[SPEAKER_03]: Revived thoughts is a production of Revived Studios.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is Troy Angel, and you are listening to Revived Thoughts.
[SPEAKER_00]: Disaster, light the rain, falls on the just and the unjust.
[SPEAKER_00]: The horror of it strikes one done, and when speech returns,
[SPEAKER_02]: Every episode, we bring you a different voice from history in a sermon that they delivered.
[SPEAKER_02]: This sermon that we're about to listen to was given during the bombings of London during World War II.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think we might be setting a record for it's it's definitely neck and neck with one of the more recent circumstances that we do is bomb the most recent no no you forgot watchman knee in like the 19 early like 19 like late 1950s but because he wasn't China his sermons didn't get translated to a way later and none of it was recorded so he technically is our latest like cap but I don't think you'll ever really hear a sermon later than World War II unless it's a situation
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't have any, by that point, it's getting recorded, radio shermons and stuff, and you would be able to go listen to it, and why would we, we've had people, I remember very early out, and the most people get it now, but we had people like, why don't you have a John MacArthur or C. Sprollers, and they're like, why, you can go listen to them, like you don't need, why would you go, why would you ask for a sermon by us when you can listen to the voice of the person who actually preached time?
[SPEAKER_01]: I imagine his voice is the best one that listened to for his sermon.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so if you weren't aware, that's kind of one of the rules we have on the show
[SPEAKER_02]: No audio recordings at that person can exist because, again, you would just go listen to them.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we're reviving the old thoughts that need the audio deliveries for it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so that kind of puts our cap.
[SPEAKER_01]: uh... again towards the invention of radio in the microphone and tentacles and what this guy from today does have like one or two audios out there but that they're not of this sermon and uh... they're not really full of sermons and so i think he still counts he would have probably you know he in those maybe those shorter sermons would have made great revive radio sermons back in the day when we had that fun podcast
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, where we used to do the radio servants, so the ones that you're grandma and grandpa would listen to on the radio.
[SPEAKER_01]: That was a cool one.
[SPEAKER_01]: I still, I still wish I had time for that show because I think it's, it was some good stuff, man.
[SPEAKER_01]: Bye.
[SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, so that's William E. Sanctuary.
[SPEAKER_01]: You are correct though.
[SPEAKER_01]: He really is one of our later, later, he won't get much later than this.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was really drawn into this sermon because it was preached during a bombing runs in World War II in London.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I always picture that moment in Chronicles of Narnia when the little kids are run into the little bomb shelter.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if you remember that movie if you've heard of Chronicles of Narnia Joel, but
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, I mean, I read the books.
[SPEAKER_02]: I do not remember really anything for me.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a good movie.
[SPEAKER_01]: We watched a watch from my one point, but we watched it with our kids and they loved it a lot and that beginning scene, there's like a bombing run and it to run and that was for me as a kid and then watch it with my kids.
[SPEAKER_01]: That was kind of like a wow, can you imagine, you know, wake up in the middle of night and running to a bomb shelter because the enemy's dropping bombs on me.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was pretty
[SPEAKER_01]: Powerful stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm glad to know your entire reference for the Battle of Britain comes to you from a scene at the beginning of Chronicles and Arnie and movie.
[SPEAKER_02]: Excuse me.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm gonna I'm gonna push back on that joy.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think there's a lot of us who think it's not just me who who's gonna remember that Thanks, that's the only frame reference you need.
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't need it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, they nailed it and after that what else is there to say Chronicles and Arnie Disney 2000 like four movie what else is there to say
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, oh, you know actually though there even there have been so many World War II movies But I can't think of any Battle of London movies that I've ever come down the pipes so yeah I mean I can think of old ones I guess what would the movie be about though?
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean you can't really do anything It's just like I get there's gotta be some fighters though that probably caught up in the sky That could probably make an interesting movie.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think there's literally there's literally movie called the Battle for Britain That that's about fighters Fighting above Battle for Britain, but it's like it's like 60s or something
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, 1969.
[SPEAKER_01]: I kept my sister remember that one.
[SPEAKER_01]: I wasn't alive then Joel.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know what?
[SPEAKER_01]: Hollywood, when you make the new battle for Britain, too, and you put all your special effects and Godzilla and or whatever, you send the slice of that check back to Old Revive Studios, because he heard it from us first, okay?
[SPEAKER_01]: Just send one single piece of that our way, because we was our idea, and we reminded you of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's all I'm asking for.
[SPEAKER_01]: Joel is some positive responses to Levi thoughts, which are shocking when we put out quality like this.
[SPEAKER_01]: On X, we had somebody say, I heard Levi thoughts about six months ago and has become one of my favorite podcasts.
[SPEAKER_01]: That was from physics, fan-tasm.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm pretty sure that was the name of his parents gave him.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm grateful.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much for listening.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're really glad Mr. Fan-tasm to have you, and we are appreciative when people tell us that.
[SPEAKER_01]: So not only is it cool to hear that you've been listening for a while, but it's also, I mean, you know, six months, but like you kept going.
[SPEAKER_01]: but it's also pretty cool to hear that we became one of your favorite sets that just as nonner.
[SPEAKER_01]: Nick says wait wait wait what do you mean we listeners were quote surprisingly cool.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah so in our first episode back from this season break I mentioned that I met a lot of listeners.
