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 PAUL RADER'S 
 SERMONS 
 
 PAUL RADER 
 
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PAUL RADER'S 
 SERMONS 
 
 BWp.SITY4F1fcUH0JS UtWIT 
 JUL 19 1918 
 
 PRICE TWENTY-FIVE CENTS 
 
 THE BOOK STALL 
 
 ORDERS TO MIL UUUIX UlHLL NEW YOrtK 
 
Copyright 1916 
 by W. Leon Tucker 
 
 Published by 
 THE BOOK STALL 
 113 FULTON ST. NEW YORK 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 The following sermons were preached in the 
 "Big Tabernacle" of the Moody Church, Chicago. 
 
 Thousands heard them and multitudes who 
 could not gain entrance into the tabernacle, were 
 turned away. 
 
 The proof of the power of these Gospel sermons 
 is a great number of redeemed, regenerated and 
 rescued, who bear triumphant testimony to the 
 same. 
 
 To preserve the spirituality, simplicity and sin- 
 cerity of the preacher, has been the purpose of 
 the publishers who publish and present the ser- 
 mons practically as preached. 
 
 There is everywhere much prayer for the bless- 
 ing of God upon the messages contained herein. 
 
 — The Publishers. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. The Blessed Hope 5 
 
 II. "On the War-path" 17 
 
 III. "Wild Oats" 31 
 
 IV. "Planting and Planning" 43 
 
 V. "Border Battles" 56 
 
 VI. Out of the Cave 69 
 
 VII. Kingdom Recruiting 83 
 
THE BLESSED HOPE 
 
 "Looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing 
 of the great God and our Saviour, Jesus Christ," Titus 2:13. 
 
 I want to talk to you to-night on this wonderful hope that 
 we have, of the coming back of Jesus. As you have listened 
 to this beautiful music, what a joy it has been to you to hear 
 in song the blessed words: "He is coming again!" But oh, 
 what a joy it is to think of the "time of music" that is ahead ! 
 
 The devil has in his hands a good deal of the music down 
 here to-day, but, thank God, there will be no music in hell, for 
 all of it is going to be in glory. The devil may have a sort 
 of trust on some of it now, but, bless God, he will have to 
 resign when Jesus comes. 
 
 On the Vertex 
 This thought of the coming back of Jesus ought to solem- 
 nize our hearts. It was wonderful for the men of old to have 
 the hope of Jesus' coming, but it is far more wonderful for 
 us to-day. The signs of His soon appearing are all 'round 
 about us; we are living on the very vertex of it. We should 
 praise God that we are living in this wonderful day and age 
 of the world. 
 
 We have a great prospect, my friends. Almost any time, 
 almost any day — perhaps to-night — we may be caught away. 
 Oh, if you have not that hope, you will find out that there is 
 just something lacking in your Christian life. With me, there 
 was always a trying to get hold of something, until I found 
 out that Jesus is coming back to the world again. Things do 
 not head up right until you find out that He is Himself com- 
 ing back to the earth. As you try to think the thing through, 
 you are left in darkness, without this blessed hope. 
 
 Bible Full of It 
 Some folks say, "Well, I haven't time to read it, and study 
 it out." If you are saying that, you are admitting that you 
 
6 
 
 SERMONS BY PAUL RADER 
 
 have not time to read a great portion of your Bible, for very 
 much of this Book is taken up with nothing else than Jesus' 
 coming back again; so that you leave out by this statement 
 much of your Bible. We might pick up your Bible and look 
 it through and find a few little thumb-marks in the New 
 Testament, maybe, and a little in Psalms, and, perhaps, a 
 little bit in Genesis, where you try to find out how it all 
 started, but outside of that you haven't any Bible; but, praise 
 God, when you realize God's plan in the coming back of Jesus 
 Christ, you will have a whole Bible and a whole circle of 
 truth. You have in His coming a place of reckoning. Like a 
 surveyor, you have a line, a base, from which to work. It 
 puts the cap on things, the climax on things. Then there is 
 an end to your thinking. There is a goal to work toward; it 
 pays to wait, for you are waiting for something sure. It pays 
 to be patient, for He will come as He promised. It is a bless- 
 ed hope truly in your heart as the days go by. 
 
 Not at Death 
 
 Now I find that a great many people are saying that the 
 coming of Jesus is simply the time when we die. That is one 
 of the great theories with which folks are fighting the teach- 
 ing of the coming back of Jesus to this world. Listen: My 
 Bible tells me that the coming back of Jesus is a "blessed 
 hope." Did anybody ever tell you a casket was a blessed 
 hope? No man looks ahead to the time he is going to die as 
 a blessed hope. It is lovely to know that maybe you will be 
 caught up without dying. "Oh, wonderful thought — shall we 
 go without dying?" 
 
 Think of it, my friend! If Jesus were to come to-night, 
 this is the hope: that as you sit there in your seat, as quickly 
 as you can bat your eye you will be changed, "in a moment, 
 in the twinkling of an eye." No death — no dying — no agony — 
 no struggle. Those who have already died and passed on are 
 to see the Lord first — "The dead in Christ shall arise first," 
 and afterwards, He says, those of us who remain "shall be 
 caught up to meet Him in the air, and thus shall we ever be 
 with the Lord!" Hallelujah! 
 
THE BLESSED HOPE 
 
 7 
 
 The First-fruits 
 
 Jesus' disciples saw that wonderful body of His come into 
 the room where the door was shut. What a wonderful thing! 
 Friend, do you know that a Christian is a supernatural man? 
 There is nothing common about him. Think of it — that inside 
 the breast of a man or a woman who has been born again, 
 there is a new creature, an absolutely new creature. Nothing 
 like it has ever been seen in the world but once, and that was 
 when Jesus Himself came back from the dead; then was this 
 wonderful kind of new creature seen. He was the first-fruits. 
 
 I see this great bird sailing ofd in the air, high up in the 
 sky; they tell me it is an eagle. I see a huge kind of animal 
 roaring in the forest, and with a voice like a trumpet he 
 shakes the trees — and they tell me that is a lion. 
 
 I see this little bird, a little yellow affair, twittering in 
 the branches; they tell me it is a canary. 
 
 There is another kind of life in the ocean — a fish. 
 
 But was there ever this kind of life on the earth where 
 comes a man into a room, and the doors are shut? Jesus has 
 entered into that room and is in their midst. Thank God, my 
 Bible tells me that He is the first-fruits of them that sleep, 
 and that afterwards the rest of us are to have a body like unto 
 His glorious body. The disciples looked at Him with their 
 natural eyes, and as He talked to them He looked like an 
 ordinary man; but as He began to break the bread with two 
 men and lifted His hands from the table-cloth, He gave Him- 
 self away, for they saw the holes in His hands — and He van- 
 ishes out of their sight. 
 
 New Creation 
 
 Here is another kind of creature that the world has never 
 seen before : The resurrected Jesus ; but, thank God, thousands 
 and thousands of them are going to be back in the world again, 
 made like our Lord Jesus Christ, at His coming. If that is 
 a fairy tale to you, thank God it is not to me. I recognize that 
 God can easily, in a moment, transform my body. I did not 
 see how He could transform my disposition and my soul, and 
 when I found out that God could get at the very functioning 
 
8 
 
 SERMONS BY PAUL RADER 
 
 of my being and my personality and subdue my will and cast 
 out my sin and the devil and the power that was within me 
 and raging in my heart, bless God, I knew it wasn't going 
 to be very hard for Him to change that body of mine. 
 
 You chemists know how easily elements are combined. 
 Friends, God has the combination of all the elements, and as 
 far as His transforming my body is concerned, that has never 
 been anything for me to doubt. God handles life, and since 
 He has transformed my soul and filled me with His own 
 Spirit, I am just waiting for the time when the rest of it, the 
 outside shell, shall all be changed like unto His own in a mo- 
 ment, in the twinkling of an eye. 
 
 Our Riches 
 
 We used to live by a family whose father had discovered a 
 mine about three miles from Leadville, and struck it rich. The 
 prospectors had given him figures on it, and the father owned 
 about sixty per cent, of the mine himself. And that father 
 and mother and children used to sit there on their front porch 
 and do nothing but plan what they were going to do when 
 they got that money. And after a while the money came — 
 a fortune — and they carried out most of the plans they had 
 made back there on the porch. 
 
 Thank God, I can sit on my front porch to-night and talk 
 about something that will do more than money will, for I am 
 going to live eternally with Him! He is coming for us short- 
 ly. I am going to have a "body like unto His own glorious 
 body." Since He has promised me a body like unto His own 
 and to let me come back in this world with Him, reigning 
 with Him, ruling with Him, I tell you, my friend, I can forget 
 everything in this world that is not of God. This blessed hope 
 holds you in the hour of temptation; this blessed hope keeps 
 you strong when men are telling you of some big thing that 
 is going to come to pass in this world. 
 
 A Big Parade 
 
 They tell you about a big parade that is coming when men 
 shall show great marvels of discovery. Thank God I know a 
 
THE BLESSED HOPE 
 
 9 
 
 bigger parade than theirs — when Jesus shall come in the sky 
 to execute judgment with ten thousand of His saints. It may 
 seem an idle dream to some, but it is not an idle dream to 
 many who have Jesus in their heart. I know there are many 
 precious saved people who have not this hope, but thank 
 God there are thousands of Christians to-day who are getting 
 it. They are going to Bible Conferences by the thousands. 
 Open up a Bible Conference, and the Christians will flock to it 
 to get the truth. They are hungry to know about the coming 
 of the Lord. Oh, it is lovely to sit down and count your 
 money and find out how rich you are going to be in glory! 
 
 "A tent or a cottage, why should I care? 
 They're building a palace for me over there. 
 I'm the child of a King, the child of a King, 
 With Jesus my Saviour, I'm the child of a King." 
 
 What more of a mansion do I want than a new body like 
 unto the One that came into that room to His disciples, on 
 that night? See Him with that body on the shore; He has the 
 fish ready for His disciples as they come from the boat. Jesus, 
 Jesus, in this room to-night. My Jesus, your Jesus, I hope, 
 and if He is not yours, this is the night that you can make 
 Him yours if you will. Oh, we argue so much that we forget 
 sometimes what a glorious hope we have in Him. 
 
 See what it says in Second Peter 3:13,14: "Nevertheless 
 we, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new 
 earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness; wherefore, beloved, see- 
 ing that ye look for such things, be diligent that ye may be 
 found of Him in peace, without spot, and blameless." 
 
