I stood on the firing line, when I was a boy, just preparatory to going into battle on a charge, and Charley H____, who, if he is alive yet, lives in South Easton, Pa., stood alongside of me. We knew we were facing the enemy and facing death, and the only preparation that he thought of was this: He said to me, "George, if anything happens to me, you write my folks." That is the only thought he had about it. Inside of the next hour, during the progress of that battle, he might have been sent into eternity, but no thought of the future.
We are facing eternity. Death is at our elbow. Just the thickness of our ribs between us and an eternal heaven or an eternal hell, and God is doing His very best in order to get us in harmony with Himself. I have listened to these men preach; I have said to myself, "They are God's messengers; they have God's messages, but how many are heeding? How many are minding the Holy Ghost? How many are in harmony with God? How many are ready to meet God on a moment's notice? How many have the witness of the Spirit, not only to their forgiveness, but to their cleansing? How many realize the sins of the past are under the blood? How many think for one moment that we are dealing with God?" And please remember this, we must do business with God before we can do business for God. One cannot work successfully for God unless one has the consciousness within oneself that oneself is right with God. Have you done business with God? Have you heard from heaven? Are you ready for whatever a day may bring forth? The Old Testament and the New unite: "Prepare to meet thy God." "Be ye also ready; in such an hour as ye think not, the Son of man cometh." "To day, if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts." Men grow harder in a camp-meeting, or they get nearer to God. Resisting the truth brings hardness of heart. You must do business with God. You cannot put God out of your life. There may be jangling voices all around you, but above them all, through them all, in the Word, by the Holy Spirit, in the providences of God, you will hear my text -- "Prepare!" Something more than singing; something more than church membership; something more than profession; something more than campmeeting; something more than a periodical spasm. "Prepare!" Somewhere down the road one block -- one mile -- one month -- one year -- tomorrow, it may be, but somewhere in that immediate future we must do business with God, on conditions, or be lost eternally.
I was preaching down in Louisiana, was invited down there by a couple of ladies who were sanctified on these grounds a few years ago -- was preaching in the courthouse, and some of the ladies came to me the next day and said, "Brother Kulp, the people don't like your proposition." I thought to myself, "Proposition -- proposition -- proposition?" And the Holy Ghost said to me, "What they don't like is God's conditions." That is the trouble with people now -- they do not like to meet conditions. But you must, or he eternally damned, eternally lost. I should not wonder that while I am preaching, your life will come up before you. The Holy Ghost will give you a retrospective view of your life, and things you do not want to think of, things you do not like to think of, and things you would gladly hide, the Holy Ghost will bring them before you. You must do business with God, on God's terms, On God's conditions. Preparation to meet God implies that very thing.
You take the Word and read it carefully, and find here that in the past men have had to deal with God. A world ignored Him, a race united in ignoring Him, but there came a time, not when the patience of God wore out, but there came a time when God was grieved as He looked at man in his sinfulness. And all the sins that they had in that day, all the sins before the Flood, all the sins that were in the cities of the plains, all the adulteries, all the licentiousness, all the bestiality, all the brutality that the carnal nature had before God sent the flood and wiped out a race, before He sent the fires on the cities of the plains, before He gathered the legions of Rome with their eagles, around the city of Jerusalem, this world has today, and sin is just as hateful as it was when God sent the flood and destroyed the antediluvians, or when He sent the fire and destroyed the cities of the plains. Sin is no joke. Sin is no dream. Sin is an awful, terrible reality. A man must meet it, and meet the consequences of it at the day of judgment. You try to put the messages away. Whenever you try to put a message of God away from you, God will not only repeat it, but He will add more to it. I will prove it.
