Featured Preacher
|
"If the Bible Be Lost"Dr. Bob Smith |
|
“And Hilkiah the high priest said unto Shaphan the scribe, I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord. And Hilkiah gave the book to Shaphan, and he read it.” (II Kings 22:8)
“Go ye, inquire of the Lord for me, and for the people, and for all Judah, concerning the words of this book that is found: for great is the wrath of the Lord that is kindled against us, because our fathers have not hearkened unto the words of this book, to do according unto all that which is written concerning us.” (II Kings 22:13) The book of the Law He’s talking about is their Bible. It was all of the revelation of God that they had at that time. It was their Bible and it was lost! The king said, “Now that we’ve found it, let’s find out what it says,” “...for great is the wrath of the Lord that is kindled against us, because our fathers have not hearkened unto the words of this book, to do according unto all that which is written concerning us.” I want to speak on this subject: If the Bible Should Be Lost. One of the most horrible days in Israel’s history is recorded in the book of Judges. Twice in the book of Judges in chapter 17 and chapter 21 this statement is made: “...every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” That’s the philosophy of the world, even in religious circles. That’s the motto today. “I’m just going to do what I think is right, what’s okay with me.” The problem with that is what we think is right is usually wrong. The other day out soulwinning I was on the parking lot of a grocery store in Arlington, Texas. Three men were walking toward me. I stopped them and said, “Gentlemen, could you help me?” “Perhaps, what do you need?” I said, “I’m lost.” “Oh, where do you want to go?” I said, “I want to go to Heaven. Can you tell me how to get to Heaven from right here?” One of them said, “You’ve got to be good.” Another one said, “Dummy, that’s not it. You’ve got to keep the Commandments.” The other one said, “Neither one of you know. You’ve got to get baptized.” None of them knew the truth, and yet each had their own opinion. They were doing that which was right in their own eyes. That’s where we are in America today, even in our fundamental, independent, premillennial, Bible believing, King James version, Baptist churches. There is a lot of talk, but we are practicing what’s right in our own mind, instead of living by the principles of the Word of God. In Nehemiah’s day after the walls were built, Ezra came with the Word of God. He stood on a pulpit made out of wood and began to read the Word of God from the beginning of day till noonday, from morning till noon, one-fourth part of the day, he read the Word of God. He took another fourth of the day for people to get right, as they began to confess their sins and cry out to God. One of the greatest revivals in Jerusalem broke out simply because of the reading of the Word of God. I’m sure it was a revival because they even got right about tithing! Luke 4 is an unusual passage of Scripture where Jesus goes into the synagogue and stands with the Word of God, and He reads from the Scripture. Then it makes this statement, “...he gave it again to the minister,...” Here in our text the Bible says the Word of God was lost, but notice where it was lost. It was lost in the house of God. We blame the liberal professors and the atheists and the infidels and in-for-hells, but God has never entrusted the Word of God to colleges or professors. He’s entrusted it to the people of God and the church of the living God. I submit to you that we have no shortage of Bibles. Truthfully, I’ve probably got 30 Bibles. I have every Bible I’ve used since I’ve been in the ministry. The Bibles I used in Bible college and pastoring for 41 years. I’ve got four or five brand new Bibles on the shelf ready to use as I wear out my latest one. I’m sure in your house you’ve got four or five Bibles. I’m sad to tell you that though we have the Bible, we are not reading it. We are not studying it. We are not practicing it. We treat it as though it is a good luck charm, something that will bless us if we will tote it around, but the truths of the Word of God must enter into our heart before God will take those truths and use them to change our life and affect our walk and our talk. The Word of God has been lost in our churches. I never dreamed that I’d live to see the day when the number one battle in Baptist churches was whether or not the Bible was the Word of God. It’s been lost in the house of the Lord, friend. I’m afraid it’s been lost in our churches and in our pulpits and in our Sunday school classes. Because it’s been lost in our churches, it’s been lost in our homes. It’s been lost in our schools and our government. Many churches and pastors and deacons and Sunday school teachers will have to answer to God for putting other things before that blessed Book in their life. You say, “How can the Bible be lost when we’ve got Bibles everywhere?” NEGLECT The first way we lose the Bible is by neglecting it. We’ve got the Book, but we don’t read it. We’ve got the Book, but we don’t study it. We make all kinds of excuses. I can’t understand how we’ve got time to do everything else we want to do, but we don’t have time for God’s Word. We’ve lost it by neglect. Because we’ve neglected