Well, tonight we are going to meet the third boy in Hebrews eleven and verse seven. By faith nor being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house. by the which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith. Now, Noah is a remarkable character. As you know, his great-grandfather, Enoch, was taken to heaven without dying. And his grandfather was the oldest man that ever lived on the face of the earth. And Nor, I suppose, for six hundred years of his life, from his birth until the time of the flood, saw that wonderful old grandfather moving around and ever bearing that amazing name, after he is dead, it shall come. Nor lived in days when prophecy was spoken about I suppose Methuselah told Lamech and Lamech told Noor and Noor told his three kids, the Lord's coming to execute judgment. This world isn't going on forever as you see it around you. Now, in the past two characters we have given a little title to the boys. The first boy, Abel, recalled the boy who was right, because it says so, by faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was right, he was righteous. God testifying of his gifts, and by it he being dead yet speaketh. When we turned to Enoch, the second boy, and we met him, we called him the boy who pleased God. It says so in the verse, By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death and was not found, because God had translated him. For before his translation he had this testimony that he pleased God. And the Father of Spirits, the great headmaster of the School of Faith, looks down over the boys and girls in the School of Faith. And he says, Abel, the boy who was right. And we were taught the lesson how to get right with God, how we can stand accepted in Christ on the ground of the substitutionary work of the cross. And as this next boy, Enoch, comes up, the boy who pleased God. We see he pleased God by a walk of faith. And he knew, he knew for years, that he was going to be translated. Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God. And God had told him, and he believed and trusted God, and by faith he was, translated, that he should not see death. Now I'm going to call Noah the boy who prepared. If I faced Noah, being warned of God that things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared, the boy who prepared. Now I don't want to get on a nasty subject and get out of favor with some of you young friends of mine. But you know, I went to school and we didn't call them grades. When I was a boy, they called them forms. And after I moved into the preparatory at the age of about five, I became a little first former, and then a second former, and then I moved up into the third form. And for the first time in my life, I met something at school that I never liked. You haven't guessed what it is yet. We called it, I don't know what you call it, we called it prep. They let the tiny kids off. Oh, yes, the kindergarten and the first and second don't bother. They close their books and close their desk and go home and forget all about school. But when we got into the third, we had to carry our pile of books home and we had prep, preparation. And mother used to say to me at supper, Harold, have you got much prep? And I would say far too much, mother. We've got geography and we've got a bit of history and a bit of English. And, oh, mother, we've got some lines. You know, I don't think they do it today. I hope they don't do it in American schools. But we had to learn lines. English literature, Shakespeare and all these great men. And I hated the lines. I had a brain that wouldn't take them in, and I used to try and stand before a looking-glass and repeat the lines, but I couldn't remember them. But do you know there was one hope when I got to school, and it was this. There were thirty boys in our big third form. And when the lines came up, the master would look round and he would pick out some boy to say those lines. And I always could sort of hide behind the thirties somewhere. But my bad day came and I can see him looking round the class and he says, Now wildish too, will you say your lines? And I got up and stammered and stuttered and I didn't know them. And so he put me in the detention class and I had to try and struggle with those lines. I tried again and again. I even had to go into the Saturday class and I remember I couldn't go out and play football because of those wretched lines. And there were these miserable little beggars in detention trying to get these horrible lines into our minds. Words that meant nothing that was supposed to be English literature in all its wonder. At last I got them in and got them out, and today if you get on those lines, they're just the lines I can't forget. If you start me off on them, I shall go on with them. To be or not to be, that is the question. whether it is nobler in the mind to suffer the pangs and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take up arms against a sea of trouble and by opposing end them. Now, what does that mean to a little English kid when it wasn't even explained to him what the words meant? Now, I wonder if you are prepared. I want to tell you the whole of your life should be a preparation for the things that lie ahead. This morning when we left off we faced the fact