God's judgment is inevitable for those who stray from Him, using the examples of Israel and Judah from Hosea 12 to illustrate this point. It highlights how both nations, despite their different levels of outward devotion, ultimately fell away from God due to deceit, idolatry, and self-reliance, leading to divine punishment. The core lesson is that God takes notice of every detail and holds individuals accountable for their actions, emphasizing the importance of returning to Him with love, mercy, and righteousness. The message concludes by urging listeners to remain in God's will and avoid straying from His plan, lest they face His judgment.
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Thank you, Mr. Sneberger. We always enjoy the singing. Mr. Sneberger has got that knack of making us all sing whether we can sing or we can't sing. We do sing when he's leading us. We thank God for that. We're going to read from the Prophet Hosea, chapter twelve, chapter twelve of the Prophet Hosea, immediately after Daniel. I think I'll read it from the revised version.
You follow along and I'll read it from, not the revised, from the Amplified. You just follow along in your Bible and I'll read from the Amplified. Ephraim herds and feeds on the wind and pursues the parching east wind. Every day he increases lies and violence. and a covenant is made with Assyria and oil is carried to Egypt. The Lord has also a controversy, a pleading contention with Judah, and will punish Jacob by visiting upon him according to his ways. According to his doings will he recompense him.
He took his brother by the heel in their mother's womb, and in the strength of his manhood he contended and had power with God. Yes, he had power over the angel of the Lord and prevailed. He wept and sought his favor. He met him in Bethel, and there God spoke with him and threw him with us. Even the Lord, the God of hosts, the name of him who spoke with Jacob is the Lord. Therefore return to your God, hold fast to love and mercy and righteousness and justice, and wait expectantly for your God continually. Like Canaan, Israel whose ideals have sunk to those of Canaan.
He's a stranger, the balances of deceit are in his hands. He loves to oppress and defraud. Ephraim has said, Ah, but I have become rich. I have gained for myself wealth. All my prophets shall bring on me no iniquity that should be sin. but all his prophets will never offset nor suffice to expiate the guilt which he has incurred. But I, who am the Lord your God, from when you became a nation in the land of Egypt, will yet make you to dwell in tents as in the days of the appointed and solemn feasts of tabernacles.
I have also spoken to you by the prophets, and I have multiplied visions for you, and I have appealed to you through parables acted out by the prophets. If Gilead is given over to idolatry, they should come to naught and be mere waste. If they insult God by sacrificing bullocks to Gilgal on heathen altars, their altars should be as heaps in the furrows of the fields. Jacob fled into the open country of Aram, or Paran Aram, And there Israel served for a wife, and for a wife he herded sheep. And by a prophet the Lord brought Israel out of Egypt, and by a prophet was Israel preserved.
Ephraim has provoked most bitter anger. Therefore shall his blood guilt be left upon him, and his disgrace and reproach shall his Lord return upon him. May God bless the reading of his own precious words. So we seek God's blessing. Blessed Lord, we thank you for thy word once more. As we take this Old Testament scripture somewhat obscure, somewhat neglected by all of us, we ask the Lord that thou speak to our hearts through it. And if, Lord, there should be one among us tonight, and thou knowest all of our hearts, if there should be one among us, Lord, that is not following closely to thee.
Speak to that one. Speak to our hearts, Lord. None of us are following as closely as we should. We pray, Lord, that God bring us back tonight. And if there's one in our midst who knows thee not as Savior, we pray that this might be the hour of decision and that tonight we might hear the voice of the Son of God and hearing His voice find life eternal. We seek thy blessing in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Well, we're getting very near to the end of this prophecy of Hosea. There's a great deal of sameness about it.
Week by week we have been studying these chapters and the Prophet is repeating and repeating and repeating. God's warning that judgment is coming. As I have said several times, if he prophesied, as I understand, sixty years, it's obvious that he would repeat many things. Therefore we get the same entreating and the same pleading week after week to Israel to come back to God before the day of judgment falls. But we're getting near the end of the book and we're getting near the day of judgment. Truly judgment fell upon Israel and God, the king of Assyria, came up and they were all carried away.
God allowed them to be carried away into captivity. into Assyria, never to come back. We don't know where they are today. One day they will be restored. God's judgment fell upon Israel. But there was another nation south, the other part of the children of Israel, Judah. Judah and Benjamin, those two tribes were in the south. The other ten tribes in the north broke away from them. And judgment fell upon Judah. Tonight we shall see what God saved not only to Syria, Israel, but also to Judah. And God's judgment fell upon Judah. Hundred or more years, more than a hundred years later, God's judgment fell upon Judah.
