i want you to turn with me to a passage of scripture that everybody knows it's the easiest passage in the one that almost everyone has memorized in the new testament john 3 16. it was the first passage of scripture that i ever memorized is a boy my mother taught it to me while she was giving me a bath once and this is the passage for god so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life i want us all to say it together
for god so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life last year the number one motion picture in the united states and i suppose throughout the world that drew the largest box office was a motion picture that was made just for a small amount of money nobody ever thought it would amount to much it was based upon a simple little story and it was called love story and then last year the duke of windsor died and a headline in the british papers
said the greatest love story of the century but the greatest love story of all time is summed up in these 25 verses of 25 words that someone is called a miniature bible the gospel in a nutshell for god so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life the greatest love story ever told for god do you ever stop and think about god many people are thinking about god today because we've seen that science does not have an answer to all of our
problems we are seeing that technology cannot solve all of our problems and so thousands of young people in europe and in america are beginning to talk about god some of them are going to india to see if they can find peace in their hearts some of them are going and studying yoga and they're going into all sorts of different sects and groups searching for god some of them are going out into the desert and sitting under the stars and watching the stars have you ever wondered about god someone asked me at a university one day
can you prove god exists and i answered no i cannot put god in a test tube i cannot put god in a laboratory and say here's god how do i know that god exists all the evidence seems to indicate that he does i look up in the starry sky and i say there must be a god i look at the beautiful nature round about me and i say there must be a god i see the birth of a baby gary player was telling us yesterday how he saw the birth of his last child and he
said as i watched that i knew that there had to be a god but there's another reason deep in your heart you have a conscience and your conscience tells you there must be a god something down inside tells me there must be a god and the bible tells us that this god is the creator of all the universe in genesis 1 1 in the beginning god created the heavens and the earth now in that passage in genesis 1 there is no explanation there's no attempt to prove god it just says in the beginning god because
everybody believes in god oh but you say i've met some atheists you met some atheists that hadn't had any real trouble yet but you find a person who claims he's an atheist and let someone announce to him that he has terminal cancer and you'll say my god help me or get into a battle or get into a difficult spot he'll say my god help me i remember mr khrushchev was touring the united states and of course being the head of the communist party in the soviet union he didn't believe in god but one day he
let slip several things he quoted several passages of scripture and he called them old russian sayings and then he said may god have mercy upon you then he caught himself and he said of course i don't believe in god but you see down inside something in mr khrushchev was saying you believe in god yes all men know that there must be a god he is the creator by the word of the lord were the heavens made now the bible tells us god is a spirit god doesn't have a body like yours if god had a
body like yours he would have to be in one place at one time but god doesn't have a body like yours god is the spirit and god can be in africa he can be in asia he can be in europe he can be in america all at the same time he can be on a planet he can be on the moon at the same time i've talked to some of those astronauts that went to the moon and they told me that they knew as they went around the moon there must be a god i talked
to some of the prisoners of war from vietnam just a few days before i came on this trip i talked to those first prisoners that came back to the united states and they told us in those prison cells for eight years in vietnam they knew there was a god god is a spirit the bible tells us that god is unchanging he never changes fashions change every part of our culture and life changes and vast changes are underway throughout the world and south africa is finding that she can no longer live isolated from the rest of
the world neither can we in america and the great problems that we face are under tremendous pressure from world public opinion the jet plane modern communications have made it impossible fashions change culture changes technology changes but god never changes the bible says i am the lord god i change not the bible says there is no variableness nor shadow of turning with god god has not changed in thousands of years ten thousand times ten thousand years from now god will be the same god is from everlasting to everlasting god does not change the bible also tells
us that god is a holy god absolutely holy the bible says thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil thou canst not look on iniquity god is holy and righteous and you'll never understand god you'll never understand about god and god's dealing with us until you understand that god is absolutely pure and god is absolutely holy and god cannot even look upon sin with any approval whatsoever and then the bible tells us that god is a god of judgment in ecclesiastes 12 14 the bible says god shall bring every work into judgment with every
secret thing whether it be good or whether it be evil there's a judgment day coming you're going to be there if you're outside of christ and every secret thing will be brought to light everything that you hid everything that you did that you didn't think anybody knew about all of your thoughts all of your motives all of your intents all of your actions are on god's computers and god is keeping a record and someday you're going to have to stand before a holy god and give an account at the great judgment day jesus said every