that the Lord Jesus is coming back again soon. If I read my Bible right, at any moment Jesus could come descending into the air, and the Holy Spirit of God, the builder of the church, could present a church to Christ without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, His true mystic body, His bride. Then he's going to come back into world events. After Armageddon, his feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives. He will fight for his ancient people. He will set up his kingdom and thank God at last. The knowledge of the Lord shall cover the earth, as waters cover the sea, and Jesus shall reign. These are the things to come. And your preparation is now... by faith nor being warned of God moved with fear prepared. Now I don't think that fear is a wrong thing. As I turn the pages of my Bible I find that there is a godly fear. Fear is an instinct that God has put right inside each one of us, and it's that which sees and weighs up the danger, and we fear because we see the reality of it, and we make provision to meet it. If you ever met a fearless person, you'll find very, very often a fearless person is a thoughtless person. Let me tell you that those that get the great highest awards for courage on the battlefield will tell you in the secret place. Oh, I was dreadfully afraid, but the situation came, and I just went into it, and that's where their courage lies. They faced the issue. They were afraid, but they went into it, and they accomplished it. And never forget the Bible teaches that fear, the fear of the Lord, is the beginning of wisdom. Now when our lovely Lord was talking, again and again he used words like this, I'll quote them from Luke twelve, verse four. I say unto you, my friends, be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will forewarn you of whom ye shall fear. Fear him which after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell. Yea, I say unto you, fear him. And our Lord, in all his lovely teaching, spoke less about the great heaven that he wanted to lift souls to, than in solemn warning about hell. He said, I don't want men and women to perish, and because he saw the awful reality of it, he went to the cross of shame that we might not perish, that we might have everlasting life. Now I believe that right through the Christian's life there should be fear. You say perfect love casts out fear. A Christian should never be afraid. Just a moment. It seems to me that fear of hell or fear of judgment might make me turn to flee for refuge to the arms of the Son of God. But once the lover's arms around you endure his, then you look into his face and a new fear born of love takes its place. You say, Lord, I'm afraid of what? I'm afraid that I might fail you or grieve you, that I might not enter into my high calling, that I might not apprehend the reason for which I was apprehended by Christ Jesus. And this is a godly fear that makes great lives for God in the school of God. Now, thy faith, Noah, being warned of God. Do you know, Noah is one of the great illustrations that Jesus Christ took up from the Old Testament to picture his own life. When he was going to talk about his death upon the cross, he said, As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up. When he wanted to talk about his death and burial for three days in the heart of the earth, he said, as Jonah was three days in the great fish's belly, even so must the Son of Man be three days in the heart of the earth. As he wanted to talk of his coming again, he picked out Noah. As it was in the days of Noah, so should it be in the days of the coming of the Son of Man. Nor's day led up to the crisis of judgment by a flood. And the days possibly that we live in are rapidly leading to the end of the age. And all the signs that speak of the end of the age are increasing around us in our world. And God is going to step into world politics in the coming back of Christ the second time he's going to appear apart from sin to complete salvation. First of his church. the end of Israel, and then solve the problems of the nations, for he must reign. Now, have you ever studied Noor's Day? Have you ever looked at it? I knew the light is going, but some of you might like to turn back and see what I am looking at on the platform. I have turned to Genesis chapter six. And as I read down these verses I see again and again a world thousands of years ago facing the flood. And I say, Oh dear, oh dear, Harold Wildish, this seems to picture the world in which you were born and you live in our boasted twentieth century. As it was in the days of Nor, so should it be in the days of the coming of the Son of Man. Verse one, Genesis six, it came to pass when men began to multiply on the face of the earth. Multiplication of population. I live in a little island which is only a hundred and fifty miles long and fifty or sixty miles across. It's just ninety miles south of Cuba, but we've got almost two million people living in Jamaica. and every Jamaican's thinking about packing his bag and going somewhere else. You know how the Puerto Ricans have come pouring into New York City. Why? Because their land is so crowded. In our trip last year around the world we found in the Far East and the Near East the same story. Teaming multitudes