its teachings on separation, worldliness has invaded our churches. It used to be that Satan would attack churches; now he’s just joining them. It used to be that the church would go out into the world with the Gospel; now the world has come into the church with carnal ungodly influence. We’ve neglected its teachings on separation, and worldliness has invaded our churches. We’ve neglected its standards of morality, and we live in a perverse, wicked, ungodly and unholy nation today. Someone said the divorce rate in America was going down. The only reason it’s going down is because people aren’t getting married anymore; they’re just living together. We have staff meeting each week and go over our visitors cards. We rejoice when two people living at the same address, a man and a woman, have the same name. As a nation we’ve neglected the Bible’s high standard of morality. So many children are being born in unwed homes. We’ve neglected the Bible’s instruction for raising a family. We try to build a home without the Bible and we have a marriage that’s a hell on earth. We raise up children that are rebels. We’ve neglected its instructions on building a family and building a home. Oh, the heartache I deal with each day. I’m dealing with things in the home that I didn’t even know existed when I started the ministry. Substitution The Bible has been lost by substitution. This is the great sin of fundamental Baptist preachers. We read all kinds of books about the Bible, written by every Tom, Dick, and Harry, but we don’t spend time in the Bible itself. We substitute a commentary for the Word of God. No man knows more about the Bible than God, Who wrote the Bible. The greatest commentary on the Word of God is the Word of God. If we’d spend time learning the Word of God and learning the types and shadows and the teachings of the Old Testament, we’d understand the doctrinal truths presented in the New Testament. We substitute newspapers and televisions and books by doctors of psychology for the greatest Book on life and marriage and home building that’s ever been written. Mutilation The Bible has been lost by mutilation. “The Bible doesn’t really mean that, does it? I think this is what it means.” We talk about the NIV. We, who believe the King James Bible is the inspired and preserved Word of God in the English language, criticize the believers and the readers of the NIV and the New American Standard and all the other latest editions. We say we believe the old King James, but we just don’t practice what we say we believe. We decide we don’t like this or that, so we don’t practice it. Where did we get this attitude? “Well, I don’t believe such-and-such is a sin to me because I’m not convicted about it.” Since when did you have to be convicted about something before it is sin? It’s not sin whether or not it bothers your conscience; it’s sin because God said not to do it. It’s sin because God said it was sin. You don’t have to be convicted. You think I can murder someone and just because I’m not convicted about it, then it’s not sin. “I’m not convicted about immorality, so it’s not sin. I’m not convicted about immodest dress, so it’s not sin.” This I hear all the time. “Oh, Preacher, I don’t believe it’s wrong for a woman to dress like a man, or to dress immodestly. I’m not at all convicted about that.” God is the One that set the standards of dress. He’s the One that set the standards of modesty and purity and holiness and God-likeness. He’s the One that tells us what carnality and worldliness is. We change the Word of God to make it fit our ideas instead of yielding our lives to its teachings, and we mutilate the precious Word of God. Growth in grace means we are not accepting only those parts of the Bible that we agree with. Growth in grace takes place when we yield ourselves to the Word of God and allow God to change us and apply those truths to our life. When we’re willing to say, “I yield to the Word of God.” I believe the Word of God is the final rule of authority in all matters of faith and practice. Just as in our judicial system we have a Supreme Court and we have no appeal beyond the Supreme Court, this Book is the Supreme Court of the Christian life. You can appeal your disagreements to it, but when the Bible states its case, then that’s final. You either obey the Bible, or you are wrong. This Book is the mind of God, the will of God, the plan of God. You can’t be right with God, or blessed by God, or in agreement with God and disagree with this Book. If the Bible be lost, moral decency will be lost with it. This Book right here is the standard of morality we are to build our society upon and pattern after. This is the standard of morality we are to build our marriages and raise our children by. This Bible, not Hollywood, should decide what is proper in dress and conduct. If the Bible is lost, moral decency is lost with it. We shouldn’t be surprised to go to a pagan land and see perversion and immorality and ungodliness as a way of life. They don’t have the Word of God. Because if the Bible is lost, moral decency will be lost with it. Here in America, we say we are a Christian nation. We say we believe the Bible is the Word of God and yet America is becoming one of the more wicked and perverted nations in the world. I never dreamed in my state of Texas we’d