That great day
every soul is going to be there.
They are all going to be there.
Every man,
woman,
boy and girl,
old and young.
All the wealthy and successful.
As well as every penniless beggar.
All the wise.
The intelligent.
The accredited.
Those with their academic excellence.
Every fool.
The morons.
The slow witted.
The powerful!
And the weak.
The honest and the deceitful.
The righteous martyr
as well as the human butchers
who murdered the saints.
The drug runners, the pimps,
and the prostitutes.
The false professors and the hypocrites.
The timid.
The fearful.
And the unbelieving.
All who love worldly life more than God.
All are going to be there.
And everybody's going to be stripped...
of everything
that flesh and wit and world
and wickedness has won for them.
Everything that your own strength of your flesh,
your own intelligence,
your own wit,
and your own wickedness and device,
and your own hard work.
All that you put together
to protect yourself and care for yourself
and insure yourself
and comfort yourself.
You won't have any of it.
You'll be brought back to ground zero
without money, without possessions,
without power.
But more awful than anything else,
as far as the unrighteous are concerned,
without Advocate.
There won't be one voice in the universe
to say one word good for you.
Not one.
You stand alone.
Everybody else is worried about himself.
No voice, no voice.
No voice to comfort.
No voice to defend.
None whatsoever.
Even if I wasn't a Christian,
if I had a hard day in this world,
and everybody gave me a beating and a kicking around and a cussing,
when I got home, I would tell my wife and she would put her arm around me
and hug me and say, "That is alright, honey. I love you.
You're alright. Don't you pay any attention to that."
There won't even be that.
None at all.
None.
Credentials will be gone.
All the honors and accolades that have been given to men,
their worldly applause,
the hands have stopped clapping.
The fine robes with the medals
and the honors and the crowns
and the stations and the badges
and the seals of authority and position!
Gone!
Naked.
Nothing left. All gone.
Everything that sets men apart
and above other men.
All that is gone.
Nothing to plead your cause.
Nothing to plead your case
before Him.
All things are open to clear with Him with whom we have to do.
He is separating.
What we are;
what we have done is crystal clear to Him.
We are going to be stripped of all of our pretenses.
Our lives will avail nothing.
The hypocritical veil
that all of us wear -
going to be stripped away.
Now don't tell me you don't have any.
You do.
Why else when you want to say something;
when you want to be real honest,
you say, "Honestly, I'm telling you honestly speaking."
"I am going to be perfectly frank."
Well, the reason you say that is
you are not always perfectly honest.
You are a little hypocritical.
All that is going to be gone.
Even those hypocrisies that you don't know about
that you have;
they are going to be gone.
That is all going to be there.
The exposure of every wicked deed
and every impious thought.
The Bible says every idle word
that men shall speak in that day
shall be brought to account.
All those slanders.
That murmuring and railing that you did
behind someone's back.
Every shameful thought.
The most impious; the most lurid
cogitations of your mind.
Every dirty word you have ever said.
Every bad deed weighed for its wickedness.
And the full punishment pronounced
for every one of them.
All comprehended and weighed
in this one awful, awful, awful final word.
"Depart from Me ye wicked."
"Get out of My sight
unto everlasting punishment."
Prepared not for mankind
but for the devil and his angels.
You like the devil.
You preferred the company of demons
than the sweet blessed communion
of the Holy Ghost.
You enjoyed them.
They aided you.
Now you can spend eternity with them
and listen to their mocking and railing
and accusations and share
their eternal everlasting punishment.
Don't get mad at me about this.
You say, "I don't like that hellfire damnation preaching."
There's too much of it in the Bible.
We've been silent about it too long.
"Depart from Me ye cursed!"
God says that!
The suffering Savior says that!
The compassionate Son of God;
He who died for men -
He says that.
"Depart from Me ye cursed
into everlasting fire."
But there is another aspect to it.
Both the sheep as well as the goats are there.
There will be the revelation of every righteous deed,
even and especially those of which
we're not aware.
Who is going to bring those out?
The Lord is...
He is going to tell us what we've done
that is right.
Now here on this earth
you have men lie to you
and give you flattering lips and brag on you.
You know they lie when they do it,
but you like to hear it.
But the fact that men have said it,
and you know that men are deceitful and flattering,
detracts from the enjoyment of it.
When the Lord says it,
you know it is so.
They will be brought out and commended by the Lord.
Every one of them.
Not one cup of water given
in the name of the Lord
shall lose its reward.
Do you think about that?
That it is utterly impossible for you
to do one right virtuous deed
on the face of this earth
and that slip by without His notice?
Very few people know how good you are.
Not too many people know about your good deeds.
But dear friend, God knows about them.
Every one of them.
Now you talk about a motivation.
You want to lay up some treasure?
You want to prepare for your retirement?
And then that greatest;
that most blessed;
that ultimate in comfort;
the sweetest sound that ears could ever hear,
"Come ye blessed of My Father."
That is what you are.
You are the blessed of My Father.
"Enter into the rest prepared..."
Not for the angels, but for you.
From the foundation of the world.
Oh dear friend, just as sure as we're sitting here
breathing God's air this morning,
you and I are going to hear
one or the other of those two words.
"Come ye blessed."
"Depart ye cursed."
So would it be that you would be ready
to meet Him?
Prepared for that great day,
whether it come while we are living
or after we are dead.
Not going to make a wit of a bit of difference.
We are going to be gathered before Him.