The

White Throne Judgment

Dr. Peter S. Ruckman

President, Pensacola Bible Institute

B.A., B.D., M.A., Th.M., Ph.D.

COPYRIGHT © 1980 by Peter S. Ruckman

All Rights Reserved

(PRINT) ISBN 1-58026-295-3

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

The Scripture quotations found herein are from the text of the Authorized King James Version of the Bible. Any deviations therefrom are not intentional.

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The

White Throne

Judgment

This “Great White Throne Judgment” is the last judgment of the unsaved dead. This is the judgment most people profess to believe in. I don’t care if you are a Catholic, a Protestant, or a Jew; you know that sometime, somewhere, it is going to wind up. And that last judgment is right in front of your face in Revelation 20, beginning at verse 11. Get your Bible and turn to it.

Revelation 20:11—“And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them.

Revelation 20:12—“And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.”

Revelation 20:13—“And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.”

Revelation 20:14—“And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.”

Revelation 20:15—“And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.”

Regardless of a person’s religious upbringing, almost everyone believes that somewhere, sometime, a last judgment is going to catch up with him (if his was a religion at all—or with the possible exception of an atheist who doesn’t call his belief religion).

The Bible has seven separate judgments, but I am not going to talk about those right now. This message is just going to be on one of them, the last judgment of the unsaved dead.

If you have any sense at all, you know that sooner or later, sin is going to catch up with you. Maybe it won’t catch up with you in this life. There have been people in this life that got away with meanness and devilment for fifty years, and, as far as the eye could see, it never caught up with them.

George Bernard Shaw lived to be about a hundred years old and was a practical atheist of the first order. After his death, they auctioned off his household belongings and among them was a Bible. In the fly leaf of that Bible, in Shaw’s handwriting, was this, “Really this book is a most undesirable possession; I really must get rid of it.” That’s how he felt about the word of God. And, as far as I know, he was only in the hospital twice in his life, and was in good health until his death.

There have been people in this world who have been mean as the devil all their life, and it appears that they got away with it; but of course they don’t always. Sometimes it catches up with them now. If there is any God up there at all, young people—and I say that with no doubt in my own mind—if there is any God up there at all, then sure as you live and breathe, you are going to get what is coming to you. Believe me: YOU WILL get it. And that doesn’t mean the bad things alone.

You know, there have been people on this earth who have suffered and sacrificed, worked their fingers to the bone, people who have done all they could for others, and never received any thanks or appreciation from anybody.

Listen, if there is a God up there, then the good things will catch up with you too. The good things and the bad things, that’s just common sense. In other words, someday God is going to settle all accounts.

One time a preacher got a letter from a fellow, and it went something like this:

Dear Brother so-and-so,

I just wanted to tell you something about myself. I’ve plowed on Sunday and sowed on Sunday. Now, it is September, and I have harvested on Sunday and have the largest bank account in this part of the country. How do you account for that?

The preacher answered his letter:

Dear so-and-so,

God doesn’t settle accounts in September.

That’s how you account for that. God will settle at a later date. Someday, you are going to stand there, and you are going to be judged. Paul says in Acts 17:31—“Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead.”

There is the Judge. You know, if you actually thought of being judged by Him you would quake in your boots. If I judged you, you would get by. You know why? Because you could find as much wrong with me as I could find with you. But God is going to judge you by a Perfect Man. God is going to let a sinless man analyze you and see how much you are worth. Some folks have a funny idea about judging. People in America got this baloney from over in Europe. They have the idea that when you get to judgment, God will take all your good works and put them in one hand and all your bad works and put them in the other hand, and if your good works outweigh your bad works, you go to heaven. Or if your bad works outweigh your good works, you go to hell. If you come out in the middle, you make a place for that. All that kind of stuff.

Do you really know what God is going to do? He is going to put you and all your doings in one hand and Jesus Christ in the other hand and weigh out. Never mind your Christopher; he isn’t going to be there: he is a rascal just like you. Never mind Mary, she probably had just as many covetous thoughts as you. Never mind Joseph, he probably exaggerated just as much as you. God is going to put you in one hand and Jesus Christ in the other and check you out. He is going to read your meter! If a fellow really got to thinking about that, it would make him nervous, wouldn’t you think?

But there are some folks you can’t scare. No matter what you say, you can’t scare them. I talked to a lady one time, and she said, “I don’t believe in scaring people into getting saved. If you can’t win them with love, you won’t win them at all.”