And they were carried away into captivity, into Babylon. We cannot trifle with God. We'll see that tonight. God takes notice of detail. And God knows our hearts. The twelfth chapter, Ephraim feedeth upon wind and followeth out to the east wind. He daily increases lies and desolation. They do make a covenant with the Assyrians and all is carried into Egypt. God's ancient people were out of touch with God. They were out of agreement with the divine purpose and out of tune with God's divine standard.
They had set up their own standards. They had their own plans, and they neglected and rejected God and rejected His prophets. And all down through these hundreds of years now, when they had been in the land, they had drifted further and further and further away from God. And now they were very near the end of the story, but still God pleads to the very end. Our wonderfully merciful and kind God is. When we wander from Him, I know there are those in this room tonight, I am sure there are those in this room tonight, that could tell a long story. Every one of us could tell a story of God's grace and mercy. When we have wandered from Him, sometimes we have spent days, sometimes months, sometimes years away from Him, going our way, trading our path.
And yet in His infinite mercy and love, He draws us back to Himself. And here we are found on this Lord's Day evening, of November, nineteen sixty-eight, sitting in this place with Christian people. Thank God for that. If we had our deserts, if God had treated us according to our ways, we wouldn't be here tonight. But he's been merciful with us. And so tonight when we look at the question of Israel and the question of Judah, away from God, we only see a picture of ourselves. We only read the story of our own hearts, rebellious, wanting our own way, wandering from him.
There was a state of rebellion against the Most High, and fellowship with God was broken. And these chapters now, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, are the last warnings of this great prophet, Osel. Now he turns in verse two to Judah. He says, but God has a controversy with Judah as well. And he will punish Jacob according to his ways, according to his doings will he recompense him. We all know the story of how judgment fell upon Judah. We know how they were taken away into captivity, but somehow God looks upon them and a slightly different way to what he did Israel.
Israel were blatant. King Jeroboam built those two golden calves and said, These be thy gods that brought thee up out of Egypt, and they worshiped golden calves. Now whilst all this idolatry was going on in the north, down in the south, the temple was still in existence. God was worshipped. in the way he should be worshipped. They were backsliding times and then revival times, but the temple was still there and the old Mosaic ritual was going on and God's plan was being carried out in some measure in Jerusalem. And so God looked a little more favorably upon Judah than he did upon Israel, who blatantly defied God and built idols and worshipped idols.
But God said he has a controversy with Judah. I suppose it would be possible tonight to split this up this way. It just struck me then as I was thinking, as I was looking at my Bible, that it may be possible to split this up tonight and say that perhaps here, in a sense, Israel would represent a sinner unsaved, a sinner who is defying God and wandering away from God in his sin and his own sin. way in his own plan. And Judah, perhaps the backsliding Christian, who still in some measure has the desire to be in the house of God, still has the temple of God in their midst and yet wandering from him.
And maybe we have the two classes here tonight. Who knows? The Lord knows every one and knows every one of our hearts. And he knows who's who here tonight. God says he's got a controversy with Jacob. And I am very, very interested to notice how God takes notice of details in your life and mine. Little things that happen that we forget, but God doesn't forget. A record is kept. And God has written in the divine book, in this wonderful book, the Bible, God has written this strange little incident.
Verse three about Jacob. He took his brother by the heel in the womb. Strange thing deriving him. Twins were born. These two boys were born. And Esau was born a little before Jacob. And the very first thing Jacob did as he came into this world was to stretch his hand and grab over the heel of Esau. You say, well, what difference does that make? Two little boys being born into this world didn't know what they were doing, and one little boy grabbed the other one and said, oh, what difference does that make? How God looked down from heaven at that birth. And the midwives there recorded what took place.
How but God had it written in his book. And he refers to it here after all those hundreds of years. There's a little tiny baby boy just coming into the world and breathing for the first time in this world, stretched out his hand and grabbed his brother's heel. What's it mean? God said to Rebekah, he said, two nations are inside of you. Two nations. The one is going to fight the other. And the younger is going to rule over the elder. God said that before they were born. And he refers to it that he took by the heel, his brother by the heel in the womb.
