the acceptable year of the
Lord.
And he closed the book…
That's what the scriptures say—in the
forth chapter of Luke: “And he closed the book…” But when you come, and open
the Book, and read where the Lord read, He closed the Book in the middle of a
sentence: “To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord and the day of vengeance
of our God.” But He didn't read that—in
the middle of the verse, in the middle of a sentence.
“To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord:” that
was His first ministry, His first coming.
“The Lord (in the days of His flesh) the Lord anointed him to preach
good tidings… to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the
captives, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.” This is the day of grace; it is the day of
opportunity. Oh, come, come, come, ye
to the Lord! But there is another part
of that sentence: “…And the day of vengeance of our God.”
And the Lord did not read the whole
sentence because the other half of that sentence is to be fulfilled in its
time, in the providence and in the council—in
the day of visitation and judgment, The Day Of The Lord, “the day
of the vengeance of our God.” So, as
you read these scriptures, you will find as there, all through it, those two
looks, a backward one and a forward one.
At the Lord's table, eating and drinking, looking back to the day of the
Lord's goodness, and kindness, and mercy in dying for our sins, according to
the scriptures. Then, looking forward,
to eat and to drink until He comes, the great day of the vengeance of our God.
Now, as we pick up this Holy Book and
look at it, there's no other faith, no other religion that has in it prophecy
but this faith and this religion—the Judeo-Christian revelation. I think that is an obvious thing. How could a Buddhist prophesy when the
Spirit of the Lord or the spirit of prophecy is not upon him? How could a Muslim? How could a Zoroastrian? But the faith of the Lord God is the faith
of the great Jehovah, Who sees the end from the beginning. And things that happen today were prophesied
thousands of years ago. And the
denouement of all time is ever before the Lord and He sees it, syllable by
syllable; phrase and letter by phrase and letter. So, when I pick up this Holy Book, I read there, through the
thousands of years, the great prophecies of God fulfilled in their times:
- Like the
first coming of our Lord, in Genesis—that He should be borne of a woman—a
virgin borne.
- In
Genesis, that He should be of the seed of Abraham.
- In
Genesis, that He should be born to the fourth child of Jacob—Judah.
- In the
Book of Samuel, that He should be born of the lineage and of the house of
David.
- In
Zechariah, that He should present Himself as the king to Israel, lowly and
riding on the foal of an ass.
- In the
twenty-second Psalm, that He should die on the cross, forsaken: “My God,
my God…”
- In the
sixteenth Psalm, that He should be raised from the dead: “Thou will not
suffer Thy Holy One to see corruption.”
- In the
one-hundred tenth Psalm, that He should be our great high priest: after
the orders of Melchizedek, interceding in heaven. Even the place where He was born was
prophesied seven hundred and fifty years before His days.
- In
Isaiah six and nine, that He should be deity Himself and His name shall be
called everlasting Father, the mighty God.
All of those things—these I have
mentioned are just a few—all of these things were fulfilled to the jot, to the
tittle, to the letter, according to the word of the prophet of God.
Now, when I turn to the same scriptures,
these that I hold in my hand, I read here in these same scriptures other and
great prophecies. And as I have
assurance that the prophet spake by the Spirit of God, and hundreds of
years—and thousands of years, in some instances—pointed to the first great appearing
of our Lord and, according to the word of God, they came to pass.
So, when I hold the Book in my hand
and read of the prophecies concerning the great second appearing of the Lord, I
can have the same assurance that the word and the prophecy of God shall never
fall, or falter, or fail. For example,
in the seventh chapter of the Book of Daniel:
And I saw in the night… and, behold, one
like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of
days, and they brought him near before him.
And there was given to him dominion, and
glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve
him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and
his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed.
I have every cause and reason to look forward to the
glorious fulfilling of the word of the Lord. Then again, in the prophet
Zechariah, who prophesied of His coming, lowly, riding upon the foal of an ass:
“(In that day) I will pour out upon the house of David, and upon the
inhabitants of Jerusalem…” Evidently
they're going to be there.
I spent half a day this week with a theological
professor. And I said to him: “Does it
mean nothing to you, nothing to you that the Hivites, and Girgashites, and the
Jebusites, and the Hittites, and the Edomites, and the Ammonites, and the
Moabites, and the Canaanites—all the other “-ites”—they are gone from the earth
and no man ever saw anyone, who ever saw anyone, who ever saw anyone, who ever
saw one? But the Israelite is still
here, according to the saying of the Man of God. Does that mean nothing to you?”