Jeremiah called for Baruch, and he said, "I want you to take it down carefully. I have a message from God for these people. Write it down carefully. Don't miss a word. Listen attentively." And Jeremiah repeated the message that God gave him, and Baruch wrote it down, word for word, and after a while he read it to the nobles of the king, and they said, "Where did you get it?" "Got it from Jeremiah." "Did you take it down from his lips?" "Yes." "Word for word?" "Yes." "Just exactly as he said it?" "Yes." "Well, it means destruction, it means death, it means danger for the king." And they went to the king, and the king said, "I would like to hear it." They sent for Baruch, and Jehudi borrowed from Baruch the message, and took it before the king, opened it and read it, and as he read it he took out his penknife and cut it off and threw it into the fire. Then he read further in the distasteful message. Say, listen! The message that is most distasteful to you, is the very message you need. I read an advertisement of a book the other day. Dr. Agan Beet, of the Wesleyan Methodist Church, in England, was the author of it. The title of the book was, "The Last Things," and in that book he makes this remark, that men today do not dare to preach on hell as John Wesley preached it, and he even went farther, and said in these days they do not even dare to preach as Spurgeon preached fifty years ago. Listen! On this campground we will preach anything God Almighty gives us. We have to preach the truth. Jesus Christ was praying and He said, "Father, sanctify them through Thy truth. Thy Word is truth." And you want the truth, and when you get it you will get the Word, and the Word says, "Prepare to meet thy God."
Jehudi took the message, but it was distasteful, and he cut it up, one piece after the other, and threw it into the fire, until the whole message was destroyed. And God said, "Jeremiah, get your stenographer." And he got his stenographer, and God gave him another message. Listen! He not only gave him the whole message, but he "added thereunto many like words." God will not only give you truth that is distasteful, but He will give you truth that will drive you into a corner, that will drive you to surrender, or where your will becomes so hardened you look God in the face and defy the very providences of God and the Holy Ghost who applies the truth. I am not a popular preacher, and I do not want to be. Popularity is a nosegay in the buttonhole of a corpse. I am here to give you God Almighty's truth. According to that Word nations ignored the messages, and whenever they did, ruin and death followed. And every person in the sound of my voice, I do not care how loud you shout, nor how high you jump, nor what church you belong to, when you are not obedient to the messages that God sends you through the Word, and by the Holy Ghost, you will lose your soul eternally, and die in the church, and go to hell. That is God's truth. You do not like these sermons; you want to be patted on the back; you want bouquets. You want somebody with one of these sprayers to spray you with perfume, and then you want to go home and say, "Wasn't that a beautiful sermon?" Over in my room I got down on my knees and told God I wanted His message. What we want is God's thought for this hour.
Now, listen! God must be reckoned with. Oh, it will ring down through the corridor of your being, every truth you ever heard and rejected, throughout the ages of eternity. Do not talk to me about growing old. Man never grows old. The mountains are old. No mountain today is as high as it was years ago. Corrosion is going on, they are going down, lowering. Man never grows old. He was made to live throughout the ages of God, and all down through the eternal ages there will ring through the corridor of your being the text of tonight -- "Prepare to meet thy God." And if you fail to do it, it will be an eternal hell,. midst eternal burnings, midst eternal damnation, because you were such a fool you trampled the blood of Jesus Christ under your feet, and went to hell, knowing you were doing it. You cannot sin and get away with it. Oh, men have tried to put God out of their lives. Listen to a fool. Jesus Christ tells us God said he was a fool. What did he do? Put God out. "I will pull down my barns. I will build greater. I will bestow my goods in a barn. I will say to my soul, 'Soul, eat, drink, be merry. Thou hast much goods laid up for many years" -- in a barn. Many Liberty bonds, many Victory bonds -- so many acres of land -- so much money in the bank -- so much stock. But listen! "But God." Oh, there will come a time when God will step in. There will come a time when God will be heard. There will come a time when God will show His hand. But God said, "Thou fool. This night shall thy soul be required of thee."
Oh, beloved, you must take God into account. "Is not this great Babylon that I built? These hanging gardens, these walls, a hundred feet high! These towers on these mighty walls! This river running through the city! Is not this great Babylon that I built?" But God -- God stepped in, as Doctor Godbey told you the other morning. For seven years he went out and grazed with the cattle. "But God!"
Oh, I believe that God will put the sins of anyone under the blood. I believe the blood will cover them. But listen! It is an awful thing to have a polluted memory. A young girl was one time betrayed. Her innocence was gone -- a mere child, and when the baby was born she left it under a hedge in the cold, cold weather, and came away and heard the wailing of that baby. Oh, the wailing of that baby! And it stayed there until it died. Godly women looked after her; godly women succored her; godly women helped her; godly women pointed her to Jesus, and she became a Christian and lived on through years, but every once in a while she would tell her bosom friends, "Oh, I can still hear the wail of the baby in the hedge!"