[SPEAKER_01]: over the summer and Nick is actually a listener I have met in the past before I also met him, he knew him through the podcast and we didn't do some different means we met a couple summers ago and so I appreciate that I appreciate him calling me out and being like oh we're surprisingly cool you weren't sure if we would be cool but to be fair when I first pitched the idea of this show to people everyone thought that this would appeal to the nerdy is some nerdy
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, like a Hebrew professor would probably be the only person who want to meet with me.
[SPEAKER_01]: But jokes on them, all the people I've met from the show so far are actually all of them now.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think about our younger people, like I don't think hardly any of them are over 40 that I've met that know me straight.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's true.
[SPEAKER_01]: all of them were under 40 and all of them are cool.
[SPEAKER_01]: So take that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I am at one Hebrew professor because of this show, but I've only met cool young people.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, so I apologize for my surprisingly, but yeah, so I appreciate that Nick.
[SPEAKER_01]: Appreciate Nick.
[SPEAKER_01]: Also, that's the same Nick who just read our Savanna Rollis sermon, and he actually, when Joe and I were talking before this show, I put Nick into our inbox.
[SPEAKER_01]: because we were discussing like how we get our episodes out of the emails.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I realized Nick has read so many sermons for us because his name comes up a lot.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like he is certain.
[SPEAKER_01]: Will William will ever force Samuel Hopkins.
[SPEAKER_01]: He might have helped us with.
[SPEAKER_01]: It looks like a possibly, no, it wasn't George Matheson.
[SPEAKER_01]: That was a person named Nick asking for that one.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's done a Calvin sermons for us.
[SPEAKER_01]: He did the Peter Kierker guard sermon.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want a great sermon.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm free.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm the Serian sermon.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, this guy Nick has preached so many German John Flivell.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, thank you Nick for all the episodes you've done.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sorry I was surprised everyone was cool, okay?
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay?
[SPEAKER_02]: And as a reminder, if you would like to read a sermon right in ReviveThats.com or you can check us out on our website ReviveThats.com and we'd love to get you plugged in and connected narrating some sermon.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you'd like to meet us, I'm not in town, but just come on out to Indonesia and I'd be sure to happy to get to know you.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then Joel, you are in town, so they'll have to go find you in the meantime.
[SPEAKER_01]: It might be a while before I'm in America, so but we'd love to meet you and then say you were surprisingly cool.
[SPEAKER_02]: William E. Sankster.
[SPEAKER_02]: What, I see his name?
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm, I'm, draw, I'm compelled to see Sandgaster, but there's no, eight in there.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know why my brain inserts that letter.
[SPEAKER_01]: Incaster sounds like the name of, like, a ghost from, like, a second grade goose bumps or something.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, it sounds like a cooler name to me.
[SPEAKER_02]: It sounds like a more formidable...
[SPEAKER_02]: person in the sandcaster.
[SPEAKER_02]: Sanctuary.
[SPEAKER_01]: Probably wasn't William E. Sanctuary.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe from London.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it was probably, I don't know, something posh like, you know, William E. Songs.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was probably how he said it over there.
[SPEAKER_02]: No doubt.
[SPEAKER_02]: Born in the year 1900 in London, England, and we have these excerpts from his autobiography growing up.
[SPEAKER_02]: It gives us decent insights into how he saw the world and it is one of him wanting to be a minister.
[SPEAKER_02]: He says, quote, I believe that I was born to be a minister.
[SPEAKER_02]: I cannot recall a time in my life when I was without a sense of holy vocation,
[SPEAKER_02]: It did not derive from any conviction in the mind of my parents who had never been so much as entertained by the thought, but I felt the pressure, but I felt the pressure of a directing hand upon me from my tenderness of years."
[SPEAKER_02]: A few more quotes we have from him about his early years.
[SPEAKER_02]: He says, in my teens, seeking what I came to regard as a deeper and more personal experience of God, I drifted from the church of my baptism and early training and associated with the people called Methodists.
[SPEAKER_02]: And when the time came for me to join the army on my 18th birthday, I was already a local preacher.
[SPEAKER_02]: So he would end up going to the army.
[SPEAKER_02]: This would have been, I guess, World War I. Yeah, that's correct.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he would have been a young man and he's born 1900.
[SPEAKER_01]: So around the age of 18, World War I is still in the thick of it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, he says, quote, army life tested me and deepened me.
[SPEAKER_02]: The strange man upon the cross haunted and held me all of the time, I came out of the army convinced that his way was the only way and I offered myself for the Methodist Ministry.
[SPEAKER_02]: I had four years of training in college and I was put on sound lines of scholarship in quote.
[SPEAKER_02]: So on his way, in line for scholarship, I also do think it's good to include a little
[SPEAKER_02]: Back then, of how he's thinking about this is very different than how people in America might think of Methodist in today's day and age, very different churches.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you don't know, yeah, if you don't know your history very well, the Methodist movement today is very different than the Methodist movement back then was, and it's a very much, I think, a turn for the worst.
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, he's not the first pastor we've had on the show that served in the first World War.
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, we have talked about a guy named Henry Van Dyke.
[SPEAKER_01]: He served in the Navy, kind of as an older man preaching to the Naval soldiers on ships.
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, we also had talked about Jay Gresham Machen.
[SPEAKER_01]: He heroically is 40 something year old, uh, professor.
[SPEAKER_01]: Princeton went off to serve in the YMCA.
