Directly addresses the question of salvation, urging listeners to strive to enter through the narrow gate, rather than assuming their familiarity with religious practices guarantees entry. It highlights Jesus' warning that many who seek to enter after the door is shut will be turned away, even those who claim to have eaten and taught in his presence. The core lesson is that salvation is not based on outward religious activity but on a genuine, personal relationship with Christ, emphasizing the need for individual effort and a right relationship with God. The message concludes by illustrating the diverse multitude that will be saved from all corners of the earth, underscoring God's expansive grace.
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Luke's Gospel, Chapter Thirteen, commencing to read at verse twenty-two. And Jesus went through the cities and villages teaching and journeying toward Jerusalem. Then said one unto him, Lord, are there few that be saved? And he said unto them, Ties to enter in at the straight gate, For many I say unto you will seek to enter in, and shall not be able, when once the master of the house is risen up and have shut the door, And he begins to stand without and to knock at the door, saying, Lord, Lord, open unto us.
And he shall answer and say unto you, I know you not when she are. Then shall you begin to say, We have eaten and drunk in my presence, and thou hast taught in our streets, But he shall say, I tell you, I know you not, whence ye are, depart from me, all ye workers, of iniquity. And there shall be weeping and smashing of peace, when ye shall see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but you yourselves thrust out.
and they shall come from the east and from the west and from the north and from the south and shall sit down in the kingdom of God. And behold, there are last which shall be first, and there are first which shall be last. Now on Saturday evening I took you back to boyhood and young manhood days and then turned the next night to the young missionary days in the Amazon jungle.
I had rather hoped to be able to turn to a Bible talk tonight for you but I have no constraints that way at all. Questions have been coming to me during the past day or two. For instance, someone said, where is the Caribbean? And when I had to tell them it was just south of Florida, if you go down to Key West, which is the most southern city in the United States, and take a nice little hop over that big outlet to the Gulf of Mexico, where the Gulf Stream swings round into the Atlantic. you'll see Cuba underneath you and then after Cuba you'll go right down to the Caribbean Sea and you'll see the islands of that sea.
The nature is about a hundred miles south of Cuba. People ask me many questions about our peasant work and I felt constrained today to give you one or two glimpses into God's amazing grace working in the heart of the mixed people of the Caribbean. Now I confess to you that from boyhood days one question has stirred in my mind very, very often. It's the question that you will find in Luke thirteen, verse twenty-three. But all Jesus had been setting his face towards Jerusalem where he was going to die.
And as he moved through the villages, preaching and teaching and working his miracles, some unknown man came up to him and said, Lord, are there a few that is saved? And this question has stirred in my mind since Father's day. As I told you, I said yes to the Lord Jesus and trusted him as a boy of twelve and a half to thirteen years of age, one Sunday night. And as I looked around the big school and climbed on through that school, I saw around me my friends, lovely boys. But so few of them seemed to know and love and panned up for the Lord Jesus.
In fact, in a whole class of twenty boys, I think I can only remember one boy with me who made a profession of knowing and loving Jesus at his stage. When I stepped out into business, I found myself rubbing shoulders in the business career of London with young fellows from all parts of the British Isles. And there were only a few of them seemed to love the Lord Jesus. Many of them were going their own way, wanted a good time. devoted to sport or money-making or fun or pleasure, thinking only of the material things, and just one or two stood out as Christians.
As I've wandered about from place to place and rubbed shoulders with people in many different lands, I often find a heartache as I look in the people's faces, and I hope they love my Savior. I hope they've tasted an eternal life. But out of the awesome it seems so few. I love him. Oh, I'm never struck with this, but the Lord didn't answer this man's question. Did you notice that? The Lord Jesus looks round at the strong crowd and he answers the people. Jesus said unto them, not for the person.
He said to the people, Try to enter in at the straight gate. I'm not going to tell you whether there will be many or few say. I'm going to urge you as individuals, each one of you, to take it to your heart, tribe, agonize, for everything you've got into it, to see the shield say, the shield on the right side of the door. Because he says the door is wide open now, and people are tickling through that door, but there will come a moment, he says.
There will come a moment... when many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in, but shall not be able when once the master of the house has risen up and shut through the door. And then he gives us an amazing picture, most revealing. He says, in that day when the door is closed for people to be saved and they can be saved no longer, there will be clamoring crowds, many standing outside not No, no, both of them sure. I never knew you. And then out of their mouths the people who stand outside the fair, they will reveal who they are.