Jacob was a deceiver. Esau was the firstborn. Might have been minutes, I don't know how long. One was born before the other. But Esau was the firstborn. But God had said before they were born, the elder shall serve the younger. And this remarkable little incident took place that he stretched out his hand and caught his brother by the hill, and that signified right in those early days that somehow or the other of that hand of Jacob was going to defeat that brother Esau. And somehow, although he didn't get into the world first, Jacob, he said, I'm going to get the first right.
I'm going to have the privilege and the honor of the birthright. I didn't make it, but I'm going to make it. And he stretched out his hand. He didn't know what he was doing, but in God's purposes, this was taking place. I wonder if we look back over our own lives. We can think of incidents, things that have happened, sometimes little insignificant things, and yet when you look back over life, there are things that meant a lot. God has ways and means of speaking to us sometimes in the smallest little ways he can speak and it means such a lot. God has purpose and plan in your life and mine and we have to keep in touch with him and keep in line with him so that we can do his will.
I have always been very concerned all through life to keep in the will of God. to keep in the will of God. Many years ago God sent my wife and me to Greece. We were absolutely positive and sure that God sent us to Greece. When I had been there some six years, the company for which I was working, their contract expired and They were going back to England.
And then it was the Greek government asked me, would I stay in Greece and work for the Greek government? And you know, we were torn because all our friends in England were saying, come home. And all our friends in Greece were saying, stay here. And our big trouble was, Lord, what do you want us to do? Now, we're sure you brought us here. And we don't want to step. It would have been nice to go home, you know. On the other hand, it was very nice to stay. And we said, Lord, tell us what to do. Tell us what to do. I didn't intend to tell you this tonight, but perhaps there's a purpose in this, I don't know. And we asked the Lord, what do you want us to do?
Do you want us to stay in Greece? Do you want us to go home? And I used to say to the bitter, if the Lord would write it on the sky, stay in this land. Or write it on the sky, go home. Wouldn't it be easy? But God doesn't do it that way. And yet let me tell you, beloved, he does do it that way. He does do it that way. Early in December, nineteen thirty-seven, the Greek commander of the aircraft factory in which I was working, a colonel in the Greek Air Force, he called me. He said, your company is going and I've got a message, he said, from the Air Ministry, they want you to stay.
I said, what do you mean, me to stay? Stay without my English company. He said, oh, yes. I said, well, that would raise a lot of doubts in my mind. You see, I said, I've been here six years, and in six years you've had five revolutions. And every time you have a revolution, you change the government. They had one again this year, you see. And I said, who's going to pay my salary when there's a revolution? He said, there won't be any more revolutions. Don't worry about that. You'll get your salary all right. We now have General Metaxas. He was the dictator and prime minister. He's in and we're six. Don't worry. Then I went to my own general manager and asked him what he thought about it.
He said, well, I'll tell you what, whether he said a few and some more fellows do the same thing. and if you decide to stay here then the company will go because they can manage without the company but the company wants to stay he said your loyalty should be to the company who pay your salary I said I understand that and that night I wrote the letter and told the man I couldn't do it but when he read the letter he folded it up and he said put it back in your pocket and write me another letter and say you will stay and so Here is the pool. Stay or go. Stay or go. What can you do? And little things, you know, God indicates, as I'm saying here from this verse, God indicates by little things.
I wrote the second letter and said that we were torn our lot with a company, but he said to me, Well, this is not the end of it. You'll hear some more. You're trying to save your company. You can't save them. They're going. I said, Well, We've reached this stage many times and they've been there thirteen years and they've always renewed this contract. The end of the year came and of the thirteen Britishers who were there, we were managing the factory there, of the thirteen nine already had got home for Christmas Day and there were just four of us left out of the thirteen, just a few left of the whole crowd and New Year's Day came.
We always had a holiday on New Year's Day. And the second of January, I went to work. And the man called me. We were clearing up. Just a four of us left there to clear it up. And when I went to the man, he said, now, this Colonel, he said, now then, you tried to save your company. You can't save them. They're gone. I've just come down from the Air Minister, and the Air Minister sends his greetings to you, and he says, he wants you to stay. And he gives you ten days to make up your mind. He said, you must get a letter in by the tenth of January to say you'll stay or you'll go. And he said, we're not asking you this time. I was chief planning engineer up till then.
He said, we're not asking you to stay in that capacity. We want you to stay as the plant manager. The man who was the manager, they said, he's not staying definitely, but we want you to take over the management of this factory. That was an opportunity for me at my age, and I wasn't yet forty, and to take over a plant and manage it, I thought it would be a very wonderful opportunity, but still I wanted God's will. And remember, he gave us ten days, and the problem was to stay or go. And we went home that night and sat down to read the Scripture as we did every night, and we were reading through the Bible. And our chapter that night was Jeremiah forty-two, and this is what we read.
