"The Lord shall reward the doer of evil according to his wickedness" (2 Sam. 3:39).
"Treasuring up wrath against the day of wrath" (Rom. 2:5).
If we thought more on eternal verities, we would behave ourselves better. If we would remember God, many persons would be troubled. If we would take God at His Word, that we shall be judged according to the deeds done in the body, we would be more careful about our doing. The Empress of Austria saw her Cabinet fearful, her troops defeated, her generals disheartened, and France robbing her of one of her fairest provinces. She realized the injustice of the thing, and said to the French commander: "My lord, God does not settle every Saturday night, but God always settles." That is eminently true. We ought to have it burnt in on our memory, on our conscience, God always settles. The Old Testament and the New agree, He will reward the doer of evil according to his wickedness. "Be not deceived; God is not mocked: whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." We may be dealing with men, we may be dealing with finite creatures, we may be for awhile creatures of time; but eternity is before us, and we will settle with God according to the records we have made. God is pressing it home upon us. We are forgetful. We are light. We are trifling. We are jesting. We are satisfied with the name on the church record. We are satisfied with going to church and to meeting once on Sunday -- if it does not rain. We are satisfied with a pretension, a profession, with a fireless experience. But, listen to this: It means much to live. People talk about it being a solemn thing to die. To die is easy. It is a solemn thing to live. We are living for eternity. The finest epigram in the English language was written by Doddridge:
"Live while you live, the epicure would say, Enjoy the pleasures of the passing day; Live while you live, the sacred preacher cries, And give to God each moment as it flies. Lord, in my view let both united be, I live in pleasure when I live for Thee."
It is a wonderful thing to remember that we are living for God. The apostle said, "For me to live is Christ; for me to die is gain." But let us get it home to ourselves. We do not have to look back to a sentiment, to a truth uttered nineteen centuries ago. How are we living? What impress are we making upon the world around us? What are we doing to help Jesus Christ? It is an old proverb, "God loves to be helped," and I want to say it reverently, God cannot do without us. Down at Ocean Grove, General Grant, my old commander, was on the platform, in that great big tabernacle, and it was crowded with thousands of people. A man who had been a private soldier in the old Army of the Potomac in Colonel Perry's old New York regiment, now a Methodist preacher (Its officers were most all Methodist preachers and its privates Methodists), introduced Grant, and when he introduced him, he said, "We could not have done without him, and he could not have done without us." That was true. Now, I want to say it reverently, God, in accordance with His plan of salvation and the economy of grace, cannot do without us. He says, "Lo, I am with you. Go ye," and when a man who was gloriously saved, clothed and in his right mind, out from among tombstones, came when Jesus was about to depart, and said, "I want to go with Thee," Jesus said to him, "Go to thy home and tell them what great things God hath done for thee." What are you telling? What are you doing? There are some people that never shout anywhere else than at the "Mount of Blessings." Some people never do any shouting at home. Some people never shout before the grocer, and the baker, and the shoemaker. How are you living at home? I was thinking this afternoon when our brother was giving his exhortation, when men dropped down here on their knees, if the men and women in this congregation who profess to be saved and sanctified, who say they have received the baptism with the Holy Ghost, would have their Pentecost, if they were on their knees before God in prayer as much as they are talking around on this camp ground, this place would be awful with the Divine Presence. There is a great big difference between the gift of gab and the gift of grace. It does not require much self-denial on the part of some people, to stand around and talk, and talk, and talk. What we need on this camp ground is to pray, pray, pray! Then we are going to see something done here that will satisfy the heart of Jesus Christ. Do not tell me about the hardness of men's hearts. I know it is harder today -- it seems so to me -- to get men and women to God; but one thing I do know -- the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth. I know that God hears and answers prayer, and I know this, that whether you are in the church or out of the church, just as sure as God lives, before every man and woman within the sound of my voice tonight, before every boy and girl who has arrived at the age of accountability, there is an eternal heaven, with all its joys, with all its blessedness, with all the glory that the Son had with the Father before the world was, or there is an eternal, salty, fiery, billowy hell, and it depends upon men's actions here. Jesus Christ told us about a church member who "lifted up his eyes in hell." Church membership is no guarantee of salvation.
"The Lord shall reward the doer of evil according to his wickedness."