They are the privileged people. They are the people that grew up in churches and sat at the very table and broke bread and stiffed the cup. We're the people that heard Jesus talking in their streets, heard him over the radio, had a thousand opportunities, not the heathen, not the lost tribes, not those who've never handled the Bible, not those who've never heard the gospel from Cameron Lips. Such a girl came to me yesterday and said, what about all those generations that've never heard about Jesus? Are they lost? I said, don't you worry about them. Harvard Abraham said, shall not the judge of all the arts do right?
All I know is this, that they will not be judged by the gospel. You never heard of it. But I said, you will be judged by the gospel. I shall be judged by the gospel. We shall be judged in the light of the land we lived in with every opportunity. And outside the door Jesus pictures the Americans, the Britishers, The folks who had every opportunity from childhood days in the Christian land grew up in Christian homes. Oh, come! Oh, come! I know it is!
Then he says something to prove. He says they shall come. Verse twenty-nine. They shall come. They shall come from the east and from the west and from the north and from the south, and they shall sit down in the kingdom of God. And it shows me that his wonderful love and grace is going to draw them from all points at the compass. They are coming from... Ah! When I turn the pages of my Bible to Revelation five, nine, you need to turn to it, that you will see ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands gathered round the throne bursting into a great song a best song is unto him who loves us and loses from our sins and as I look at that great company I turn to some of my Greek scholars you know these folks who know all up here in the Greek and I say see sir Could you tell me in the original what ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands
of thousands are? They shake their heads and they say we don't know. That figure speaks of an innumerable song that no man can number. It's beyond numbering. And I say praise. Those that are going to be saved are far more than I expected. It won't be just a little flock. It will be the fruitage of Calvary, Jesus lifting men and women. And then I turn back to my Bible and I begin to read. And I see a poor dying robber, a boy who early in life got into bad company.
A boy who began to seize and kill. A boy who had a price on his head by human law. A boy who's caught with a rubber band and now they've got him on the cross. Somewhere there's a mother behind him and a father and they're weeping their eyes out. Our poor prodigal boy. Oh God, oh God, our boy, our lost boy. Jesus said to him, Just now you called me Lord. You said, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.
And if thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe that God raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. Today thou shalt be with me in the paradise of God. And right from the very brink of hell, The devil's cast away was lifted by the grace of our God. Oh, I'm so glad about all this, for I know as however I get to heaven, it will all be His grace, nothing that I've ever done, all of His grace, and His grace is going to try, where sin abides. Grace is going to do much more about.
But take it in America, young people. Take it to your heart. He says, Try to enter in a disgraceful, agonized for everything you've got into it to see that you're on the right side of the door now in favored America, in privileged America. Don't you sleep tonight without being saved. See that you've passed through that door, and you're on the inside. And you are sure of your salvation, the great God. Now, he said they would come from the east and the west and the north and the south to sit down in the kingdom of God.
I said, you know, the first contact I had with the Caribbean was on the South American coast The boat from Liverpool, as a young man, passed right by the red hinders and down the coast, and I landed at Georgetown in British Guyana. Now if you were to take Georgetown in British Guyana and move up from there, there's Trinidad, Tobago, Grenada, Barbados, St. Vincent, St. Lucia, the French Islands, Dominica, St. Kitts, Antigua, round to Puerto Rico, and going toward the great big country of Haiti and Jamaica.
Cuba lines to the north, of course. A sea of islands. And there are the big circle of islands that enclose the Caribbean Sea. And the Caribbean gets its name from the Caribbean Indians that were found there by Columbus when he discovered those islands and discovered America. Now, into those islands there have poured a tremendous mixture of people. It seems for some strange reason God has brought from the east and the west to the north and the south a great mixture into a melting pot.
The first assembly of Christians, and let me tell you, there are somewhere about a hundred and sixty or seventy assemblies from British Guyana up the circle of English-speaking islands to British Honduras, assemblies that we know and love them, simple gatherings of Christians, but in every one you'll find a mixture of races. The first one I sat in was one in Georgetown, and there were eight hundred breaking bread. Have you ever sat in a meeting that size? And as you looked round and saw that great big assembly of Christians gathered to keep the Lord's Supper, I tell you as a young fellow my stranger mood that I saw African brethren, yes, the descendants of African slaves, and I saw Chinese brethren who were descendants who are actually from China, and I saw East Indians from Calcutta in India, and I saw Syrians and Jews and Europeans all one in Christ in these great nations.
When I was thrown out at the Amazon twice because of malaria, constant malaria, God allowed us to come up to these islands. Out of our great disappointment, he had his own appointment. And, you know, when we came there, we learned to love these island people, and I could never be away from them a month or two without getting homesick. Oh, I love you very, very much, but I get homesick for my island people. I love my Negro Dresden. I love my Chinese Dresden. I love my East Indian Dresden. I love those great mixed companies down there with all their warm heartaches. And you know, still they're responsive to the gospel.