“Nothing at all,” he says, “Nothing at
all!”
I said: “Does it mean anything to
you that the prophets say, the prophets say; they say, and they say, and they
repeat that Israel will go back to Palestine, some of them before they are
converted and some day after they're converted—all Israel will be in
Palestine? Does that mean anything to
you?”
“Nothing at all. Nothing at all,” he said.
I said: “Does it mean anything to
you that for a thousand, five hundred years there were no Jews in Palestine,
none at all? It was a wasted and
forsaken land, but according to the saying of God and the prophecies who spake
of it, and spake of it, and spake of it: ‘They shall go back to their
land!’” I said, “Is it nothing to you
that today, you see Israel turning their faces toward the holy land? Is that nothing to you?”
“Nothing at all,” he said. “Nothing
at all—absolutely meaningless!”
I thought: well, I'm looking at a
prophecy of God itself. In the third
chapter of 2 Peter it said:
There shall come in the last times scoffers…
saying, Where is the promise of his coming?
for since the beginning everything continues as they are.
And he says: “I don't see any signs!”
And he doesn't know it, but he's a sign
himself!
I will pour out upon the house of David,
and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, there the spirit of grace and
supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they
shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in
bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn.
And in that day there shall be a great
mourning in Jerusalem…
There shall be a mourning in every
family apart…
And in that day there shall be a fountain open to
the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for
uncleanness.
The Book says that some of these days,
in this great and final denouement, that the Lord Jesus—like He appeared to
James, his brother; and like He appeared to the apostle, Paul, who was then
Saul of Tarsus and he was converted.
And Paul referred to himself as being lost, far and out of due time
(that is before the time, he was an abortion), the time hadn't come. But the Lord appeared to Him, as [if he] was
born before the time.
There shall be an appearing of the Lord
to His people and they shall look upon Him whom they have pierced and they
shall mourn for Him as one that mourneth for his only son, and they shall say
to Him, according to that same prophecy: “Whence came these scars in Your hands?”
And He shall say: “In the house of my
friends (by My very own) was I pierced.”
A fountain open and, ah (the word of the Lord): “And his feet shall
stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the
east, and the mount of Olives shall cleave… and a great valley in
between.”
And it continues (It will be light
in that day):
In the evening it shall be light and it shall be in
that day, living waters going up from Jerusalem; half to the former sea, half
to the hinder sea… And the Lord shall
be king over all the earth.
Why can I not believe in the prophecy
when that same prophet Zechariah, along with his other prophets, spake of the
coming of our Lord as a humble One, as a Lamb of God, as a sheep brought to the
slaughter, pouring out His life for the cleansing of those who trust in
Him? That same prophet lifts up his
voice again and says: “And some of these days…” And he repeats these great
prophecies of the denouement of the age: “And the Lord [is] the king of all of
the earth.” Nor are they
isolated—repeated!
Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing in up into
heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken
up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go…
And one of a multitude of others:
Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall
see him, and they also who’d pierced him (His own people who slew Him. “He came unto his own and his own received
him not”).
Behold (Revelation 1:7) he cometh with clouds (the
Shekinah glory of the Lord); and every eye shall see him, and they also which
pierced him (and this world, lost and rejecting Christ): and all kindreds of
the earth shall wail because of him (The beginning of the great day of the
Lord).
Now, we must hasten. In this fifth chapter of the Book of Thessalonians,
Paul is speaking of the time of that.
You just can't read these prophecies and not ask the question:
“When? When are these things to come to
pass?”
Same as with the disciples, when
they heard Jesus speak of these last eschatological things—and when He was with
them on the Mount of Olives, they asked Him, saying: “Lord, when? When?”
You can't escape it—not if you are normal; and not if you are a
Christian and interested: “When [are] these things?”
So Paul attempts to answer that
question: “But of the times and the seasons, brethren… ye yourselves
know.” Now, look what he says: “That
they know.” (By the way, that word
“time” it means time, the time of it.
The Greek word is chronos, a chronometer is a
measure of time. A chronoscope
is a little, fine instrument measuring intervals of time; chronology, or
the things that happen in history, in time.)
“But of the time (the chronos)…” What of the time? Is it possible to know?