[SPEAKER_01]: He'd meet these soldiers coming back from the front like right there his his tent was right next to the front And would give them stuff and he would work 12 15 16-hour days just crazily try and to keep these poor guys With hot chocolate and some food and stuff out of the day recovered from coming in from the trenches And I always loved Jake or I should have made you in the story because he was a famous Princeton professor already like his life was good.
[SPEAKER_01]: He didn't have to go do this But he sat on the front line like
[SPEAKER_01]: basically on the front lines at one point here like run from a bridge that was exploding behind me at gas attacks with hit where they were sometimes and uh... it was miserable and he would have these just two person bible studies with soldiers that i mean you gotta want you know and these giant campments only two people show up that i just think man that that is
[SPEAKER_01]: heroic service for God to be, you know, this elevated man, but he's willing to, you know, serve so low.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we have Oswald Chambers was another one.
[SPEAKER_01]: He went and preached the soldiers in Egypt, and sadly he got kind of a medical issue that he died, and he didn't die because of World War I, but if he had been in England and not next to the front lines of Egypt, when he had that medical episode, I do wonder if he would have been handled better.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe he's still a little died, but it's certainly questionable if that was the best place for him.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, he was saying, sir, though, I do think he is the first time we've had a soldier, like he was an actual soldier in the trenches that we've ever had on the show, because he's just a later, you know, we don't normally have people listening to the show.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he has that unique aspect going for him when you think of the terrors of the great war, when you think of the horrible trenches and the things that they, that you stick your head up and you get shot and you're just out there for, you know, all the terrible things that have is, is truly amazing that anybody
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, that is what he would have been serving in and that kind of position and the fact that you can see, man, when he says that the cross haunted me, like it's amazing, he came out of that with any humanity at all, but it seems that the Lord got his, you know, was able to get his heart during those times, but as a person preaching to people, holding, like, just in that kind of situation, I can only imagine what that would have been like.
[SPEAKER_01]: He married his wife Margaret, it was a bit unclear for me when I put in his name, like even usually you'll find at least a Wikipedia page to kind of give you burnt dates and you know marriage names and stuff like that, to kind of at least get you started on this guy's life, but no, not him.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's another William E. Sankster that was like a 1900s activist, 1800s activist, and he took this guy's slot, so I don't know where this guy the preacher was, but he didn't seem to have a page, even though he seemed like a pretty important person that should have a page.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, well, a very strange biography, very recent, um, guy who had a really important impact in the world, who somehow, uh, doesn't have as much information out there about them.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's just weird because again, like, it makes sense to me in the 1700s, random pastor who's, you know, birthday and death date is unknown, doesn't get an, okay, I can see why he might not have a lot of articles and stuff right now.
[SPEAKER_01]: But this guy was, I mean,
[SPEAKER_01]: There are people alive today who are alive at the same time as this guy.
[SPEAKER_01]: It seems weird to me that running one of the biggest churches in London in his era, he has almost no discernible biography out there that's easy to grab.
[SPEAKER_02]: What we do, uh, kind of have documented from him is his time, uh, pasturing a church in London.
[SPEAKER_02]: And this was one of the largest churches in London.
[SPEAKER_02]: And he took the job in 1938.
[SPEAKER_02]: And this is, again, in the, and the months and years, leading up to World War II and,
[SPEAKER_02]: the raids, the bombing raids that would happen on this.
[SPEAKER_02]: And he's right in the middle of London.
[SPEAKER_02]: So this is prime target prime errade zone.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so can you imagine a ministry in which daily you are having to take cover and take refuge in a bomb shelter?
[SPEAKER_02]: while you wait for the planes to pass over.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, the bombings were usually at night time.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I don't imagine these usually interupting the morning services, although I suppose they probably could as well.
[SPEAKER_02]: But still, just imagine going out and looking up, and I mean, these raids are 300 to 500 planes on average, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Imagine looking up and seeing 500 giant bomber planes,
[SPEAKER_02]: dropping thousands of tons of explosives on your city.
[SPEAKER_02]: What a terrifying fact.
[SPEAKER_02]: And not just that day, the next day and the next day.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the next day.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it went on for like a two year stretch of pretty consistent bombings.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you would have,
[SPEAKER_02]: air raid sirens you know there was people's out that would be able to spot the plans coming and and sound the sirens and and allow you guys to take cover and so uh you know they they were minimizing casualties as much as possible but even still with that they say over 21,000 people died and these bombings let alone how many homes were lost and structures were ruined because of the bombing of of London so
[SPEAKER_02]: a very unique time to be in the peak of your ministry, you know, like this was, this was his prime preaching era and he's, this is the environment that he's doing it and so very different than what, he's hard, you know, it's hard for me to wrap my head around what that would, that would be like very foreign.
[SPEAKER_01]: not just staring in the infamous blitz by the way, Germany bombed London multiple times.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I didn't realize how many times they just start bombing London.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they also used rockets.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a very early rocket set the world new, shooting something in the sky was or invented so that Germany could bomb or London on 1944 and in 1945.
[SPEAKER_01]: And again, I just won instance of this.