Still Jesus Christ is gathering the harvest. But you know, there's no difference. I wish I could explain to you the difference between the races. One of the things that young Americans find the harvest when they go over the fields is to find out that they don't understand other people. Did you realize that? You've got your way of life here and you think everybody ought to adopt your way of life, but they're not having it. You see, many of them had old civilizations long before America and Britain, when people were living in caves in Britain, the Chinese had their beautiful character writing and were printing.
And lots of these people that we rather still talk about across the seas of season, they've got far bigger backgrounds than we have of culture, a real heritage, and they need understanding. Now the East, from the East comes China. Did you notice that there are six hundred million Chinese people in the world and every fourth person you need is a China? Rather sad to think they've all flung into the communistic block, but down in our West Indies we have thousands of them. Now this. If I was in a room with a kind of them, I took this little watch off my wrist and I put it down there.
A walk away and then I looked back at that thought that watch has gone. And the only other person in this chapel was a Chinaman. Who took it? Who took it? Mr. Chinaman. Now, being a Britisher, I suppose, a bit blunt, I would come right out. Hi, hi! She was in Chinaman! You've got my watch! And before he gets out of that door, let's have it out with him. Take from the shoulder. Don't you ever deal with a Chinaman right there? You make an enemy for life, if you do. You say, why? If you're cutting off his face.
He'll lose face. He'll never be able to look you in the face again. You'll never be afraid. You'll never get near you again. He's lost face. You've destroyed his face value, and you've exposed him as a common dirty thief. What do you say he is? You think he is, but you mustn't cut his face off. Okay, what should you do? Well, what you should do is to notice it's gone and then turning your back on that spot you move over and say, listen, I left my walk somewhere and I lost it. I wonder if you could give me a helping hand to find a screen. That spot goes as far away as he can and he'll help you all right.
You go down helping, helping, and when you see he's moving in this direction, he'll as far away as he can. And you come searching for it down here and watch you and put it back and go on, searching and searching, and move over there. And when you see he's over there, he's there, and you slowly move back. And when you see his eyes are turned away, he's searching in the corner, you pick it up. Oh, I found this hand. Thanks very much for the help in me. And he hasn't lost pace. Oh, you see, I don't like that nonsense. Well... six hundred million people were brought up on that mountain. That's their outlook of life.
They should come from the east and from the west. Now I'm going to take you into some Indian hut, whether they're East Indian or Amerindian, Red Skin Indian, I don't mind. They're much the same to us in Trinidad, British Guyana, Jamaica. And I wanted to see those split-eyed, brown-skinned, dark-haired Indians. And they've got a big, modern yokel hut with a trash roof, and the hammocks are swinging underneath, and that's a hard, beaten floor. And as you walk in, dear ladies, you begin to hold your skirts, you know, a little bit like this, and you think, oh dear, they live here and sleep here and cook here.
Oh dear, I wonder if it's clean. And you're rather disgusted because you see them clearing their nose and throat by sitting on the floor. Now, see, I know it's crude, but if you're going to be a missionary, you might as well face it. Clearing their nose just like that on the floor. You don't like it. But they're asking you. And they see Mr. America or Mr. American take a lovely handkerchief from his pocket and use it.
And when it moves it with growing horror, they watch you putting it back in your pocket. And carrying it about in your handbag and talking all day. and they teach you a very certain people. Because the fire is hard beating, and it's just out to look behind the day, and that's far better than carrying it about to do it. Same ways of looking at things. Those will come from the east and from the west and from the north and from the south and sit down in the kingdom of God.
I say, sinking black, did you ever read it? I don't think it's fake to anyone ever read it. Did you ever read it, Bob? Or Bob read it? I say, give me a word because it was born in the beloved city of Central Africa. Dan Crawford, the man that followed after Livingston and Fred Stanley Arnott and pioneered in Africa. wrote, thinking black, and he tried to think as a black man would. And he tried to get into the black man's mind. And I read it once or twice, but I wonder if Dan Crawford knew the Mughal mind. I confess to you, I don't understand it.
I love my Mughal residents. I'm in and out there homes. I eat with them. I work with them. I travel with them. But I don't understand it. You know this, down in our islands of the West Indies, a mucro, in one of our villages, he gets sick and he immediately turns to the hospital, whether it's a mission or a government hospital, makes no difference and he goes there and he allows the white doctor or the skilled doctor to test it. You know, blood pressure, stethoscope healing, the back, all the rest of it.