idle word that men shall speak they shall give account thereof on the day of judgment the apostle paul said in his great sermon at athens he hath appointed a day in which he will judge the world by that man christ jesus there's a day of judgment coming he is appointed a day it's all set you're going to be there and every secret thing that you've ever thought or done will be flashed on the scoreboards up in heaven at the judgment and the whole world will see what you really were down inside god is a god
of judgment but the bible also teaches that god is a god of love that god loves i'm glad that's in the bible from genesis to revelation that god is a god of love and mercy and grace and that god loves everybody i don't care who you are he has the hairs of your head numbered he sees the spirit of all he's interested in you and he loves you now there are several greek words that are translated love eras means sensual love sexual love fellaio means friendship love the love that i would have for a friend
but when the writers of the new testament were trying to find a word that would describe the love of god they invented a new word a guppy the divine love a love that we cannot know outside of god there is no love that you can think of in human relationships comparable to the love that god has for you and that god has for me god loves you you say but billy i don't deserve such love i'm a sinner i've broken god's law i failed him a thousand times i know that's the beauty and the greatness
and the thrill of god's love that no matter what you've done he loves you for god so loved the world the black world the white world the yellow world the red world the rich world the poor world the uneducated world the educated world and he loves us all the same god loves you and god loved us so much that he gave his son now why did he have to give his son what happened what tragedy what disaster came upon the human race the bible tells us that god created you created man he put him in
paradise he put him in utopia and god gave to man a gift he did not give to his other creatures god created us in his image not in the physical image of god but in the spiritual image we have a moral nature and we have the right to choose and god said i'm going to give you everything in the world for your happiness but there's one tree over here that i don't want you to touch because i've given you the freedom of choice i want you to choose me because you want to i want you
to love me and serve me because you want to serve me you want to love me i don't want you to do it because i make you i've given you the tremendous responsibility of freedom of choice so i put a tree here but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shall not eat of it for in the day that thou shalt eat thereof thou shalt die what happened man looked at the tree he looked at the fruit he saw it was an unusual fruit probably had a magnificent taste the devil was
there in the form of a serpent to tempt him and the bible says that man broke the law of god man rebelled against god man failed the test and man made his own deliberate choice god said in the day that you eat it in the day that you rebel against me in the day that you break this law of the garden of eden you shall die god had to keep his word man had to die or god would not be holy so from that moment on man began to die he died physically he died spiritually
he died eternally and all the troubles and all the problems of the world down through history have come from that great disaster because all of us are the sons of adam all of our prejudices all of our hates all of our fightings all of our bickerings all of our jealousies all of our pride everything that troubles the human race today came from the fact that we have rebelled against god and we're all guilty all have sinned and come short of the glory of god the bible says you have sinned i have sinned we are guilty
pascal once said in seeking to become angels we have become less than men carl young the great psychologist once said it is becoming more and more obvious that our problems are not social he said it's not starvation it's not cancer but man himself who is mankind's greatest danger bertrand runs russell once said it is in our hearts that the evil lies it's in our hearts that's what jesus taught that our problems lie in our hearts because jesus said for out of the heart precede evil thoughts murders adulteries thefts false witness blasphemy jesus said your problem
is a heart problem the apostle paul said for the mystery of iniquity doth already work there's a mystery about it none of us really knows exactly where the devil came from i'm writing a book right now on the devil i've been doing a lot of research for 18 months on the subject we don't know for sure exactly how the devil came but we know that he's a factor we know that he is there tempting and pulling and trying us and attacking us and harassing us at every turn and we know that mankind made the faithful
choice in adam to follow the devil instead of god but the bible says in spite of our rebellion in spite of our sins god loves us and god gave his only son now the bible says the wages of sin the result of sin is death what kind of death well you go out here and you see the cemeteries and you know that people die physically yes we're all going to die in 100 years every person in this audience will be dead perhaps in 50 years we'll all be dead everybody will be dead i'm 54 years
of age the most of my life has already been lived i know that i'm going to die unless christ comes first i know that i'm going to die it's appointed unto man wants to die that's a result of sin that has infected the whole human race then there's spiritual death what is spiritual death well spiritual death is where you are alive in a sense but you're also dead and that's why you find movie stars who reach the top the sex symbols like marilyn monroe many of them commit suicide many other are unhappy why because they
thought that if they had power and fame and money they'd be happy but they're not happy why because spiritually your soul made in the image of god is separated from god and your soul keeps crying out for god and you say well if i make a little more money maybe my soul will be happy or if i get a little more power or if i have a little more influence i'll be happy but the trouble is you're not happy you seek you want more and you don't get that certain something that you're always looking for