have to vote to define marriage. I’m glad, thank God, that 77% of the people in Texas that voted, voted for marriage to be between one man and one woman. Maine voted the same day and voted the opposite way, to recognize same sex marriages. I told our church last night, I thought it would be a good deal if we’d get all the good people in Maine and move them down to Texas, and gather all the perverts in Texas and move them to Maine. That would settle a lot of problems, wouldn’t it? If the Bible is lost, moral decency will be lost with it. We have a ready made example in our country, our public school system. When I was going to school in the public school system, we read the Bible every day. We prayed every day. Preachers came in and preached in the assemblies. Teachers would have devotion time. It wasn’t wrong then to pray at a ball game. Back in the 60’s and 70’s, we got so intelligent in America that our legislature voted Jesus and the Bible and prayer out of the classrooms. In our public schools, when the Bible and prayer went out, in came dope and sex education. Out went the Bible and prayer, and in came nudity and sensitivity training and abortion. Out went the Bible and prayer, and we forgot about discipline, dress codes, and honor. When the Bible and Christ and prayer was kicked out of the school, out of the closets came the homosexuals. Out went the Bible and prayer and since then our students have learned how to revolt and riot and push drugs. We’ve learned how to graduate students with the reading ability of a third grader, maybe. They’ve been taught that the world owes them a living, that they shouldn’t fight for their country, and they should expect a paycheck from the government every month. Paul Harvey said that our young people, seventh to twelfth grades, are in greater danger of assault in the public schools, than at any other time in their life. I’m simply saying to you, when the Bible is lost, moral decency will be lost with it. Do you wonder if it’s true? I’m going to share with you some things that I’ve read out of the newspaper for public consumption, things that happened right here in America, not in some pagan country. Dallas, 1982, a mother helped the step-father rape her twelve-year-old daughter. That’s not normal, but perverted. When the Bible is lost, moral decency will be lost with it. In Michigan a twelve-year-old girl became pregnant. There was an uproar all over the state, not over her becoming pregnant, not over her promiscuous activity, but over the fact that she wanted to have an abortion and they wouldn’t let her. Houston, 1984, a father pays a man to rape his teenage daughter while he watches. That was in the Houston Chronicle. That’s not normal except in a society where the Bible is lost. Detroit, there appeared in the paper the story of a ten-year-old girl who caught venereal disease from her twelve-year-old boyfriend. Tell me that’s normal. Folks were worried about the disease that could care less that 10 and 12-year olds were involved in sexual activity. When the Bible is lost, moral decency will be lost with it. The Dallas/Fort Worth area just within the past few years, a story appeared in the paper and was on national news about a man injecting his son with the HIV virus so he wouldn’t have to pay child support. You tell me that’s normal. Wild animals in the jungle have more concern over their little babies than that man had over his own son, or that mother had over her daughter. It’s not normal except in a society where the Bible is lost. When the Bible is lost, moral decency will be lost with it. I was driving home from a meeting one night and heard a man talking on a radio talk show. He was telling the man on the radio how he was trying to tell his twelve-year-old boy about the birds and the bees. Nervously he was trying to approach the delicate subject with some kind of sanity and reason. The twelve-year-old boy said, “Ah, Daddy, don’t bother. I’ve already been drunk on alcohol, high on dope, and I’ve already had sex.” Twelve years old. Tell me that’s normal. When the Bible is lost, moral decency will be lost with it. If the Bible is lost, the stability of the home and marriage and family will be lost with it. If the Bible is lost, the strength, order, health and happiness of the home and marriage and family will be lost with it. Oh the precious memories of growing up as a boy in the home. It is real and vivid in my mind as a five-year-old boy watching my daddy and mother walk down the aisle and get saved. Up until I was five, I never remember one time ever being in church. The Smith crowd down home didn’t go to church much. They drank, fox hunted, wolf hunted, but didn’t go to church much. It was during the World War II, close to the end of the war in December. We didn’t have air conditioning or electricity, so we were sitting out on the front porch long about dark. We lived so far out in the country we didn’t get Monday’s sunshine till Tuesday. We saw headlights on a car coming over old Sand Hill. I remember hearing Momma and Daddy say, “I wonder who is out driving?” You had to have coupons to buy gas. We saw the car come over the hill and come up to our driveway and turn into the yard. We didn’t have any grass. We cut all the grass off and swept it with brush brooms to keep the snakes and ticks out of the yard. I’ll