in Singapore Island, Hong Kong loaded with people Masses everywhere saying, where can we go on the face of the earth? Do you know, population is one of the biggest problems of our day, and it's one of the many signs of the end of the age. Now verse two, the sons of God saw the daughters of men, but they were fair, and they took the wives of all which they chose. Now I don't want to be unkind, but believe me, the picture before the flood is a picture of selfish men allowing the God-given gift of sex to be out of all proportion. You can't look around our modern world today to see how disgustingly this is true today. all the right, honest values are being broken down. And today, largely men resist every striving of God's Spirit, and they live with men in the flesh, and they live for the selfish lust of the lawment. I have traveled and worked in South America Through Brazil, I know many of those countries and the Guyana lands, and I tell you I've been shocked and shamed to see in a remote village as many as four hundred people coming together to see a film. Negroes, East Indians, Chinese, Amerindians. Some of them so poor that they can't get money to get in to see the film, and at the door they have a great big bucket of water, and they take two eggs to let a person in instead of money, and they put the eggs in the water to see if they float or not, to test them. And when they get inside, what do they see? They see the latest productions of Hollywood, an Elstreet, and the great civilized nations. And they sit there, the simple natives, and they watch the lavish, selfish, luxurious, sexual, half-naked way of life of the great Christian nations. And they wound up. Oh, no, I'm not going to sidetrack on this subject, but I tell you in nineteen sixty-four, in our boasted twentieth century, you can see the days of gnaw reflected throughout the populations that are multiplying on the face of the earth. The next thing, verse three, the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh, yet his day shall be a hundred and twenty years. The Spirit of God dethroned. Flesh taking over, agon, selfish flesh taking over. and in his tremendous ministry of striving with the mind and heart and conscience of men, resisted until conscience no longer works. It's a conscience feared. We do what we like. God looks down from heaven his dwelling place today upon the children of men, and he sees the grieved, quenched, Holy Spirit going on with his quiet work of gathering out from every tribe and kindred and tongue and people. A glorious church, a called-out company that will share Christ's life and affections in a unique way. that the Spirit of God today is being quenched. Then you'll notice in the next verse, Thor, that they were record-breakers. My word! There were giants in those days, and after that the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and their children unto them. The same became mighty men of old, men of renown. Every record was being broken in those old days, and so it is today. When I was a boy at school, I thought I was doing very well when I could run a mile in five minutes. Today they're doing it in three minutes and fifty-six seconds. I thought if I could do the hundred meter dash in about Twelve or thirteen seconds, I was a record-breaker, but today they've got it under ten seconds. And in every realm today you can see them breaking records. Yes, we are living in a scientific world. We know how to do things. We know how to produce the goods. And as it was in the days of Nor, so shall it be in the days of the coming of the Son of Man. Now the next verse, five pictures, the attitude of men. God saw the wickedness of man was great in the earth, that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was evil continually. It repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth. It grieved him to his heart. And the Lord said, I will destroy whom I have created from the face of the earth man and beast and creeping thing, fowls of the air, for it repenteth me that I have made them. I don't know what you think of the world and whether you agree with me that it's not getting better. Oh, it's getting cleverer. We are not living in the ramshackle old houses and the old tub concrete barbs. We are not using the old buggies. Times have changed and we boast in our civilization that can make the world more comfortable. But the man is not getting better. I am going to say something that will surprise you. But if you will get a hundred men off Main Street in any American city tonight and bring them here and line them up, I'll guarantee we could quickly prove that they are not better men spiritually or morally than their grandfathers and their great-grandfathers were in the past century. Wickedness is increasing, and the trouble today with wickedness is this. Men are getting clever and cleverer able to conceal their wickedness and get away with it. You can go around the world today and you can find in government circles, in tax offices, in police, if you lift the lid, seething iniquity and selfishness. And I tell you, God looks down and He knows the secrets of the hearts of men. He knows how they put His Son on a cross, and largely the world is keeping Him on that cross. And they're saying, we will not have this