[SPEAKER_01]: And one night, just one night alone in 1940, 100,000 bombs, which all of them were kind of designed that like, when they hit the ground, it would start a fire.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we're dropped on the city all at once.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I just, and you mentioned, we mentioned dead people, but that doesn't include injuries, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, if you survived the house falling over, but you, you know, but you broke your arm or you went blind or whatever, you got hit in the head.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, you didn't die, so you wouldn't have counted in the deaths.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, so the number of people going through that, absolutely crazy.
[SPEAKER_01]: So imagine trying to be a pastor, reaching to this, uh, your congregants sons are dying in a war over there in those horrible trenches, uh, maybe you've given some of those funerals, your neighbors, and maybe even some of your prisoners.
[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, his church was about 2,000 people, so certainly some of his congregants would have died by some of these bombing raids, uh,
[SPEAKER_01]: It would really just make you think each sermon you preach truly could be the last sermon they ever hear.
[SPEAKER_01]: And sometimes while preaching the bombs would start falling, we mentioned this happened to Martin Lloyd Jones and G Campbell Morgan as well and the sermon that we'd pulled over by them, but where they actually were preaching when a bomb went off and my own, you know, shook the church.
[SPEAKER_01]: But, uh, sangster, he would usually be preaching once the bomb started falling a lot times he'd in the service.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, okay, we're going to end early because the bombs are going off.
[SPEAKER_01]: But not always.
[SPEAKER_01]: I kind of like this about him other times he preached and he would say, quote, those who have a nervous disposition may leave now if they like and then he would just continue the service as the bombs are falling to the sirens are going off.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, you mean, what do you do in this situation?
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you leave?
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you, I'm scared, uh, or do you stay in like, I'm, I'm super faithful.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I mean, like, if the bond does go off, then that's kind of a bummer.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think today, you wouldn't even hear a pastor give you that option, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: You'd immediately say, go home quickly.
[SPEAKER_01]: But, uh, I do love that.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's like, if you're scared, you can go home.
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess you've cowardly.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now I can't go home the way you said it like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, and so, you know, and so he was a good guy too though.
[SPEAKER_01]: He opened his church's basement as a bomb shelter every night.
[SPEAKER_01]: So people who, for whatever reason their home was unacceptable, or maybe their homeless or something like that, they had a place to shelter for five different years.
[SPEAKER_01]: And him and his wife stayed in that basement with these people ministering to them, taking care of their needs, sharing the gospel with them, so that they could be able to do ministry for people who otherwise would have nowhere to go and could be in danger.
[SPEAKER_01]: As a person, he was kind of considered old-fashioned, kind of even pure-tint, pure-tintish.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I read one person said basically, he was like the last Puritan of the Methodist.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was very popular, though.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was just very much like people loved him.
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, 2000 people are going to his sermon, steering World War II.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, he was a beloved guy.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was pretty much the last true conservative of the Methodist movement.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was drifting very liberal, as we kind of mentioned, the Methodists are very different today than they used to be.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he's kind of seen as the last, the last one in England that was still holding down the four.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, he wrote books on preaching and he has some advice.
[SPEAKER_01]: I listed a few of them.
[SPEAKER_01]: First one, don't steal sermons.
[SPEAKER_01]: I really like that one.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you may say, that's ironic because you're running a podcast for yourself.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I don't steal a service.
[SPEAKER_01]: I give credit.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we mentioned who they are.
[SPEAKER_01]: We read the biography.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the people stealing sermons.
[SPEAKER_01]: As someone who's seen it happen in real life.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've seen this happen in person.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've heard famous pastors get caught stealing sermons.
[SPEAKER_01]: I, it's a bad thing, and I appreciate that this was a problem.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's 70 years ago as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: Before Google, people were running, I guess, to the libraries and stealing sermons.
[SPEAKER_01]: We've covered that on our shows before, but I saw that piece of advice on, like, yes, good.
[SPEAKER_01]: The average pastor today, and you're going to be tempted to steal that sermon and chat, should we tea it, don't do it, all right, sing, stir, sing, and don't do it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Stay away from the plague of trying to say something new, or always interpreting the text to mean something it doesn't.
[SPEAKER_01]: Boy.
[SPEAKER_01]: So true, you might get out there and you're like, oh, I got to preach something that's going to be new, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: I got to preach something people haven't heard before.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's worth listening to, or I got to preach, oh, you think the text I assist, but really it means this thing is I don't do that, just be faithful.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just interpret it correctly, even if it's the same thing they've heard before, that's okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Don't try to make something happen, that's not there.
[SPEAKER_01]: I also recommended reading a lot, but to not be showy about it, which I also appreciate.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think we live in an era where people, if they even read books, they probably only read books from their very narrow camp of like, approved people, but at St.
[SPEAKER_01]: St.
[SPEAKER_01]: was a big fan of reading a lot of different people.
[SPEAKER_01]: Reading your, the people you disagree with, so you know how better to answer them.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's really, really good advice that we could all use.
[SPEAKER_01]: So read a lot, but then don't be showy about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Don't be like, you know, don't be the guy who shows off how much we read.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just, you know, mention it as you as it's needed.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's final years, Saintster got a debilitative muscular atrophy disease that just was very, very painful for him.
[SPEAKER_01]: And in his last year, he couldn't speak at all, which.
[SPEAKER_01]: you lived your life as a preacher, sharing the gospel, you've been through World War I, you preach your way through World War II bombings.