Then he gives him a nice big bottle of medicine. And taking the medicine he begins to drink the medicine. Incredibly, as he's told to drink it, the bottle goes down to nothing and it's empty. But the pain is still there. And immediately a suspicion comes into his mind. It isn't a natural sickness. Somebody doomed me, as they say in the West Indies. someone's casting a spell upon me. And the only way to get past that is to go to a strong witch doctor, an avian man. And he can break the spell, and he can cast a spell against the enemy that would cast the enemy.
And the day of the night, yes, right through Jamaica, take me down to British Guyana, they creep away to the avian man. In the stillness of the night, even the little eagle, The old dear man will say, yes, that pain, that pain you've got, yes. Yes, someone's working evil influences against you. Yes. You must come back tomorrow night. You must bring with you a dollar. You must bring with you a chicken. You must bring with you a smother of the man's style. I won't tell you all about it. And by hook or by crook that man will get it and bring it. You could see one of those happenings in the middle of the night when a fire is burning, when a chicken is killed, and then blood is sprinkled, and then eventually a calabash is brought, a big round hollow groove is brought, and it's put on the place where that pain is.
Now I want to tell you that that man's prepared that good. It's a round board with a little round hole in it used to carry in water, but he's taken something and dropped it in, and he's taken some latex, some rubber, heated rubber, and he's dropped that in on top to stick the string on the inside, and now he's brought it out, and he's put it right over the place where the pain is. And holding it there, he begins to get the hot ashes, and he pours the ashes all over the calabash, and they begin to fall down on the man's arm, and he pours these hot ashes, and hot ashes, and hot ashes, till the fellows are almost getting a bit burnt, and getting rather frightened, and then they take the calabash away, and what he'll be fair?
A mass of kiki sort of rubber, and in the middle of it, and there it is! And he gets up there! Look! Look! That's what I got out of the room! big, darkened necrosis. Look at that, aren't they? And we laugh at them, but listen, very, very, very often the pain goes away. When you say, mind our overmatter, well, you can explain it like that if you like. But right doctor couldn't do it, with all the skill of medicine. Oh, dear man, God, we didn't get it. He couldn't help it. If I began to tell you it would take hours to hear the tricks, many of them on tricks, many of them clever tricks, but most of them not so, as planted on these poor people by the old descendants of the witch men from Africa who still exist all through those islands of oblivion.
Well, I tell you, I don't understand them. But I tell you, when you sit down on Wednesday morning and you look around and you see the Chinaman and you see the Indians and you see the African and you see the European One in Christ sitting around the Lord's table, proclaiming the Lord's death, you know that there is someone who understands, there is someone who can bear them with cause of love. And so, I'm going to give you one or two stories from three different races that I've seen with these eyes of mine. There was a Chinaman who came from Canton, South China.
He spoke the hacker dialect. He landed in the West Indies to work on the sugar estate for five years. Contract, his name is Yuan Shao. Five years he labored under the sun for a pittance. For a pittance. Never forget that. And I would say this to some of you because you don't understand it. Half this world today works far harder than you've ever dreamt of working and yet practically nothing for it. For a pittance. And they live as poverty lives. You know that half this world goes to bed very hungry of nothing. And they say capitalism has never done a thing for us.
They come with their machinery, they come and run these escapes, and they come and do all these things for what they do. And lastly, capitalism overseas has underpaid its workers, and communism comes and drops the seeds of calm off. We all ought to share a share of the world's goods and they settle for it. That's why there's communism in Cuba, because three-quarters of Cuba are at poverty level, and capitalism never got stinging for them. Poor old Castro, who wasn't a communist, to be miserable, is now being led by the net flashes right deeper and deeper into the arms of the Russian Guard. And it's clavowing those lands to the ground where poverty raised.
Well, you and Cao came and worked for five years and he saved every cent he could, every cent he could, put it into the kitchen. And the moment he had finished his five years, they said, would you like to go back to China? He said, no. And they said, do you want to stay here? He said, yes. And he bought it for you good. And a trader, a Chinese trader, was half. He went round tapping at the little Chinese doors and calling at the house. and he began to sell groceries and began to sell cotton goods. Slowly he made his money until at last he could fill a little store up and be a storekeeper. When first we met Yun Shao, he was the storekeeper on a river bank, with a nice little store selling groceries for the Mughals and the river people.
And he was running his little store happily, contentedly. But whether he the mind knew nothing of the gospel. It was a Saturday night, and he, shall, this Saturday night, was serving behind the counter, when all of a sudden he heard some people singing. And some people had got out of a boat, and they were having a little meeting right opposite his store. He didn't mind that. And as the meeting went on, all of a sudden a Negro dropped out, and he said, We have the best book in the world, and we are selling a few coffees tonight, if anyone would like one for half a dollar.
half a dollar for the best book in the world, God's holy book. William Charles put his hand under the counter, he pulled out half a dollar and he called you a little Negro boy, said, here boy, get a book. A boy ran out and brought the book and into his hands for the first time they placed the book, this book, the Bible. If you believe this, it was six or seven weeks before those men came back for the next open-air meeting, and an amazing thing happened. As they were finishing their meetings, he lifted the lid of his canva, came through the lid, crossed down the steps, went up to one of these men and said, Could you come and talk to me about the book?