I said, “Well, what kind of Bible have you got?”

She said, “What do you mean?” (And she had a King James Bible.)

I said, “Your Bible says, ‘and others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire; hating even the garment spotted by the flesh’ (Jude 23); ‘Noah...moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house’ (Heb. 11:7).”

Why, I’ve heard people get up and sing:

T’was grace that taught my heart to fear,

And grace my fears relieved.

How precious did that grace appear

The hour I first believed.

It’s better to be Hell scared than to be Hell scorched. Don’t you know a good healthy fear is one of the best emotions you ever had in your life? Did you know that? People look kind of funny when they say, “I don’t believe in scaring anyone.” Why, you big liar. You folks sitting here tonight, you’re scared to death of things. Some of you kids are afraid you are going to flunk out next year in school. Some of you older ones are afraid you are going to get cancer. Some of you parents are afraid you are not going to be able to meet the bills. Some of you are afraid you won’t find a partner for life. Why, you are scared all the time. In fact, you are afraid of everything except what you ought to be afraid of. The Bible says, “fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matt. 10:28). According to the Bible, a good, healthy fear is the best emotion you ever had. But some folks you can’t scare; I know that. You wouldn’t even try to scare some folks; they are too dumb.

Now, take some of you; if you were parked on a railroad track and an express train was coming down the track at eighty miles an hour and I said, “Get off! Get off! There comes a train!” And then you say, “You can’t move me by fear; you will have to move me by love.” How dumb can you be?

I’d like to see you overseas in the Army and not be afraid when those shells start coming toward you. A fellow stands up there and says, “You can’t scare me.” Blam! Nothing left of him.

Listen, the most healthy emotion you ever had in your life is a good, healthy, wholesome fear. Fear is what keeps you from drowning. Fear is what keeps you from burning. Fear is what keeps you from poisoning yourself. “By the fear of the Lord men depart from evil” (Prov. 16:6).

All right, the Bible says that God is going to judge you, and the Bible is full of that judgment. Matthew 12:36—“every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment.” Matthew 10:26—“for there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known.” Mark 4:22—“For there is nothing hid, which shall not be manifested.” Job 34:22—“There is no darkness, nor shadow of death, where the workers of iniquity may hide themselves.”

In plainer words, someday it’s all going to come out in the open, and everybody is going to know about it. God is going to take that car you were in last Saturday night and peel that thing back like a sardine can. Everybody in town is going to know about it. You are a fool if you think you can cover your sins. If you want to cover your sins, there is only one right way to do it, young people, and that is with the blood. The BLOOD is the only covering that is going to last.

Why, did you ever realize what kind of judgment that is going to be? Paul said, “In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ.” Someday God is going to judge some secret things about you that your mother and daddy didn’t know. Listen, every whispered word, in every dark alley, every back room, in every bedroom, on every beach, and in every automobile will be as loud as every blast of the trumpet of the Archangel. You better think about that! But, of course, I realize some of you can’t be scared; you don’t have enough sense. If you had any sense, you would be scared.

Did you ever stop to think about what kind of business this judgment is going to be? This judgment is not on just what you have done. The writer in Ecclesiastes says, “God shall bring every work into judgment with every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil” (Ecc. 12:14). “Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandeth my thought afar off” (Psa. 139:2). O Lord, there is not a hair on my crown that thou doest not know all together. God knows when I get up, and God knows when I sit down. God knows what I am saying, and He knows what I am thinking about. Hebrews says, “all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do” (Heb. 4:13). As a Christian, when I don’t always live for the Lord and have things I need to talk to the Lord about or to confess to Him, do you know what I do? I talk to Him plain because it is already plain to Him. You haven’t any covering. Your clothes may hide you from our sight, but they don’t hide you from His sight. “All things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do” (Heb. 4:13). The biggest trick the devil ever pulled on you young people was to make you think that if the lights were blue and the smoke was thick or the music was loud, God couldn’t see. Well, let me tell you something young fellow, you never put your hand where God didn’t see it. You will give an account as sure as you live and breathe.

They took the preaching of Hell out of the schools, and now they have hell in the schools. They took the Bible out of the schools, and now they have to put it in the prisons. Folks say, “I don’t believe in that Hell-fire-and-damnation preaching.” Well, then, you aren’t a Christian. The words were coined by Jesus Christ in the gospel according to Matthew.