Then all the captains of the forces and Johanon, the son of Korea, and Jezanar, the son of Hosea, and all the people from the least to the greatest, came near and said unto Jeremiah the prophet, Let we beseech thee our supplication be accepted before thee, and pray for us unto the Lord thy God, even for all this remnant. For we are left but a few of many, as thine eyes do behold. That the Lord thy God may show us the way wherein we may go. and the thing that we may do. Then Jeremiah the prophet said unto them, I have heard you. Behold, I will pray unto the Lord your God according to your words. And it should come to pass that whatsoever thing the Lord shall answer you, I will declare it unto you.
I will keep nothing back from you. Then they said to Jeremiah, The Lord, be a true and faithful witness between us, if we do not even according to all things for the which the Lord thy God shall send thee to us. whether it be good or whether it be evil, we will obey the voice of the Lord our God, to whom you send us, that it may be well with us when we obey the voice of the Lord our God. And it came to pass, listen, it came to pass after ten days that the word of the Lord came unto Jeremiah. And he called Johannes the Son of Korea, and all the captains of the forces that were with him, and all the people, from least to the greatest, and said unto them, Thus saith the Lord, the God of Israel, unto whom he sent me to present your supplication before him, if ye will still abide in this land, I'll build you up and not pull you down.
I will plant you and not pluck you up. I thought that was a wonderful answer. We were asking, Lord, shall we stay in this land or shall we leave? and I had ten days to make the decision, and the answer came after ten days, if you'll still abide, I'll build you up and not pluck you down. And that night we sat down and wrote a letter, as a result of which the contract was drawn up, and I became the manager, Technikos Liefendis, as the technical manager of the Greek state airplane factory in Athens. The only airplane factory in Greece at that time still is, I believe, And God blessed us exceedingly.
But why do I tell you this story? Because I believe it's possible to get out of line with God's will. And that's what worried me. That's what worried me. All our friends said, come home, but we said, no, we'll do what the Lord wants us to do. We had many problems after. Four years after that, we had to leave Greece at two hours' notice and left all we had in the world. The enemy was only a hundred miles away from Athens and we had to run and they took us to Egypt. We got out just in time, just in time, having lost everything, but still the experience of hearing the voice of God and having it right on the sky. To me, he wrote it on the sky. Stay in this land. I wonder if I'm speaking.
I never intended to say this tonight. I wonder if I'm speaking to somebody here tonight and you're out of line with God's plan for you. Out of line. You're somewhere where he didn't intend you to be. You've made some relationship, signed some contract, got into a position where a Christian should not be. I wonder, I don't know. Jacob had his own way of doing things, and God said, I've got my way. He had power over the angel and prevailed.
You remember how Jacob wrestled with the angel? And in his weakness, he won. He couldn't. fight the angel but he clung on to him and clung on to him and clung on to him and finally God touched his thigh and Jacob's thigh was out of joint and as a cripple walking for the rest of his life on a stick he bowed to God's plan for him and God said Jacob I'll change your very name up till now you've been a supplanter you cheated your brother you cheated your father and your mother You've treated your father-in-law, and you've come up to this stage, cheating, supplanting, twisting everybody.
Jacob, I'm going to make your prince. You've got power with God. Listen, friend, you might have got a long way from God tonight. Do you know you can still have power with God? And if in the darkness God is wrestling with you as he wrestled with Jacob, he says, that the sun went down and he was left alone wrestling with this angel. And perhaps in your life it's like that and the sun's gone down and you're wrestling. Just hang on to God. He hung on to him and finally God touched him and broke him. And what happened? The sun rose. Twenty years there had been sunset. But when he first left home and put those stones down to make his bed the first night, the twenty-eighth chapter, It says the sun went down and the sun didn't rise till twenty years after it says the sun rose on Jacob.
Twenty years twisting and cheating people and trying to work out his own ways and plans and schemes to get where he was. And God, all these years later, reminds them about Jacob. He made supplication unto him. He found him in Bethel and there he spake with him. And then God says this, and I love this verse, verse five, even the Lord God of hosts, the Lord, Jehovah that is, capital letters, Jehovah is his memorial. What does that mean? Jehovah is his memorial. They tell us today that God is dead. So let's put the gravestone up there. What's the memorial?