man to reign over you. And we live in a world that is ripening for God's judgment. Now look at verse eleven in that chapter six of Genesis. The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. I don't know what you think of nineteen sixty-four, but Greeks are fighting Turks in Cyprus, and Negroes are fighting East Indians in British Guyana, and blacks are fighting whites in South America, and you can go round the world and see civil war and strife and nation-hating nation. And these little tiny things are just the outbreaks in a cold war that rages in radio, that rages in commerce, that rages in every sphere of men today. And men today only keep from turning to a hot war because of fear of the awful consequences. Khrushchev doesn't want a hot war. America doesn't want a hot war. They'll go all the way to try and stop it. Why? Because one finger on a button in Moscow or Washington could start a heliocast that could destroy all life on the face of our planet. And Jesus, nineteen hundred years ago, said, Except those closing days are shortened, no flesh shall be saved. And so we see a world filled with violence. Now I look today in my thinking for an illustration to bring to you of a world that's not getting better. Forgive me if I offend anyone's feelings by bringing this illustration to you, but I was in Great Britain in the year nineteen forty one when the early days of the last war were turning to heat and Goring the great Luftwaffe leader had found that he must win the air space over the Channel and over Great Britain if he was going to conquer that little island, the British Isles. And these eyes that are looking at you tonight actually saw the Battle of Britain raging along the South Coast. I shall never forget one day on the Sussex Downs, seeing something like a hundred and sixty Hinkler bombers, and weaving above them and around them Measuresmith fighters protecting them, and they were coming for their first daylight strike to London. We saw the Spitfires and the Hurricanes going up to meet them. We saw the dog sights beginning to break out in the sky. We saw the great Armada beginning to break up and scatter into groups, and then we saw the casualties of this battle beginning to come down. And you would see the little white parachutes break out, and you would see men dangling on the parachute coming down onto the Sussex coast, the Sussex Downs. And as you know, as they landed, they were captured. And perhaps you don't know that they were interviewed, if they were well enough, immediately asked questions. They were asked what part of the German Air Force they belonged to, what squadron, they were asked what base they had flown from, they were questioned about important vital secrets. But amongst the many questions they were asked, they were asked this. Have you got a religious faith? Now these boys dropping out of the fight where Hitler's trained the finest young Germans of a race that wanted to be a master race, that wanted to be pure-blooded, that wanted to rule the world. They were boys between nineteen and twenty-four, none were over twenty-four. And these young pilots made their answers, and here are the answers recorded in press at that time. Fisci said, religious faith? No, I just believe in nature. They believed in nature and worshipped nature, and in their Hitler youth camps. They used to sit round the fires, and they used to say grace at their meals, and what do you think their grace was? They used to say, our hearts to the girls, our souls to the devil, our lives for Hitler, heal. That was their grace. And fifty said, we worship nature. Forty said, well, we worship a person, Hitler. He's our everything. And ten, the remaining ten, said, well, I'm an atheist. I don't worship a thing, don't believe a thing as far as religion or God is concerned. And out of one hundred, not one said they believed in the Christian religion, Jesus Christ, the Savior, and these boys came from the land of Martin Luther, the land where the Great Reformation was born that spread through Europe and blessed the world and reached America. That shows you how far Germany has gone back in the days of nineteen thirty nine. And I want to tell you you can find practically through the world today a drifting away from the great revealed truth of God and faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, that men stand accepted right with God, pleasing God. Men who are prepared to meet God. The average man you meet in America today isn't prepared to meet God. You say to him, are you saved? He said, well, I go to church six or seven times a year. I send the kids to Sunday school. I didn't ask you that. Are you saved? Well, I've always done the best I could. I didn't ask you that. Are you saved by God's grace? Well, I think I'll have a sporting chance. I've never done anyone any harm. And the average man you meet is bypassing God's way of salvation, and they're not prepared to meet God and not prepared to face eternity. Oh, I plead with you face these facts. Do you know this? Nor found grace. He tasted of the grace of God. It says it there in the chapter six, verse eight. Nor found grace in the eyes of the Lord. And he made provision for his wife and his sons and their wives. And in obedience he made that great big