it's always elusive it's always out there in the future somewhere why because your soul is searching for god and your soul made in the image of god says i want god and saint augustine said it's restless till it finds god and until you come to know jesus christ as your lord and savior and receive him into your heart you'll always be questing and looking and trying to find but you won't be able to find then there's a third death and that's called eternal death that's what jesus called hell he used the word lost perish condemn
hell punishment whatever it is it is separation from god because of our sins and the bible indicates that jesus believed that there was a future world there was a future heaven and a future hell now in the midst of all that god says i love man so much i want to save him so what did god do god devised a magnificent plan to redeem you to save you he decided to come to earth and to become a man and that's who jesus christ was jesus christ did not have a human father he was born of
the virgin mary mary couldn't have been more than about 16 or 17 years of age and she became pregnant not by a man but by the holy spirit and she gave birth to a baby and that baby grew up and he began to teach and what a person he was he was only able to teach and heal and feed people for three years and they crucified him the romans took him outside the city walls of jerusalem they beat him until his back bled they put a crown of thorns on his brown his face bled they
pulled his beard out they put spikes in his hands and while they were doing that seventy-two thousand angels pulled their swords ready to come and sweep this planet into hell and jesus said no i love them too much i will bear the hell i will bear the judgment on the cross for their sins and jesus christ hung there between heaven and earth and in some mysterious way that i do not understand god took your sins and your sins and your sins and my sins and laid them on christ and in that dreadful moment we get
a glimpse of what was happening because our lord exclaimed my god my god why hast thou forsaken me and in that terrible agonizing moment he was bearing your sins and my sins he took the death and the hell and the judgment and the sin that i deserved he took on that cross the bible says who his own self bear our sins in his own body on the tree isaiah the prophet had prophesied the lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all paul said you have made him to be sin for us who knew
no sin he was made sin jesus christ became guilty of adultery of murder of robbery of hate of prejudice on that cross he took our sins he who had never known us in took our sins and became sin he became sin for us and they took his body away and laid him in a grave but he didn't stay there the bible says on the third day he arose again and jesus christ at this moment is alive right now he's a living savior and when they went out to see his body the angel said he is
not here for he has risen and the greatest words that were ever given in the language of men was he is not here he is risen jesus is alive right now and he's ready to come into your heart and receive you and receive you into him self so that he will abide in you and you will abide in him if you put your faith in your trust and your confidence in him now that's not the end of the story because god has another plan god's plan is to send jesus christ back to this earth again
when is it going to take place we don't know but i believe that there are signs in the scriptures that would indicate that his coming is relatively soon it may be tomorrow it may be a thousand years from now we do not know but we know that the bible is filled with passages that indicate that he's coming back and we're going to have utopia we're going to have world peace the lion and the lamb will lie down together justice will sweep the earth and there's coming a day when the dream that martin luther king gave
in washington will come true when all prejudice will be gone and men will have love for each other but till that time we are called upon to do the best we can dealing with fall in human nature we can patch up problems here and patch up problems there and patch up problems everywhere and we spend all of our time patching up problems and now we have atomic bombs in our hands ready to throw at each other but jesus is coming back and the next time he comes it will be as lord of lords and king
of kings the bible says for the lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout i'm looking forward to hearing that shout i get tired sometimes and i get weary and i sometimes say lord i wish it would today sometimes the pressures are too great and sometimes the burdens of life are too great and i find myself praying in the middle of the night lord let it be at sunrise tomorrow i'm ready to go i want to go i'm looking forward to heaven and i'm living in hope and anticipation of that glorious tomorrow in which
there'll be no sunset and no darkness and the streets will be paved with gold and the fruit trees will bear 12 crops a year and everybody will have plenty to eat and there'll be no poverty in the world what a wonderful time that's going to be but now at this moment in this stadium and on this radio god the holy spirit has spoken to you the gospel is never preached without the working and the operation of the holy spirit you see there's a little voice that's been speaking to you while i'm speaking that's the voice
of the spirit of god and god has been convicting you of your sin and god has been convicting you of your need of jesus christ oh i know that the majority of you may be members of the church when i came to christ many years ago i was a member of the church i was the president of the young people's society in my church everybody thought i was a wonderful christian but deep in my heart i did not know jesus christ as lord and savior now god loves you he's given his son what do you