There they are, the Bible says, before the judgment. My! Don’t you know that’s going to be a day? The unsaved will be standing there clothed in filthy rags because the Bible says, “all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags.” And apart from Jesus Christ, the condition of a man or woman, boy or girl is like that church in Revelation that was poor, wretched, naked, miserable, and blind. And what was even worse, they didn’t know it. The Bible says that ignorance is no excuse, that you could have found out if you had wanted to.

Bring them in! Bring them in! Don’t you know that is really going to be a day? Baxter McClendon, or “Cyclone Mac” as some used to call him, the old time circuit riding preacher—do you know what he used to say? He said, “If a little two bit, tin horn, circuit riding preacher like me can get some of you folks twisted around in your seats like you have a hornet in the shirt, what on earth are you going to do in that day when the holy eyes of God Almighty look down through your naked soul?” My! My! What a day that is going to be.

It’s easy to act big down here; it’s real easy. These that like to play the big shot; I wonder how they will act up there. You hear some of these little kids about thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen-years-old down in the washroom telling dirty jokes. I’d like to see you tell Him a dirty joke, brother. I can just see some of you standing up there saying, “Have you heard this one about....” You’ll never finish

—you’ll never finish. Oh, they talk big down here.

I heard a fellow say down here one time, “Oh, preacher, you don’t have to worry about me getting to heaven. If my wife gets to heaven I’ll just go in on her apron strings...har...har...har.” You know.” And then another one says, “I’ll tell you what preacher, if old drinking so-and-so is saved, you don’t have to worry about me...yak...yak...yak...Me and him drink out of the same bottle.” Big, boy, you know, big boy. I’d like to see you tell God that. I would sure like to see you tell God that. I’d like to see you pull out that flask and give Him a shot. I’d like to see you give God a bottle of beer and tell Him the malt was good for Him.

Listen! You can talk big down here, but my, my, wait until you get up there! Wait until you get up there with the One these preachers preach and talk about. You know, sometimes you think, “He is just somebody we preachers talk about just to make a living,” but, brother, you have it all wrong. You are going to see Him: your eyes right into His eyes with that bearded face looking right into yours.

Can’t you imagine old Judas Iscariot coming up to that Judgment? Can’t you see Judas coming up there, and somebody saying, “There he is Judas; you sold Him for thirty pieces of silver. You kissed Him in the garden, Judas; go kiss Him again.” You would have to say, “What’s the matter, Judas? You look a little green around the gills. Aren’t you going to kiss Him again?” No! No! He isn’t going to do it again.

Up comes Caiaphas. You remember Caiaphas, the one that spit on Him in the judgment hall? Can’t you imagine Caiaphas at the Judgment? They say, “Hey, Caiaphas, aren’t you going to spit on Him again? Come on, spit on Him. Hey, where are you going, Caiaphas?” Do you know where they are going? They are running and crying, saying, “Rocks fall on us; mountains cover us from the face of the Lamb, for the day of His wrath has come and who shall be able to stand.” Nobody! Nobody! Not your mother, not your priest. No, not in that day. The Bible says that in that day every mouth shall be stopped and the whole world will stand guilty before God. What a day that is going to be.

Let’s take a fellow and just bare his soul. You know, I never could stand too much veneer, shellac, and varnish. Let’s just strip a soul naked and see what it looks like. I remember one time I was driving down the road and saw an advertisement for a movie on an arcade. It was about a chronic alcoholic, and they called it “I’ll Cry Tomorrow.” The advertisement went on to say it was filmed on location inside a woman’s soul. I thought to myself, “Ain’t that a joke. Ain’t that a rip. Ain’t that a riot.” Why, listen, Hollywood never made a film of a soul. Hollywood never could get it right. I saw an arcade one night that said, “The Damned Don’t Cry.” But they do. “There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth....” And the woman who is a chronic alcoholic doesn’t cry tomorrow—she cries the next day, the next one, and the next one. Hollywood never could get it right. I believe the only honest arcade I ever saw was one saying, “Everything but the truth.” I thought, “Now that’s the only honest show in that town.”

Now, let’s take that soul we were talking about and put a camera on him and see what he looks like. First of all, he is guilty of murder. He says, “I’m not! I’m not!” He says, “I never killed anybody in my life. I was never guilty of manslaughter. You can’t get me for murder. I wasn’t in the army. I didn’t shoot anybody; I didn’t kill anybody.” Well, who ever told you, you had to kill somebody to be a murderer? Where did you get that from? You must have gotten that out of Readers Digest; you sure didn’t get that out of the Bible.