Three of them, all Negroes, River Negroes, went in, They passed through the living in his castle into the back room and they saw a little table there and on the table was the open book and it was opened at Matthew's Gospel. They sat down and Yun Xiao asked those men an amazing question. Now here's the question we asked. He said, I read in this book about the kingdom of God. Can you tell me how to get into the kingdom of God? He said, I know how I left China my homeland. I know how I signed my papers, how I became a citizen of this country.
I know how I got into this country. But he said, how can I get into God's country and God's peace? Now, I want some of you girls and boys to look at me fairly straight. If a Chinaman from South China looked into your face in this America, and ask you, how could I get into the kingdom of God? Could you take your Bible and show him how he could get into the kingdom of God? Could you? Could you pick up the book, turn the pages, and show him how he could get into the kingdom of God?
Could you? Now be honest, could you? Three Negroes, as they sat round the table, picked up the book, and they turned him, they told, make a free scripture. They turned him first to Matthew five, verse twenty. Accept your righteousness, exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees. You can in no wise enter the kingdom of God. And from that verse they taught you in chowder. They said, you can never get into God's kingdom by anything that you can do and you confess. It's not at work. There's any man you say.
You can never get into the kingdom of God by trying, by doing, by paying, by any self-effort. and they hammered away at the impossibility of ever being a Christian in the kingdom of God by anything that you can do. Oh, how relieved that. Did you believe me all over your love country when I speak to people who are not Christians and I say to them, Are you saved? And they say, Well, I'm trying the best I can. You're not a Christian. Oh, I'm trying to be a Christian. I am as good as anybody else. I go to church. I share a deal with everybody. I try to live a decent life.
And immediately let's talk about themselves. And these three neutrals truck of that with this verse. You will never get into the kingdom of God by what you do. Then they took the Bible and they turned to Matthew eighteen, verse three. And they read this. except she be converted and become a little children, we can ennure the advent of the kingdom of God. And they said that there must be the coming to a turn still, the right about turn, and a good march in a new direction, a right about turn, a conversion. And they said there must be a real change, a right about turn.
Then they turned to the third scripture, which I hope you guessed John three, those great verses between three and five. If such a man be born again, he cannot see, cannot hear, cannot touch, cannot taste, cannot enter into the kingdom of God. You must be born again. And do you know with those three scriptures, you and Chow looked into their faces and he said, well, could I get into the kingdom of God that way? And they said, yes. And they told this Shaman that if he would just open his life to the coming of a Savior, who had loved him, who had come down to die for him, who had satisfied every claim of God for him.
He could receive that Savior and God's days. If you receive my son as Savior, I receive you into my family and make you my child in the kingdom of God by a new birth. Jesus, could I do that now? And with that simple childlike eagerness of a service-seeking soul, he looks around at their faces and they say, Yes, you can. And I've seen this thought on that river bank where you shall melt down the free river Negro, and receive Jesus Christ as his own enduring Savior, and was received into God's family. You know, he used to get into his canoe, and he used to go up to the meetings in the little hall, away up the river.
And one day he started them with these words. He said, I'm reading the book. And he said, I read in the book that those who enter the kingdom of God were baptized. I've been reading about them being baptized. He says they believed the message and they were baptized. He said, I want to be baptized as a Christian. And those men in that little assembly of Christians looked at him and they said, Mr. Winshaw, we'll have to talk over that matter. And as they talked it over, they were troubled. Back in that business he had a license to sell liquor. Back in that business on Saturday night he used to sell out a lot of liquor and Amy's fighting or difficulty or problem up and down the river bank could be traced back to his liquor department.
Grocery, press, liquor. They went to him and they told him the whole story. He said, Mr. Ewing, shall all the trouble in our district in the way of fights is due to drunkenness and drinking, and you handle strong drink, you sell rum and liquor, and we really couldn't advise you to take the step at public bachelors and the wonders you are costing you, and confess that you are dead to the old life and alive to a new life if you go on with that. You know, he just missed it and started. He had never thought of it. He had never grinned to his mind that there was anything wrong.