have to do you have to do something what is it first you have to repent of your sins jesus said repent ye the apostle paul said god now commandeth all man everywhere to repent god commands you to repent have you ever repented of your sins do you remember the moment when you repented you say well billy what do you really mean by repent well first of all repentance carries with the idea that you say lord i'm sorry for my sin have you ever said that to god i'm sorry and you really meant it and then
it means that you have to change you have to turn around you have to change and quit doing your sins change your way of living old things pass away and everything becomes new that's repentance i'm sorry for my sin i'm willing to turn for my sin have you ever repented jesus said except you repent you will perish and then secondly by faith you must receive christ as your lord and savior that can all be done with repentance repentance and faith go hand in hand you may not understand it all intellectually you don't have to you
come by simple childlike faith the bible says for by grace are you saved through faith the bible says without faith it's impossible to please god now that doesn't mean you do away with your intellect or commit intellectual suicide oh no there's a logic to the gospel but your mind has been affected by sin so that you can no longer really receive spiritual things so you come by faith and receive him and then the third thing you must openly confess him as your lord and savior and master whosoever therefore shall confess me before men him will
i confess before my father which is in heaven now that's why i ask people to come forward in these crusades i ask you to openly confess christ all over the world throughout japan throughout america in the great stadiums of great britain and all over europe i've seen thousands of people do what i'm going to ask you to do i'm going to ask you to get up out of your seat wherever you are and come and stand in front of this platform and say by coming i know that i'm a sinner i receive christ into my
heart i want my sins forgiven i want to know that i'm going to heaven i want a new life in jesus christ you say billy that's a hard thing for me to do to get up and come in front of everybody i know but jesus hung on that cross in front of a shouting crowd that was spitting at him and laughing at him and mocking him he died publicly and not a single place in the new testament do you find that jesus ever called anybody privately it's always publicly that he called them and there's a
reason for that a psychological reason a spiritual reason a scriptural reason you say but how would i ever get through this crowd i know it's going to be difficult so i'm going to ask the crowd to help us i'm going to ask you not to move where you are just stay where you are quiet reverent with bad heads and i'm going to ask men and women and young people to get up and come and stand in front of the platform and back of the platform here and all around just stand here and after you've all
come i'm going to say a word to you have a prayer with you give you some verses of scripture and some literature and you can go back and join your friends and if you're with friends or relatives or in a coach they'll wait on you you say well why is that important when i got married i stood in front of witnesses and said i will coming to christ is into something the same way you're making a covenant with god to receive christ into your heart and to receive god's love and forgiveness and you do it
openly and you say lord i will i know it'll take two or three minutes to come but we've got all day and this may never be another moment in the history of johannesburg like this this is your moment in your hour with god you get up and come we're going to wait from back here all in the back everywhere you come [Music] you think about it and don't come unless you mean it [Music] we're going to wait just a minute or two as many hundreds of people are coming and if god is speaking to you
sitting out there in the stands this is your moment with god you coughed the night that i came to christ the evangelist extended the invitation for quite a long time and i was the last to come and i'm glad that he waited we're waiting today because there's so many on the way it's so difficult to get forward the crowd is so huge [Music] zacchaeus could hardly get to jesus because of the press of the crowd but he finally made it and it was worth it he climbed a tree to meet jesus and he was converted
from the limb to the ground as he jumped down when jesus called him when i see a great audience like this i'm reminded of the parable of the sower jesus said he himself was the soul he said some of the seed that was sown fell on the wayside and the fowls came and devoured them some fell in stony places where they didn't have much earth they sprung up but there was no deepness of the earth so they perished some fell among thorns and the thorns came up choked them out but other seed he said fell
on good drought and brought forth fruit some a hundred fold some sixty fold and some thirty fold some of the people that have come forward today will be in each of those four categories there will be some that will be on the good ground perhaps the majority it will flourish it will grow after i received christ if you would ask me two or three days later what had happened i couldn't have told you in theological language i didn't know i just knew that i was different and i suppose i would have told a reporter well
i feel better that wouldn't have been much of a witness but my whole life was changed and if you'd asked me two years later i could have told you [Music] you've come prompted by the holy spirit to receive jesus christ into your heart god's mercy god's love god's grace god's forgiveness you receive him today you've come to him i cannot save anybody i have no magical powers i'm just an ordinary messenger of the kingdom of god and i've given you god's message today you are receiving by this act of coming here today you're receiving the
lord jesus christ into your heart well i want to tell you he receives you he that cometh unto him he will in no wise cast out says the scripture he receives you now i'm going to ask that we have a prayer and i want you to pray this prayer after me out loud oh god i am a sinner i'm sorry for my sin i'm willing to turn for my sin i receive christ as savior i confess in his law from this moment on i want to follow you and serve him in the fellowship of his
church in christ you