It was a hard thing to get away from the United States Government during the last war. They had secret service men in business offices; they had them in shops; they had them on the street; they had them wherever men congregated, and men not knowing that notice had been taken of what they said, found the heavy hand of the government laid upon them and they were summoned before the Department of Justice. The government was watching, and very few men escaped with their treason against the government. But if men could not get away from the government, how are you going to get away from God? General Mitchell, that Christian astronomer, sat in his observatory and turned his telescope down across the country, and seven miles away he saw boys in an orchard, shaking apples off the trees and robbing the orchard. They knew nothing of it, but that man's eye was upon them. But, listen! There never was a sin you ever committed, whether in the light or dark, whether at home or a thousand miles from home, there was never a sin hid away in your bosom that you ever committed that you would not have your wife, your sister, your mother to know, but God was gazing on the whole thing, and unless you confess and repent, and get right with God, He will uncover that thing at the Judgment Seat of Christ. Oh, we go to campmeeting, and we go to our churches, and we go Sabbath after Sabbath, and go in and out like the door on its hinges, and then we think no responsibility, no decision, no action called for. Listen! If you have got a spark of old-time Bible salvation, it will put a go in you, and make you interested in the salvation of souls. One of my prayers is, O God, help me to see in everybody someone for whom Jesus died! And yet they are dying all around us, they are slipping through the fingers of the church by thousands into a devil's hell, and there is very little effort being made to save them. We have periodic spasms that last about ten days, and then for the balance of the year we devote ourselves to monkey shows and church socials, and lectures, and entertainments, and let people go to hell, while Jesus Christ is on the throne praying. I repeat what Brother Hatfield said this afternoon, Lord, wake us up! We are going to campmeeting and enjoying ourselves ten days in the year, and going back home and lying on our oars, and letting the world go to hell. God knows. God sees. I am glad to preach sermons that make people uncomfortable, that drive people to their knees. I am glad to preach sermons that drive men and women to confession. That old Book is gloriously true. It is awfully true. It is tremendously true. It is eternally true. "The wages of sin is death." Oh, you would not think so. You would think sin was a joke. You cannot get ten ungodly men together one hour in a fishing party or a hunting party, but before the hour is past someone will have something to say that is smutty or unclean, and thinks it is smart; but God makes a record of it. You never uttered a sentence with a double meaning, you never thought an unclean thing, but God Almighty had the record. You never did a mean thing, but God Almighty took note of it, and He will call you to judgment. You do not have to drink. You do not have to smoke. You do not have to chew, and I think it is as much of a sin to chew as it is to drink. Any man that violates the law of God in his own body, sins against God. Oh, I got along beautifully in some meetings for six or eight days. Some fellows said, "That is fine preaching." "That is good preaching." They would sit on the front seat, and shout and shout, and about the ninth day God would put something on me about tobacco, and then they closed up just like a clam. They were members of the church, had their names on the church record. Whenever a man gets real Bible salvation, it will change the color of his spit, and the Lord will reward the doer of evil in his own body. If I live until the 23d day of next month, I will be seventy-four years old. I have not got an ache or a pain. I have not got an organ of my body that I know I have from any ill feeling.
When I came to this country I was as sound in my body as any baby that was born since Abel. I was the first baby of an old-fashioned Methodist father and mother. Father was converted at sixteen, mother at fifteen. Neither one of them ever went into sin. Father lived to be eighty-one and never backslid. Mother will be ninety-six next November, was converted at fifteen, and never backslid, and when I was coming to this country they did not try to kill me, so I landed safely, with a perfect body -- perfect in limb, perfect in wind, and I never went off into sin, as many have done, for which I thank God and the training of my Christian parents. They watched over me, did not let me out after dark. I do not know that I ever stayed out much after dark, until after I went into the army, and I went into the army just before I was seventeen years of age. They kept me home, and I went to church with them, and sat on the same seat with them. I did not sit on the same seat with mother, because when I was a little fellow and went to church, the men sat on one side, and the women on the other. Men are rewarded for the evil they do to their bodies, as they violate the law of God, and if you have sinned against your own body, either in the marriage relation or your appetites, you will die and go to hell as quickly as the biggest drunkard in America. The Lord shall reward the doer of evil according to his wickedness.