ark. You may laugh at the story, but it's a proof fact. There are the marks of the flood in many parts of the world today, this awful devastation. And God brought eight souls through the flood onto a cleansed earth to re-people it. I don't think we half have entered into what the flood meant. It's a remarkable fact that before the flood men lived to six, seven, eight, nine hundred years and more. After the flood life was shortened. The conditions of life were changed by this tremendous happening when the flood of waters above the firmament was loosed and the waters below were loosed and the flood came. And somehow without those waters up there, through which the sun softly shined, and there was no rain before the flood, a dew watered the face of the earth. There was a change, and the amazing change shortened human life. And today, if you're lucky, you'll live for seventy years, three-score years and ten. And if, by reason of strength, If your father and mother were sound in body and gave you a good heritage, you might live to eighty. And if it's after eighty, it's a few years extra till the call comes into eternity. And may I say to you kids and you younger ones, face the fact if your mom and dad passed on to you a sound mind and a strong body and a godly heritage, you've got one of the greatest gifts in life. And I pray, God, that you will preserve that heritage to your children. If you are going to smoke and smoke and become a chain smoker and let that little tiny thing master you, ten chances to one, they say, you may get in the modern world with all its lack of purified air in our cities, cancer of the land. And if you're a drinker, you may easily shorten your life, and every drink will put a nail in your coffin a little earlier. It's a wonderful thing to be able to pass on to your children a sound constitution and to let them face life free from those things that shorten life. And now, found grace in the sight of the Lord, and looking up into the Lord's face moved with fear. Obediently he prepared the ark to the saving of his household. Now I want to, in my closing moment, before we come up to the film, to give you three remarkable things that happened in No's Day, and I see them happening all around me in the world in which I live. The first is this. God gave to them in No's Day plenty of time. It reveals to me the patience of God. plenty of time. The long suffering of God waited in the days of Noah. Waited, waited, waited. And Noah's grandfather had a name. After he is dead, it shall come. And God had revealed to Enoch that the flood wouldn't come till Methuselah died. And when Methuselah reached the extraordinary age of nine hundred and sixty-nine, the flood came. It was the year he died, and the flood came. And God waited. I tell you, fifteen years ago, I heard my dear father, who, thank God, is in heaven a businessman. I heard him round the fire in the old home. that I remember talking about these sacred scriptures that I hold in my hand. He knew this book. He loved this book. He used to turn the pages and study Daniel and Ezekiel and Joel and Isaiah and Jeremiah. He knew those little Jewish prophets and all that they predicted about the future. And fifty years ago, As an intelligent, almost twelve-year-old schoolboy, I listened and listened and listened in the face of a world that said, Professor Kuei, every day and in every way we are getting better. And at the beginning of our twentieth century, they said we've got the Palace of Peace at the Hague. We'll never have war again. And my father said, no, things will wax worse and worse. Nation shall rise against nation, perplexity, men's hearts fading them for fear, for the things coming on the earth. And as he spoke of the Jews going back to Palestine from their dispersion, and as he spoke of their Arab foes around them, and as he spoke of the power of the North, and the kings of the East, and the reviving Roman Empire, and the little nations being born fifty years ago, Dad's gone. But I've seen the headlines of the papers recording these happenings. And today in nineteen sixty-four the stage is set for the age-end happenings. And at any moment Jesus could come to remove his church. He had not appointed his church to Roth, but for salvation. And the one thing that hinders the flood tide of evil coming to its peak is just this, the presence of the Holy Spirit of God, still gathering out from every tribe and kindred that amazing, called-out company that belongs to Christ. God's given you plenty of time, as in No's Day. Oh, I say, is it possible, under the big trees, in the church bowl at Yosemite, God brought you here because... He wanted you, sir, and you, madam, to face the claims of God and eternity in your life. He wanted you to taste salvation that perhaps your grandmother enjoyed and your parents loved, but you've neglected. And tonight God's giving you another opportunity to get right with God and do it now. Get right with God. He tells you how. All come to Christ who shed his blood. And at the cross, get right with God. You can have pardon. You can have a risen Christ as your Savior to step out into a new life. And tonight, in long patience, God waits, waits, as He waited in No's Day for you to come to Christ to close in with God's offer of