You know why a lot of folks think they are good? It’s the standard they compare themselves with. Birds of a feather flock together. And the reason some of you will leave this camp thinking you are pretty good is because of the crowd you hang out with. Because by the standards of the bunch you run with, you are pretty good.

You know what I am going to do tonight? I’m going to show you what God’s standards are. “Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him.” Did you ever hate down here? Did you ever lie in bed at night and say, “I hate him, I hate him; if I could just meet that fellow in an alley I’d knock him down. I’d take a brick....” The Bible says that if you hate him in your heart, you are a killer. Why, I could look out over this audience tonight and say, “Look at that fellow, he must be saved. He goes to church, carries his Bible, is active in the young peoples’ group.” And God might say, “You see that fellow there, he is a killer he has a switchblade in his hand ready to do business.” God doesn’t see like man sees. The Bible says, “Man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart.”

Let me tell you something. Your form of religion looks pretty good, but God sees your heart. That isn’t all. That fellow is guilty again. He says, “I’m not guilty, I’ve only been married one time, and I’ve never stepped out on my wife.” Who ever told you, you had to be divorced four or five times to commit adultery? Where did you get that from, Life magazine? What have you been reading? Did you know people think they are much better than they are because of what they have been reading? You don’t find many people who spend time reading the word of God that have any illusions about their self-righteousness. When you find people who think they are good enough to get to heaven without Jesus’ blood atonement and Him as a personal Savior, then you can tell they have spent all their time reading junk.

Jesus says about this thing, “whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart” (Matt. 5:28). That covers a lot of territory, doesn’t it? It says WHOSOEVER...looks on a woman...for the purpose of...lusting...HATH ALREADY COMMITTED ADULTERY WITH HER ...Two involved, ladies! In his heart...you better be careful how you dress, ladies. The young lady says, “Well, I can’t help how people think; it isn’t my fault.” Yeah! The book says, “whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.” I don’t know where that puts these Hollywood stars, but I wouldn’t want to be in their shoes at the Judgment. You better be careful how you dress. You better be careful because you will stand before the Judgment Seat of Christ, and you will have to give an account of the effect you have on people as a Christian girl. The Bible says, “whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart” (Matt. 5:28). That’s why we have some old fashioned ideas about dress, or that’s the reason we have old fashioned ideas about bathing suits. A lot of unsaved, sacramental, religious bigots don’t understand it, but that’s why.

I heard a fellow in Texas, about a year ago, say girls were wearing dresses so thin that a mosquito could fly through the material without breaking a wing. Why, a girl wears so much paint that if a boy did kiss her he might get lead poisoning. And have you ever seen those girls that wear so much mascara blink at you and have their eyes stick together.

Let’s get back to our man and take him apart to see what he is. He is a thief. He says, “I’m not a thief. I never stole anything in my life.” You didn’t? Now, are you sure? You know, people are the funniest things about this. They think if they haven’t robbed a bank, opened a safe, or robbed a cash register, that they are honest. Strange, isn’t it? Did you ever steal ten years off your mother’s life by making her worry about the way you live. Are you sure you are not as crooked as a dog’s hind leg? You mean you never took ten minutes off the time your employer paid you for a coffee break? How about you boys sitting here tonight, did you ever steal the sweet bloom of purity off somebody’s cheek? Are you sure? Are you sure you are not as crooked as Alvin Carpus, maybe? People, you need to think about things like that. You that think you have to rob a bank to be crooked, why, if you rob a cash register they will put you on a chain gang or give you five years in the work house; but if you steal $30,000 from the state highway department, they will make you commissioner. It’s according to how you look at it.

Are you sure you are crooked or straight? Some of you folks here tonight are so crooked that if the truth were known, you would have to screw yourself into your socks in the morning. I know if the truth were known about you here this morning, you are so crooked that if you fell through a barrel of fish hooks you wouldn’t get hooked one time. Now, I want to ask all of you something. I’m not trying to trip you or anything, but I just want you to be honest with me. Everyone in the audience stand a minute. Now, everyone think carefully and tell the truth about it. If you have never stolen in your lifetime (an apple, watermelon, pen, or pencil) sit down. You people on the first few rows, look behind you. This must be the fulfilling of prophecy, “you have made my house a den of thieves.” Everyone sit down.