Nobody ever did a good deed but what God took note of it. I see an old prophet down here in a pit, and the pit has mire in it, it has water in it, and down there means death, and somebody pities the old prophet, and goes to the king and says, "You leave Jeremiah down there many days and the old prophet will die on your hands. Let me take him out." And the king said, "Go, take him out." And they let down clouts to go under his arms, and let down a rope, and told him to put the rope over the clouts, and then lifted him up out of the dungeon and landed him, and took him over and put him in a chamber and took care of him. By and by, in the evil day, God remembered that man that went to the king in behalf of the prophet, and said, "Tell him the people of the land will go into captivity, but he can go wherever he pleases, have perfect liberty, and the whole land is at his command."
Oh, God is very mindful of His laws. God said to His people, "One year in every seven thou shalt leave the land lay at rest." But they were like the people of America are today -- they were prosperity mad -- and for 490 years the land had no rest. But listen! God has got a long memory. By and by those people were carried off into captivity for seventy years, and the land had its rest. Oh, you are dealing with God. You cannot cheat Him. Today the Sabbath, with many people, is a day of pleasure, a day for big dinners, a day for visiting, a day for company. I remember I went on a new charge one time. One of the leading members drove up in front of my house after Sunday morning service, stepped out in front of the house (he had a great big, spanking team of bays and a fine surrey), and he said to the children, "Is Brother Kulp there?" I went to the front door, and this man said, "Brother Kulp, let your George go out with us and spend the afternoon, and we will bring him back when we come to church tonight." I said, "No, sir; I do not allow my children to go visiting on Sunday." If people do not obey the laws of God, they will not obey the laws of man. The man that is not loyal to God is not a good citizen We are introducing the European Sabbath. Tall about the Puritan Sabbath, when they would not make a fire or wash the dishes -- bless God, I would rather have a Puritan Sabbath than a European Sabbath. They produced men. We do not have any statesmen today. We have a lot of politicians, and they have got their ear to the ground to hear the sentiment of the people. They are not leaders, but followers. In those days we had men that stood four-square. We are talking about keeping the Sabbath. There is not much shouting, is there? The Bible says it is a day of rest and worship, not a day for fun and for frolic, and your ministers all over this country that are talking about a liberal Sabbath, and moving picture shows on Sunday, and baseball games on Sunday, belong to the devil. "The Lord shall reward the evil doer (the Sabbath breaker) according to his wickedness." That is the teaching of God's Word. You are dealing with God's Word. Listen to what Jesus said: "The words that I speak unto you, they shall judge you in that day." "The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life." You are not dealing with me. I am bringing God's message. I would not dare to preach anything else but what God gives me, and I preach anything God gives me, no matter where I am, if I have to walk home. Listen to what a man doubting the truth of that Word said: "If I could believe that death is an eternal sleep, I'd be happy; but if there is a life beyond, I am a lost soul, and eternity means hell for me." And that is true -- hell for the man that does wickedly, no matter how moral he is, no matter how high he stands in society. It is hell for the sinner, rich or poor. Oh, we can go down and stand before the congregations in the slums and preach the truth, and lay it on about hell, and about the violation of God's law, and then when we get uptown in the churches, and get a lot of so-called respectable sinners before us, then we are dealing in nosegays and perfumery and rose water, and they are going to the same hell as the others do.
"The Lord shall reward him according to his wickedness." Down in the Shenandoah Valley the commander of a brigade of cavalrymen was riding through the valley. There is a home, and there stands a man in the front yard, and there is a boy not over sixteen years of age. Back there about five miles, two or three Union soldiers were hanging by the neck. The commander of this brigade said, "Mosby's guerrillas did that. We will settle with those fellows." And he came on until he came to this house, and there stood that man and there stood that boy; not a gun in their hands, no sign of armed resistance, and he commanded his men to shoot that man and boy. He said, "Run, if you can get a chance for your life." And they ran, and he said, "Men, fire!" And the men fired, and that man and that boy went down to death in what I call cold-blooded murder. "The Lord shall reward the evil doer according to his wickedness." That Brigadier General was the idol of his troops, of every cavalryman in the Army of the Potomac, and they would have almost considered it treason to have said then what I am saying now. But listen! That man, after a great many years, went out West, was surrounded by the Indians. His troopers were shot down, and the Indians told how he stood there with his revolvers in hand, fighting to the very last, and at last he went down to death. Listen! listen! listen! God shall reward the doer of evil according to his wickedness. You cannot violate the law of God and escape. There never was a Union or Confederate general, during the Civil War, that began a battle on Sunday, but was defeated. When Admiral Cevera came out of that bay down there on Sunday morning, he thought the Union fleet was at worship. The flag of worship was up, and he came out and provoked the battle, and was defeated. He was fighting against God.