All right. Paul has two answers:
first, for the unconverted, for the unsaved, for the lost—they do not
know. It is hidden from them. They belong to the children of darkness and
they belong to the children of the night.
But of the times and the seasons, brethren
(you don't need for me to repeat what I've already told you).
For yourselves know perfectly that the
day of the Lord cometh as a thief in the night.
When they shall say, Peace and safety;
then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child;
and they shall not escape.
Of that day, and of that hour, for the lost world,
they do not know. It is darkness to
them and it is hidden away from them.
And he says two or three things here about it: one, that it shall come
upon them without premonition, without preliminary, without sign, without
program. It shall come suddenly, and
immediately, and catastrophically, and finally, and terribly—this great final
day of the Lord. He says many things
about that. For example, He will say:
It is like the five virgins who were foolish. The five who were wise entered into the
kingdom of God, but the five who were foolish were left outside. The bridegroom came suddenly, and that the
world was shut just like that.
They do not know. They are unprepared. They're not ready. He tells a parable of the wicked
steward. Because the master of the
house delayed his coming, he began to be wanton, and drunken, and to beat his
fellow servants. In how many instances
does the Lord illustrate that? To them
he comes as a thief in the night. They
are oblivious of the dawn overtaking.
Many of these old manuscripts that prove there are thieves in the
night—the dawn suddenly coming and overtaking them—the world unprepared.
Look again when he says: “And when they
shall say, Peace and safety…” This
great and final Day of the Lord is going to come at a time when the nations
say:
We have our protocols. We have our instruments of peace. We have the signatures on these documents. Here is the treaty of friendship. Here is a reciprocal trade agreement—“Peace
and safety.”
Isn't that the funniest thing you ever
saw in the development of time? The
more United Nations we have, and the more treaties we have, and the more
amalgamations we have, the more we strive and prepare for the final great
holocaust. Isn't that a funny
thing? Isn't that a strange thing, when
they shall say “peace and safety.” “Look
at this organization. Look at this
great community of nations. Look at
this great stockpile of defense. Look at
all of this: ‘Peace and safety!’”
An identical thing with the Titanic:
they were riding on the bosom of the deep, from Liverpool to New York City, in
the unsinkable Titanic. “The unsinkable
Titanic:” one moment it was unsinkable, and the next moment it was foundering,
and diving, and sinking to the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean. That's the way the Lord illustrated: “[In
the] last time it shall be,” He said, “as it was in the days of Noah”—laughing,
and drinking, and carrying on in a day of happiness—“peace and safety.” And then the flood came.
“And it shall be,” He says, “as it was
on the days of Lot”—marrying, giving in marriage, carrying on in a great
hilarious time until the fire fell, and the brimstone, from heaven. So it is, he says, in this great day of the
Lord, when they shall say “peace and safety.”
“We've got it: look at the
signature; look at the national commitments.
Look! It is peace for our time
and our day.” Then the awful travail
comes, as a full [term] woman, and they shall not escape.
I think of the beginning of that
sixth chapter of the Revelation. First
the white horse, the great representative and champion of the people—Peace and
safety, the white horse. Oh, my soul,
after him, the red horse of war, and the black horse of famine, and the pale
horse of death.
The Day Of The Lord: if I had about an hour or two, we'd
just stop and look at that awful thing of peace and safety, and then sudden
death. I can't take time for it. I just don't know of a better illustration
of it than in our day right now. In
California, yesterday, there was the mournfulest, longest wail at eleven
o'clock sharp. I listened to it for
five minutes; I listened to it for ten minutes; finally my curiosity got the
better of me. I said: “What in the
world is that wailing?”
And the answer was: “Once a month,
on that day—whatever yesterday was—once a month, on that day, at eleven o'clock
sharp, we have the blowing of the air-siren, the air-alarm, the air-raid. And it is to acquaint the people with it.”
Today, beautiful sign, the sunrise:
maybe not a cloud in the sky—peace and safety.
Then, out of the sky, the blood, and the fire, and the wrath, and the
judgment of some Armageddon. I'm not
saying that's it. I don't think it
is. I'm just illustrating by it. I said: “Why in the world do you have that
out here? We don't have it in Dallas.”
That is the mournfulest sound in
that city. It was—the pleading of that
air-raid warning. Fifteen minutes of
it! I said: “It's enough to drive a man
mad!”
