“Readable” is a lightly edited reading copy; “Verbatim” stays close to the spoken words. Audio is the record of what was said.
I would like to make an apology to the students who rushed over to the bookstore to get some of those books that were advertised. My stock of books in the Northwest was completely cleaned out, and I had to air freight some up from Los Angeles in order to meet this promised supply. Seattle Transfer picked up the books but didn't deliver them yet. They're supposed to be here by 10 o'clock today. So may I repeat the announcement? Mrs. Ashton will be glad to let you have the three books for the price of two during this series. I know enough about college students to know that while they're not always broke, they don't have money for very long ever. So I like to make things easier for them. I think Mrs. Ashton also has a bargain for you if you just want to take the two smaller books, so you can remember that.
The books are "Full Surrender," "Living the Christian Life" with a preface by Billy Graham, and the little book "Faith that Makes Sense," dealing with the popular apologetics that we've been giving you in breezy style. The third little book is "Inside Story of the Hollywood Christian Group," telling of these remarkable trophies of grace in that Bible class down in Los Angeles.
One of the students said to me, did you come to your knowledge of God along the lines you've been speaking to us? I had to say, oh no, not at all. I didn't sit down and think of the teleological argument and the cosmological argument and so forth, nothing of the sort. I was brought up to believe in God. But it was quite a refreshing experience to get into university life and find that Christian faith made sense. That's why I've been passing these things along to you, that you may be encouraged to.
And tonight, before I give my message, I'm going to tell you something further about my assurance of faith in God, which came through personal experience. I still remember traveling on my way to Soviet Russia with two and a half dollars in my pocket. I came back again with a dollar and a quarter. I had some amazing experiences, and I'll take a little time tonight to tell you of some of these adventures traveling around the world.
On Monday, I spoke to you on the fact of God. Yesterday, I spoke to you on the deity of Jesus Christ. Now I'm going to ask a question. What is the first word of the good news of Jesus Christ? Some might say love, some might say believe, some might say fatherhood, some might say brotherhood. But what is the first word of the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ?
Dr. A. T. Robertson, America's greatest Greek scholar, I think, says that this first word is the most poorly translated of all the words in the New Testament, the most poorly understood. And I have seen the copy of a letter written by an American scholar to Dr. Westcott, the famous Greek scholar in Cambridge University, whose Greek text is the standard text studied, saying, can't we do something to translate this word properly? And Dr. Westcott said, well, the word is so ingrained in the English language now, we have to trust the people in the pulpit to explain it.
I find that the first word of the gospel, the foremost word of the gospel, is the most poorly understood. Its meaning has been perverted, its application has been restricted, its necessity in evangelism has been denied, and its continuation in the Christian life largely ignored. You say, well, what is the word? Well, I propose to establish it for you. I'm going to read familiar verses, you don't need to turn them up, but I will establish this for you in just a moment.
We find in the first of the Gospels these words: In those days came John the Baptist preaching in the wilderness of Judea and saying, repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. What was the first word? In the next chapter, it says, from that time Jesus began to preach and to say, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. You'll find in Mark's gospel, after John was put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee preaching and saying, repent ye and believe the gospel. You find also in Mark's gospel, when he sent out his twelve disciples to multiply his ministry, they went out and preached that men should repent.
You find in the time of Pentecost, when Peter preached his remarkable sermon, when he reached the climax and they were pricked in their hearts and said, men and brethren, what shall we do? The Apostle Peter said, repent and be converted, that your sins might be blotted out. His first sermon, he said, repent and be baptized, every one of you, for the remission of your sins. When the Apostle Paul started to preach, it doesn't say immediately what he said, but in defending himself before King Agrippa, he said, whereupon, O King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision, but first at Damascus, then Jerusalem, then throughout Judea, then to the nations, I told them that they should repent and turn to God and produce works meet for such repentance.
When the Apostle Peter writes of the end of time, when the heavens will be consumed in nuclear fire, he says, God is not willing that any should perish, but all should repent. The word repent is the key word of the gospel, yet it is not preached as such today. When I said its meaning has been perverted, I'm reminded how words change meaning.