My text is true to the individual and to the nation.
Now, again . We know we must die. Unless Jesus comes, every saint here will die. Every sinner will die. Are we living as though we thought it? I was standing in the station at St. Mary's, Ohio, and there was a great big bill poster furnished by the railroad company, and on that poster here is a party in an automobile, and yonder is the railroad, and yonder comes a train, and here are the words on that poster: "Whenever you approach a railroad crossing, always remember you may enter eternity on a moment's notice." That is true whether you are approaching a railroad crossing or not. No one here has a guarantee for tomorrow. You may die before tomorrow morning. What preparation are you making for it? I preached the other night. "Prepare to meet thy God." What preparation are you making? "Why, Brother Kulp, I am a member of a church." You can die with your name on a church record, and go to hell. I believe in churches. My name is on a church record where I live, and where I was pastor for fifteen and one-half years. I believe in churches and denominations, and anybody that cannot be satisfied nowadays must be pretty hard to suit. But I am not depending upon my church membership to save me. The poet wrote, "All men think all men mortal but themselves." That is a lie. Every man knows that he must die. The seeds of death are in our frame. Seventy heartbeats a minute, going to an eternal heaven or an eternal hell. When Sister Standley was a young girl, she went down to a Mission in Cincinnati that Brother M. W. Knapp was in charge of, and when she was walking out, M. W. Knapp said to her, "You are standing on the brink of hell." Each and every sinner here tonight is standing on the verge of eternity, and on the very brink of an endless hell. The sinner is almost lost and already damned. You say, "I do not believe that." Every sinner is under condemnation, and condemnation means damnation. God says in His Word, if your heart condemns you, God will condemn you. How do you stand in your own heart tonight? John uses the word heart there instead of conscience. How do you stand by your own conscience tonight? I knew a little girl who went visiting with her parents -- a little bit of a thing about three years of age. For some reason her mother and the lady of the house went upstairs, and she took possession downstairs, as a child three years of age thoughtlessly will, and she walked out into the kitchen, and then she walked out into the pantry. The pantry door was open, and she saw some cookies, and that child took two or three of them and came out chewing cookies. The lady of 'the house said, "That's all right." Let me tell you something. Quite a number of years afterward, when she was a young lady, she went to the altar and wanted to get right with God, and she prayed and prayed, and came to her mother and said, "Mother, do you remember when we went to Mrs. W____'s, when I was a little girl three years old, and I took some cookies out of the cupboard? Do you think I ought to go and tell Mrs. W____?" Oh, she got through all right. She is a preacher today. There is a way through. But listen! You cannot go over your sins and you cannot go under your sins. There is only one way, and that is God's way -- repent, confess and forsake. Have you done it? You were on the car the other day, and the conductor did not collect your fare. Do you call yourself honest? You are a thief! You rode in the train the other day. You had your girl with you, and she was over six years of age, and you ought to have paid half-fare, and you did not do it, and you thought that you beat the railroad company, and you were that much ahead. You are a thief -- and you will die and go to hell unless you repent. I was preaching out at Salvation Park this way one night about fifteen years ago, and went down off the platform and started over to my tent to get on dry underwear -- I had been perspiring -- and as I went by a woman said to me, "Great God, preacher, what am I to do? That is what I did coming to camp-meeting." She had her children with her, and did not pay half-fare. You do not like this preaching. This is too pointed. You want something that is general. Generalities are the death of prayer and the death of preaching. God did not call me to deal in generalities. He called me to preach the straight Gospel.
I was preaching at a certain place; I was laying on the truth, and a man said to another preacher who was sitting behind him, "I wonder if there is any necessity for any such preaching as Brother Kulp gave us tonight?" It was none of his business. I am not a man-made preacher. A man did not call me to preach. If a man had called me to preach I would have run away long ago. I had a call from heaven, and knew God called me to preach. Before the next morning went by this preacher who was sitting behind that man that criticized me, went to him and confessed to sin, and the next morning when I preached, he came to the altar. You need straight preaching. You are settling down in the mire and mud of sin, and you will settle in an eternal hell, unless you repent.