They said: “Out here on this West
Coast, everywhere, it's that way, getting ready, getting ready.”
All these things, when they shall
say “peace and safety,” then… And in
the Greek language I wish you could see that sentence. Isidious, that's the word that is
emphatic. (You know, the Greek can take
his words and stick them anywhere. When
he wants to make it real emphatic, he puts it first.) Isidious, “suddenly,” like out of blue of the sky.
That's for the lost world; that's for
the unconverted; they don't know. It
comes suddenly, unexpectedly, without warning.
But I'm just preaching the Word of the Lord. I'm not saying a thing of my own here. Now, you listen to what God said. But he's just described how it will be for the lost, unprepared,
left in blood and in war. That's why
I'd like to have an hour this morning to say what that Book says of the
preparation of the nations for war, for war, for war! But in the next verse there, the fourth verse:
But ye, brethren, (ye who are saved) you
are not of darkness that that day should overtake you as a thief.
Ye are the children of light, and the
children of the day: we are not of the night, we are not of darkness.
That is, that day, when it comes, will not surprise
us. We're not going to be taken aback. We're not going to be lost. We're not going to be left in the world that
runs rivers of blood. Not we! But ye, brethren, “ye are not appointed unto
wrath.” We're not of that day of
darkness that it should overtake us as a thief in the night. We're not of that age; we're not of that
dispensation; we're not of that judgment; we're not of that crime; we're not of
that hour.
We are of the light; we are of the
day. We are looking. Our faces are raised upward where our Lord
is in heaven. And we are not of that
awful hour of darkness and damnation that it should overtake us as a thief in
the night.
May I parenthesize here a
minute? You know, I—just in order to
show you that these things are—I so many times have to bite my tongue to keep
from calling names. If I would just
turn loose, I would like to name for you some tremendously great nationals and
international preachers, especially of Manhattan Island, who stood up to preach
in the days of my youth. And, oh, what
glamorous days they immediately had.
And their sermons—I went up there to listen to them in New York. I stood at their feet. I listened to them. Oh, what things did they preach! And they preached about all of the glories
of the immediate future. Everything was
just working out according to the fine genius of man, and of science, and of
government. And everything was rosy and
the millennium was right there—if we were not already in it. Both preachers preaching that!
And, in the midst of their
preaching, there came upon this world the awful bloodbath. Out of the sky there rang bombs, and fury,
and Hitler's hoard to the east; and then wheeled around to the west, and we
found ourselves enmeshed in that awful and terrible conflict. Well, to a man like that, those terrible
hours sweep them off of their feet.
They're just lost. The greatest
preacher of their kind quit preaching.
He just quit his pulpit and gave it over to somebody else and stopped.
You're not that way. Not you, 'cause you've already been told
that there lies ahead tribulation; there lies ahead blood; there lies ahead the
great day of the wrath and the judgment of Almighty God. These days in the past are just patterns;
they're just types; they're just pictures of the great and final Armageddon.
And, when these awful days come and
tragedy strikes, you're not of the night, as that that day should take you
unaware and surprise. Why, God's word
says: as long as there is a tooth that can be bared to bite, as long as there
is a fist that can be doubled to fight, as long as there is the beast, and the
ape, and the tiger in humanity, it will be the story of blood, and war, and
destruction.
You may say:
Oh, dear, sweet Kruschev—he's over there in the
Kremlin planning nice things for us.
We’re gonna have peace and we’re gonna all dwell under each his own vine
and his own fig tree; and we’re all going to have two Cadillacs in every
garage. We’re all going to live in
forty mansions. And we’re all gonna
have great bank accounts. And all we've
got to do is to eat, drink and be merry, for peace and safety is our lot in
life.
And just about the time you think you've
got it out of the sky, and out of the Kremlin, and out of the dark unconverted
works of men, there come these manifestations of the fountain of depths of
depravity and iniquity, rising to point out once or more that mankind is a
fallen race. As long as Satan is out of
the pit and as long as he rules in this earth, his instruments are darkness,
and blood, and horror, and death.
“You are not of the night, as if
that day should overtake you unaware.”
“When these things come to pass,” said Jesus, “look up, lift up your
head, for your redemption draws nigh.”
It will not be long; for the elect's sake, those days are shortened.
Therefore, now, look! Don't ever get the persuasion that the
things that are written in the books of prophecy—like this passage that I'm
reading now from Paul—don't ever think they're written just for our
curiosity. No! Not that we might just be curious and find
things. No! These great revelations are made that we might be children of
God.