Oh, listen! It will be an awful thing in eternity, when there are some spirits that come into your vision, and come before you, and look would-be -- not mothers in the face, and say to them, "Oh, if it had not been for you I might have had a body, I might have lived in that body. I might have glorified God. I might have won souls. But you deprived me of my body." It will be an awful thing to meet those spirits in the other world that you deprived of a body by murdering them before they were born. Oh, it means something to prepare. It means something to get right with God. It means the forsaking of sin. It means the abandonment of and confession of sins. It means getting down on your marrow bones and staying there before God until God searches you through and through. Preparation means forsaking. Preparation means restitution. Preparation means restoration. Preparation means all of that before you can believe God for salvation. Brother Slater said he read in a book that an evangelist went around and each year counted the same folks some other evangelist counted the year before. You know why? Because of lack of straight Gospel preaching. The Gospel is the power of God unto salvation today wherever it is preached and believed; and the great trouble is, there is not faithful dealing with souls down here at the altar. It is a good thing to leave a soul to the Holy Ghost. He will deal with it, and He will deal faithfully. He did with me. I did not have anybody around me when I was seeking. The first night there were a few, but I went home and put the thing through on my knees -- morning, noon and night, and there was not anybody there to talk to me and make it easy for me. The Holy Ghost was making it hard for me. The Holy Ghost was going to the bottom of things. What we need today is to leave people to the Holy Ghost. I am not saying the former days were better than these. I do not believe it. God is the same. The old Bible is the same. The Holy Ghost is the same. Man's needs are the same, and man needs the truth today just as much as ever he did in the past, and men today need to go through on God's lines, and meet the conditions that God lays down right here in the Word.
"Prepare to meet thy God." You must meet Him, and meet every sin you ever committed, down on your knees at some altar of prayer, or else meet them up yonder at the judgment seat of Christ, where it will be too late to pray. I believe that when I as a sinner came before God in prayer, that He brought up before me every sin I ever committed, down there on my knees, and the devil came and said to me, "Look here, you have been such a bad, wicked boy, Jesus Christ can save everybody else, but He cannot save you." Let me repeat it: You must meet your sins on your knees, and confess out before God, or else you will meet them at the judgment seat of Christ, where it is too late to confess.
I was preaching last August. A young girl came there, and she did not think much of this preacher. I was preaching every night and pouring on the truth, just as God gave it to me, and she sat away back the first night she came -- was almost in the rear of the Tabernacle. The next night she came she was four or five seats farther front. The next night she came she was farther up yet, and the next night she was nearer the front, and then one night, about 10 o'clock, that girl came to the altar. I wish you had heard her pray. She prayed until half-past 12 at night, and she prayed through, and that campground was just one scene of glorious revelry when that girl got through. Let me tell you how she prayed. "O God! O God! If you will only forgive me I will never drink any more wine. I will never go to any more skating rinks. I will never go to any more dance halls. I will never run with any more married men. I will never kill any more babies. I will tell my husband all about it, O God, if You will only save me!" That is the kind of confession that she made there on her knees, and about half-past 12 at night, God saved her.