I should not wonder tonight but there is some fellow here that holds his head mighty high, and it has not been many years since you sat in a parlor and the young girl you sat with tonight is on the street, wrecked and ruined, and you are running around in somebody else's parlor, to play the same thing over. A young girl one time walked out of church, and a boy walked up and said, "May I have the pleasure of seeing you home? Will you take my arm?" She said, "No, Sir." The next day his sister came and said to this young lady: "Last night my brother approached you in a very gentlemanly manner, and offered you his arm and asked for the privilege of seeing you home, and you said, 'No, sir.' Will you please tell me why you refused my brother's arm?" She said, "Certainly I will tell you. I will not take the arm of any licentious young man."
I heard tell of a woman sometime ago, the night before she was married the man that married her looked her in the face and said, "Have you always been a good, true, clean woman?" Listen! If the women that are about to be married, would ask the men that question, and insist upon it, seven-tenths of the men could not answer it truthfully, or would not, rather. I am going by what the doctors say. I have the records. A clean woman has as good a right to a clean man as a clean man has to a clean woman. A man came to me one time and said, "Oh, I want to see you alone." I said, "Come on up in my study." We went up there, and he said, "Oh, what am I going to do? Before I was married, my body was diseased through sin, and I came back to this city and married my present wife, and now we have children, and I am afraid that my sin will tell in their bodies, and I go down to the drug store and buy medicine and take it home to wife, and say, 'Wife, it is springtime; the children ought to have blood medicine.' She says, 'There is nothing the matter with visited upon the children. Listen! A girl had better, a thousand times over, die an old maid than to yoke up with diseased manhood. I do not think old maids are such awful things, after all I am pretty sure of one thing -- they did not jump at the first chance they had, like some other folks. I want to say another thing. I believe that God Almighty can take a man who has been down in sin and down in the slums, and down in the mire, and forgive his sins, and clean his heart, and in a measure restore his body. Glory to God! "Though ye have lain among the pots, yet shall your wings be as the wings of a dove." Hallelujah! God says so in His Word. I am glad I believe God.
I want to get that second text -- "Treasuring up wrath against the day of wrath." Treasuring up stores for eternity. Here is a man with a muck rake. He is after gold. He fails to see the crowd. Here is a man pleasure mad. He is in the theater, the moving picture show. Here is a man at the gaming table. Here is a man with liquor hid away in the cellar and closet. Here is a man -- what is he doing? Gratifying appetite? No; I will tell you what he is doing -- treasuring up wrath. There never was a lie told, there never was an unclean thought, there never was a licentious act, there never was a word spoken that could not be said in the presence of God, but what that person added to the treasures of wrath up yonder. Oh, it is no joke to live. It is no dream to live. We are living for two worlds. Dr. Warren said there are two classes of people -- optimists and eternalists; worldly and other-worldly, and the great majority of people are today optimists, the worldlings. I saw a girl at the altar in one of my last meetings, and she had on a wrist watch, and the thing did not go, and had not gone for months. Worldlings! Oh, you say you don't believe in those things. Well, I do. That was a clear case of pride. The thing did not go at all, and it was worn for show, and if fashion today said to wear them on your ankles instead of the wrist, the majority of young folks would have them on their ankles.
The Lord shall reward the doer of evil according to his works -- like for like. The law of retribution runs all through the Word of God, and runs all through natural law. Jacob deceived his father, and his sons deceived him. The Egyptians killed the male children, and God Almighty killed the eldest son of the Egyptians. Whatsoever a man sows, that shall he also reap. Haman built a gallows for Mordecai, but was hanged on it himself. Daniel was thrown in the lions' den by his enemies, but God kept him, and the next day his enemies were thrown in themselves. They put the Hebrew children in the fiery furnace, and those that cast them in were burned by the fire. Whenever you try to make it hot for somebody else, you always get burned yourself. Charles IX. looked down on the pavements where Huguenot blood was running red -- the streets flowing with the blood. How did he die? His pores issuing blood; bloody forms before his eyes; bloody pavements before his eyes. "Whatsoever a man sows, that shall he also reap." He shall be rewarded according to his wickedness. You cannot get away from your sins, only at the Cross. You remember Pilgrim came through the little wicket gate, and came and stood in front of the Cross, and there he lost his burden. You remember what Bunyan makes him say: "Blest Cross! blest sepulcher! Yea, rather, blessed be the man that hung thereon and died for me!" You can lose your sins at the Cross, but you will have to take God's way to get there.
