What Have You Done With Your Life?
THIS IS VERY MUCH THE SAME ATTITUDE WHICH WE OLDER FOLKS OFTEN HAVE AS WE APPROACH THE END OF LIFE'S DAY. We think back over our lives and we remember our deeds and our words and our actions and we wonder if we have done our best for Jesus. Has it truly been His life lived for Him, by His power and His strength and His guidance in His Will, having the fruits of His Spirit and the fruits of His Word--souls born into the Kingdom of God forever?
IT WAS A STRANGE and AMAZING DREAM, and the first thing I can remember is that I was seemingly still working for Fred Jordan, the founder of "Church in the Home" and the Soul Clinic, where under his Biblical teaching I learned that we needed to go back to the original plan and pattern in the Acts of the Apostles and the Teachings of Christ, summed up so simply in, "Go ye into all the World and preach the Gospel to every creature!" ( Mk.16:15 )
I HAVE FOLLOWED THAT SCRIPTURAL TEACHING and PATTERN TO THE BEST OF MY ABILITY EVER SINCE, first going out and witnessing to the churches and trying to get them to go out into the harvest fields so white. But I found them hardened in heart and cold in attitude and lazy in response. So I got fed up with the churches and decided to win fresh new young souls who were not ruined by Churchianity.
SO I STARTED A LITTLE SOUL-WINNING MISSIONARY TRAINING SCHOOL OF MY OWN. And from our first little school in Miami we sent as many missionaries as we could to the Caribbean and South America. But I was still not satisfied! I realised that through the modern mediums of communication such as radio and TV we could reach manifold millions more, so I travelled for nearly 15 years serving "Church In The Home", a real Gospel-preaching program that I put on over 1100 radio stations and over 300 television stations throughout the U.S.A.!
BUT I WAS STILL NOT SATISFIED! So we launched out into the home field in person with our own little family just going town-to-town and field-to-field, witnessing wherever we could find the youth. We had tremendous phenomenal results, TTL! But it was still not enough!
I WOULD OFTEN ASK MYSELF THE QUESTION, "WHAT HAVE I DONE WITH MY LIFE? What am I doing with my life? Am I really accomplishing the highest and greatest purpose that God has in store for me?"--Then we heard a pitiful plea from my own Mother, over 80 years of age and still preaching the Gospel: "Please come and help me reach this new generation of strange young people called hippies!"
SO AT HER PLEADING INSISTENCE WE FINALLY WENT TO CALIFORNIA and WE FOLLOWED THOSE POOR YOUNG PEOPLE DOWN INTO THEIR GUTTERS and THEIR DIVES and their dope dens and their hard-rock hells, and we invited them, not to come to church, but just to come to Jesus and He would solve all their problems, answer all their questions, satisfy all their longings and hungers and give them something wonderful to live for--the Truth of His marvellous Love!
SO THEY CAME and LISTENED and HEARD and BELIEVED and RECEIVED THE MESSAGE OF GOD'S LOVE and HIS MARVELLOUS PREDICTIONS OF THE FUTURE! TYJ!--And they loved us and followed us and obeyed us and obeyed the Word of God and have obeyed Him ever since, following us now to the uttermost parts of the Earth!--Into over 100 countries, preaching the Gospel in 40 languages throughout the World!
THEY HAVE NOW GROWN FROM MY LITTLE FAMILY OF MERELY SIX TO OVER 20,000 THROUGHOUT THE WORLD! They have certainly done their best with their lives and given their lives for God in His fruitful service! TYJ! And they're going to see those souls whom they've reaped in Heaven for Eternity, as well as their thousands of little children that they have had themselves!
SO IN MY DREAM I WAS STILL BACK AT THE SOUL CLINIC trying to round up bums on Skid Row and get them into Fred's mission. I saw one of these bums crawling through a sewer and coming out and breaking into a store building and getting caught and having to pay the penalty of his crime. I saw how seemingly hopeless it was to work with these old, already-ruined derelicts and I realised that we must try to reach the youth and the young people.
THEN I FOUND MYSELF A PRISONER IN SOME KIND OF DETENTION OR CONCENTRATION CAMP. And suddenly I saw a young teenage girl hanging from what appeared to be a cross!--One of our own girls dying as a martyr on this cross, bound to it with ropes and hanging there by her wrists in agony and suffering, torture, torment and pain!
MY HEART WENT OUT TO HER and I TRIED TO COMFORT HER and they allowed me to temporarily untie her and let her down from her cross to stand there while I tried to massage the circulation back into her poor bound arms. She was clinging to my bosom in gratitude and love and affection, almost symbolic of the way we have saved the youth of this day from their crucifixion by the System!
AND AS I COMFORTED HER UPON MY BOSOM and HELD HER IN MY ARMS, I TURNED TO THE CROWD who were watching in cold, hard indifference, mere morbid curiosity as the majority had watched at the cross of Christ, and I cried out in a loud voice to them: "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH YOUR LIFE?"--As I was thinking about what they were doing to this dear girl, her crucifixion on that System cross of torment and the imprisonment of the rest of us!
I CRIED A CHALLENGE TO THOSE WHO PASSED BY, AS THE GREAT PROPHET JEREMIAH DID OF OLD: "IS IT NOTHING TO YOU, ALL YE THAT PASS BY?" ( Lam.1:12. ) Is it nothing to you that these suffer, that these are lost? Is it nothing to you that these are in torment and imprisonment and in sickness and in sadness? "Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by?" In other words, what have you done to try to help and save them?--What have you done with your life?
AND I REMEMBER THE HARDNESS OF SOME OF THE FACES, THE SCORN and THE SNEERS, particularly the contempt of some of the well-dressed, highly-coiffed System women who it seemed were the hardest of all!--Sneeringly and contemptuously ridiculing my rescuing of this poor little hippie-like maiden who was giving her life for Jesus!
I CRIED OUT WITH SUCH A LOUD VOICE IN PROTEST and CHALLENGE and CONDEMNATION OF THEM: "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH YOUR LIFE?"--THAT IT WOKE ME UP! Apparently, that's the question the Lord wants to ask you: What have you done with your life? Are you living it for the Lord? Are you serving Jesus? Are you crucified daily for Christ, dying daily for God and His loving service for others?
HAVE YOU? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH YOUR LIFE? God bless you, I hope you have done your best for Jesus! For that's the question that will be asked you today and every day, and that you should ask yourself every day, and that God's going to ask you each day, and when you come to the end of life's day and you face Him! In Jesus' name. Amen.
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