You say, "Preacher, why did you preach that way?" I will tell you why. Down there in that town they had water works, a great big reservoir, and they emptied that reservoir one time in order to clean it out, and found fifty babies in it, and the preachers in the town told me of it more than once. We have got to preach straight. It is murder, murder, murder! Not merely taking a knife and driving it home in somebody's back, but the blood of unborn innocents on their fingers, going into eternity, and bearing evidence of their damnable act to the judgment throne of God. Do you believe God will forgive it? Yes, I do; but it has to be confessed. I was preaching in that Campmeeting, and I had my meals on the ground in the dining hall. I had a beautiful room about a block and a half from the campground. I preached one night, and God helped me. Oh, how God did help me preach, and the next day a man came to me, threw his arms around my neck, and said, "I went home and confessed to my wife last night." He said, "I had confessed to her before, but the way I confessed to her was this: I told her that when I got drunk, before I was married, that I did things a drunken man did." He said, "That is all the confession I made, but after I heard you preach last night, I went home and told my wife all the sins I committed, and she said, 'Husband, I forgive you.'" How much better he felt. About half-past 9 the next morning, in a beautiful automobile, a man with his wife drove up in front of where I was stopping. He came to the door and said, "Mr. Kulp, I want to see you. I heard you preach last night." He said, "There is my wife out there. She wanted to come with me." He said, "Wife, come in. Mr. Kulp is here." And they came into my room and sat down, and he said, "Oh, if I had only heard it preached before! If I had only heard it preached before!" That night, in preaching, I preached this: "Unconfessed sins never go under the blood." And that man heard me preach, and went home and said as he went home, "I will confess to my wife." He was a moneyed man, a business man. He said he was down in the cellar helping to fix some boxes, and his wife came down there and he said, "God sent her down here that I might make the confession." He confessed, and said, "Let's go see the preacher." And they drove over to see me that morning, and he said, "Preacher, I never sinned against my wife until after our last child was born; but I was in a city, putting up at a hotel, and a woman was stopping at the hotel. They were going to move there, and her husband was back in the town where they were moving from, and she was there. I was standing in front of the post office one day, and she came along and said, 'Are you going down to the hotel?' I said, 'Yes,' and I went down to the hotel and roomed on the same floor with her, and she said, 'This is my room.' And I said, 'That is mine,' and she came into my room, and I sinned against my wife. If somebody had only preached, 'Unconfessed sins never go under the blood,' I would never have done it." And there stood his wife, and her heart breaking, and she was weeping.
Say, listen! Unconfessed sins never -- never -- never go under the Blood. Here is the text -" Prepare to meet thy God." God is the friend of every repentant sinner. But every sinner who wilfully continues in his sin, runs against the bosses of Jehovah's buckler, and that Bible says that God is angry with the wicked every day. There is no soft solder about that. There is no sentimentality about that. I am giving you God Almighty's truth, and I do not care how much money you have, how respectable you are in the society where you move, I do not care what your reputation may be, if there is one single sin between you and God in all your past that is not repented of, and you have not taken God's way, and met God's conditions, that sin will sink you into the devil's hell, though the preacher may preach a beautiful sermon and eulogize you, and pass you into the gates, amidst the acclamations of angels, but you will be damned because of unrepented sins. Do not tell me a man cannot live without sin. A man cannot be saved until he quits sin. A man has to go out of the sinning business.
I was preaching not far from here, and a man was at the altar. He said, "Yes, I have got through. There is one thing yet I have got to confess to. I was hurt, and I claimed the benefit of a compensation law, and I have been paid a part of it, but I will not take the rest, for I was not hurt as bad as I let on." You are not dealing with man. You are not dealing with preachers. You are dealing with the Holy Ghost. I should not wonder but you would surprise some folks in your community if you would go around making things right. They would look at you in astonishment. One time I stopped in Indianapolis; just had time to run in and get my dinner, and the dinner was fifty cents, but it did not have cantaloupe on the bill of fare for the fifty cents, and I wanted a piece of cantaloupe, and said to the waiter, "Bring me a piece of cantaloupe." He brought it, and I went up and paid my bill and I got into the car. I said, "There, I did not pay for that cantaloupe!" I said, "The first time I am in Indianapolis, I will pay for that cantaloupe." I was back about a year afterward, and I walked into that restaurant and went up to the clerk, and said, "Is here where you take the money for dinners and suppers?" And he said, "Yes, sir." A policeman sat right there. I said, "Well, I was here about a year ago, and got a fifty-cent dinner and ordered a piece of cantaloupe that did not belong to the dinner," and I said, "here is fifteen cents; I want to pay for it." He looked at me, and the policeman looked at me. I guess he thought I was an innocent just escaped. Oh, I should not wonder a bit but what the grocer and the shoemaker and the tailor, and a few other business men in town might be greatly benefited and highly astonished, if you would get enough religion to go around and straighten up the past. That is what preparation means, and I had to write some letters, and I had to send some money. Oh, beloved, it means something to prepare to meet God. If the Holy Ghost does not back that up, don't you move; but if the Spirit of God applies that truth, you mind the Holy Ghost. How are we going to meet God? Red-handed?