 Keep Looking 
 
 You are waiting for the great event, and it pays to be "dil- 
 igent." It pays to be looking up all the while. I find that 
 this hope, if you have it, really separates you from the world. 
 You begin to realize that somehow there is a life that you have 
 that is not common life. You begin to realize the mighty 
 working of Jesus Christ in your heart; this wonderful work- 
 ing of the Spirit of Jesus on our natures, on this old thing we 
 have turned over to Him. It is not that you say : "I am bet- 
 
10 
 
 SERMONS BY PAUL RADER 
 
 ter than other people," but oh, you begin to say to yourself, 
 "My, it is a wonderful thing to be saved." You begin to love 
 other people and say, "I wish they had what I have !" It sep- 
 arates you from the things of sin. You do not want to defile 
 God's body that you have given over to Him. You do not 
 want to be touched by the things of the world. You want to 
 walk in such a way that the moment He comes you will be 
 ready for Him to take you away. 
 
 I know we are preaching much about the security of our 
 salvation, but I tell you these warnings mean something. It 
 means something for a Christian to be up-to-date every min- 
 ute in the Lord. There is a warning here, "That ye might 
 be found of Him in peace, without spot and blameless." 
 
 You look forward to it, you wait for it, you have your hope 
 fixed in Him and Him alone. It may be to-night, it may be 
 to-morrow, and so you can wait and be patient and you can 
 afford to set aside the temptations of the devil, with this hope 
 within you. 
 
 He Couldn't Steal 
 
 I remember of a colored boy in a certain family; after the 
 folks had come home from meeting he came to the boss of the 
 house and confessed that he was going to steal something 
 while they were all out. 
 
 He says: "Boss, I was going to steal something to-night, 
 but about the time I was going to take it, I would feel like 
 somebody was coming in the front door; then I would feel 
 like somebody was coming in the back door ; then I thought I 
 heard somebody cough out on the walk — and it kept me from 
 taking it, all the time." 
 
 I tell you, my friends, if you really have the hope of Jesus- 
 coming, you find out that it is a great help in the hour of 
 temptation. You say "I cannot tie up with this kind of a busi- 
 ness; I cannot connect myself up with these people, and those 
 people, and the other people." Why? "I hear a footstep com- 
 ing down the stairway from heaven, and He may be here in a 
 moment. Jesus may step in the next moment and be with us." 
 
 It is not frightening us into it, but friends, it is a constant 
 guardian of our attention; we forget so readily. It is so easy 
 
THE BLESSED HOPE 
 
 11 
 
 for us to get our mind upon something of the world and center 
 here, and God wants to absolutely fix our mind and our atten- 
 tion upon this: "Looking for that blessed hope and the 
 glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus 
 Christ." That is the next great event in this world; I am 
 waiting for a parade, when everything that is of earth, as far 
 as we are concerned, of the tears, and the sorrow and the 
 sighing and the temptation, miraculously march off forever, 
 and we are one with Him, and become new creatures in Christ 
 Jesus in body as well as in soul and spirit. 
 
 That is what God offers to the soul that will take it — a new 
 life, a new being, incorruptible, that does not fade away — a 
 God-given inheritance. 
 
 John Newton's Conversion 
 
 We were reading this morning in family worship about the 
 conversion of John Newton. He was a very wicked sailor, 
 and as they sailed along one night on the ship, after a night 
 of debauchery and drunkenness and dissipation, in agony of 
 soul he went to sleep, under conviction. He dreamed that he 
 stood at the side of the ship with a magnificent jewel in his 
 hand, and satan seemed to come alongside and say : "I dare 
 you to drop that into the ocean." He took the dare and as 
 he did, something seemed to whisper to his heart, "You have 
 lost your soul. There it is down there." 
 
 In another vision Jesus stood beside him, and He asked him 
 if he wanted his soul and wanted his life. "What shall it 
 profit a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his own 
 soul?" 
 
 "Yes, I want it," said Newton. Jesus immediately dived 
 from the deck, and before long, with agony upon His face, 
 and showing the horrors of the effort, through which He had 
 gone, He appeared again and had the little jewel in His hand. 
 Newton reached his hand out to get it, but the Saviour drew 
 it back. "Oh no," He said, "I gave it to you once, and you 
 were careless with it and threw it away, but I will keep it 
 for you now. It is yours, but it will never be thrown away 
 again." 
 
12 
 
 SERMONS BY PAUL RADER 
 
 God's Gift 
 
 Hallelujah, that is our salvation! God gave men this life, 
 and they threw it away. The devil tempted you, and you let 
 it sink. God help you to see that outside of God you are lost, 
 man, you are lost, woman. You have let go; you have let the 
 devil in, and if J esus asks you to-night to walk up and take 
 life from Him, the devil tries to keep you in that seat; he 
 wants you to go out again into the giddy world and forget 
 you are lost. 
 
 Life Rescued from Death 
 As God looked down upon us, He saw us lost and undone — 
 perishing. PERISHING! Oh, how that word makes my soul 
 thrill with agony and horror for men. I have heard it in the 
 night hours, I have heard it in the morning hours. Friend, 
 let me tell you: there is nobody can ever dive into death and 
 get your life back but Jesus Christ. Jesus broke the laws of 
 death. He appears in the room with His disciples with the 
 life in His own hands. There He is — His body, a body like 
 ours, transformed. He enters, the doors being shut, and says : 
 "Here is your life — I am your life/ 7 What did He say to 
 Mary and Martha: "I am the resurrection and the life." HIM- 
 SELF. He says, "Because I live, ye shall live also." Praise 
 God, I am so glad my life is in Jesus. He is my life. God 
 gave Him life and power over all flesh. The Scripture says 
 in Jesus' prayer in the seventeenth of John: "As Thou hast 
 given Him power over all flesh, that He should give eternal 
 life to as many as Thou hast given Him." He is holding our 
 new bodies safe in His keeping, and will deliver them. Oh 
 blessed hope! 
 
 God's Offer 
 
 He is calling you to-night. What does He offer you? This 
 life He has died for; He has broken the powers of death and 
 now He offers you a living soul, forever. Friend, do you hear 
 me? Are your ears so dull that you cannot hear the Gospel 
 message, that Jesus Christ has life, and you have none unless 
 you get it from Him? You know not the way to God, and 
 there is no other way to get to God and life outside of Jesus 
 
THE BLESSED HOPE 
 
 13 
 
 Christ. If you have not Jesus Christ in your life, my friend, 
 I would not care if you belonged to fifty churches, and went 
 every day, or had gone through confirmation or been baptized, 
 or any other kind of ordinance. If I did not have the witness 
 from heaven that I was a child of God, I would get it to-night. 
 I would not be bluffed by the organizations of men nor the 
 theories of men. I would have life, straight out of God's 
 heart. And wait with this new life throbbing in my breast for 
 His appearing and a new body as His own. 
 
 Mortgage Paid 
 
 When Jesus died and His Blood was spilt on Calvary, He 
 paid the debt for your life. He took over the old business or 
 body and then He is going to tear the whole old structure of 
 the body down and put up a new; He paid the mortgage on 
 the old place. Like the rich man Mr. Dawes told about, who 
 went back to the little New England farm : the little farm and 
 house where his father had lived. When he got there, he 
 found that the man who now owned it had a mortgage of 
 $17,000 on the place. He took a carpenter along with him, 
 and they walked around the buildings. He asked the car- 
 penter: "What will it take to bolster up the old barnf And 
 the carpenter said: "It is useless; it can't be patched up." 
 
 They looked at the old house, and he asked him: "How can 
 you fix it up f But the carpenter said : "You can't patch that, 
 either; it is useless. The boards are rotten and the founda- 
 tion is rotten — the whole thing is rotten." 
 
 "What shall we dof he asked him. 
 
 "Do you love this spot?" asked the carpenter. 
 
 "I certainly do love this old spot — this was my father's 
 farm and buildings." 
 
 "All right, then, we can build another house just like this 
 one — a new one." 
 
 So they tore down the old one and in its place put up a 
 new one, just like it. The man paid the mortgage off, and 
 built a new house on the old spot. 
 
 Thank God, Jesus' Blood paid the mortgage on this old 
 farm of ours. These old bodies are wrecked and ruined by 
 
14 
 
 SERMONS BY PAUL RADER 
 
 sin, and God could not have lived in them and get His glory 
 in them as He desired. So His Son paid the mortgage on our 
 souls: the old spot — and soon the buildings: our bodies — will 
 be made new. 
 
 Oh, it is detestable to the heart of God these days to hear a 
 lot of theories about the divine spark in man, when he is a 
 dirty, tumble-down, rotten shack on the outside, and eaten 
 upon the inside by the mortgage of sin. 
 
 But Jesus has paid the mortgage, and will give you a new 
 heart; you are born again, and the Holy Spirit can come in 
 then and dwell in your heart. He will give you a new house 
 to live in later; perhaps to-night. 
 
 New Houses — New City 
 
 Then He is coming back to collect all the houses He has 
 made, put us all together, so we will be a city. That is the 
 New Jerusalem; a city; you are a house, and I am a house. 
 I do not know what street you are living on, but I am on the 
 corner of Joy Street and Hallelujah Avenue, and you can live 
 there, too, if you want to. God has given you a mansion, in 
 this wonderful city of our God, that cometh down out of heav- 
 en: this wonderful city, the Bride of the Bridegroom. 
 
 This is the wonderful creation God offers you to-night. It 
 is not a theory. Jesus demonstrated it before the eyes of His 
 disciples; this wonderful resurrection body of Jesus was 
 shown openly and handled! 
 
 Warning in Our Day 
 We have a lot of theories these days, but God wants real 
 faith in your heart. If you believe that Jesus can change you 
 in a moment and in the twinkling of an eye, and it may be 
 any one of these days, do you mean to tell me that you are 
 not going to separate from these things of the world? You 
 will say "I cannot afford to have any of this stuff hanging to 
 me. I will restore to any man anything I have wronged. I 
 will clean up, I will get straight with men and women." The 
 coming of Jesus is the warning in our day, my friend. As 
 Noah preached to his day and said: "The flood is coming," 
 
THE BLESSED HOPE 
 
 15 
 
 the warning of our day is that the tribulation is coming and 
 the Bride must make ready for Jesus' coming. "He that hath 
 this hope in him purifieth himself, even as He is pure." 
 
 Hard? 
 
 Do you say, "It is a hard life to live"? Hard? — and you 
 may have a glorified body in ten minutes? Oh, God, somehow 
 put a faith in us to-night that will laugh at the little perse- 
 cutions of earth. Oh, we need a glorious vision of what it is 
 to be saved. He may come at any moment. Can you say you 
 are ready, brother? Ready for that soul's bright home? 
 Sister, brother, are you ready? You can be ready. 
 
 It will consecrate you. It will get you to the place where 
 you say, "Lord, yes — I see why you want me to be given 
 up to you." 
 