He said, Leave me time, I'll think it over, I'll read the book. And he came back with a proposition himself. He came back and looked into their faces. He said, I've made my decision. He said, I'm closing my liquor store. And they said, What are you going to do? Well, he said, I've decided to close this. And he said, On the day I'm that tight, I'm going to have an orderly order. And they said, What? Is he going to go, have he? Can I prove it? He wouldn't. He said, Do you mean that? He said, Yes. Now come down that river today, you've only to mention the name of you and your child. And on the day of his baptism, and you'll see eyes listening, I'm going to talk of it today.
That Sunday morning when you and child get down up to the waist in the waters of that river, And the cruise all the way out in the river, and hundreds of them were flanks around. He said, Bring them out! Bring them out! And they brought out Basha after Basha, one or two battles, and they poured the rum and stuff into the old muddy waters of the river, with people all around going like this. And he never saw Raman's son drink again. He was baptized in those muddy waters under confession of his faith as a believer. And you know this, God honored him.
He grew to be the wealthiest Chinese merchant in the capital city. His eight lovely children grew up to love Jesus Christ. Three of them left for China, and I had the joy of commending the last two Rachel and Charles who went, one as an evangelist, and the one another as a nurse to China. Far as I know that in China, somewhere in that, behind that bamboo curtain at this moment, every one of those children was out into life to be in every verse of life a witness for Jesus Christ. And old June's child and his life radiated The love and peace and joy of the Lord and everything they have, the more God honours them and prospers them laid at the feet of Jesus Christ.
They shall come, said Jesus. They shall come from the east. You're going to meet a lot of Chinese in heaven. No, they shall come from the West, and I'm going to pick out an Indian. And the one that came to my mind today was an Indian called the Nazi. He was a Hindu, and he was really a high-caste-German man. And this Hindu named the Nazi used to live in a big village, and I used to go and preach there with some of the youngsters on a Saturday night. And as we took our stand with a big lantern in these still tropical evenings, the people used to gather round in the darkness, they used to bring out delicate mats and sit down, their broken spoons and sit down.
And generally speaking, it is the new grave to the nearest to you. And then the Chinese would be a little farther away, but the East Indians would always linger off in the shadows. They knew they were Mohammedans or Hindus. They didn't like to come too near to this Christian meeting that they used to listen in the darkness. May I pause here for a moment? I want to say, I don't know how you can do this in America, but I want to tell you, if some of you young people in your home assemblage would band yourself together as a young open-air band to spread the gospel and go out to the gospel from the home chapel, I cannot whether it is into a new district as a whole of children's meeting on a summer's evening, get permission at the riverside or the park or on the stands to gather twenty children around you or to catch an audience.
It would make you... I'm going to tell you this. The evangelists cannot make and develop the law. They are not produced in our Bibles. The boys and girls who go amongst the people, and perhaps in all the encampment there, and look in the great big pools of fish to catch. Those are the ones that God will entrust with children, send them to the ends of the earth in the holy church. Those Saturday night meetings were wonderful, and I little realized that he used to listen Saturday after Saturday, a slimy spindium, the nasties.
He often told me the story, he said, that Saturday night you took the prodigal son, simply told the story. A certain man had two sons and the younger of them came to his father and said, Give me the portion of goods that falleth to me, and he defied it unto them, his living. When he had got all, he gathered it together, turned his back on his father and home, and went to a far country and wasted his substance and right of living, when he had spent all, he began to be in one. No man gave to him, and he went to a citizen of that far country and began to walk in a pig-yard, and fame would fill his belly with the husks of the slime beneath.
As you know, the Marcy listening back there in the shadows realized that as far as the living God was concerned, the living God, he was a prodigal. He had turned away from the living God, and he didn't get anything from his life. He went home that night and told his wife, he said, I'm going for instruction. And how well we remember how he crept in and took a backseat in our instruction car. And how he used to linger there, and then he came to another meeting, and then to another meeting, until one day we actually saw him around the Lord's table, sticking on a backseat behind the fellowship line, right at the back, watching, watching.
And we knew that something had happened in that man's life. We knew that God's grace was working and had brought something, but he hadn't taken his stand yet. Little did I realize, for I tell you, only slowly you learned these experiences, the battle that was raging in that heart. I don't know the battles that raging your heart, young people, when you go and lay your head upon your pillow at the end of the day, as you've listened to messages, but I do know that my Lord knows all about it. I'm so glad about that. He knows the battles, the secrets, the longings, the strivings, the resentments, the resistance in your life.