One time a British vessel was after a smuggler, and the captain of the smuggling vessel said, "There comes a British vessel. We will have to throw the cargo overboard." And so they went down in the hold and were throwing it out, and throwing it out, and by and by they came up on deck after having thrown every bit of it out, and they said, "But it floats!" And there was the cargo floating. Say, listen! It floats. You have left a trail behind you, and I want to tell you, all the money you can give in a campmeeting, and all you can unload, never -- never -- never will atone for your sins in the past. It will take the blood of Jesus Christ.
Now wait a moment. In some places restitution has gone to seed. You say, "What do you mean, preacher?" I will tell you what I mean. I have heard people get up and testify, and they said, "I could not get right until I made restitution, and I made the restitution, and everything was all right." I do not believe it. Restitution does not save you, and if you could undo every sin you ever committed, if you could restore everything you ever wronged anybody of, it would not save you. It takes repentance toward God, and faith in Jesus Christ. Listen, brother! If you cannot stand this kind of truth, what are you going to do when you meet the God that gave it? Jesus Christ said, "Thy Word is truth."
Now, again -- your church membership. I would rather be a sinner outside of the church, than a sinner inside. I think I would have a better chance, that there would be a greater probability of my getting to God, if I was outside of the church, than in. The devil would say, "Now, don't go back on your profession. Now don't dishonor your church. Now what will your folks think of you?" It is not what folks think. It is, what does God think? Here is a woman dying. Mrs. Norris, a woman of the same church, came into the bed chamber. The woman looked up and said, "Oh, Mrs. Norris, isn't this awful, to be forty years in the church, and to die and be lost!" I used to labor some years ago with Doctor Keen. I was with him in a campmeeting up at Bay View, Mich. Listen to what he said just before he died. He said that 75 per cent of the church members that he was called upon to pray with before they died, he had to pray with them that they might be saved. Good Lord help us! How is it with you tonight? May God wake us up here!
Preparation. When? Now. "Now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation." You may be summoned into the Divine Presence any moment. I knew the president of a bank -- I will not tell you where it was, but I was in his private office one day, and he had been a warm friend of mine for years. I had preached the funeral sermon of his father, who was a good, old-fashioned Methodist, and had real Bible salvation. This president said to me, "Mr. Kulp, there is one thing I hate (he was president of a state bank), at any moment the state inspector can walk into this bank. He can demand of me to furnish all of my books, to furnish all my papers. I will have to show him the whole thing, let him examine it. He can come whenever he pleases, and I have got to pay him ten dollars a day, and," he said, "how I do hate having that inspector, that bank examiner, come around."
The Holy Ghost is an Examiner, and while I am preaching He is applying the truth, and tomorrow is eternity, and in that eternity is the great white Judgment Throne, and men are going to be judged for the deeds done in the body. God knows every heart. "Go call thy husband." "Why, I haven't any husband." You told the truth then. The man you are living with now is not your husband. You have had five. "Who said so?" The Man that is going to be the Judge out yonder. He knows. He knows all about it. There is no secret history He does not know. There is nothing that He does not have on record. During the war the Department of Justice sent for me, and I went over there with a friend of mine. I was introduced to the gentleman, Mr. Smith, and he said to me, "Well, Mr. Kulp, you were out preaching for that pro-German the other night, wasn't you?" I said, "Pro-German? No, sir; that man is not a pro-German." He called for somebody, and they brought out a pile of papers. He said, "Here we have it. Here is what he said. Here is where he said it. Here are the witnesses. We have got the record here." And that man did not know a single thing about that record -- but they had it. Listen! God Almighty has got your record, and it is your record you are going to face, and preparation to meet God means canceling that record on God's conditions. What are they? Repent. That means, go out of the sinning business. What are they? Confession. "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us." What are they? Forsake. "Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him: and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon." Oh, brother, God has the record. But listen! I want to tell you something tonight. The law, the ordinances, were against us. Jesus Christ took them, and He nailed them to the cross, and He made peace through His blood. But, brother, you will have to meet conditions in order to get the merit of that blood. What are you doing? I was preaching up here at New Richmond, Ohio. After I got through at night, I dismissed the congregation, and a young woman came up and stood before me. She said, "Mr. Kulp, I have only got one thing more to do." "Well," I said, "what is that?" She said, "I lied about somebody. I have got to go and confess it." My! If folks had to confess all the lies they had told, wouldn't it keep them busy? A Sunday School class one day had a lesson on Ananias and Sapphira, and the teacher said, "Children, why doesn't God strike people nowadays when they lie?" A little girl held up her hand and said, "Because there would not be anybody alive." God has got the record, and it is always fresh in the memory of God, and in the conscience of the sinner. It takes the blood of Jesus Christ to purge an evil conscience. How is it with you tonight? Are you ready to meet God? What is your salvation good for if you are not ready to meet God on a moment's notice?