 It Focuses the Soul 
 
 It focuses the soul. It gets your mind fixed on one thing. 
 It seemed to me I had about ten different minds before Jesus 
 became all and in all. One day I would think this way, and 
 the next day a few arguments would switch me over and I 
 would think the other way. But, friends, when you get all 
 that you have in Jesus, and center in Him, thank God you live 
 a peaceful, steady sort of a life. Your heart will be fixed; 
 your eyes will be fixed; and folks will know right where you 
 are stepping. They know you have made up your mind to 
 go along with Jesus and are going right along that way. We 
 talk about a "bee-line." That bee never loses sight in his 
 mind of that little hive, all the time he is flying; and you 
 will not lose sight of that little hive of yours up there in 
 glory, where God's honey is stored and soon to be given out 
 to His own. You will be making a bee-line for it, every day. 
 
 When you get the hope of the coming of Jesus Christ, you 
 will have one ambition. Folks won't worry about stepping 
 on your toes. You will be picking them up so fast they can't 
 step on them anyhow. You are headed right. 
 
16 
 
 SERMONS BY PAUL RADER 
 
 Are We Ready? 
 Brother, are you ready? Sister, are you ready? Suppose 
 the thing was to strike here to-night. How about you? 
 
 I Strike My Hand 
 
 Now it is all over. Suppose the whole thing had struck as 
 I struck my hand just now — how about you? That is exactly 
 how quick it is coming. The devil is trying to tell you you 
 have a lot of time, but listen: When it comes you will have 
 no time to prepare. It comes faster than death. Death may 
 creep on and you may have three or four weeks of preparation 
 — but Jesus may come to-night — in a moment. He says: 
 "Watch, for you know neither the day nor the hour that the 
 Son of man cometh." 
 
 God help you to wake up ! Supposing it was all over, just 
 a few moments ago — where would you be? Just answer this — 
 don't put any "if's" or "ands" in it — where would you be? In- 
 side or outside? 
 
"ON THE WAR-PATH" 
 
 This subject was suggested to me when Mr. Johnson and 
 Mr. Woolley came home from Canada. Mr. Woolley needed a 
 vacation very badly, so he took one of twenty-four hours. I 
 don't know how many pounds he gained, but I gained a lot of 
 information myself. Woolley tells me everything he knows, 
 and then I preach. 
 
 He told me how one of the boys there in Canada who had 
 gone to the front had written his mother that there was no 
 "V. C." blood in him. His duty was to carry ammunition 
 along a certain road, and he wrote that the enemy had their 
 range exactly and had dropped bombs all along the road, on 
 every side of them; that the war-path was strewn with the 
 bodies of dead men, dead animals, broken-up wagons, all sorts 
 of explosions had occurred — and every time he took a step he 
 trembled. 
 
 Great Waste 
 
 My friends, because we appear to be living in peace to-day, 
 so in contrast to war, we seem to be calm about some of the 
 great waste of life about us. Men are being hurled into eter- 
 nity by the thousands, going into death by the millions — men 
 who know not Jesus. On life's war-path to-night are strewn 
 the carcasses of men and women, young and old, all over the 
 world. Sin and war, my friends, are greatly alike. I want to 
 call your attention to-night to the resemblances between the 
 war-path and the path of a sinner; to give you a little com- 
 parison. 
 
 God says in the sixth chapter of Romans, the twenty-third 
 verse : "For the wages of sin is death ; but the gift of God is 
 eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." 
 
 What a wonderful verse! 
 
 They Volunteer 
 The wages of sin is death. The wages of war is death. 
 There is no other end to either. They go into it for death. 
 
IS 
 
 SERMONS BY PAUL RADER 
 
 They volunteer for death. They march out with death- 
 dealing instruments on their shoulders, with their great en- 
 gines pulling the guns of destruction and of death. 
 
 Sin, my friends, is to end in death, and all along the path 
 of the sinner there are strewn the carcasses of men and of 
 women who have sinned. Death comes to men from sin as 
 it does in war from bullets. 
 
 Explosive Sin 
 
 There are some folks who creep along in sin and die; there 
 are other men in whom sin simply explodes — the devil drops 
 his awful bomb and they are gone. I had a boy friend in 
 college, on the foot-ball team; he was considered one of the 
 best fellows in college — and he went on a trip one day. He 
 met a woman; he had never met her like in the world before. 
 His father had money; and inside of three weeks he was gone 
 — sin had grabbed him, taken him captive. The poor father 
 and mother were horrified, the school was horrified — but he 
 was gone. He had not only shot her, but shot himself. It 
 was an explosion. And so sin, my friends, on the war-path 
 takes some people that quickly. Others live along, travel a lit- 
 tle further, and sin's death gets them, but with some it is an 
 explosion. 
 
 A Quick Shot 
 A poor man, with a wife and two children, living in the 
 valley near Dayton, when the flood came went to his home 
 from his work and found the mother gone, the children gone. 
 He never had taken a drink in his life as far as anybody 
 knew — what made him do it then no one knew — but he went 
 to another part of the town, began to talk with some men 
 there, and the first thing they knew his head was inflamed with 
 liquor. Two weeks after that he woke up in jail, and has to 
 serve years for the things that took place. 
 
 I say to you, my friends, if you do not know the awful 
 deadliness of sin, wake up to-night! The wisest man on earth 
 is the man who reckons on the awful power of sin. Here are 
 boys to-night on that war-path; some of them whistle and 
 some sing and some crack their dull jokes as they go along; 
 
"ON THE WAR-PATH" 
 
 19 
 
 but friends, there is only one safe place to walk, and that is 
 under the sheltering protection of the Blood and power of 
 Jesus Christ. No bomb can touch you there. Praise God 
 that you can go out and in and find pasture with Him, while 
 the war-path is strewn with bombs. 
 
 Men Go Crazy 
 
 There is suicide in war. Men go crazy. Men went out with 
 romance in their hearts, but have gone crazy, with the poison 
 of the food, with the lack of sleep, with the noise. 
 
 My friend, a young man, came back to the University from 
 the Spanish War, and told me about an experience that hap- 
 pened in his tent one night, when two of the boys suddenly 
 went insane. One of them drew his own sabre and stuck 
 it into his heart. They went to pieces, because of the poison 
 of the food. There are thousands of people who are commit- 
 ting suicide, going madly into sin, because of the poison of 
 it. It poisons men. I have looked into faces of men who 
 have sin soaked in their hearts, and they are poisoned, they 
 are doped, they are wild: and they go right along into it. 
 My grandfather used to tell about a charge in the Civil War; 
 how the boys hadn't had any sleep, nothing to eat, their shoes 
 worn out, their clothing worn out; they could hardly carry 
 their muskets; but when he gave the order to charge, they 
 charged face foremost into the enemy without even lifting 
 a gun, and the slaughter was terrific. 
 
 Anxious to Plunge 
 There are young fellows to-night waiting for the cabaret 
 show to open, that they may charge into the things of sin. 
 There are young women to-night, wild to plunge into sin; 
 there is the girl who, like a fool, heedless of the mother who 
 begs her not to go with that fellow, leaps into the leper's arms. 
 Into that vile, rotten man's arms, his rotten lips upon her 
 cheeks, she plunges, in the face of her mother who pleads with 
 her to turn aside. Oh, the awful wreck from sin there is to- 
 night! Oh, as you see the wreck of home and of young wom- 
 anhood in our day, as you walk the streets, it makes you cry 
 
20 
 
 SERMONS BY PAUL RADER 
 
 out to God to send salvation to young men and young women. 
 I beg you in God's name, cover yourselves with the cleansing 
 Blood of Jesus, and let Him keep you from sin I Jesus wants 
 to save you, He is anxious to be your Saviour, He is pleading 
 with you to step out, and if you dare to step out, praise God, 
 He will take you. 
 
 Traitors ? 
 
 There are others who are traitors, there are others who are 
 spies, in warfare. Oh, how many men are betraying young 
 life. How many women are betraying young life. When 
 they began to look into the white slave trade, they found 
 that women — women who knew what a horrible, awful thing 
 it was to lose everything precious to themselves in virtue, — 
 were loaning their aid to get young girls in a life of shame. 
 There are men taking 3 7 oung men to teach them the business 
 of sin; talking a-bout the habits of sin, joshing and joking 
 about the deep things of crime, about the sacredness of wom- 
 anhood, fooling and telling stories about it in the presence of 
 young men; these are the men who are traitors to God, these 
 are the men who are in league with the devil. 
 
 Oh my friends, it was an awful thing in Ireland for those 
 men to have to be shot down by a government which they 
 had tried to put out of commission. It was an awful thing in 
 our country to have to take a traitor out and shoot him; but 
 think of it! There are men who are traitors against God; 
 God, who is trying to get men out of sin and give them liberty. 
 
 The Show System 
 God help you to-night to get out of the world system that is 
 filled with its sin, and join Jesus Christ. The trouble with 
 Christians these days, my friends, is that there is too much 
 lolly-pop life with us. We need a little hard persecution, in 
 order to stick by Jesus Christ. We have too many people 
 who are liars about this thing. I ask you which ones of you 
 are Christians and you will raise your hand in the tabernacle, 
 and the next night will find you in some dirty show, having 
 your lowest sensations tickled. There isn't a show on earth 
 
"ON THE WAR-PATH' 
 
 21 
 
 that hasn't behind it a great system of cultivating the pas- 
 sions of men and women. It is all sin promotion — that is how 
 they get their money. Oh, friend, let Jesus into your heart 
 to-night. I am so glad to-night I have an experience that is 
 real and know what Jesus can do for a sinful heart. I am 
 so glad that somehow God arrested me, tried me, found me 
 guilty of sin, and then gave me Jesus to pay it all and set 
 me free. 
 
 The Romance 
 
 Next, this call to the world-warfare, and sin, is just alike. 
 The colors are there, there seems to be a romance about it. 
 Young men go out under patriotic speeches, but they are going 
 to death. And the devil imitates that sort of thing himself. 
 The devil gets the music to going, he puts in the lights, puts 
 in the song, he puts in the dance, he puts in the martial 
 music and the little wiggle that is in the dance, and all the elu- 
 siveness of it, and even parades himself with the fancy danc- 
 ers. He starts out a young couple of fancy dancers with the 
 latest dances and isn't satisfied to have them in New York, 
 but sends them out over the country to teach everybody else 
 how to wiggle themselves to hell. The call to the deviFs work 
 and to sin, my friends, always has fine music with it, it looks 
 like it is going to come out fine, but from that dark line of 
 death and of hell, men will never march back. 
 
 No Medals 
 
 There never will be a time when the medals will be passed 
 out to them; it is forever, to eternity, into the jaws of death, 
 because they refuse Jesus Christ as their Saviour. God help 
 you to take Him to-night. He offers to take you off the war- 
 path, and Himself to be the Captain of your salvation. God 
 made Him perfect through suffering, so that He was able to 
 succor those that are tempted. The Lord knows I am tempted, 
 He knows you are tempted, but praise God we have a 
 mighty Saviour that can save from sin and keep from sin. He 
 will hold you fast. God only wants to get hold of you. 
 