This man had them all. He told me long after, he said, I used to sit there on a Sunday morning and I used to see the bread broken and I used to see the wine poured out and passing round that company. And he said, in my heart I knew that Jesus had died for me and his blood had been shed for me. And he said, I was a secret believer in the secret of my heart. But he said, again and again as I watched, I said, I can't do it. I can't do it. And you would never guess what he couldn't do. The one thing he couldn't do was this. I couldn't take a plate from another man.
and take from that place some bread and pass it to another. I couldn't take a cup from another hand and put it to my lips and pass it to another. Blamins never do. They're high cost. They always carry their little plate and their little cup. They never use each other. It's one of the most uncrewed things in a bloomin's eye to use somebody else's speaking or drinking, faith or dis. I can't do this. One Sunday morning came, and there was a visiting missionary, an old man and his daughter Marjorie.
She died in the West Indies a few years ago of Typhoid fever. Why we don't know, we're not known, but there's a gap in the ranks. But this old missionary and his daughter Marjorie came to this centre and they were there with these believers for this Sunday. And as it came to the time for the breaking of bread, this old missionary got up. Gave thanks for the prayer. He broke it and put it on the sore plate. This is it from the table. He went and served it steadily. And the bread went all round that company. And the last place to come back to the table he took, and he went to his daughter and served his daughter, Martin.
And then taking the plate, he himself took the bed and put it to his lips and put it back on the table. And he didn't know that the Nazi, the Brahmin, yeah, it could be true. But the White Saha had sold everybody. And his own daughter asked, Serve them, you're going to be, and keep not of the day. Those were the days just before India got her freedom. Those were the days of the old colonial outlook and power. Those were the days when an Indian would step off the sidewalk to let the white men go by.
Those were the days when he would not and say, Salam, Sahih. And to speak to the West, So had everybody. And his own daughter laughed, and himself laughed. His head went down. And as he watched the same thing happening, then the cuffs went down. Again his head went down, and the meeting came to its close, and the people drinking each other and went out into the sunshine. But a man with his head down, and his shoulders He would even would sob to remain in his seat.
And it was a Negro brother, a Negro brother, who went up to him, one of the elders of that assembly. And this Negro elder went up to him and sitting by his side, put his arm around his shoulder and said, Don't cuddle with you, can I help you? And all he got was this sobbing man sobbing for a moment or two, and then all of a sudden it burst out. I give in. I give in. And then, rising to his seat and leaving the Negro behind, he walked right down the middle aisle towards the table. And he looked down at the table with his head on the edge of the table, talking. And he said, I give in.
I give in, Jesus. I give in. He went home. That Sunday told his wife that afternoon she packed her few things and left to join her parents and left him all alone. He came and told me and said, Brother Vanarsen, what the Lord has done for you and can do for your wife? I said, you can get food at the kitchen here. I said, if we can help you in any way we will.
A few days after which he came back, he said, I'm going to do what you've done. I can never forget that's hiding that couple. But I stepped down into the waters, the tears rolling down my cheek. Couldn't help it. Oh, I said, God, what have you done? Go in your way by love and grace and to the Not only saving them as individuals, but remarking them as a married couple. Today one of the sweetest homes is the Narciss Home. It's still a modern waffle trash house. But that industrious little East Indian with his family growing up around him and his family now loving the Lord shows the beauty and grace of the Lord his life.
They shall come, said Jesus. They shall come. If Americans stay outside the door and businesses stay outside the door, with all that advantages, they shall come. They shall come to the uttermost part. Every seat will be filled. Ten thousand times, ten thousand, thousands of thousands from every tribe and kindred and tongue and people, they shall come. I shall get satisfaction from the pooties of Calgary. Thank you. Oh, God. I'll spend just a moment in giving you one more little picture.
I dare not leave my negro bedroom out. They wouldn't forgive me if I did. Not only the Chinese, not only the Indians, but... children of Africa, the children of Ham, we call them, who have been so amazingly stretching out their hands toward God during the last hundred years of missionary endeavor. A simple child like people of the past. They were never, never built by God to walk the concrete streets of Chicago with ties on and put ever lays round the corner competing with their wife, neighbor.
America faces our own sin. The Virginie's roof, what she told, they took the night free. The old concern of West Africa living should call it shackled like this. They came from their homes, roost to the coast, holding the cross to walk on your sugar and cotton plantations. Now you roost with the nation what you shoot, so-so. They were made for the forest, their dark skins for the sunshine, not the cold northern cities. Poor Negro. And all through our islands, you can see, right down the South American coast, the children of Anne.
You're one that I learnt to love so much, was Robert Jefferson. Brother Jeffers stood higher than myself by about six inches, a tall, fine Negro. He was a fisherman. He had an actual boat and would go out fishing, sometimes with success and sometimes with failure. He had a little plot of land and he used to rent some land and go and get crops, rice and corn and things, hard working. And I tell you you should see him on Sunday coming into the meeting. Brother Jesser with his kind old handsome negro face and his keen eyes.