[SPEAKER_01]: I can only imagine how frustrating it must have been this been your final year, just not able to communicate it all.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you could write stuff down, but you couldn't preach, you couldn't do what God, you know, had called you to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that was probably quite the hardship for him, but friends and family set a handle it, you know, very, very well.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, you can listen to a sermon, and we believe this sermon was preached during those World War two years, perhaps in the background.
[SPEAKER_01]: You could imagine the sirens going off the bombs going off, maybe halfway through the sermon, and then you could imagine him kind of looking up and going, if you're scared, if you have a nervous disposition, you were free to go.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's, I mean, I would have passed through doing that today.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just what he's something.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not everything happens in the world just as God wishes.
[SPEAKER_00]: When people say, whatever is is best, they cannot really mean what they say or they mean it with certain conditions and reservations, which changed the literal meaning from the words.
[SPEAKER_00]: In simple truth, whatever is best is best.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then this is paradise, and as a laden it's argued, the best of all possible worlds.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we find that hard to believe, even when we give the closest seed to the German philosopher's reasoning and allow that a little biter is often more pleasing than sugar.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is evil merely a privation, a deficiency of limitation?
[SPEAKER_00]: The shedding of the picture or the discord in the music just added to heighten and enhance the effect?
[SPEAKER_00]: And we say with Browning, the evil is null is not, is silence implying sound?
[SPEAKER_00]: Voltaire makes Mary over a lightens his reasoning and gives it his opinion that this is the worst-apossible worlds, and while we shrink back from that absurd caricature, we cannot feel that this is paradise now, since seems too positive.
[SPEAKER_00]: Evil leaves its slimy trail over so much that might be fair and beautiful.
[SPEAKER_00]: We pray that I will be done on Earth as it is in heaven, because, as yet, the correspondence of Earth in heaven is far from complete.
[SPEAKER_00]: I met a friend one day, minister returning from the funeral.
[SPEAKER_00]: even allowing for the sad hair and which had occupied his mind, he seemed peculiarly a little spirited.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have just buried a child," he said.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the child's father is under arrest for manslaughter.
[SPEAKER_00]: Last Saturday evening it seems he came home drunk, clambered into the bed where his wife from the little one were asleep, and in his confused condition pushed the baby out of the bed.
[SPEAKER_00]: It fell, and as it fell, the child's head struck the corner.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the gray light of the next morning, they found the little body cold and dead upon the floor.
[SPEAKER_00]: The police recalled, of course, and the father is in prison awaiting trial.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that wasn't the whole of it, my friend went on.
[SPEAKER_00]: After the service, one of the mourners tried to make a little pious talk in the minister's presence said, Oh, well, it can't be helped, I suppose it was the will of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: The will of God, said my friend bitterly, that wasn't the will of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: God could never have desired for that deer child to be shoved into death by a drunken brute.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a horrible travesty of all that God would have wished for that little one.
[SPEAKER_00]: As we parted, I turned the old problem over in my mind again.
[SPEAKER_00]: What happens to the guidance of God when calamity comes?
[SPEAKER_00]: Calamity isn't always the outcome of obvious sin.
[SPEAKER_00]: It overtakes the saints.
[SPEAKER_00]: On timely death is ended the life of the noblest souls, and not death merely, but often death through agonizing pain.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thomas Arnold, a great headmaster and educator, the friend of God and of children struck down at 47 with Anjana Pictoris.
[SPEAKER_00]: F.W.
[SPEAKER_00]: Robertson, fearless thinker in front of the working man passed out at 37 with a terrible brain abscess.
[SPEAKER_00]: Henry Drummond, whom Ian McLaren called the most perfect Christian I have known or expect to see this side of the grave, died at the age of 46 after two years on his back and pain.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that isn't even the problem at its worst.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hardly a year passes, but some great disaster stuns the public mind.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Taboridge disaster, the ramming of the Victoria, the sinking of the Titanic, the wreck of the Hindenburg.
[SPEAKER_00]: no easy answer leads to our lips.
[SPEAKER_00]: The man who finds in all such disasters, the judgment of God on a wicked people is both unconvincing and inhuman.
[SPEAKER_00]: Godly souls perish in such an hour in these calamities, visit a thrifty and industrious people as well as a lazy and frivolous one.
[SPEAKER_00]: Disaster, light the rain, falls on the just and the unjust.
[SPEAKER_00]: The horror of its strikes one dumb, and when speech returns are hurricane of questions rises to the lips.
[SPEAKER_00]: does God guide us?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is there knowledge in the most high?
[SPEAKER_00]: Does He lead us to the lip of a calamity and leave us to fall in?
[SPEAKER_00]: The problem demands an attempt in an answer because any day might thrust it on our notice again and because it challenges faith.
[SPEAKER_00]: If anguish comes, can doubt be far behind?
[SPEAKER_00]: It is the opinion of the preacher that the perfect will of God is constantly thwarted by human ignorance, stupidity, carelessness, and sin.
[SPEAKER_00]: No other view seems tenable as one looks at this chaotic world.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is a consequence of God's great gift to men of freedom, and without that freedom we should be Marianettes and not men.
[SPEAKER_00]: We are born more over into a society and a world where the perfect will of God has been held back for ages, and we are bound up in the bundle of life with our fellows.
[SPEAKER_00]: We gain a measureably from these relationships.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can love one another, serve, help, and influence one another.
[SPEAKER_00]: But necessarily, we can also harm one another, too.
[SPEAKER_00]: We could not have the blessing without the risk of the pain.