22 SERMONS BY PAUL RADER 
 
 Sin Alone? 
 
 Neither a soldier nor a sinner ever suffers alone. No, my 
 friend, if some of you think you do, you are altogether mis- 
 taken. When that soldier goes out in the trench and fires 
 his gun and the bomb explodes and these five men are blown 
 to pieces, this poor fellow lies on the dump in his agony and 
 cries for the doctor, and at the going down of the sun his soul 
 passes out and he is gone. There they are to-night by the 
 thousands, dying like that, — the worst war the world has ever 
 known. But my friend, right out of this tabernacle to-night, 
 perhaps some young man, some older man, some young wom- 
 an, some older woman, will go out into sin and think they are 
 going to die alone and suffer in sin alone. No sir, no man 
 can sin alone, no woman can sin alone. 
 
 Family, Too 
 
 Thiuk of young Orpet who is being tried, his father and 
 mother sitting by him, and on the other side an old father 
 and mother — they used to be friends of the family before, but 
 now a little girl is dead. Is he the only one injured*? No, 
 every one connected with him is tainted, families ruined, homes 
 wrecked; it wasn't his own sin alone; others had to share it 
 with him. Every time there is a sinful boy in a home, the 
 whole family is affected by him. He is not just one black 
 sheep alone, but every sheep in the family suffers with him. 
 
 Homes Suffer 
 
 When they bring the news back from the firing-line, that 
 fellow that is shot doesn't suffer alone, but every one in the 
 family suffers with a broken heart. The suffering out yonder 
 to-night is nothing to the suffering when the news is brought 
 back, when in the days to come the poor widows and orphans 
 have to make their way in this world, weakened by the loss 
 of the men who have gone out to their death. War is hell; 
 it is an awful picture of sin. You cannot suffer alone. The 
 sins of your life will have to go on with other people. Praise 
 God that only the power of Jesus Christ can break that power 
 
"ON THE WAR-PATH" 
 
 23 
 
 and cut that connection and let the Blood of Jesus Christ take 
 care of the past and of the future. What a wonderful thing 
 Jesus offers to you, men and women, — that if you come down 
 these aisles and take Him to-night, God forgives the past, and 
 puts it away as though you had never sinned ! Glory to God ! 
 
 Why Stay? 
 
 God help you to see the awfulness of sin to-night, and 
 what a fool a man is to stay in it when J esus offers the chance 
 to get out; offers to cleanse you so that God looks at you 
 as if you had never sinned. 
 
 A young fellow down South said to his father one day : "I 
 am going out to-night." They were sitting at the table, his 
 mother and sisters there. The father said: "Where are you 
 going?" The boy told him, and the father rose up from the 
 table and said: "You are not going out to-night, my son — 
 you are not going to go with that girl." 
 
 "What business is it of yours?" 
 
 "I am your father." 
 
 "Well, I am going with whoever I please — that is nothing 
 to you, is it?" 
 
 "Bert, we have a family. We have a right to know who 
 you go with. Surely a father has some rights, a mother has 
 some rights, and Bert, you are the only boy and there are 
 five daughters in my home. If you make a misstep it throws 
 dirt upon them and the whole family. As a man and as your 
 father I beg of you to give that woman up." 
 
 Bert turned and whirled around, and said to the whole lot 
 of them: "What do I care? It is my business. I will go 
 with whom I please." 
 
 One of the sisters close to his age who had chummed with 
 him, came running to him and threw her arms around him 
 and said: "Bert, you will stay at home to-night, won't you?" 
 
 "Look here, sis, it is none of your business. I am an in- 
 dividual; I have some rights." 
 
 The father talked to him again in the parlor before he went, 
 and said to him, "Bert, I think I could take a gun and shoot 
 
24 
 
 SERMONS BY PAUL RADER 
 
 your brains out and be happier than to see you go out that 
 door like this." 
 
 The boy said: "That is it — for your own selfishness — you 
 would like to blow my brains out. I have a right to do what 
 I please." 
 
 Oh, a great many of you here to-night think you have a 
 right to sin as you please, when you please, and as long as 
 you please, but I say to you, you are not going to answer to 
 God for the sin in your own life, but for the sin you put 
 in other lives. 
 
 Sin Surprises 
 
 The boy walked out of that home, and he never any more 
 expected to be in jail that night than to fly to the moon. They 
 were sitting around a table in an adjoining town, a few of 
 them. They had been drinking; there was another young 
 fellow there who had been going with this girl. The girl 
 wanted to break with Bert — his father hadn't given him 
 enough money to suit her — and when this other young fellow 
 insulted him, he turned to the girl, grabbed his revolver — 
 nobody ever knew where he got it — and pinned her first, and 
 the man afterwards. The people grabbed him and took him 
 to the jail, and in another wagon carried home two dead bod- 
 ies. And that whole family of girls, that noble father, a 
 heartbroken, suffering group of those who loved him, had to 
 walk out behind that casket after the crowd had gathered at 
 the jail and seen him hanged by the neck, dead. 
 
 He Delivers 
 
 My God, teach some of you people what sin is to-night — sin 
 — sin — sin — the stuff that is in your life, that Jesus can take 
 out, that He can put away from you as far as the East is from 
 the West. He will keep you from sin, from the bombs of the 
 devil, the wiles of the devil, the temptation of the devil. Hal- 
 lelujah, I am telling you about something that is real! Jesus 
 does exactly the thing I am talking about: cleanses and de- 
 livers. 
 
 The record never can be written of war. What newspaper 
 can ever publish the sufferings of this war up to date, the 
 
"ON THE WAR-PATH" 
 
 25 
 
 things the soldiers have done when they have gone in to a 
 town, the poor, suffering women ravaged, the awful horrors 
 that have swept over a village. The papers say "So many 
 thousands dead," but that isn't a millionth part of all the 
 suffering — the famine that goes with it, the stricken, broken 
 hearts. Think of the Armenian question alone. One of the 
 men who seems to know the most about it says that over a 
 million of them have gone down in that bloody slaughter, and 
 one man in the province of Van boasted that in twenty-four 
 hours he would rid that province of 50,000 Armenians. And 
 made the boast good. 
 
 Wake Up! 
 
 My friends, the world is full of sin to-night. Wake up be- 
 fore Jesus comes back, and get under the Blood of Jesus 
 Christ! I say to you that we are living in the most terrific 
 day the world has ever known. You may call me a fanatic 
 if you please but bless God I will try to wake you up to the 
 awful things round about us. God help you men and women 
 to stay out of sin to-night, and see the clouds of judgment 
 just ahead. 
 
 No Record Here 
 
 The record can never be written here, but every bit of it 
 is up there and it is against you unless the Blood of Jesus 
 Christ has blotted it out. That is God's way, and it is perfect- 
 ly just. Why? Because you can have cleansing to-night if 
 you will take the step and confess Him before men. You can 
 have it for nothing, simply if you will take it. There is a 
 good deal up to your will to-night, that little will power that 
 has taken you to sin and said, "Yes" to the devil. You have 
 in your breast to-night the decision that will land you into 
 heaven forever or into hell forever. God help you to see it. 
 You don't have to theorize. God says to you "Come" and you, 
 with your stubborn will say back to Him, "I won't come" — 
 and you go on in this war-path of sin. 
 
26 
 
 SERMONS BY PAUL RADER 
 
 No Fear 
 
 There are lots of folks who have not the fear of God in 
 their hearts. There are men who will ruthlessly run into dan- 
 ger. Some of you say, "Mr. Rader, my conscience is all 
 right." My friends, the man who sees sin as he ought to see 
 it, and then says he wants to run with it, there is only one 
 charitable thing to say about such a man — and that is that he 
 is a fool. 
 
 If You Will 
 
 It is all up to your will. We have books, books, books, 
 published about the divinity of Jesus Christ. Let me tell you 
 something. That poor down-and-out drunkard that just says 
 "Yes" to the first message he hears about Jesus, and staggers 
 up the aisle and falls at the altar and trusts Jesus Christ, will 
 know more about the divinity of Christ than all the high-brows 
 who haven't taken Jesus as a Saviour will know in a million 
 years. Mary, simple Mary, Lazarus' sister, knew of the di- 
 vinity of Jesus, knew He was to die, and anointed Him for 
 His burial. She knew Him. You can know Him, thank God, 
 and He will reveal Himself to you in a peculiar way — there 
 will not any two of you have the same experience, but you 
 will say, "I am talking about the same person." 
 
 He Talks 
 
 Always He talks to your will — He says, "I can explain it 
 if you will obey Me." What does a man know about what 
 a beefsteak can do who will not put it in his stomach? What 
 does a man know about what water can do who will not drink 
 it? He will die in agony without water, but if he just drinks 
 it, not knowing anything about it, he will live. J esus is water, 
 He is bread, He is life itself, and He will reveal Himself to 
 you, when? — when you consent to turn from your sin and 
 obey Him. 
 
 On Christmas morning we throw back the doors and all 
 come in to what? We say, "What is in that package?" "I 
 don't know, but I think it is so-and-so." "What do you think 
 is in the other one?" What are you all in for? Do you know 
 
"ON THE WAR-PATH" 
 
 27 
 
 what you are going to get? No, but it is the time for gifts, so 
 you all come in, and when you open them up, you will know. 
 
 A Gift 
 
 Jesus gives life, and His gift is to be put into your heart; 
 then when He by His Spirit unwraps it you will know. No 
 man in all the world ever sought Jesus who did not find Him. 
 He has the gift, and you are to come — that is your part. 
 
 Nesbitt's Story 
 
 This is Henry Nesbitt's story as I heard it. He was a 
 lawyer in a little town in Missouri in his younger days. He 
 had a dear little wife whom he said he loved, and they came 
 out to Colorado to live. He was an orator, and such a brainy 
 jovial fellow that all the folks loved him. They wanted to elect 
 him to office, but his wife kept him back for his own sake. His 
 wife knew the Lord, trusted the Lord, but he made fun of her 
 when she prayed. They had gone to school together, and 
 I remember how he told of taking the ribbon off her hair in 
 school and tying something else on it. He was a great big 
 fellow, about six feet two and weighed two hundred and sixty 
 or two hundred and seventy pounds, with a splendid face; and 
 he came from a fine family. 
 
 His wife was a timid little soul, who wouldn't argue with 
 him, — she just lived it. Henry didn't pay any attention to 
 what she said; he would say, "She is a lovely little woman, 
 but her head isn't big." All the fellows looked up to Nesbitt, 
 but he didn't know the Lord, and how many boys in that city 
 would say, "Nesbitt don't belong to the Lord, and he is a 
 pretty good fellow!" They didn't know he was being pre- 
 served in the sugar of prayer, that his wife was holding him 
 up to the Lord all the time. 
 