I remember I once asked the same question to a congregation in Fulton, Kentucky, and a lady in the back would get up and sit down, get up and sit down. I asked her after the meeting what the matter was. She said, “Brother Ruckman, we did do that when I was a little girl, but we didn’t call it stealing ‘em; we called it taking ‘em.” That made me think of what a fellow said to me one time about his daddy being in jail. I asked him what his daddy was in jail for, and he said that he was in jail for something he didn’t do. I asked, “What was it he didn’t do?” He said, “He didn’t wipe his fingerprints off the safe.” Lots of truth in that, too.

People get used to looking at things a certain way, and they think thieves have to steal things like money. But some of you have stolen watches, books, clothes, and, when you get right down to it, you have stolen a lot. You are not straight! And that’s not all, this fellow we are dealing with is a liar. “A liar,” he says, “I never lied, “ You did too! “Well,” he says, “You got to make a living.” You don’t have to make a living by lying! The Bible says LET YOUR YEA BE YEA and YOUR NAY, NAY; “for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.” When you say yes, let it mean yes. When you say no, let it mean no. When you say maybe, let it mean maybe. Don’t deceive and don’t be crooked. Some of you think you are really a straight fellow, and you are just as crooked as you can be. You have made promises a dozen times and had no intention whatsoever of fulfilling them at all. People do that more than ever now.

It used to be that a man’s word was his bond, but it isn’t anymore. Did you know, back in the old days, a man’s word was his bond, and if he needed money he could go to the bank and say, “I need five hundred dollars.” The banker would say, “What credentials do you have?” And he would say, “I’m a member of the First Baptist Church, or the First Methodist Church.” And the banker would lend him the money. In 1800 and 1890, they would loan him the money. Can you imagine that happening today? Picture a fellow going into a bank and saying that he wanted to borrow ten thousand dollars, and when they ask for his credentials he says, “I’m a member of the First Baptist Church,” Oh, brother! Harry Truman was a Baptist.

People lie and don’t think a thing about it. Time was that if you called a fellow a liar you had a fight on your hands. You don’t anymore. You call a fellow a liar now days, after you catch him in a big one, and he will just grin at you like a possum with a banana stuck in his mouth sideways.

I had a meeting one time in Attapulaos, Georgia. They were having a liquor fight in that town, and the preacher of the church where I was preaching, was trying to stand for something. The mayor was grafting and embezzling, doing everything he could to keep that liquor in there. I saw this pastor get out of his car, go over to the mayor, put his finger right in his face, and call him by his first name. He said, “So-and-so, you are nothing but a low down, dirty, rotten crook.” The mayor laughed and said, “Well, just politics, just politics.” He didn’t get mad. People lie and don’t think a thing about it.

People say, “I’ll be there next Sunday. I’ll do my best to be there.” They lie! They are not going to be there. They are just lying.

I carry a dollar bill around with me to give to the fellow that ever says to me when I knock on his door and ask him to come out and hear me preach, “I’m not coming to hear you because I don’t believe you and don’t like what you are preaching. I won’t be there and don’t look for me.” I am going to give him that dollar on general principles for being honest. People just lie like a dog and don’t think a thing about it. These folks that say, “Well, I won’t say I will and I won’t say I won’t”...they are the biggest liars in the bunch.

You fellows sitting here tonight, suppose I said, “Meet me at five o’clock tomorrow down by the pump house and bring the lunch and tackle. We will go up the river and fish for bream a couple of hours. Can you make it?” You say, “Well, I won’t tell you I will when I won’t and I won’t tell you I won’t when I will.” What a man ought to say is, “If I can make it I will be there.” When a man wants to do something he will tell you. The reason a man won’t tell you he will or won’t is because he doesn’t want to be there. But, brother, he will sure lie about it. You are living in an age when it is all artificial, all veneer; it isn’t real.

You drive down the road and see a gas sign that says “Gasoline, $1.03 cents a gallon.” Now, you know it’s not $1.03 cents. It is $1.03.9 cents a gallon. It’s just that the .9 is in little bitty letters, where you can’t see it.

I bought a Bible once that said “genuine leather.” And it had been sprayed on there. Sprayed leather, just shot all over the thing. This is a day of imitation; it’s a day of falsehood. It is a day that you can buy a sweater that says twenty percent wool and forty percent something else. Young people, what they used to call a lie, they now call delusion, hallucination, fabrication, romance, novel, or exaggeration. I don’t see any reason to cover a thing up with a lexicographer’s blanket. A lie is a lie! Either a fellow is a liar or he isn’t.