When I first came to the United States, I stayed with a very nice family in Seattle. I was leaving, I said to my host, I want to thank you for arranging all my meetings, but most of all, for having me in your home. I said, that's the first time I've stayed in an American home. I said, as a sort of compliment, I think your wife is one of the homeliest women I've met in my life. He said, what? By extrasensory perception, I perceived that I hadn't used the right word somewhere or other, so I said, I think your wife's one of the homeliest ladies I've met in my life. Well, he said, she's not exactly a movie star, but she's a pretty little thing. I said, yes, but she's homely. He said, what do you mean? That's what I say. Well, he said, what does homely mean, where you come from? Well, I said, sweetly means sweet-like, nicely means nice-like, quickly means quick-like, brightly means bright-like, and homely means home-like. He's not in Seattle. He said, brother, you ought to be careful. If I hadn't been converted, he said, I'd have punched you in the nose.
How can a nice word like homely come to mean ugly? Yet, that happened. That's an accident, I would say. But when it comes to a word like democracy, the Communists twist it. I was looking down the muzzle of a Tommy Gun in Hungary, as I told you, and Hungary is called a people's democracy. The people have nothing to do with the electing of the government. If democracy is a government of the people, for the people, by the people, then this word has been twisted. Wouldn't it be a masterstroke if Satan could take the first word of the gospel, the word with which John the Baptist, the Lord Jesus, the disciples, and the apostles began their ministry, and carried on their ministry, to take that word and twist it? Well, that is exactly what has happened.
Among Protestants, the word repent means to feel sorry. But that's not the meaning of the word. It has a shade of that in it, but it means a lot more than that. In Los Angeles, I heard of a thief who made a specialty of stealing women's handbags. He developed a system. He would start running. As he saw a lady coming along with her eyes on the shop windows, he would give her a good hard shove, not enough to knock her down, but to surprise her. And as she relaxed her grasp, he'd swipe the bag away from her. But he didn't like pushing women around. In fact, he told one of his friends, it makes me feel a heel. So he always apologized. He always said, sorry, as he ran off with the bag. That is not repentance.
Yet, if you were to show a person in Seattle an item from the paper and said, look, the police are holding so-and-so for such-and-such a crime, and the sergeant says he didn't show a bit of repentance, what does that mean? They would say it means he didn't seem a bit sorry. That is not the meaning of the word.
Now, among Roman Catholics, the word repentance has been translated due penance. It's a difficult concept, but I suppose you could put it this way, to do something good to make up for something wrong that you've done. And it doesn't mean that either. Some people think that repentance means self-reformation. They say, well, you can't ask a drunkard to repent. You mean to say he's got to get on the water wagon before he can be saved? They misunderstand the word.
What does it mean? The Greek word is a strong word, metanoia. Meta means change, noia means thinking. The Amplified New Testament, published by Zondervan, has been called the poor man's Greek grammar, and it gives some of the fine shades of meanings of Greek verbs and tenses. And I find metanoia is translated to think differently, to change your mind, to amend your ways, to change your conduct, to abhor your past, to change your feeling. You say, which? All of them.
When Nicodemus came to the Lord Jesus Christ by night, was his a problem of conduct? Was he a drunkard? No, he wasn't.
Was his a problem of emotion? Was he in love with somebody else's wife? No, it wasn't that. He was confused in his thinking, and the Lord said to him, if I speak to you of earthly things and you don't understand me, how can I speak to you of heavenly things? Repentance applied to his thinking.
But take the woman who was taken in sin. The Lord Jesus Christ said to her, go and sin no more. Hers was not a problem of thinking. She knew she'd done wrong, nor was it emotional. It was just that her conduct was wrong.
Take the rich young ruler who said, I've kept all the commandments since I was a boy. Our Lord did not contradict him, but the Lord said to him, go and sell all that you have and give to the poor. Why did he say that? Because his problem was emotional. He loved his money, and he couldn't do it. He went away sorrowful. It was emotional.
So you see, repentance is applied to thinking, acting, and feeling. That's why the apostle Paul said, I told the nations that they should repent and turn to God and produce works made for such repentance. So what does it mean? Every time you read the word repent, read the word change. That's the root meaning. Change. It means primarily change your thinking, but it's bound to change your acting and ultimately your feeling.
I said the meaning of the word has been perverted, but also its application has been restricted. One of my good friends who conducted a series of meetings here at Seattle Pacific College sent me a tract of his recently, in which he entitled the tract "Peter or Paul," in which he said that Peter preached repentance to the Jews, but Paul did not preach repentance to the Gentiles. And even Peter, when he spoke to Cornelius and his Gentile friends, didn't use the word repent. That repentance is for Jews and not for Gentiles. By the way, this man's practice is far greater than, better than his theory. He's a great soul winner, but he's got this notion in his mind.