never forget, the car door opened and it was Mr. Meredith from Meredith’s Drug Store in Will’s Point. He also operated the Western Union. He got out of the car and took his hat off. When he did that, Momma started crying, “Oh, no.” Daddy started crying. He walked up and handed them a telegram and said, “I’m sorry. Your son was killed in action.” He was my only brother. Two weeks later on a Sunday morning Daddy said, “Get up, we are going to church today.” I had never heard that before in my entire life. He got us together and we all went to church. Momma, Daddy, Dot (Dorothy, my sister) that was still at home and myself. That afternoon Daddy said, “Get ready, we are going back to church tonight.” That night I watched them get up out of their seat, Daddy, Momma, and my sister Dorothy, who was ten years old at the time, walked down the aisle and accepted Christ as Saviour. From that day until I left home, I don’t ever remember not going to church on Sunday morning, Sunday night, or Wednesday night. I never had to ask the question, “What are we doing Sunday?” I already knew. I thank God for those memories. Daddy didn’t have an education, didn’t finish the first grade, couldn’t read or write. He could write to sign his name. When he passed away, I got all of his cancelled checks. He had signed them, but somebody else wrote them out. Momma finished the seventh grade and she did all the reading in the family. Momma would read the Bible. What a memory. We didn’t have anything. We were so poor, we had to have two co-signers to spend cash. But I never knew we were poor. I never knew until they closed the country school and moved us to Will’s Point and some of the rich kids told me I was poor. We were just so happy and grateful. Later Momma developed glaucoma and didn’t get treatment for it, so she started losing her eyesight. She’d read three chapters out of the Bible every day to the family. If she missed a day, she’d read six chapters the next day. I don’t know how many times she read the Bible through. I still have her Bible. One time when I was down visiting, I noticed she was holding the Bible closer and closer. I went to the store and bought the largest giant print Bible I could buy. I took it to her and said, “Momma, I know how important the Bible is to you. I don’t want you to ever be without the Bible.” She opened it up and saw those big words and hugged me, kissed me, and thanked me. I’d love to watch her and listen to her read it. I came back a little later and she had that giant print Bible up like this. So I went to the store and bought her the Bible on tape and a tape recorder and brought it down, showed her how to use it. She was so happy. She hugged me, kissed me, and thanked me for it. About three months later I was back down at the house and saw her reading her Bible up here like this. To buy the Bible on tape was pretty expensive back then. I fussed at her and said, “Momma, what are you doing? I bought you the Bible on tape. Why are you straining your eyes? You can’t hardly see it. Why don’t you use the tapes and the tape recorder?” She started crying and said, “Don’t fuss at me, son. This is the Word of God, and as long as I can read a little bit of it, I want to read it for myself.” Momma and Daddy left me a treasure that money couldn’t buy. Oh, what Jesus and the Bible did for my home and family and for my life. As a direct result of my brother’s death, Mom and Dad got saved. Sister got saved. When I was 15 years old, I got saved. God called me to preach. How my life was changed by this Book. Do you want to know how to build a family? Here is the Book that will tell you. Do you want to know how to raise and train children? Here is a Book that will tell you. If the Bible is lost, moral decency will be lost with it. If the Bible is lost, the love, strength, joy, and the happiness of the home will be lost with it. They are saying that six out of ten marriages in America are now failing. As many are failing among Christians as among the unsaved, and the reason is we’ve lost the Word of God. Just being saved doesn’t guarantee you a good marriage. The Word of God will tell you how to build a marriage and how to be the kind of husband or wife that we ought to be, but we watch television and read the newspapers and substitute everything for the Book. We know what Dr. Houdini said about the family, but we don’t know what Jesus said. We know what Dr. Spock said about raising children, but we don’t know what the One who designed the home and miraculously gave life to those children says. The One Who caused that seed to grow in momma’s womb, the One Who gives life, the One Who has plan and purpose and direction for that young life, how are we going to find out what His will is? It’s right here! The crop duster is not going to come by and leave a stream writing in the sky to tell you the will of God. Read this Book. I don’t believe the most important thing you will do with the Bible is studying it. I believe the most important thing you’ll do with the Bible is reading it. When I sit down at the supper table, I don’t study the food. I eat it. When I read the Word of God I’m eating it. I’m taking it in. I’m taking in the material or the fuel for the Holy Spirit to do His work in my life. We want the Holy Spirit to empower us and grow us and direct us, but