[SPEAKER_00]: God allowed this risk.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everything sweetness life has come to us from others.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our mother suffered pain to give us birth.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our father's workforce.
[SPEAKER_00]: When we rail, doctors and nurses bent their strength and skill to make us better.
[SPEAKER_00]: And our dear ones turn night in today as they watch to our side.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nor were we allowed to grow up untudered in mind or so.
[SPEAKER_00]: We regicated.
[SPEAKER_00]: All that clever men and women had ever discovered or thought was put before us in ways we could take in and the best the world has ever learned and things spiritual was made attractive too.
[SPEAKER_00]: We learn the name of Jesus, the imperishable stories of the Bible we're spoken over us, and all along the path of life precious things, the most precious have come to us from other people, friendship, counsel, encouragement, love streaming in on us from others because God has set us here in a great family life, and made us so that our lives intertwine.
[SPEAKER_00]: It should not surprise us in the light of all we gain that there is some risk of loss as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: when God made us so that we could love and help one another.
[SPEAKER_00]: He exposed his family to the possibility that we would hate and harm one another.
[SPEAKER_00]: This was by necessity.
[SPEAKER_00]: The one goes with the other.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when sin came in with its long trail of sorrow and suffering, we can now be heard at any time by the folly, carelessness, or crime of another.
[SPEAKER_00]: Would your rather live in a world and wish that couldn't happen?
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you wish God had made us so that we could never influence each other?
[SPEAKER_00]: Never be friends, never guide, comfort or help each other.
[SPEAKER_00]: Never love.
[SPEAKER_00]: It would be a hateful and unindurable existence, loathsome to us all.
[SPEAKER_00]: God's will, we believe, for His children, is the perfection of their characters and their ultimate bliss.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the cast of our inherited nature and the conditions of a sin-spotled world do not allow an easy path to that great end.
[SPEAKER_00]: God therefore permits the woes of life to press upon us, a consequence of our own sins, sometimes the sin of others.
[SPEAKER_00]: and the carelessness and ignorance of others.
[SPEAKER_00]: The loss of the Titanic was due to reckless racing through an ice field, and the death role was lengthened by the fact that she only carried both accommodations for 1200 people.
[SPEAKER_00]: Though the passenger is in crew total 2293, it was a compound of pride and criminal folly.
[SPEAKER_00]: A good man named WT-Stead was among the passengers, going to America and the interests of
[SPEAKER_00]: he was drowned.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yet God meets us in every situation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's the cry which are bleeding hearts fling to him, and bears with us when in bitterness we question his restraint denies love and doubt his existence.
[SPEAKER_00]: Granada willing in response of hardiness, he can so turn tragedy to triumph and lost to gain that men have even believed that he sent the pain and devised the disaster so marvellously does he bring good out of evil?
[SPEAKER_00]: Think how closely joy and pain are interwoven in the fabric of our human lives.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our achievements and love measure our capacity for pain.
[SPEAKER_00]: Before I knew my friend or cared for him, his doing was worth no account to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Get past me in the street with a frozen stare.
[SPEAKER_00]: I did not mind.
[SPEAKER_00]: He did not sympathize with me in my trouble, and I did not miss his sympathy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Once his success came to me, he sent no congratulation, but it did not make me sad.
[SPEAKER_00]: We were outside each other's circle and we had no sense of lack.
[SPEAKER_00]: But when I learned to love my friend, I armed him with the power to wound me deeply.
[SPEAKER_00]: I put a weapon in his hand and exposed my heart to a vulnerable weakness.
[SPEAKER_00]: The more I loved, the more he could wound.
[SPEAKER_00]: If he ignores me now, I'm hurt.
[SPEAKER_00]: If he denies a sympathy, I miss it.
[SPEAKER_00]: If he lapses into sin, I share the shame.
[SPEAKER_00]: Love has made me vulnerable.
[SPEAKER_00]: It has exposed me to pain.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because pain and love are inextricably interwoven and the only kind of life we know.
[SPEAKER_00]: If sin had never spoiled this fear earth, if men had always done the perfect will of God, if our poor race had responded at every stage to the leading of the loving father, anything might have happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: Perhaps there would be no need of sympathy in such a world.
[SPEAKER_00]: Perhaps character would have grown without discipline.
[SPEAKER_00]: Perhaps love would never have been linked with pain, perhaps, and perhaps.
[SPEAKER_00]: But in this world, the only world we know, love and pain, are inner woven.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mysteriously, they belong together.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're united at the very portals of life.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's nothing noble and sweeter on this planet than a mother's love.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it is strangely compounded, and half its quality comes from this that a mother goes down to the gates of death for a child.
[SPEAKER_00]: Joy and Pregnates, pain brings out, love is born.
[SPEAKER_00]: None can deny that the trouble tossed in pain rack people have often pioneered the way to a better world.
[SPEAKER_00]: John G. Peyton, toiling for Christ, beside the lonely grave of his wife and child in Tana, Josephine Butler, bereft of her darling girl, Ace of Hutchinson, the saint with
[SPEAKER_00]: Nor is the truth well expressed if we say that they served well in spite of their well.
[SPEAKER_00]: They served well because of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: They carried it to God and God turned it into triumph.
[SPEAKER_00]: Many life had been saved by the loss of the Titanic.