There are three billion people in the world today. Two billion nine hundred and ninety million are Gentiles. Only ten million are Jews. What a masterstroke of the devil to convince Christians that two billion nine hundred and ninety million don't need to repent. Let's convince Billy Graham that when he goes back to Manhattan, he must say, you Jews from the Bronx need to repent, but you Gentiles from Jersey City don't need to repent.
I'm sure you've heard this idea. I was speaking in a Baptist church in Texas, and one of the Bible teachers came to me and said, you hit me pretty hard. He said, because this morning I was telling them that very thing at the Bible class. The Apostle Paul spoke at Athens to a Gentile audience. If there was a Jew present, there's no indication of it. They were Gentile philosophers. He said in times past, God winked at ignorance, but today he commands all men everywhere to repent. Only Jews.
When the Apostle Paul said goodbye to the church at Ephesus, they wept that they would not see him again. And he said, I call God to witness that for two years from house to house, I have testified both to Jews and to Greeks repentance towards God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, if you look up the story of Cornelius, you'll find that the Apostle Peter apparently, at least it's not recorded, that he used the word repent to Cornelius. Cornelius believed, but when the Apostle Peter went back to report to the church in Jerusalem why he had been hobnobbing with Gentiles and breaking Jewish custom, they held their peace and rejoiced that God had granted unto the Gentiles also repentance unto life. Whatever it was that Cornelius did, the Holy Spirit, by the pen of Dr. Luke, calls it repentance. It's change.
In our modern evangelism, we find repentance is ignored. Now, this is not true of Billy Graham. Billy Graham preaches repentance, that's one of the secrets of the strength of his ministry. But far too many modern evangelists preach a kind of easy-believism. You say, but don't you believe that yourself? Don't you believe that what Paul said to the Philippian jailer, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. He said that to a man already on his knees. Now, I quoted the verse that the Lord Jesus said, repent and believe the gospel. You repent in believing, it's not two things.
If an agnostic came here this morning and said, before you speak I want to make my position clear, I do not believe. But if at the end of the meeting came up and shook hands with him and said, well, now I believe. He has repented. He has changed his thinking, hasn't he? How can anyone who is not a believer become a believer without repenting? But you see, it has an immediate effect on conduct and feeling.
It was my privilege to be a founder of the Hollywood Christian group with Dr. Henrietta Mears. A producer used to come to the meeting with his mistress. He was divorced from his first wife, separated from a second, living in anticipation of marriage with a third. In fact, I asked him, man to man, are you going to marry this girl? And he sort of indicated the other two had cost him too much money. He was a disturbing influence in the group, and some of the converted members wanted to exclude him. I said, no, let him come, he may get converted. He didn't, but his mistress did.
I said to Tim Spencer, who told me, are you sure? He said, I'm sure. I said, who led her to the Lord? He said, my wife Velma. I said, well, I respect Velma. Is Velma sure? He said, Velma's sure. Why? Well, he said, the first thing she said when she got up off her knees, he said, Velma, will you go downtown with me? I want to buy a new Yale lock for my door. The producer had the key to her apartment. The first thing she said was, I want to change the lock. She had repented.
But I met at the Hollywood Christian group one night a little girl who had become very notorious as a teenage mistress of an evil living movie star since deceased. A man who wrote his own autobiography and entitled it, "My Wicked, Wicked Life." And it was really wicked. I haven't read anything so foul for a long time. One night I was listening to the radio, television news, when I heard that this poor kid had been arrested by the police for homicide. She had shot a young man, playfully apparently, during the small hours of the morning in rather shameful circumstances. But then Paul Coates, the commentator said, mentioning her name, is a member of the Hollywood Christian group.
So I phoned a member of the committee. Now, although I'm not mentioning names, you all know the names, because this has all been in the newspapers. So I'm not breaching confidence. I said to the committee member, did you hear the television announcement? Yes, he said, isn't it terrible? He said, I'm hoping some good will come out of it. But I said, did you hear that she was announced as a member of the Hollywood Christian group? He said, yes. I said, well, how did she become a member when the Constitution says that only those who are born again and whose life shows it can be members?