this is what He uses. God’s Word teaches how to train up our children in the way they should go. Not Spock’s way, or the world’s way, or Hollywood’s way, but the Bible way, the way God planned it, and we don’t train them. We are not consistent and persistent. We are all the time changing our commands. We are all the time lying, “If you do that again, I’m going to spank you,” and they do it six more times and we do nothing. We are teaching them to disobey. I’m talking about the Bible. We’ve lost the Book. We’ve lost it in our churches. We’ve lost it in our homes. We’ve lost it in our child rearing. We lost it in building a marriage. We lost it in directing our own lives. We live in one of the most disastrous times in America’s history. Immorality and perversion has never been as rampant and widespread as they are today because this Book doesn’t have the place in our lives it used to have. This Book right here would bring revival if we’d get back in it. This Bible would change our walk, our talk, our thinking. Our thinking is wrong because we don’t have God’s Word in our heart. All our thinking is based on what we’ve read in every book other than the Bible. We’ve listened to CBS and NBC and CNN and we haven’t listened to Him. The liberals have more influence on the fundamentalist’s life than God does because we listen to them more than we listen to Him. If the Bible be lost, moral decency will be lost with it. If the Bible be lost, the strength, order, and happiness of a home and a marriage will be lost with it. God never intended our marriage to be a hell on earth and a battle zone. He intended for your marriage to be a little bit of Heaven on earth, but we’ve lost the Guide Book and the Instruction Manual. I don’t ever remember my momma trying to run the home. We made the mistake of saying, “Well, somebody has got to wear the pants in the family,” and the women took it literally. They are acting like men, dressing like men. No wonder we are having problems with perversion today. No wonder our boys are effeminate and our girls are masculine. This Book will change a lot of things in America and it will sure change a lot of things in our lives, if we’ll treat it as the Word of God instead of the grocery store. When I go into the grocery store, I don’t buy everything in there, just what I need. But we carry that philosophy over to our treatment of the Bible. We don’t buy every thing, we just choose what we want, what will help us at the moment. This is the Book. May I say very plainly that you only believe that part you are practicing. Don’t tell me you believe the Bible if you know truth and you are not practicing it, and you are willfully disobeying God’s Word. Ignorant of the truth is one thing, but rebelling against it is something else. Refusing to practice it is something else. When the Bible is lost, the strength, order, health, and happiness of the home will be lost with it. Did you hear verse 13? He said, “God is judging us because of the sins of our fathers.” If you neglect the Word of God, it’s going to be your children and your grandchildren that pay the greatest price. Neglect of the Word of God is costly, and if we lose the Word of God, moral decency will be lost with it. If the Bible be lost, the strength, order, health, and happiness of the home will be lost, as well. If the Bible be lost, the way to Heaven is lost with it. If the Bible be lost, the way to Heaven is lost with it. You don’t stumble to God by accident. You don’t find God by accident. In testimonies I’ve heard people say, “Well, bless God, I found the Lord.” No, you only found Him because He found you first. He came seeking after you. You got saved because somebody gave you the truth of the Gospel, the good news of Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection for our complete and eternal and free salvation. If the Bible is lost, the way to Heaven will be lost with it. The Bible tells us that man is lost. He’s condemned already. He is without God in this world, facing eternity in Hell. The lost man has no hope outside of Jesus Christ. Jesus said, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.” (John 5:24) The first verse I ever memorized as a little boy in Sunday school was 1 John 5:12. Every word in the verse is a one syllable word. “He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.” Isn’t the Bible complicated? That one little verse of one syllable words would change your life if you would believe it. The Bible says we are saved by grace through faith. “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9) Yet the Bible says, “So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” (Romans 10:17) The Bible says, “For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” (Romans 10:13) He goes on to ask the question, “How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?” If the Bible is lost, the way to Heaven is lost with it. My family got saved because they came to a place where the Bible was preached. God used the Bible to introduce us to His Son as our Substitute and Saviour. God used the Bible to change our lives. Because of the Bible, I got to grow up in a home where never one time did alcohol ever come into our home. I saw my daddy turn a brother and an uncle away who came to visit when they were drunk. “No, you are not going to come into