Let's go back to it. Exodus chapter three. Exodus chapter three. And here God chooses Moses and tells him he's going to send him to bring the children of Israel up out of Egypt. And Moses said, who am I that I should go? And he says the second time, he had many excuses, Moses. The first was, who am I? Why should I go? And the next was, when I go to the children of Israel, what shall I say to them? This brings us to chapter three, verse thirteen. Moses said to God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers has sent me unto you, and they shall say to me, What is his name?
What shall I say unto them? And God said unto Moses, I am that I am. And he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I am, has sent me unto you. And God said, Moreover unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, the Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob has sent me unto you. This is my name forever. This is my name forever. And this is my memorial. This is my memorial unto all generations. In chapter five of our Verse five of Hosea chapter twelve says, Even the Lord God of hosts, the Lord Jehovah is his memorial.
What's the memorial for God? Why, his very name, the dignity of that name, Jehovah, the Lord of hosts. I am the eternally existing God of Jacob. And they say God is dead. And here's the memorial, the eternally existing one. I am. God's not dead. And so the prophet Hosea reminds us of God's gracious dealings with his wayward servant Jacob to bring him where he was. And God told Jacob, I'm going to bless you and your seed, and I've given you this land.
I gave it to Abraham, to Isaac. I give it to you forever. I'm afraid Mr. Nasser out there in Egypt has a big lesson to learn yet, for God has given that land to Jacob forever. And no Nasser, and when God's time comes, if it is God's time now, no Nasser and nobody else can take it from them, because God has given it to them forever. And God, his memorial, is I am the Jehovah, the living God. So he talks about Jacob. Now he goes back in verse seven to Israel.
And he describes Israel. And if ever you've got a description of a Jew, you get it in this verse. Let's read it. He is a merchant. He is a merchant. Notice how I read it in this Amplified? Verse eight, it says, Verse seven, like Canaan, like Canaan, Israel whose ideals have sunk to those of Canaan is a traitor. I understand this word merchant in the Hebrew was, he's a Canaanite, a traitor.
To me this is a wonderful description of a Jew. He says, is a merchant and the balances of deceit is in his hand and he loveth to oppress. Who can trade like a Jew? Who can bargain like a Jew? Who can balance like a Jew and put some deceit in one side and get unfair and make some money out of nothing? They can do it. And you know it says in Deuteronomy eight and I'm amazed at it. It says, The Lord thy God, he it is that giveth thee power to get wealth. Don't worry, God's done that. He it is that giveth thee power to get wealth. God has given that power to the Jew.
And he's a traitor. And the balance is of deceit in his hand. And he's talking about Ephraim. Ephraim says, verse eight, I've become rich. I've found me out substance in all my labors. They shall find none iniquity in me. He was a toaster like Jacob, you see. He was a deceiver like Jacob. He had an unjust balance. And somehow his coffers were filled. His stores were filled. And he'd become rich. And he has much substance. He says, ah, but I'm perfectly honest now.
There's no iniquity in me. No wonder he says in the earlier chapters, Ephraim has gray hairs and doesn't know it. Ephraim was a deceiver and a twister like Jacob and a sinner, but he wouldn't admit it. He would not admit it. One of the hardest things in the world is to get a man or a woman to admit that they're sinners. I have found as I have dealt with men and women down through life and talked them about salvation, the last thing in the world they want to say is I am a sinner. The first thing they do when you talk to them about salvation, the first thing is to tell you how good they are.
Every time they tell you what good parents they had. How they've been to church, members of some church far away. You know, I'm amazed with this in Florida. You talk to anybody about salvation in Florida. And do you know what they tell you? Well, I got my membership in a church up in, I don't know, Michigan or Massachusetts. That's where my membership is. You say, well, how long since you went there? Well, I've been living down here fifteen years. Well, where did you go to church now? Well, my membership's up there in Massachusetts. And, you know, a lot of people want to keep their membership in Massachusetts and live in Florida. How you can do that, I don't know. I can't see it. I can't see it.
I feel I'm a member of the local church where God has put me. He put me there. But that's why in Florida, You find a lot of people that are disconnected from anything to do with the Lord. They don't want to be part of it, you know. They don't want any responsibility. They want to keep out of it and say, well, my membership's a way up in the north. What good it can do for them, I don't know. And Ephraim, he found himself... a long way from God that he wouldn't admit it.