mercy. Then, secondly, I notice in No's Day, God gave them plenty of warnings. I call this God's pleading. Do you realize that Noah was not only an ark builder, but the Bible says Noah was a preacher of righteousness. And all through those years he built the ark, he preached that which was right. He stood amongst men and says, God must judge sin, get right with God. Taste of God's grace, and he pleaded with them. But they were careless. They laughed. There were scoffers in those days. And so it is today. You've had plenty of warning. You know, I come to you as a guest in America visiting your great country that I admire and love so much. I come from a little island in the West Indies, and I want to tell you one of the things that impresses me the most the moment I land in America is this. Any day, any night, any Sunday, I can take my little transistor out of my bag that I carry with me, and in a hotel room or wherever I'm staying, I can begin to turn the dial, and not, not one, not two, not three, not four, but six, seven, eight, ten channels I can pick up in a radius of a hundred miles. And as I swing from politics to jazz dancing to this to that to the other, Again and again I hear a voice of a throbbing old preacher of the word of God. It may be the old tired voice of a fuller from Los Angeles. It may be the staccato voice of a Billy Graham from Carolina. It may be a doctor to harm from Michigan. I care not where it comes from, but your country is blanketed with the gospel. You're without excuse. There isn't a man who can stand and look at me and say, I never heard the gospel, you've heard it from childhood days. If I preached the gospel to you tonight and told you of Christ dying for your sin and being buried and being raised again, and I said, is that right? You'd say, of course it's right. Heard it since I was a little kid. And if I went wrong in my gospel, you could put me right. And yet you're not saved. You're not right with God. You're not prepared. You haven't done your prep. Oh, I plead with you to prepare. Prepare to meet thy God, and prepare to face eternity. The last thing is, I noticed that God gave plenty of room. A great big ark, it was so big, I am amazed at its size, I just wonder where it would fit into the structure of this place here at the Church Bowl. Do you know it was three hundred qubits long? It was fifty wide, it was thirty high, and that is four hundred and fifty feet long, seventy feet wide, forty feet high, room, I would say, for thousands. And eight souls stepped in, when God, who in the ark, through an open door, said, Come thou and all thy house inside the ark, and they stepped into the presence of God, and God closed the door, and the flood came. And today God is in Christ reconciling the world unto himself. And God is saying, Jesus is the door. I am the door by me if any man enter in. Jesus is the ark. You can be in Christ and there's no judgment. And I go to people and I say, are you in Christ? And they say, no, I'm in such and such a church. Thank God for that. I'm not speaking against churches. We wouldn't dare to do that. We respect every man's religion. But are you in Christ? Have you come? fled for refuge to the arms of the Son of God, brought into the place of safety, restfully knowing that your sins were dealt with on the Cruel Cross, and that Jesus, whose pardoned your sin will give you power to live a new life. I say to you, as we think of Nor and stop here, are you willing to say, this night shall not pass as I look at the film, this night shall not pass before I put my head on my pillow down in the camp or in the cabin, But I'll say, oh God, if you gave your Son Jesus Christ to be my Savior, and if he satisfied every holy claim you have, and comes and says, give me thy heart, I died for you, I'll respond to his love and say, Lord Jesus, I will trust thee, trust thee with my soul. Guilty, lost and helpless, thou canst make me whole. I know there's a weary heart here, I know there's a stirring of conscience there. I know that there's a man and woman who thinks of Granny and Mother's face, and you think of the God of your fathers, and how far you've strayed away. Your carelessness, your selfishness, and it's not brought satisfaction. And tonight, deep down in your heart, you know that you can find that peace that Jesus made at the cross, that peace that passes all understanding. You could find your rest in Christ, knowing your sins forgiven, knowing he will give power for you to live as a child of God. And I ask you, will you come by faith to him, just as I am, without one plea, but that thy blood was shed for me? and that thou bid'st me come to thee. O Lamb of God, I come. Will you mean it? It's quite possible there's someone who sat in the great big cow palace and heard Billy Graham preach, and you remember how those meetings closed with that simple just as I am. Or in his recent campaign in L.A., you went amongst the mighty crowds to the Colosseum, and you listened him preach, and they moved into just as I am. And you saw people going to give their lives to Christ, and you didn't. Oh, friend, God brought you here to this lovely spot. Tonight, just there under the trees, you could look into the face of the Savior and whisper it, just as I am, without one plea.