Up where I was pastor so long, there are some people who will not come to hear me preach. They say they are made so uncomfortable. I wish they would stop and think. I wish men and women tonight would take a retrospective view of their life, while the Holy Ghost is applying the truth, and while the text comes in thunder tones -- "Prepare to meet thy God." Just take a backward look, and then remember, beloved, remember that the God who came to Adam and said, "Where art thou?" is on your track tonight. Remember that man never hid from God until he sinned, and sin is just as hateful in God's sight tonight; but remember, "The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin." Remember, "When I see the blood, I will pass over you." Oh, there is hope for you, but you will have to meet God's conditions.
A fellow brought a load of coal to a house, went in and said, "Where do you want this coal?" The lady said, "You will have to go down and unlock the cellar window." The man went down and unlocked the cellar window, and coming back, he saw a fine pair of gloves. Oh, they would be good for a driver! And he took them and put them in his pocket. He unloaded the coal and went away. Twelve years afterward that man yielded himself to God. He hunted up the man who owned the gloves and said, "Say, I have got something to tell you. For twelve years I have never met you but what I have been ashamed of myself." The man said, "What is the matter?" He said, "Twelve years ago I took a load of coal to your house. I went down in your cellar to unlock the cellar window. There was a pair of driving gloves there, and I stole them, and I want to pay for them." Twelve years! Conscience has a long memory -- and God has a longer one; and if our conscience condemns us, God will condemn us, for God is greater than our conscience. Prepare. When? "Now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation."
Do you know why a great many people do not come here? Because they are unwilling to meet the conditions. A young man was standing right down about there in my church, and I saw the fellow was under conviction. I went to him and said, "God is talking to you. You ought to be a Christian." He said, "Mr. Kulp, if what you preach is true, I will never be a Christian." I said, "What is the matter?" He said, "I have sinned against some people, and injured them, and they do not know that I am the fellow that did it." God knows. M. W. Knapp, when dying, said, "Wake them up! Wake them up! Wake them up!" and the only thing I know that will wake them up is the truth, as it is in Jesus Christ, preached by godly men and backed by the Holy Ghost. Jesus is able to save unto the uttermost all them that come unto God through Him, and save them now -- when you meet conditions -- and then you will be saved on the merit of the blood of Jesus Christ, and not because of your good works.
It is 8:58. How many persons are there here tonight ready to meet God at 9 o'clock, in just two minutes? You know whether you are or not. Let me tell you something. My old mother is ninety-six years of age next November. Once in a while she will have a flash of her old self, and when she does, she will sing some old hymn:
"Drooping souls, no longer grieve, Heaven is sufficient, If in Christ you do believe, You shall find Him precious.
Jesus now is passing by, Calling mourners to Him, He has died for you and me, Now look up and view Him."
I can hear her old cracked voice. Then again she will say to me, when she has those moments -- they do come now and then -- "I am all ready whenever the Master sends for me." That never leaves her. Somebody referred to something of that kind the other day, and I thought of mother. Oh, thank God, there are some things we know. You can know if you are ready. Bishop Hughes says never to put a test that is not Scriptural -- and I am not. That is the test that Jesus Christ puts -- "Be ye also ready, for in such an hour as ye think not, the Son of man cometh." Are you ready?