 Take these sweet, godly women out of the world, and things 
 would go to rack and ruin in a short time. 
 
 Nesbitt would say to her: "Listen, tell me this." 
 
 "I can't tell you anything," she would answer. "There is no 
 arguing with you. I just have it in here — I can't tell you 
 about it." 
 
28 
 
 SERMONS BY PAUL RADER 
 
 They were sitting at a meal one day, and had the first arti- 
 chokes they ever had. They had never tasted them before. 
 She pulled off one of the little leaves, and skinned it in her 
 teeth — and said, "Wait a minute, don't eat yours yet. Now 
 ask me how it tastes." 
 
 "What is the use? You couldn't tell me how a thing tastes. 
 I'll have to try myself." 
 
 "Sure, that's it," she replied. "To know what I am tasting, 
 all you have to do is to pull off your leaf, stick it in your 
 mouth, and what you taste then will be the same as what I 
 am tasting. It is the same way with the life of Jesus in the 
 soul, Henry Nesbitt!" 
 
 We know that we know and we don't know how we know, 
 but we know that we know. 
 
 One day she asked a number of women to come and pray 
 with her in the afternoon, and she said to them, "I only 
 brought you up here to pray for Henry, not for me. I am 
 going fast. A few more days and I'll be in glory." 
 
 They came when she died; they had part of the funeral 
 service in the house, the rest down at the big brown church 
 where Nesbitt used to go sometimes Sunday mornings with 
 her. He sat through it with a peculiar look on his face. Every 
 one said, "I wonder what the judge will do now." He walked 
 up to the house, and shut himself in the library, closed the 
 window blinds, locked the doors, and told the servants to let 
 him alone. Up and down, up and down, he walked. He knew 
 he was up against it. He had looked into that little grave, 
 and it had changed everything. He was facing life from a 
 different angle than he had faced it before. 
 
 Oh wake up, friend — death is ahead of you! Why do we 
 bluff ourselves? 
 
 He walked up and down in that room, and finally said : "Oh 
 God, I have got to find you ! I have got to find you or I will 
 die." He turned and with one great fist lifted in the air he 
 said, "Oh God, I will! I don't know what it is, but I will." 
 And he threw himself over a plush chair and cried as though 
 his heart would break, and as he did a great vase, the hand- 
 somest one in their beautiful home, fell and broke all to pieces. 
 
"ON THE WAR-PATH 7 ' 
 
 29 
 
 He got on his feet and said, "Am I crazy? What made the 
 vase fall?" Then he began to reason: "Vases don't fall of 
 themselves. I don't know who has been listening, but some- 
 body moved that vase." He stood there and said, "Come out 
 from behind those portieres: some one must be behind this 
 vase breaking." 
 
 A servant came out, trembling, and said, "Sir, I only wanted 
 to help you, to keep you from dying. They elected me to come 
 in here to protect you against yourself. Sir, they feared you 
 would commit suicide." 
 
 "That is all right, you can go," said Nesbitt, and the minute 
 the man had gone, without any Scripture verse on his lips, 
 for he knew none of it by heart; he only knew the life of 
 his wife and what she had told him, he said, "I see it. That 
 vase fell because somebody pushed it. I fell over this chair 
 crying of God to you because you pushed me. You are after 
 me, Lord — you have been after me since I was a boy. Lord, 
 I will, I will, I will." 
 
 Then God said to him, "Look at the vase. That is the 
 costliest thing in your house isn't it, broken to wake you up? 
 Well, I broke the costliest prize of heaven for your salvation. 
 I gave my best for you." 
 
 Nesbitt saw it all in a flash, and continued to say, "Lord, I 
 will, I will. I've resisted your best offers but at last I will. 
 I'll quit the sin that made you suffer, and your Blood pays. 
 I count it done." 
 
 Yes, the old days were over. Nesbitt left the old war-path 
 of sin. 
 
 Will you leave it? Will you? Take one look at all its wages 
 of death and hell and leave it, my friend. Will you? Jesus 
 is the way out of sin. 
 
"WILD OATS" 
 
 "Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man 
 soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his 
 flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to 
 the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. And let us 
 not be weary in well doing, for in due season we shall reap, 
 if we faint not," Gal. 6:7-9. 
 
 So many times we talk about this first verse: "As a man 
 soweth, that shall he also reap/' but that does not mean 
 enough unless you take the next verse, which states that the 
 man who sows to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption, 
 and the man who sows to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap 
 life everlasting. 
 
 There is the flesh — we are all dead sure of that — but, thank 
 God, there is a Spirit. Man isn't conscious of it until God 
 comes around and whispers into his heart. The Word of God 
 is able to divide between soul and spirit and between spirit 
 and flesh, and let a man know where he is sowing. 
 
 If God could pull back the curtain to-night and give us a 
 glimpse of the spirit world, all our life would be changed in 
 a moment. We would never think the same again. We would 
 never be the same kind of folks if God were to take the lid off 
 Hades to-night ; show us Dives, of whom Jesus spoke. It was 
 torment then; it is torment now. But that is not hell; it is 
 a place where the wicked are waiting. The souls of the saints, 
 those who are born of Jesus Christ, thank God, they went up. 
 Paul says, "To be absent from the body is to be present with 
 the Lord." 
 
 The Under World 
 Those outside of Jesus Christ are yonder in Hades to-night. 
 They have their mentality; they have their individuality. 
 Dives, looking across the gulf, saw Lazarus and knew him as 
 Lazarus. He talked to Abraham as a person, and Abraham 
 talked back to him. He remembered his life on this earth, and 
 
32 
 
 SERMONS BY PAUL RADER 
 
 said to Abraham : "If you cannot come over here and do some- 
 thing for me, send back and do something for my brethren." 
 
 If God to-night would take the lid off Hades, your life 
 would never be the same. You would get away from the 
 things of the flesh and sow to the Spirit; you would let God 
 come in and fill your spirit. You would see that that spirit of 
 yours is going to live somewhere forever. If death ends it all, 
 what would be the use of preaching to you? It would be use- 
 less. Oh, in this world we may have persecution, but, praise 
 God, it will all be over before long and we will go sailing up, 
 to be with God and to be with Jesus forever. 
 
 If God would take the lid off and let you see heaven to- 
 night, my friend, you might think you would fly for that, but 
 I doubt if you would, if you do not belong to Jesus. I may 
 declare Jesus Christ in all His beauty, I may tell you of the 
 magnificent gifts in Christ, but you say, "Oh, the preacher 
 sees it, but I don't. Give me something I can see. Give me 
 the money in my hand. Give me the pleasure I can draw to- 
 day — this week — that is enough. What I can see — that is 
 what I will take." 
 
 Unveil Heaven 
 
 If God were to unveil heaven, every last man and woman 
 outside of Jesus Christ in this place would be on their faces — 
 crying out to hide themselves from the face of Jesus Christ 
 who sits on the throne. 
 
 There is a spiritual world. "God is a Spirit, and they that 
 worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth." God 
 is trying to open your eyes to the fact that this old body of 
 yours has corruption in it; this flesh of yours is doomed to 
 corruption; and Jesus Christ has come to redeem your soul 
 and change these vile bodies of ours and has offered us a 
 marvelous salvation that affects our body, and affects our 
 spirit, and our soul. He takes us, spirit, soul and body, and 
 transforms us by His own power. 
 
 His Life 
 
 I am in this pulpit to-night because I had a father who 
 was a person and a mother who was a person, and those two 
 
"WILD OATS" 
 
 33 
 
 gave to me by the process of birth a personality. I am here 
 with a face like my father's, some characteristics of my moth- 
 er, and because they lived I am here to-night, my flesh walking 
 the earth. My friend, if you ever get to walk around heaven, 
 it will be because you met Jesus Christ and He put His Spirit 
 into you. His life, His life alone, can save, and it is a gift. 
 
 So God says if you sow to the flesh you shall of the flesh 
 reap corruption. Some man says to me, "Mr. Rader, why is 
 this thing harmful, why is that thing harmful ?" It sows to the 
 flesh, it only enhances the flesh. I can afford to go with a 
 beaten back, I can afford to go with my face pounded into a 
 jelly by persecution, I can afford to starve, to go without any- 
 thing decent to wear, to be called the off-scouring of the world 
 — but at the end, praise God, I can be changed in a moment by 
 Jesus Christ, and through eternity be His, in bliss, complete 
 and new. I can afford to suffer persecution but I cannot af- 
 ford, I cannot afford — hear me — I cannot afford — not to find 
 Jesus and let Him make my soul alive. I must sow to the 
 Spirit. 
 
 "Take the world, but give me Jesus, 
 
 All its joys are but a name; 
 But His love abideth ever, 
 
 Through eternal years the same." 
 
 Oh, friend, swap to-night. Take whatsoever may come 
 in this life, but make dead sure that Jesus has come into your 
 heart and changed your life; and if you sow to the Spirit you 
 will reap everlasting life. You will have life — you surely will. 
 
 I have seen fellows come into a training camp, supposed to 
 be athletes — fat, their eyes pudgy, living a dissipated life. 
 And then I have seen them begin to work and to train. You 
 say, "Better let them alone; they are in such poor condition, 
 so out of shape, you better put them to bed." But they begin 
 to train, and they begin to change, and new life comes to them : 
 new vim, new punch, new energy. They couldn't run a mile 
 when they tried it the first time; now they can hit it at 
 a pretty good pace, and walk and dog-trot five miles and 
 sprint at the end, and the muscles show through their skin, 
 
34 
 
 SERMONS BY PAUL RADER 
 
 and the fat goes; they come forth with a new kind of life, 
 and here is the point. They are very conscious of this life. 
 
 New Life 
 
 And Jesus says that the man who tries to seek Him, who 
 puts out his soul after Jesus Christ, praise God, Christ will 
 manifest Himself to him in life. If you sow to the flesh, 
 you will of the flesh reap corruption. As a man goes on 
 developing his body, he knows that added strength is coming 
 to him; knows what his appetite has come to be, what refresh- 
 ing sleep comes. The other fellows come around, ask him 
 how he feels: U I feel fine." What has come to him? New life. 
 What was the other? Corruption. 
 
 Now he feels life, vigor, in every part of his body. Does 
 he know it? Sure, he knows it. Does he feel it? Sure, he 
 feels it. Do other people see it? Sure, other people see it. 
 And I say to you, my friends, the man that touches Jesus 
 Christ has gotten right at the very fountain of life. Will he 
 feel it? Sure, he will feel it. Will he know it? Sure, he 
 will know it. Will other folks know it? Sure, they will 
 know it. Will the devil know it? I should say he would. He 
 will roll on his back and say, "Where did that fellow get that 
 kick?" 
 