He would take his seat. Always he had his big Bible under his arm. He had his old text on his nose. Jesser. And I could see him getting up, Wheelfield, sing him, eighty-two, my brothers and sisters. Ten thousand, ten thousand thanksgivings, I bring my Lord Jesus to be. And as they sang, you'd see the old head going thanks. Ten thousand, ten thousand thanksgivings, I bring my Lord Jesus to be. He was an elder in the church, a simple negro in a village.
One day his life died and he was left alone in the little trash hut that he lived in with its earth floor, its few little articles of furniture. The years passed and the hair turned white and the King that the old new girl got like leather crinkled on his jaws, and around here a handsome old man with the beauty of the Lord upon him. But somehow the strength was going, and he sold his boat, he couldn't fish any longer. And his little capital dwindled until at last, at last she was brought to poverty level, as so many are, no provision for old age.
wife had gone. His sisters used to take food to him. The last time I saw, Brother Jeffers, I was in that village for two or three weeks' work, and for the first time my wife was able to come and spend the three weeks in that village, and we were working together. One morning I said, after breakfast, we'll go out to the back down of the village and we'll see old brother Jeffers. And so we walked out, and as we walked through the streets we were greeting different ones and calling into little huts and shouting out to people, and people were greeting, glad to see you back again.
Oh, nice to see you, Mrs. with you. So friendly, so kind. We moved out laughing, talking to see old brother Jeffers. We reached this hut and I called our brother's mother for you there. And a very weak voice said, Yes, who is it? I said, It's Brother Wildish, come to see you. Do you remember me? Oh, yes, dear Brother Wildish, come in. We pushed our way into a hut. There was the old man lying on the floor on his bed.
Not a bedstead, but just right down on the floor, one or two boards and a little old mattress on top, and lying on the mattress was old Brother Jethys, and by his side a blanket on the one side that he could pull over him, and on the other side was his cyborg and the same old sex, and a little tiny tin lamp, or a lamp. And I looked round, and it seemed as if everything else had gone, he had had to sell his few possessions one by one. And I'd heard the sisters were going in with a quick meal for him every day, couldn't eat much.
He was an old, old man, but they cared for him. And he couldn't stay around much and get off his dirty lay there, awaiting the end of the journey when he would be released from the old earthly tabernacle and go home. He took out his frail hand to greet us, and he met my wife. He looked down at the pathetic poverty of it all. But he was happy. But then, the Lord was there. And then, Jeff, if you feel lonely, he said, well, sometimes, but the Lord never leaves me.
But Brother Jeff says, you can't get out these days till the saints come to see you much. Well, he says, they're busy, they have to work so much, not very often. Sisters bring something for me to eat, it's all I need. And there was the shine of the grace and love of the Lord in that old ashram. And I remember standing there deeply touched. I realized I would never see him again. We were leaving him a day or two. And I said, Brother Jeff, is there anything we could give you, anything you want? Something we'd like to get for you? Something we would make you comfortable? Something, anything that you could think of?
No, you said there's not a thing. Not a thing we ask for. It'd be nice. And I looked down, and I noticed that his eyes had turned toward the little tin lamp. And I just wondered why. And I don't know what made me do it to this moment, but I stooped down and picked up the little tin lamp and shook it, and it was empty. But it's not as yet as you haven't gotten the oil in your lamp. No, he said, I haven't. I said, but don't you need some? And who did you like some? Well, he said, I would like some, yes.
Well, he said, haven't you had me just lately? He said, no, he said, I haven't any money now, you know. And he said, I haven't had any for a few days. Well, he said, I'll see, but you'll get some, I said. You need it. You ought to have a light here. Well, he said, I would be thankful if I could have some, because he said, the rats do trouble me at night. I said, but what? What do you mean? How do they trouble you? Oh, he said, they come round. He said, in the night, he said, they... He said, they know my toes. But I look at his toes. And the nails and end of his toes, all known by the rat.
I'm strong, but this man broke. I said, Brother Jesus, why didn't you tell someone? Oh, he said, I don't want to bother anyone. He said, the Lord's so good to me. I don't need anything, but if you could send me a little oil, I would be blessed. Perhaps we'll send some at once. We prayed with him. We left. My wife and I had come through that village chattering, talking, greeting old friends. But we walked very quietly back. We were done. But we walked up the old West House steps, and we went toward the bedroom instinctively.
We didn't talk to each other. We opened the door and we went inside and closed the door and closed the cell down in our deep but a peg. And so, boy. Oh, Lord. You've given us everything all our life. Fruits and clothing and lust-wise and nothing. And then I have to ask you for a thing you think so good. There's a dying old African. He doesn't want a thing in the world. He's satisfied. Thank you.