“Therefore”—that's the sixth
verse—“therefore…” He says all of these things—the only reason they're written
in the Book is for our admonition, that we might be great, and true, and
wonderful servants of Jesus.
“Therefore…” Now this is it—look
what he says: one, two, three, four—he makes four appeals there:
Therefore let us not sleep, as others
do; but let us watch and be sober.
For they that sleep in the night; and
they that are drunken are drunken in the night (In view of the great and final
coming of the Lord and the denouement of that age, in view of that, don't let
us be drunken, drunken with anything—the glamour and the pleasures and the
enticements of the world, let us not be drunken. Let us not sleep as they do in the night.) Let us… be sober (looking up to God).
Now look at the [eighth] verse: “Let us,
who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith (and hope)
and love.” How many times did he
mention that in the first chapter; and he mentioned it in the thirteenth
chapter of 1 Corinthians. “Faith, hope
and love:” these are the graces that God has bestowed upon us.
Then another one:
For God hath not appointed us to wrath,
but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ,
Who died for us, that, whether we wake
or whether we sleep, we should live together with him.
You don't have anything to be afraid of. Not you!
When I was a little boy, I had a terrible dream. I dreamed the great last day had come and
the whole world was before the judgment seat of God. And I was there and I was lost.
And I was lost! And I was being
sent away into eternal perdition and damnation. I was just a little fellow; and I awoke and was crying in fear;
and I ran to mother and daddy in their bedroom. And mother said: “Why, son?”
And I told her, and she said: “Come, my
son.” I laid down by her and she
quieted me. And soon after that, I
found the Lord. Now, I don't ever need
to be afraid. Never!
Jesus died for us that, whether we wake
(that is, whether we're alive at his coming and are translated) or whether we
sleep (whether our bodies are buried in the earth), we should live together
with Him. All the wrath and judgment of
God, and the days of the Lord, and the tribulation, it will never touch God's
people. They will be with the Lord.
The first thing is, He will take to
Himself His own. Then it says:
“Wherefore comfort yourselves together, and edify one another, even as also ye
do.” Lift up your heart, my brother! Lift up your face, my sister! Be of good courage, my yokefellow! It's all in God's hands. And if the storm comes, ye rise above it. And if death comes—and oh, how it comes—He
is the Lord of life. “Whether we wake
(whether we're here) or whether we sleep (we fall before He comes), we shall
live together with him.”
My friends, all of it just means this:
if I have Jesus, I have a hope; I have a destiny, a life, a day, a glory. If I have not Jesus, I am lost. It is nothing but the night, and the dark,
and the doom. Oh, how could a man say:
“I had rather die. I'd rather be
lost. I'd rather be in hell. I'd rather be dammed. I'd rather spend eternity in suffering and
agony. I'd rather be shut out with the
door closed. I'd rather be sent
away. I'd rather be lost than to open
my heart to the saving grace of Jesus, and my name be written in the Lamb's
book of life, and whether I die or whether I sleep, to live together with
him.” How could a man say no? “No, no, Preacher. No, no!”
Oh, by the Spirit of grace, and it must
come from Him. May the Spirit of grace
open your hearts to the Word of the Lord.
“Today I take Him as my Savior.”
[It] may be a pull or a taking; it may be a feeble reaching, but: “Such
as I can I do today, I take the Lord as my own. I trust in Him. Here I
come, Preacher, and here I am. I give
you my hand, my heart. I give in trust
to God. Here I come.”
Would you? In this great host in the balcony, these front stairwells or
those back stairwells, down the stairwells and here to the front: “Here I come,
Pastor. Today I take Jesus as my
Savior.” In this lower floor, a throng
of people, somebody you, today: “This day I hide myself in the Lord.”
He hideth my soul in the clefts of the
rock
That shadows a dry, thirsty land.
He hideth my soul in the depths of His
love,
And covers me there with His hand.
[Fanny J. Crosby]
In the great day of the Lord—and someday
it will surely come—in that day,
He
hideth my soul with his hand—under the shadow of the Almighty. Would you come trusting Jesus, giving your
life in faith to Jesus? Or somebody
you, a family, putting your life in the church while we sing, while we make
appeals, would you come? Would you make
it now, while we stand and while we sing?