 In the Strength of Another 
 Oh, it wasn't his. He sipped it out of the cup of salvation, 
 and is going out to battle the devil in the strength of Another, 
 in the name of Jesus. Thank God, a good many of us are 
 here because we escaped from the devil ; J esus gave the victory, 
 Jesus gave the power. We stopped sowing wild oats, stopped 
 sowing to the flesh, and sowed a big yes to the Spirit. We 
 did not know how the life came; neither die! the athlete know 
 how muscular life was added. Little by little his muscles came 
 — but we didn't get it little by little. We opened our mouth 
 and got it all in a gulp, and the old habits and the old life and 
 the old gang went out, and Jesus started His work on our old 
 constitutions and old souls and old brains. His Spirit wit- 
 nessed right away with our spirits that we were the children of 
 God. Do we know we have Him? Thank God, I should say 
 
"WILD OATS" 
 
 35 
 
 we do. Oh, you can afford, friend, to go without everything 
 else, but you cannot afford to go without Jesus Christ. He 
 is life, life. Say a big yes to His Spirit's pleading to-night. 
 
 There was that poor woman at the well, the poor old sinner 
 — she was pitiful. My, she certainly had a reputation around 
 her little village; and Jesus had her number. He said to her: 
 "Go call your husband." Wasn't that sweet in Him? He 
 knows how to get it out, the whole story. He just says, 
 "Call your husband." 
 
 "I haven't any husband." 
 
 "Yes, that is right, you told the truth, my dear woman, 
 you have had seven husbands, and the one you have now is 
 not your husband." And in a moment the whole door was 
 opened and she saw that her whole life was sown to the flesh. 
 In a moment she had a look at the rottenness of flesh, of what 
 it meant to be without God. Oh, the flesh smells to heaven, 
 but the Spirit of God gives life. 
 
 Without Everlasting Life 
 
 Take a steer and stab him and leave him out in the pasture, 
 and he may not smell very bad to-day, but to-morrow it will 
 begin to come, and the next day it is worse. Why? There 
 is no life in it. The life has gone out of him. Listen: You 
 are a stabbed steer without Jesus Christ. You may not smell 
 to heaven to-day. You may say, "I'm living a pretty good 
 life," but to-morrow the stink will go up to heaven forever. 
 It is flesh and it is filled with corruption. There is no life in 
 you until you find Jesus. "He that soweth to the flesh shall of 
 the flesh reap corruption." The man who sows to the Spirit 
 takes Jesus in, bless God, he kicks up his heels and runs 
 through life's pastures, and he is a mighty live one, I tell you. 
 
 God help you to-night to have the glory of His life within 
 you. It is not a theory, it is the personal life of Jesus Christ 
 coming into your heart. Man, God doesn't care what your sin 
 has been, Jesus doesn't care whether it has been big or little, 
 flesh is slated for corruption; we are born in sin, by our very 
 nature. Why? Because "we have turned every one to his 
 own way," the flesh way. Take a steer and rope him, and pull 
 
36 
 
 SERMONS BY PAUL RADER 
 
 the knot up tight around his neck, and give it a good twist, 
 and somebody will come up and say: "Isn't he a good steer?" 
 "Yes, a perfectly good steer — but he is going to die right 
 away." His wind is choked off; he has to have wind to live. 
 The man or woman who shuts Jesus Christ out of his life is 
 just as big a fool as he would be if he tied a rope around his 
 neck and shut the air from his lungs. 
 
 Samson 
 
 Samson sowed to the flesh. God made a wonderful cov- 
 enant with him, and Samson made his promise to God. God 
 was his strength, not himself. God let men like Samson loom 
 up in the Bible just so you may see it was all God. It wasn't 
 Samson. If you get an artist's picture of Samson, the strong 
 man, it will be a man about eight feet tall with big muscles on 
 him, a great big pair of calves and thighs, and a great big 
 knotty back. Listen : There is not a thing in the Book of God 
 to substantiate it. They searched old Samson, they even put 
 detectives on his trail, they tried to trap him in a room where 
 somebody could get the secret out of him. There wasn't a 
 thing about him to show where his strength lay. They all said, 
 "Where does he get it? What is the trick? What is the 
 combination?" They looked at his arms and said, "It isn't 
 there. He is a little man, nothing to him at all. How did 
 he carry off those gates?" 
 
 An Example 
 
 My friends, God put Samson there as an example to you 
 and me. I don't care how weak you may be to-night, you can 
 take the devil's gates and carry them to the ends of the 
 earth, with Jesus Christ in your heart. The devil can put up 
 a little bit of a perfumed bunch of nothing and take you off 
 after him if you sow to the flesh, but with Jesus Christ in 
 your heart the victory is yours, and you can beat the devil. 
 
 Samson's strength was in God and the keeping of his vow. 
 Samson had made his covenant with God; he was a separated 
 man; they all knew he was a Nazarene. His hair was long 
 and had never had a razor on it. "But," they said, "there is 
 
"WILD OATS" 
 
 37 
 
 no strength in hair." Certainly there wasn't. Some big dunces 
 in our day grow a lot of long hair and think there is strength 
 in it, but you can grow hair a mile long and you would be 
 as weak as you are now. A bald-headed man has as much 
 chance as Samson had. It wasn't his hair, it was in the fact 
 that he had the covenant with God, and as long as he kept 
 his vow with God, God kept His vow with Samson and his 
 strength never left him until he broke that vow. 
 
 Take Heed Lest We Fall 
 
 Finally they had him down, in temptation, there in the lap 
 of Delilah — sowing to the flesh. He thought he was somebody. 
 Oh, how the devil gets folks to thinking they are somebody. 
 I tell you, it is a good thing for some of you Christians to 
 have a place to look back to, where God took you out. It will 
 keep you from getting the big head. It is by nothing a man 
 can do — it is simply by trusting Jesus; Jesus does the work, 
 and, praise God, you will reap if Jesus Christ is in your life. 
 
 Now Samson is feeding to the flesh — thinking he is some- 
 body. And all the Philistines wanted to know the secret. 
 Samson said, "All I have to do is to just stretch up and go 
 out and kill them; the power of the Lord comes on me and 
 I slay them." "But Samson, where is your strength?" So 
 they finally drive Delilah into it; they say, "You try to help 
 us; you get the secret from him." He is in sin, feeding on 
 the flesh. 
 
 Delilah says, "Samson, you tell me about it." Samson lied 
 to her. He said, "I tell you what you do. You get seven little 
 green withes that had never been dried and she bound him. 
 Then shall I be weak and be as another man." 
 
 Then the lord of the Philistines brought up to her seven 
 green withes that had never been dried and she bound him 
 with them. Then she said, "Samson, the Philistines are upon 
 you!" Snap! went the bandages, like strings that had been 
 burnt. So his strength was not yet known. 
 
38 
 
 SERMONS BY PAUL RADER 
 
 Playing With Fire 
 Samson kept on lying to her — but all the time he was play- 
 ing with fire. Think of it! in the lap of a woman, playing 
 with that secret between him and heaven, that vow that was 
 between his father and his mother and himself and God — 
 playing with it, fooling with it. Sowing to the flesh. Sowing 
 wild oats. 
 
 Let me tell you, some of you young people: if you made 
 your covenant with Jesus Christ to keep out of the world, 
 God help you; don't flirt with the amusements of your day. 
 Don't say to yourself, "Oh, I can forget it, I can get forgive- 
 ness." Oh, the men and the women I know to-night who have 
 been plunged into the depths of despair, who have fooled 
 with God. "God is not mocked" — hear me! You may think 
 you are getting by God, but God runs the world and brings 
 this old earth of ours around on a second of time, and God is 
 longsuffering to us-ward, but God never will be mocked. 
 
 Listen to me, some of you young fellows that think you are 
 getting by: God will not be mocked. "As a man soweth, that 
 shall he also reap." 
 
 Paying To-day 
 You young bucks in here to-night, God pity your poor soul 
 that is on its way to hell, besmirched by sin. God help you 
 to get out of sin. "The man that sows to the flesh shall of the 
 flesh reap corruption" — get that into your brain. Oh, how I 
 hunger for the souls of some of you young fellows. Praise 
 God, He will heal your body, and heal your soul, and set you 
 going for God as you keep close to Him, and He will keep 
 close to you. Listen : The biggest delusion abroad in the land 
 to-day is this: that you think you won't pay. We are paying 
 to-day in churches for the doubts of preachers. We are pay- 
 ing to-day for the mothers' and the fathers' sins in a genera- 
 tion of amusement-mad young folks in high society, low 
 society, in the young high school life to-day, in the awful con- 
 ditions of sin among young men and young women. You 
 either let Jesus pay, or you will pay. Oh, if my children 
 had to pay to-night for my sin, I would die — but, praise God„ 
 
"WILD OATS" 
 
 39 
 
 I plunged beneath the crimson flood, and He has washed me 
 white as snow! You may be washed. 
 
 Will the Hair Grow? 
 Poor old fool Samson — daring to carry that precious secret 
 around in the lap of Delilah. But he paid, and paid hard. 
 Finally she said to him, "You don't love me." How many 
 men have gone to hell over that statement ! "If you love me, 
 you would do this, you would do that." If you ever really 
 love you would stand up and praise Jesus, and stick by the 
 Lord. No woman can have a higher love than the love a man 
 gives her when he is true to Jesus. The love of a Christian 
 man, or a Christian woman, who really knows God and has 
 Jesus in his body, is about as fine a thing as you can get on 
 this earth. 
 
 Poor old Samson ducked and went down under the plead- 
 ings of this woman, and he said: "All right, I will give you 
 the secret. I'll get my hair back some way. Fll take vacation, 
 go down to Hot Springs and stay there a year, and my hair 
 will grow out." 
 
 So she gets a pair of scissors and cuts off his hair, and then 
 cries: "Samson, the Philistines are upon you!" And Samson 
 says, "What do I care? All I have to do is to shake my- 
 self. I'm the same big man." No, sir, now he is the little old 
 weazened Samson; and they come on and bind him like a 
 kitten. 
 
 Satan Binds 
 
 Outside of Jesus Christ the devil can bind any one of you 
 to-night. I don't care what your character is, the devil knows 
 what you want, and he mixes the dish to suit you and lets the 
 aroma come up into your nostrils and the color come into your 
 eye, just to suit you — and he gets you, too. Don't tell me — I 
 have lived too long; I am a kitten nine days old, and I have 
 my eyes open and know some of you; the best thing you can 
 do is to confess your sin and know that outside of Jesus 
 Christ the devil has you traveling straight to corruption and 
 hell. 
 
40 
 
 SERMONS BY PAUL RADER 
 
 Samson went down. Look at old Elijah — they tried to hurt 
 him, but he stuck. He got down on his knees and he talked to 
 God, and God talked to him, and when all the prophets of Baal 
 came up against him Elijah could reach his little puny with- 
 ered hand of a man up into glory and get the fire of God and 
 pull it down on the sacrifice. 
 