[SPEAKER_00]: The track of Westbound Steamers across the Atlantic was shifted further south away from the dangerous ice fields.
[SPEAKER_00]: the obsolete board of trade requirements with regard to emergency motor accommodations were heavily revised.
[SPEAKER_00]: Several improvements in life-saving appliances were immediately made, and wireless, which was still in the early stages of its use, received the force which only tragedy can impart.
[SPEAKER_00]: We see the gains in individual lives as well, commenting on the sorrows that be set Dr. R. W. Dale, Robertson Nichols says, in him we fulfilled the great word that the men of sorrows are the men of influence in every walk of life.
[SPEAKER_00]: Carallel comments on the sufferings of Dante in these words.
[SPEAKER_00]: If all had gone well with them, Florence would have had another Lord Mayor and our world would have lost the Divina Com India.
[SPEAKER_00]: Of our friends as well as of our Savior, we might say, fruitful, let your sorrows be, and not only of our friends, but ourselves.
[SPEAKER_00]: What then will we save guidance?
[SPEAKER_00]: If God's aim for us is character and not our swift enjoyment of some low way of life, should it surprise us that He does not intervene when sinners do pity, follow your ignorance, our own or another's, brings us to the tough road?
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll be questioned his love because he persists in treating us as persons and not puppets, and will not rob us of our freedom to save us from our woes.
[SPEAKER_00]: From many of these griefs and pains, he could have and would have saved us if we had been more sensitive to his leading in response to his call.
[SPEAKER_00]: But in a world like ours, where we are a close need and a great family circle in our lives are constantly affected by the deeds of others, it's impossible to think that he could save us from them all.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when we look at our own natures in the light of God, we would hardly desire ourselves.
[SPEAKER_00]: Disappointment, pain, grief, and loss have taught us so much.
[SPEAKER_00]: If we had never walked down the tough road, we never would have found that he answers us there when we call.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of the sweetest souls we have known have walked it longer and in far, far, rough or places, but they say, he never ceased to guide.
[SPEAKER_00]: He knew the way, knew what it's worst.
[SPEAKER_00]: A hand like this hand reached me in the darkness and led me on, like this hand, like an unlike.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was rough with work on a carpenter's bench and pierced with an ancient wound.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some are on the path with bitter hearts and lagging feet, and their lives, poor souls are sour and unloffly.
[SPEAKER_00]: They have not found the guide, or rather let the guide find them.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were bellion in their heart prevents it, and the cloud never seems to lift from their toil some way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because they do not follow the guide, they never reach the planes of light.
[SPEAKER_00]: they don't believe that it leaves there.
[SPEAKER_00]: It does always to those who will follow the guide.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is really the path of opportunity.
[SPEAKER_00]: Guidance does not end when calamity begins.
[SPEAKER_00]: And every situation he meets the set of every situation he can lead us to a greener pasture and a sphere of wider use.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can trust him in whom we believe.
[SPEAKER_00]: But when calamity has its in its grip, even this strong thought is not enough of itself.
[SPEAKER_00]: We look the ugly intruder in the face, feel its power to steal the joy from half our life, and cast our whiny inquiries at God demanding to know why it had to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: In that hour, the safeguarding of our freedom doesn't seem enough.
[SPEAKER_00]: In our bewilderment, we feel that a loving God would find effective discipline some easier way.
[SPEAKER_00]: We look at Him through the midst of tears and wonder if in His greatness He really feels our will.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then, is that our Lord comes and shows us His feet, His hands, His side?
[SPEAKER_00]: Then, it is that we feel with Emerson, how near granddaughter to our dust, how near is God to man.
[SPEAKER_00]: He has suffered.
[SPEAKER_00]: He does not simply reign in some far off splendor on troubled by our woe.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus knows all about our struggles.
[SPEAKER_00]: He will guide to the day is done.
[SPEAKER_00]: The whole story of the Passion is rich in its power to bless.
[SPEAKER_00]: We go with him to get sent me and feel even when our own sorrow is most vivid to our thought, that we have not drunk the cup of bitterness so deeply as this.
[SPEAKER_00]: In all the dark mystery of it, the shadows never seem so dark as they do in Gethsemane.
[SPEAKER_00]: The word agony is used of our Lord only in the garden.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was master of himself from the kiss of Judas till he cried with a loud voice and gave up his spirit.
[SPEAKER_00]: But in the garden, agony, the bloody sweat, the pleading prayer, if it'd be possible that this cup passed from me, so he prays, first on his feet, then on his knees, and then on his face.
[SPEAKER_00]: He knows it all, deeper, further than any of us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Besides his agony, our own seem to shrink, and every cross goes light beneath the shadow Lord of thyme.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then the voices through the trees and the gleaming lanterns, Judas in his leproskis, poor Peter dragging the sword from beneath his garment and taking a blow at the nearest.
[SPEAKER_00]: He meant it for his head, but it only got his ear.
[SPEAKER_00]: The shouts, the trampled undergrowth, the scared disciples, and the inquisitive mob.
[SPEAKER_00]: But Jesus is master of the situation again.
[SPEAKER_00]: His will is perfectly attuned with the fathers.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's going right on by way of the cross.
[SPEAKER_00]: Turning on Peter, he ordered the sword back into its sheath and broke their last hopes of a spectacular conquest.