Here is a man who murdered his master. He left his master' s body in the house and set fire to the house. He was arrested, tried and convicted. Here is a judge sitting on the bench. He is very, very uneasy. The lawyers notice it, the prosecuting attorney notices it, the counsel for the defense notices it, and now comes the time to sentence the prisoner. The judge breaks down and begins to weep. He went down, took his place in the prisoner's box, and sat alongside of the prisoner. Listen to what he said: "Twenty years ago I murdered my master. I left his body in a house, and I set fire to the house, and I have been trying my own case and find myself guilty." Twenty years ago a murderer -- a judge now on the bench, but still a murderer. Conscience is faithful. The case reminds him of his sin, and he sits down in the prisoner's box and acknowledges himself guilty. "Be sure your sin will find you out." "The wages of sin is death."
"Treasuring up wrath against the day of wrath." You are dealing with God, and the messengers of God are on your track, and yonder is the judgment seat, and yonder Calvary, and there is the praying, bleeding Christ, and here is the blessed Holy Ghost, and men are sitting under conviction, and people are saying: "I would like to be saved, but, oh, that past life!" Listen! The Blood will cover the past, but you must repent; you must confess, you must forsake. You must go with God, or what? This Book says then, eternal wrath. How is the wrath of God pictured in the Bible? Fire! Fire! Fire!
Burn so much surface of the body, and all the doctors in the land cannot restore you; but Jesus Christ says that eternal wrath is eternal fire. "The smoke of their torment ascendeth forever and ever." It is going into eternity, over the dividing line, by the Bible, by a mother's prayers, by the prayers of the saints, by the entreaties of the Son of God by the pleadings of the Holy Ghost, going over the crucified body of the Son of God, to a billowy, fiery, eternal, salty, dark hell, the abode of the damned, where they chew their lips, bite their tongues; where there is no water, no children, no music. Lost forever and forever and forever lost! Without hope all through eternity. No mourners' benches, no sermons, no altar calls, no invitations, no mercy offered, no repentance offered, but lost -- lost forever. Not for one thousand years, not for ten thousand years, but lost for all the ages of the future -- lost! lost! lost! As Brother Ed Ferguson said on this platform one time -- lost until the last soul winging its way through eternal space can find somewhere the gravestone of the Almighty God. That means lost, lost, lost, forever! Brother, tonight God calls you, the Spirit is striving with you, Jesus is praying, and here is a blood-bought opportunity. Listen! You will make a decision tonight. I can imagine somebody says, "No, preacher; I will not." Yes, you will. You will decide for God or against Him. If you are saved you will know it as well as you know your own name, and if you do not know you are saved, you are not. "The Spirit beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God." What are you going to do with Jesus tonight? Will you receive Him? Tomorrow is eternity.
I was preaching away up in Ontario, near North Bay, where they have the snows until May and June. The first night I preached, a young man said no to God. He went out of the house, the night was dark, and that man climbed over a fence and got down on his knees and said, "O God, if you will spare me until tomorrow night, I will go to that altar." And God spared him, and he did not go to the altar. That man went through one meeting after another. I never knew him to be settled and settled with God, and since I have been down here, Brother Tom Robinson has told me that that man is in eternity. God called him again and again.
I was preaching down in George Street Mission, and I made a remark down there like this: "If you ever had a better experience than you have tonight, you are backslidden." God said to a man, "Young man, go to the altar." He did not do it. Five years after that I went up in Canada to preach. I was preaching the first night, and I again made that remark, and I gave the altar call, and a young man stopped me and said, "Five years ago I was in George Street Mission, in Cincinnati, O., and I heard Mr. Kulp say the same thing he said tonight, 'If ever you had a better experience that you have tonight, you are backslidden,' and God said to me, 'Go to the altar,' and I did not go, and five years from that time he comes up here and preaches the same truth, and I am going to the altar." God has a message here for somebody tonight, and it may be that young man that is nearest the dead line; that young woman that is nearest eternity; that young girl that mother is praying for; that mother's son that God has been talking to in these meetings, and tonight God has given you another opportunity. Will you come forward here to the altar? How many persons are there here, you want the prayers of God's people, you are not ready to meet God, and Jesus says, "Be ye also ready, for in such an hour as ye think not, the Son of man cometh." "Prepare to meet thy God."