 Miracles 
 
 And I believe that is what Elijah did — I believe in the mir- 
 acles of the Bible, thank God. Do you know why? Because I 
 have had one of the biggest miracles in the world happen right 
 under these ribs. Yes, sir, I know there has been a new fel- 
 low put in there — you cannot beat that for a miracle. Jesus 
 has put new life in my heart; and when He can change your 
 life and your heart, bless God, He can certainly handle a 
 hundred worlds. And, oh, when you have been wasned by the 
 Blood, then you can pray; then you have a right to come 
 into the presence of God; and you feel it, and the Holy Spirit 
 urges you to come boldly. I say to you to-night, I do not 
 know a man under God's heaven who can pray to God who 
 does not believe in the atoning Blood of Jesus Christ. He 
 cannot do it. He cannot get into God's presence. 
 
 "Christ Died for the Ungodly" 
 Friends, there is nothing so disgusting to God as this idea 
 in our age of talking about the spark of divinity in a man, 
 saying that sin is only an accident, and that he does not have 
 to get rid of sin to come into God's presence; that God put us 
 into the world, therefore God will put us into heaven. Lis- 
 ten: We are by nature in sin, and God says we are rebels. 
 God has a plan in Jesus Christ; God help you to take Him 
 to-night — just as you are, without one plea. 
 
 The Sheriff 
 
 There was a man in one of our tent meetings — a fellow who 
 was a very wicked man in the town; he had been sheriff in 
 
"WILD OATS 
 
 41 
 
 the county. He came to the services night after night, and 
 I had talked to him once or twice. He said, "Mr. Rader, I 
 have led a pretty good life; I never cheated anybody here." 
 But I just went on preaching about what Jesus was. I 
 preached a sermon about Nicodemus — tried to show what a 
 good man Nicodemus was, but how Jesus said to Nicodemus 
 when he came to him that dark night, "Except ye be born 
 again, ye cannot see the kingdom of God." We looked for a 
 closing moment into the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus 
 shed drops of blood, down on His knees with His poor elbows 
 on the rock, crying to God: "Oh, God, if there be any 
 other way, allow this cup to pass from me!" A deathless 
 Christ — a sinless Christ — a spotless Christ — yet He must go 
 into the agonies of death — what for? Oh, man, in God's 
 name, how dare you stand there and say to God there is an- 
 other way, to dare walk out of that pew and say you are saved 
 by your own work? 
 
 And this poor fellow saw it for the first time in his life. 
 I had not finished my sermon when he pushed back his chair 
 and with the sweat dripping from his brow said : "Mr. Rader, 
 let me come now, let me come now." He turned around to the 
 little audience, and said: "Oh, folks, if ever there was a 
 sinner, I am a sinner" — and he dropped at the altar, and, lift- 
 ing his hands to God, said: "I take Jesus as my Saviour — 
 poor lost man that I am." And his poor, haughty wife there 
 lifted her veil and put it back over her hat and witli her hand- 
 kerchief in her hand and the tears streaming down she put 
 her arms around him and said, "Oh, I am with you, I am 
 with you." 
 
 "He that humbleth himself shall be exalted." That is the 
 way to come. Do you dare to sow to your flesh — to say to- 
 night, "I will walk out of this tabernacle to make it comfort- 
 able for myself. I will not humble myself"? You will reap 
 corruption, for you sow to the flesh. God is speaking to you 
 
42 SERMONS BY PAUL RADER 
 
 to-night, God is calling to you to-night, and if you hear His 
 call and answer back to-night, you will reap everlasting life. 
 
 God is calling you to-night — will you come? I have deliv- 
 ered my soul. I have told you the way. Jesus has promised 
 you Himself. I dare you to come. Jesus will make good; if 
 you sow to your flesh and go out to satisfy yourself, you are 
 going into corruption. Oh, take life, to-night! 
 
"PLANTING AND PLANNING" 
 
 The text will be a few words found in the third verse of the 
 thirteenth chapter of Matthew : 
 
 "Behold a sower went forth to sow." 
 
 God has made man and the earth very close together. It 
 is only lately that man's inventions have lifted him into the 
 air. God made man out of the dust of the ground, and though 
 he builds a sky scraper he still has to go to the soil for his 
 food. God was the first gardener, and He will be the last gar- 
 dener. His last act will be to take all the weeds out of the 
 garden and let the wheat spring up. Mary supposed Jesus 
 to be the gardener on the morning of the resurrection and 
 what great delight is ours to-day in knowing that He really 
 was. It was all made "for Him and by Him." 
 
 Jesus the Truth 
 
 God gave us this parable that we might apprehend what He 
 was talking about when He began to tell us of the sowing of 
 truth in human soil. Jesus said, "I AM THE TRUTH." Not 
 only what Jesus said was the truth, but Jesus Himself is the 
 Truth, and every outcropping of His life is connected with 
 the Truth; every promise of God has to do with the Truth, 
 and runs back into Jesus. 
 
 Vine and Fruit 
 
 The vine sheds forth the blossom and the blossom brings 
 forth the fruit, but the fruit and the blossom and the leaf and 
 the branch are all connected with the vine. So all the truth 
 is in Christ Jesus, and every promise of God must be amen in 
 Christ Jesus. Every bit of fruit is amen in the vine, and 
 without the vine there is no fruit. Without Jesus Christ there 
 is no promise. Without Him there is no fulfillment of any 
 of the plan of God. 
 
44 
 
 SERMONS BY PAUL RADER 
 
 Now in order for God to have His plan, He must plant, and 
 He must plant that which held His plan — Jesus. He wants 
 not to plant a doctrine in your heart, alone, but praise God 
 He comes to plant Jesus Himself that the life of Jesus might 
 bring forth fruit in your heart. 
 
 So the sower, He says, goes forth to sow. Here in the hu- 
 man heart is the soil and there in the glory was the Seed. It 
 came to earth in human form to reach the soil, and He throws 
 it and casts it forth into the soil, and if the soil will but open 
 up and take it in, it does the work and brings forth a hun- 
 dredfold — less or more. Christ gives the picture of the hu- 
 man heart as the soil, where the Truth may be planted, and He 
 says it depends upon the condition of your heart as to wheth- 
 er you will take it up or not. He has sown life in the world, 
 and it depends upon the world whether they will take Jesus 
 or not. The Jews, with stony hearts, not only cast Him out 
 but tried to crush the seed that God wished to sow. They 
 bruised it, and it went into the ground, but praise God it 
 sprung up again and Jesus came forth into life and is now 
 seated in the glory. 
 
 Seed and Soil 
 
 Now God says it takes good soil to produce good crops. 
 There is one thing in the seed; there is another thing in the 
 soil. For a long time the American government experimented 
 with seed out in the Western country. They tried their best 
 to get seed that would live in an arid country, and experi- 
 mented entirely with seed, seed from other dry places in the 
 world, that could stand the dryness of the western climate. 
 The condition of the soil was considered a secondary matter. 
 
 Finally one of these Western fellows, a peculiar sort of a 
 man, a "poor rube" he called himself, while he was in the city 
 one day stuck a piece of loaf sugar in his coffee. He only put 
 the end of it in, but the coffee came up into the loaf of 
 sugar, and he said to himself, "Where is the power that draws 
 the coffee into this sugar? I am holding this loaf of sugar 
 above the coffee. I can put my bucket above the well but the 
 water doesn't jump up into it." And immediately he had an 
 
"PLANTING AND PLANNING' 
 
 45 
 
 idea. He said to himself, "Now I know why my land goes 
 dry, It is because there are clods in it that pull up the 
 moisture from the soil, just like this loaf of sugar pulls up 
 the coffee and then the wind gets a chance at it, and fans it 
 out." He put some pulverized sugar in the coffee, and it 
 floated on the top. "Now," he says, "I know what I will do. 
 I will go home and pulverize my land." So he put a drag 
 on it and a harrow on it, and pulverized it, then he planted 
 his seed, and pulverized it again, and found out that when he 
 knocked out the clods and smoothed it down the wind could 
 not get at the moisture to dry it out. The farmers all found 
 it paid to prepare the soil for the seed. 
 
 The United States government experiments to find out 
 what the different soils contain. All good soil I understand 
 contains phosphorus, lime, nitrogen and potash, and if any of 
 these elements fall below their proper percentage the soil does 
 not produce the crop as it should. Therefore a system has 
 been adopted to put something into the soil that will yield 
 back the crop. The farmer had taken three crops off his 
 farm and put nothing back, and the result was that it pro- 
 duced less and less crop. 
 
 A Heaet Change 
 God knew that the greatest thing heaven had, the best 
 Christ could give, all the truth that heaven could give, could 
 never take root in a human heart unless God changed that 
 heart and praise God, heaven by His own decree demands that 
 a man be born again before he can raise a crop. This idea 
 of thinking that in a poor sinful soil, besmirched by iniquity 
 and led of the devil, somehow a man can raise a holy crop, is 
 an infamous lie. The greatest enemy to a real new birth is 
 churchianity to-day. I mean simply joining some organiza- 
 tion. Men do not believe what J esus taught, namely : a 
 change of heart, a heart change that makes Jesus Master. 
 There are Christian people fighting the reception of the Holy 
 Ghost also; there are Christian men and women who will not 
 entirely break before God — then wonder why they cannot 
 raise a hundredfold crop. God can never raise a crop in your 
 
46 
 
 SERMONS BY PAUL RADER 
 
 life until He breaks down the hard places in your life; the 
 clods in the soil must go. Let pride be there, and you will 
 find that it is a clod, swept by a wind that will sap every bit 
 of your spiritual power. You would not talk to the person 
 across the aisle from you in the street car — pride is boss. You 
 would not come to a street meeting — pride is boss. Do you 
 know the truth? Yes, but there is a change that is necessary 
 in your heart before truth and faith will mix, and until God 
 gets the consent of your life that the soil of your life may be 
 pulverized, and yielded in humility before Him, He cannot 
 produce the crop. 
 
 God's Pulverizing Plan 
 So God wants to plant, but God's plan, my friend, is the 
 plan of sanctification, when it comes to crop raising. God 
 wants your body to be given to Him a living sacrifice. Friends, 
 I say to you, it is a delightful experience, but all the joys of 
 crop raising cannot come to you until first of all God's plan 
 of pulverizing your heart comes. God must let you go through 
 the rough experience of having no crop, of seeing your efforts 
 come to naught, and when He gets you to that place, you cry 
 out, "Oh Lord, why can't I raise the crop?" — and through 
 some little bit of a thing, just as tb a t farmer found out what 
 was the trouble with his land, God will show you through the 
 reading of His Word, through some crisis, through your very 
 failure, that you need a deep heart work that has never taken 
 place in your life. You need a breaking crisis, an experience 
 before God, that God's power may come upon you and lay 
 you low at His feet, in humility. Undone in your self-suffi- 
 ciency, then He can trust you with His power and the crop. 
 