my house around my kids when you’ve been drinking.” The Bible did that. Before the Bible, Daddy would have been with him. The Bible changes lives. The Bible showed us the way to Heaven. Because of the Word of God, I’m saved. I have a saved wife. I have three saved children. I have three saved sons-in-law. I have nine saved grandchildren. But if the Bible is lost, the way to Heaven is lost with it. Here in America, because we’ve lost the Word of God, there are boys and girls growing up in homes that have never one time heard John 3:16. Isn’t that a tragedy? I won a young man to Christ the other day in his late teens who had never one time been to church, never one time read from the Bible, never one time said he had ever heard of John 3:16. The way to Heaven is lost with it, if the Bible is lost. We can stand here and condemn Islam, and we ought to. We condemn communism, and we ought to. We can condemn the liberals that have changed the Word of God for their profit, and we ought to. But let me tell you, the custodians of this Book in America are fundamental churches just like this one. “But I just don’t have time to read my Bible everyday.” If you read the newspaper of a large city like St. Louis every day, it is equivalent to reading the New Testament through each day. It’s all in what’s important to you. I had a man come forward in a service and said, “Preacher, pray with me that I will find time to read the Bible.” I said, “I won’t do it.” “You won’t pray with me?” “No, sir.” “Why?” “Because you are not going to find any more time. There are just 24 hours in a day. God is not going to make 24 hours and 30 minutes for you.” I said, “Now if you’ll ask me to pray with you to rearrange your schedule so you can make time for the Bible and get your priorities in line, I’ll do that.” Our thinking is flawed in reference to the Scripture. “Well, I’ll have my devotions just before I go to bed.” You are so tired that late that you fall in bed without doing it. Everything that you face in the day and need God’s wisdom for is already done for the day. Do you know what the Psalmist said? “...early will I seek thee:...” (Psalms 63:1) Do you want to get serious about the Word of God? It’s a proven fact that your ability to read and retain is greater in the morning than it is in the evening. Set your alarm clock for 30 minutes earlier. Cut out Night Line and all the late night television. Cut out the ten o’clock news. You’ve already heard it at six. Go to bed 30 minutes earlier. Get up 30 minutes earlier. Make you a pot of coffee or tea, or a cup of hot chocolate. Sit down. Put on your glasses. Turn on the light. Open your Bible and spend 15 minutes in the morning reading the Scripture. Not looking up words and doing reference checks, not using a concordance or a Bible dictionary, just spend 15 minutes every morning reading through chapters in the Bible. Read a Psalm every morning. Read a Proverb every morning. Then read a couple chapters somewhere else in the Bible every day. You can do that in 15 minutes. Then close it and get on your knees and spend 15 more minutes and ask God to apply what you’ve read to your life, and help you to live it before your family. Ask God to guide you, and bless you, and fill you, and direct you. If you’ll do that, you are about to see revival take place in your heart and your life and your family, but we don’t even spend 15 minutes in the Book a day. We don’t spend 15 minutes in prayer a day. Sometime keep a log of your prayer time. If you pray when you get up and pray when you go to bed, and pray for every meal, add it all together and you won’t have two minutes and 15 seconds worth of praying. You could probably do more than 15 minutes, but brother, nobody on their way to Heaven by the blood of Jesus can make excuse for not even taking 15 minutes out of the day to spend in the Bible, and 15 minutes in prayer, talking to the Lord. The Word of God has been lost in this country, and it’s our fault, Christians. I’m challenging you to start today, if you haven’t been already, and spend that half hour EVERY DAY in the Bible and prayer. Make a prayer list. Get you a prayer journal. Get this soulwinning binder. If you use both of them, it will change and revolutionize your life. We’ve got to get back to the Book. If we don’t get back to the Book, calling ourselves fundamental, independent Baptists is not going to change the world. We are going to be over-run by Islam, if we don’t get back to this Book. If we don’t get back to this Book, we are not going to see our family saved. If we don’t get back to this Book, we are never going to see revival again in our day. We’ll be like the Psalmist. “Lord, I heard about it with my ears. Our fathers told us how it used to be, but we’ve never seen it in our day.” If we’ll get back to the Book, we can stop hearing about it and start experiencing it again. It’s our responsibility, brother. If the Bible be lost, morality and decency will be lost. The home and family and marriage that God designed will be lost. If the Bible be lost, the Gospel message, the way to Heaven, will be lost to all those who so desperately need it. We’ve got to read it and heed it. We’ve got to get our lives in line, in obedience to this Blessed Book right here. Oh, the impending tragedy that looms before us if the Bible be lost. |
|