There are big sins, little sins, red sins, scarlet sins, black sins, chartreuse sins, mauve sins, and indigo sins. People used to call sin, SIN. Black was black and white was white. Now, it is sort of integrated, pastel. Back in the old days it was black or white, up or down, hot or cold. Now, it is sort of all one color; you can’t tell what is going on. They used to call a thing what it was. I believe I despise the misnaming of things worse than anybody. (And I know I am no example. I’m one of the crudest fellows you ever met in your life. They have been trying to refine me for forty years, and I am worse now than I was ten years ago.)

When I was in the infantry, I used to run around with a bunch of fellows that were Hell bound and lost, but I tell you one thing about them, they called a spade a spade. They didn’t try to mess with terminology. And that has always stuck with me.

Folks once said “fornication. “ Now it is “self-expression.” They would have said, “There goes a drunk. “ Now it is, “There goes a chronic alcoholic.” Isn’t it sweet? A fellow who traveled around the country used to be called a bum. Now they call him.... (You couldn’t find a bum nowadays if you looked all night.) They call them “transients.” You would almost want to be one with a name like that. They cover a thing up now. A man used to say, “God, forgive me my sins.” Now it is, “Lord, forgive us our faults and errors.” Isn’t that sweet? Isn’t that nice? A fellow used to die. Now he expires. They used to bury them in coffins. Why, you couldn’t find a coffin anywhere; it’s caskets. “People are just dying to be buried in our caskets.” They used to say a fellow was down at the morgue. Why, you can’t find a morgue in Cincinnati; they are funeral homes. FUNERAL HOMES! Folks, that’s not my home. My home is up there. If I have to die before the Lord comes, don’t put me in one of those thousand dollar things. Find me a little pine box with one end kicked out so I can get out when the Lord comes.

Something I just can’t stand is dressing something up to make it nice and refined that’s not nice and refined to start with. Looks like anybody could tell that there is something about that that just isn’t right. I went down to the store the other day to buy some shoe polish, and there wasn’t a bit of shoe polish in that store. There was Brine Shine, Shoe Refinisher, Shoe Renovator, and all that mess, but no shoe polish. Why, America has gotten to the place where it is so sophisticated and so refined and so covered up. They have gotten to the place they are so shellacked and veneered that when a fellow stands up and says, “That’s it!” it scares folks half to death or makes them mad.

I saw a sign the other day for a car that was so long it would cost you $10.00 to park the thing, and the color of the thing was the color of a rotten Easter egg. You would have to mortgage your house to buy it. Underneath the picture of that car it said, “More than an automobile, a new concept in automotive experience.” Listen, when I get a car, I want a car, not a “new concept in automotive experience.”

Now with all this talk, let’s just lay it on the line.

You ARE a sinner...understand that?

You ARE going to die...you ARE going to drop dead...understand that?

You ARE a sinner and you HAVE SINNED...are you with me?

You ARE going to JUDGMENT, and those books are going to be opened, and YOUR record is coming out...is that clear?

Daniel says in Chapter 7—“I beheld...and the Ancient of days did sit...A fiery stream issued and came forth from before him: thousand thousands ministered unto him and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him: the judgment was set, and the books were opened.”

Colored folks in Alabama have a favorite song they sing, and it goes like this:

My Lord is writing,

My Lord is writing,

My Lord is writing all the time....

And Pilate answered and said, “What I have written, I have written.” And even Rudyard Kipling’s Omar Kyam had some truth in it, even though it was written by an old, drunken infidel:

“The moving hand having writ moves on,

And all thy power and all thy wit

Can not erase a half a line of it.”

Young people, since you got up this morning you have been writing, and I wonder what your letter looks like. What does it look like?

There was a time on earth,

When in the book of heaven

An old account was standing

For sins yet unforgiven;

My name was at the top,

And many things below,

I went unto the keeper,

And settled long ago.

The old account was large,

And growing every day,

For I was always sinning,

And never tried to pay;

But when I looked ahead,

And saw such pain and woe,

I said that I would settle,

I settled long ago.

Long ago, long ago,

Yes, the old account was settled long ago;

And the record’s clear today,

For He washed my sins away,

When the old account was settled long ago.