Well, he said, I led her to the Lord myself. I said, please tell me about it. Well, he said, I use Revelation 3:20. You know, he says, you know the little book that tells you how to use these verses? He says, I said to her, now read this. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If any man hear my voice and will open the door, I will come in and sup with him and he with me. And she read it. Now I said to her, you invite him in. She said, is it as easy as that? He said, well, read it again. And finally, in her own way, she invited Christ into her heart. Now he said, where is he? She said, where is who? Where is Jesus? He's in heaven, I guess, she said. No, no, you have invited him in. He didn't say, I insist, but he might as well have said that. Oh, she said, I get your idea. Now he said, you're a Christian, so thank him. So she thanked him. And he said, now, this isn't the usual thing, but I'm going to get your membership card right away. We had a probation period in the Hollywood Christian group.
He said to me on the phone, well, what did I do wrong? I said, I'll tell you. Before the word behold, there's a space. Before the space, there's a period. And before the period, there's the word repent. And to quote Zondervan's Amplified, it means to think differently, to amend your ways, to abhor your past. It means to change. And you did not tell her that repentance meant change.
Billy Graham asked me to keep my eye on Jim Voss after his conversion in Los Angeles, because he'd professed conversion twice before. I wrote to Billy and I said, I'm convinced he's converted, because I find he has sold his big house to pay for his things he's stolen. He sold his big car to pay for bad debts.
He and his wife and baby are sleeping on a mattress in an empty, unfurnished room, and he's gone to the chief of police and offered to give evidence against himself, even though it means going to jail for perjury. Today, Jim Voss is a distinguished Christian social worker in New York, an evangelist to the gangs. But Jim Voss's friend, Mickey Cohen, came to our meetings also, and raised his hand one night, and talked to Billy Graham, and talked to several other people. I was uneasy about him, for reasons I don't need to mention. But one of my friends, a man of God, a businessman, decided he was going to lead Mickey Cohen to the Lord.
And so he went and used Revelation 3:20, and Mickey Cohen invited Jesus into his heart, and my friend paid his fare to Manhattan so that he could hear Billy Graham preach for a week, put him up at the best hotel, lent him his credit card, on which he ran up quite a big account. Where's Mickey Cohen today? In jail. What went wrong? He said to my friend, you didn't tell me I had to turn my back on the gang. In our evangelism, we must make it clear, when we invite people to become disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, that the first step is repentance, and it means change.
Take the gospel parables, Luke 15. You know the stories: the lost sheep, the lost coin, the lost son. The members of the religion faculty would be very interested to hear me say that the first parable, the lost sheep, is pure Calvinism. The last story, the lost son, is pure Arminianism. The sheep did nothing to save itself, the shepherd did everything, that's Calvinism. The prodigal son came back on his own account, that's Arminianism. The link between the two is pure evangelism. The woman is the church, the coin is the lost soul, and the sweeping is evangelism. That's why a Free Methodist and a Presbyterian can get behind Billy Graham and the evangelistic crusade.
But I noticed something very interesting in that account, Luke 15. Our Lord Jesus tells the story of the lost sheep. You know it so well, don't you? And then he says, he comes home and calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, rejoice with me, for I found my sheep which was lost. That's the end of the story. But the Lord Jesus adds quickly, I say unto you, that's his way of calling attention to things, likewise there shall be joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth. Why did he add that? Because you could read the story and say, well, a sheep didn't have to repent. You might think that salvation came without repentance.
Take the story of the lost coin. When she found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors and says, rejoice with me, for I've found the piece that I'd lost. The Lord Jesus adds quickly, likewise I say to you, there's joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth. Why did he say that? Because somebody might read the story of the lost coin and think, well, the coin did nothing, it was just found, therefore repentance is not needed. But when you read the third story, it says, for this thy brother was dead and is alive again, was lost, and is found. I thought, now, oh, it's not here. He didn't comment on repentance. Why? Because in the story itself it says, I will arise and go to my Father and will say to him, Father, I've sinned against heaven and before thee, and I'm no more worthy to be called thy son. That's repentance.
The three evangelistic parables emphasize repentance so that no one has an excuse to think that you may be saved without repenting. The most important things I have to say, I'll have to leave till tonight. And that is, how does it apply to us? I can't compel you to come along tonight, but if it means anything to you, I will say that what I have got to say tonight will be the most important of all the things I have said this week, or can say. In fact, if you don't mind my saying, I'm just getting warmed up to my message, but you have to go to classes, unfortunately. Will you come tonight and hear what God says to you, whether you're Christian or not? Lord, teach us to repent, for Jesus' sake. Amen.