[SPEAKER_00]: He would not appeal to force.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you think I cannot ask my father and he will even now send me more than 12 legions of angels, but he would not call them.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was taken the long way, but the only possible way, the way of love.
[SPEAKER_00]: And no pain would turn him back.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was no discord in these will, so perfectly attuned.
[SPEAKER_00]: It would conquer sin with love.
[SPEAKER_00]: He would make the cross of throne.
[SPEAKER_00]: He would use the shame and pain and humiliation of it to expose the very heart of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And sin would not triumph.
[SPEAKER_00]: It would be, but a dark background revealing by contrast, the wonder of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he takes the cross, not of compulsion, not by mere submission or resignation, but willingly.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when we see him there, we have our greatest aid, understanding how the calamities of life can be converted to our souls' use and the use of others.
[SPEAKER_00]: He takes it willingly.
[SPEAKER_00]: His arms are not merely stretched upon it, they are wounded around it.
[SPEAKER_00]: He holds it to him.
[SPEAKER_00]: He does not merely suffer it.
[SPEAKER_00]: He uses it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so the symbol of shame becomes the focus point of glory.
[SPEAKER_00]: In that same willing spirit, he desires that we meet and use the calamities of life that overtake us.
[SPEAKER_00]: An evil that can be put right must be resisted.
[SPEAKER_00]: But those are not the problems we are considering now.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is a finality about bereavement, amputated limb and curable disease, a lost fortune.
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you hear the cross willingly?
[SPEAKER_00]: That will change it from a weight and a wings.
[SPEAKER_00]: Can I crush you?
[SPEAKER_00]: You rise by it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So by my woes to be near my God to thee.
[SPEAKER_00]: Near to thee.
[SPEAKER_00]: Through the shadows he guides still and converts the loss into game, working out of our
[SPEAKER_00]: Thomas Arskine of Lennoth and says, many things appear and are irretrivable to us, but there is nothing irretrivable with God.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a great gospel to my heart.
[SPEAKER_00]: He who knows how to take a case and from the fall to bring in the redemption may be safely trusted with each event and with every action, good, and bad.
[SPEAKER_00]: I believe that love reigns in that love will prevail.
[SPEAKER_00]: I believe that He says to me every morning, begin again your journey in your life, your sins, which are many or not only forgiven, but they will be made by the wisdom of God, the basis on which He will build blessings.
[SPEAKER_00]: so we believe they will be made by the wisdom of God, the basis on which He will build blessings, our sins and our mistakes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even the saddest of our mistakes, the ones we made when we listened for his guiding voice, but did not quite succeed in disentangling it from the voice of self-love.
[SPEAKER_00]: He will build a blessing on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in the light of heaven, the mysteries will be solved.
[SPEAKER_00]: The gains of our loss is made clear, and full of scope be found for the disciplined abilities we've developed on Earth.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then I will see and hear and know all I desired and wished below, and every power finds sweet and ploy in that eternal world of joy.
[SPEAKER_01]: But this sermon was very interesting to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think there will be people who will listen to this sermon, and it might disagree with parts of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know what?
[SPEAKER_01]: That's okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think we can listen to the sermon and disagree with parts of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I will say what I do appreciate is he's not preaching this from the safety of an ivory tower.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's not preaching this sermon on the old times of calamity.
[SPEAKER_01]: What could it be like when things go wrong, the professor saying that from the theoretical classroom?
[SPEAKER_01]: This guy's preaching this.
[SPEAKER_01]: Tearing World War 2, during the era of bombs falling, what do my people who are losing loved ones right now need to hear, and they need to hear the hope of the gospel, they need to hear that God loves them, they need to hear that Jesus is the way out of this pain and comfort, this pain in this world, and the comfort for this world, and I appreciate that He's very direct, and He's willing to say it, and preach it to that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I hope that pastor, when pastors of churches and near you, or that the people you know, or if you are a pastor listening,
[SPEAKER_01]: just as direct with dealing with the issues of your day and that when your people need help when there's a time of calamity, I hope that we are all pointing our friends, our family, our loved ones, those around us, to the gospel and the need for Jesus Christ like he was as well, because that's so many times when a calamity happens, things go wrong, people shrink back because they go, oh, they're going through a hard time.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't want to say anything to make it worse.
[SPEAKER_01]: And yet so many times, calamities are the very moment when people are most open to hearing about God.
[SPEAKER_01]: They are most in need to hear the good news and sometimes we shrink back when we're scared to make things worse.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that we need to quote, thanks to not have a nervous disposition but get in there and get it done, tell people about God and share the good news with them so that they can become for dinner.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for listening to today's episode of Revived Thoughts.
[SPEAKER_02]: Today's sermon was narrated by John Rainar, big thanks to John Rainar, we always love it when we get people that come back and read more sermons for us, it's always at the light and John does a great job.
[SPEAKER_01]: John is awesome.
[SPEAKER_01]: John really appreciate all the sermons.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's done for us great voice as you can tell he does In stuff you can look up his website.
[SPEAKER_01]: He has that we've mentioned before on the show where he does audio He's just always been very kind to us and he's he's told us basically I see this as a ministry So I appreciate what you guys do and in fact John reached out to me and was kind of like hey What's this all right?
[SPEAKER_01]: What's the latest sermon?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's been a while since you've met such a guy
[SPEAKER_01]: John, let me get you something and I really enjoyed this one, so grateful for your help on these episodes, John, you always do a great job.