Maybe there's someone here like that tonight that you've got a membership and you used to go to the house of God and you used to be interested in the things of God. Maybe that you're really saved born again but you're so far away from him tonight you don't know where you are. I can talk like this when there are strangers there that I don't know and never met before. Maybe God is speaking to our hearts tonight to bring us back to him. I tell you, can't go on forever this way. Judgment is coming. He says to these people, I have also spoken by the prophets and I have multiplied visions and used similitudes by the ministry of the prophets.
Is there iniquity in Gilead? Has the prophets bring their message? Is there iniquity? Yes, he says, surely they are vanity. They sacrificed bullocks in Gilgal. Yea, their altars are heaps in the furrows of the fields. They had many altars, many altars, but they were altars to idols. Today we have many churches. We have much religion, many altars. But how much have we got of the real true worship of God today? So many are like Ephraim, worshiping their riches, worshiping their substance, and the labors of their hand.
And so the Lord says of this Laodicean age in Revelation three, you're rich and increased with goods, and you know not that you're wretched and naked and miserable and poor and blind. That's the picture of the church today, and that was the picture of Ephraim in that day, just before judgment came. And we live in a few hours before the day of judgment. I believe that judgment is so near. I believe the coming of the Lord for his saints is so near that judgment is just around the corner tomorrow. Oh, how we should plead with men to come back to God. God gives one little bright hue here in verse...
He says, I am the Lord thy God from the land of Egypt. That's to say, from the time when He took them by the hand in Egypt to bring them out, He says, I've been the Lord your God from the land of Egypt. And I will yet make thee to dwell in tabernacles as in the days of the solemn feast. The feast of tabernacles was the great day of rejoicing, an eight-day feast. And the final day of the feast was the great day of rejoicing. And he looks on, God, and he says to Israel, the time is coming when you're yet dwelling tabernacles.
Despite all their backslidings, God looks down over the ages. And although they've gone into captivity, God is going to gather them up and bring them to himself. And by and by the Messiah whom they rejected, he's going to reign in Jerusalem. And there's going to be a great time of feasting, the feast of tabernacles, all over again in that wonderful day of rejoicing, coming after the tribulation, the way in the years that lie ahead. Just a glimpse God gives us of the future. Then he goes back to Jacob, verse twelve. Jacob fled into the country of Syria and Israel served for a wife and for a wife he kept sheep. And by a prophet the Lord brought Israel out of Egypt.
And by a prophet was he preserved. He goes back to the story of Jacob. He fled into the country of Syria because of his iniquity. because of the way he cheated his brother. He had to run away because of his sin. And down there he labored and worked and worked for a wife, and God gave him a wife. Then he says that God led him, Israel, you know the story went down into Egypt, and by a prophet by Moses he brought them up out of Egypt, and by a prophet he preserved and kept them. He's just reminding Ephraim of his wondrous grace, his wondrous dealings, down through the years, Now his final word is this.
Ephraim provoked him to anger most bitterly. Therefore shall he leave his blood upon him, and his reproach shall his Lord return unto him. There was no hope for Ephraim. They were steeped in their sin and iniquity, and finally judgment fell. Oh, I do trust that God is speaking of some heart here tonight. It may be, I don't know who it is. Perhaps to my heart, to bring us back to himself, that what's left of our lives might be used for his glory and his honor. And that before the day of judgment comes upon this Christ-rejecting world in which we live, we might be witnesses for him and for his glory.
May he lead us and guide us. for His own namesake. Amen. I think we're just time to sing a couple of verses. Number two hundred and twenty-five. Two hundred and twenty-five. A hymn I haven't heard sung in this chapel. I don't know whether I ever heard it sung in Florida, but I remember singing it many, many years ago. It's a hymn for the sinner, but it's a hymn for the backslider, too. It's a hymn for you and for me to come back to the Lord Jesus tonight. Come to the Savior now. He gently calleth thee. In true repentance, bow before him, bend a knee.
He waiteth to bestow salvation, peace and love. True joy on earth below. A home in heaven above. Come, come. Come follow the music and I'm sure you'll pick up the tune quickly. Now, begin the poetry.
We take it to the south, and we take it out of our way. Just say, and now gaze on that glancing down The world has lived for God is so yet to die.
After the world has been lost, his living shall be found. Amen. Come to the Saviour, now he suffered all for thee, and in his merits thou hast an unfailing plea. No vain excuses, frame, for feelings do not stay. None who to Jesus came were ever turned away the last verse.