There is only one way to clear your record. Only one way to take the hand of God and make it wipe away the old account. “What can wash away my sins? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.” That blood is the only thing. Take the church and run it across, and it won’t wipe away a thing. Take those sacraments and run them across those sins, and they will still be there. Take the “Golden Rule” and try to erase them, and those sins will still be on your record. Anything you pull across those pages, except the blood of the Son of God, will not erase a line of it.

Christ points His finger at the fire and says, “Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matt. 25:41). People say, “How could God send a man to Hell to burn forever for just a few little old sins?” Well, I’ll tell you how. In the first place, if you go to hell it won’t be for just a few little old sins. It will be for a sin worse than that. God can save a murderer. He saved Moses. God can save an adulterer. He saved David. God can save a thief. He saved the thief on the cross. God can save a drunkard. He saved Noah. God can save a liar, although it is a little more difficult because the liar has been lying so long he thinks God is lying too. That’s the way he thinks. Some of you kids tonight, who are saved, can’t believe it because you have been perverting the truth so long that when God tells you something you can’t rest on it.

A fellow came to hear me preach one time night after night. He came up and said that he just couldn’t believe he was saved for sure and know it. I showed him Scripture and he still doubted. I said to him, “Boy, if I told you that I would meet you at two o’clock tomorrow afternoon, do you think I would meet you?” He said, “Yes.” I said, “Why?” He said, “Because I think you are a man of your word.” I said, “But I might not; I might die in my sleep. I might have a heart attack, an accident. I might lie to you.” I said, “Why would you believe me and not God?” That shows you the depravity of man.

Listen, God can even save a liar. God can save anybody and everybody. There is just one kind of man God cannot save, and that is a man that refuses... (notice, they say sins of omission and not commission)...a man that refuses God’s righteousness, which is the blood of Jesus Christ. The man that cannot get saved is the man who will not have the righteousness of God but takes his own righteousness, which is composed of church membership, sacraments, confirmation, baptism, the “golden rule,” godfathers, godmothers, beads, bangles, Hail Marys, etc. Those things are your things and God won’t have it. God won’t take your righteousness. He will take the righteousness of His sinless Son for your sins, or He won’t take anything at all.

Young person, if you go to Hell you go to Hell for not taking Jesus Christ. Jesus died on the cross for you, and you look at that and say, “Well, I’ve got my religion and you have yours. I’m going to stick to mine till I die.” Jesus said, “I did it, I paid it all for you.” You say, “No, it’s not finished, I’ll have to put this on it and this on it, too.” God says, “You take anything else and you won’t get by.” You say, “Well, I’m just not ready; some other time.” You put it off and put it off, and one day you die in your own self-righteousness. You are lost...LOST! Boys and girls, a man doesn’t die because he is sick; he dies because he doesn’t get well. Did you ever think about that?

Here is a man who is sick, and I say, “Are you sick?”

He says, “Yes, I’m dying.”

I say, “Just take this pill and you will get well.”

And the fellow says, “No, I just don’t believe it.”

I say, “Did you ever try it?”

He says, “No, but I’ve got my religion and you have yours.”

I say, “Well, this pill has worked thousands of times; it will work on you—open your mouth.”

The man says, “No, I don’t think it will work.”

I say, “You’re dying; what have you got to lose. Just try it.”

He says, “I just don’t have the right feeling.”

I say, “Well, you feel like you are dying, don’t you? Open your mouth.”

Fellow says, “I think it might cure me, but I’m not going to take it.”

I say, “Please, I know it will cure you if you just open and swallow.”

Fellow says, “Well, I’m not going to take it even though it might.”

I say, “Why?”

He says, “Because there are too many hypocrites in the church.”

I mean, what are you going to do with a fool like that? Young people, you are going to die, you are going to die, you are going to die, and if you don’t take the cure you will wind up in Hell. Anyway, I have an appointment to meet every one of you and everyone I have ever preached to, at the GREAT WHITE THRONE JUDGMENT. One of these days we are going to meet—right there.

I’m going to be up there, and if you are unsaved, you are going to be down there. You say, “How did you get up there, Ruckman? Aren’t you guilty of all those sins?”

“Yes, but I TOOK THE CURE. The cure says I have passed from Death to Life. “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life” (John 5:24).

Is there a sinner here who will take God’s cure for sin? God’s cure for sin is the blood atonement of His only begotten Son.

What can wash away my sins—NOTHING but the blood of Jesus.