 Striking Stumps 
 Jesus says the sower went forth to sow, and when the seed 
 fell into good soil it would bring forth the fruit. You know 
 whether your heart is good soil or not. We know when we 
 run up against the stumps when we are plowing. You know 
 when you strike an awful stump in your disposition and 
 pieces of the harness fly, and "pieces of your mind" are freely 
 
"PLANTING AND PLANNING" 47 
 
 given. No wonder God cannot raise a crop in such a life 
 as that. You know whether the stump, the rock, is there just 
 now, and God Himself wants to prepare that soil. I tell 
 you, it takes a great soul to hold a great vision, and if you 
 will look at men and women who have had visions of God and 
 done the work of God, you will see them point you right 
 back to the place where God pulverized their hearts, brought 
 them down low before Him, and they saw they were not to 
 plead for power, but plead for soil. God gladly gives all 
 the power of the Holy Spirit to a yielded life. He gives the 
 Holy Spirit in His fullness to them that obey Him. 
 
 A Cut-up Heart 
 
 God is a wise gardener, God is a wonderful gardener, and 
 He is not foolish enough to think that the soil that is not pre- 
 pared is going to bring forth the crop. He says to the man 
 that is humble, of a contrite heart — (a cut-up heart), a heart 
 with the harrow gone over it, with the roller gone over it — 
 '"to this man will I look" — to a man who is so susceptible to 
 the voice of God that he goes down before God. God can be- 
 gin to use your life, my brother, my sister, whenever you be- 
 gin to give your whole life to Him. "The eyes of the Lord 
 go to and fro in the whole earth to show Himself strong in 
 behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward Him." But you 
 will find out that when you go into your closet and shut the 
 •door and say to Him, "Lord, I came that you might break my 
 spirit," that there is a drawn battle on. There are men and 
 women here this morning who can look back over the past 
 years and see where God tried to break them, but they came 
 right up again — then came another blow — perhaps right now 
 they are in the crisis of a blow. Oh! let Him have His way 
 now. Is God trying to afflict your life? No, He wants only 
 to put the plow in and the harrow in, so that you will say a 
 big "Yes" to Him, and be anything, go anywhere, for Him; 
 yielded and fit for the Master's use ; clay in the potter's hand. 
 
 Oh, you will find out there is a strong streak of objection in 
 your nature. I used to have a horse for cattle chasing, that 
 every time I wanted to go one way, he wanted to go another. 
 
48 
 
 SERMONS BY PAUL RADER 
 
 When I had time to ride that horse, I would ride him. He 
 could stand a hard trip, but the trip was about as hard on me 
 as it was on the horse. It meant a battle every time we came 
 to the cross paths, — about fifteen minutes of bucking and lay- 
 ing on the whip. That horse might turn around and say, 
 "Paul, I am your horse — ain't I your horse?" Yes, he was my 
 horse, all right, but he wouldn't mind. I had another little 
 horse that would just wear himself right out going just as I 
 wanted him to go. Which horse would I use when I couldn't 
 take a chance on any kind of bucking? The answer is easy. 
 That little fellow was skinny all the time, I rode him so much* 
 I was sure of him. 
 
 Too Much Bucking 
 You will find out in every church there are some folks just 
 ridden to death; God can use them, and He can't take time to 
 fool with some of you buckers. He does not dare to put you 
 at anytliing. You are full of nettles, and every time God 
 goes to put you anywhere you have so much objection, so 
 much planning, so much bucking, that He cannot afford to 
 use you. I tell you, friends, God is looking for men and wom- 
 en on whom He can lay a burden without a thousand objec- 
 tions. God help you to get to the place this morning where 
 God can afford to trust you with His plan. God knows wheth- 
 er you are yielded or not. It doesn't make any difference 
 how many talents you have, or what kind of a person you 
 think you are, God Himself knows whether He can use you, 
 and the proof of your yieldedness is in raising the crop. 
 
 Running Your Own Life? 
 Oh, seek God's plan. The reason your life hasn't been 
 as it should be is because you have had your own plan. You 
 have seen the why of failure in the sinner, but you don't see 
 it in yourself as a Christian. You go out and say to the 
 sinner, "My dear brother, you will never be saved by works- — 
 you need to be born again." He could turn right around 
 and say to you as a Christian, "Yes, and you don't get along 
 any better." Why? You have your own works. You have 
 
"PLANTING AND PLANNING 1 
 
 40 
 
 your own plan. You are running your own life. You have 
 the streaks and streaks of objections that have never been 
 yielded. 
 
 Here is a mother who wants to talk to her daughter, and 
 she knows that every word she says goes in one ear and out 
 the other. Here is a father who wants to talk to his son, and 
 what he says passes right over him. You go into a foreign 
 country and talk to men and they look at you with blank 
 faces. That is the way God feels, maybe, in your presence. 
 God has the mightiest tilings in the world to give you, but you 
 cannot get it until you give Him your attention, until you be- 
 come yielded. A man might preach the holiest kind of call- 
 ing on earth, lift up the greatest experiences possible for a 
 man to have, but unless there comes the breaking to a con- 
 gregation, he will find that even the truth becomes a hardener 
 of the soil, it becomes a curse to us unless we hear it with 
 humility and contrite hearts. May God cut our hearts now, 
 until all say to Him, "I must know you, I must have tender 
 ears, I must have seeing eyes, I must have a heart that feels 
 God's voice and minds the least thing He says." 
 
 Spiritual Indigestion 
 
 Now God says He wants to sow the truth in the soil. The 
 reason people have indigestion is not because they are starv- 
 ing, but because they have something in their stomach that 
 won't digest. In the world at large to-day, in America, in 
 places where men and women have heard the Gospel, the great 
 majority of people know what you are talking about when you 
 talk about salvation, but they won't digest it. We were going 
 up in an elevator the other day. I spoke quietly to the el- 
 evator boy. He turned around and smiled, and I said, "I see 
 you know what I am talking about." 
 
 "Oh yes, sir." 
 
 "Did you have a Christian mother?" 
 "No, sir." 
 
 "Did you have a Christian father?" 
 "No, sir." 
 
50 
 
 SERMONS BY PAUL RADER 
 
 "Well, where did you learn about these things?" 
 "Oh, that stuff is in the air." 
 
 I said to him, "If you were dying right now, how would 
 you be saved?" 
 
 He replied, "I would call on the name of Jesus Christ." 
 
 "You know the truth like that?" 
 
 "Oh, I go to a church once in a while." 
 
 "And with the truth in your heart you are going on in sin? 
 You are about the worst kind of a sinner on earth." 
 
 Mixtures 
 
 There are thousands and thousands like that. They know 
 the truth. The greatest trouble we have to-day is so many 
 learned men know the truth, so many ignorant men know the 
 truth, so many of all sorts of folks know the truth — but they 
 don't mix it with faith in the soil of the heart. God says it 
 must be mixed with faith. The food that goes into the stom- 
 ach must be mixed with gastric juices, or it will not digest. 
 You must say to Him, I believe you, I take you, you came 
 for me. The soil and the seed must come together in a chem- 
 ical combination. The seed gives itself up to the soil, the soil 
 gives itself up to the seed, and soil and seed start in together 
 to make a tree, and the chemical combinations mix down there 
 in the roots. Can the little tree take the oil and run little 
 pieces of dirt out to the ends of the branches? No, it mixes 
 with water, and little chemical combinations in the plant, it 
 mixes itself with that fundamental power of life in the plant 
 and thus is made into the tree. 
 
 Oh, friends, let there be faith in your heart as the truth 
 comes forth. 
 
 You may catch the vision, but here is the thing God wants 
 to hear from you: "Lord, that hundredfold business must be 
 mine. I must produce the crop. Not only other men, but I 
 must produce the life. I must have this holy life in Jesus. I 
 must have this life given up to Him. I must have the Holy 
 Spirit." Paul says, "I was not disobedient to the heavenly 
 vision." Shipwrecked? What did that matter? His faith 
 was clinging to truth, clinging to Jesus. Does the tree give 
 
"PLANTING AND PLANNING" 51 
 
 up because the northwester swings around? No, its roots 
 only go deeper. If your soul is clinging to Jesus, the very 
 adverse things will be the things that strengthen your hold. 
 You won't kick back at the people that shoot at you — you 
 will take it, and it will only drive you closer to Him. You will 
 cling to Him by faith. 
 
 Grabbing By Faith 
 Now God in the first chapter of Genesis shows us His plan- 
 ning and His planting. First of all God rolls the waters back 
 and He gets the soil there. That is what He gets first in you. 
 Afterwards He begins to plant something. He says, "Now let 
 the earth bring forth grass." But remember, my friends, it 
 is the earth bringing forth grass. God doesn't say, "Let the 
 sun bring forth grass. Let the sky bring forth grass." Some 
 of you are saying, "Let God bring me an experience." Oh no 
 — God says, Let you bring forth. God put the seed there, 
 but you grab it by faith, and the crop springs up. Some 
 folks wait for feeling. You will get all the feeling you can 
 possibly hold if you will trust God and stand on His Word. 
 Where is this thing going to happen — in my head? No head 
 was ever made to have experiences. It is only the roadway; 
 the eyes are a roadway, the ears are a roadway. God says 
 your heart is the soil and Jesus Christ comes into your heart; 
 He will satisfy everything through your brain, and will meet 
 you on every lme, but He wants you to take Him in your 
 heart and say Praise God, He is mine! 
 
 "LET There Be" 
 
 Then God comes to man, and says, Let us make man in our 
 own image." Now He says, "I have made the whole plan. 
 You come into My plan." He planted the Garden of Eden, 
 filled it with other creatures, then put in man and woman and 
 said to them, Here is the whole thing. Now just obey Me 
 and everything will be delightful. 
 
 What is the great word here in God's account of creation. 
 The great word here is this wonderful word LET. God 
 simply says, "Let" — "let there be light." God didn't create 
 
52 
 
 SERMONS BY PAUL RADER 
 
 light that day. You know the earth was cursed and the first 
 view you get of it after those first ten words in the Bible is 
 of a cursed world wrapped up in darkness and in water — 
 wrapped up and hidden away because of the curse that was. 
 here before man. God shows us in His account the world first 
 of all as a wrapped-up package, swinging out, without form 
 and void, and darkness upon the face of the deep, as if God 
 had hung crepe on it, to let all the rest of the stars and the 
 universe see it as a dead, cursed thing. Then God says, We 
 will make it a home for man. We will make him a little low- 
 er than the angels, give him an emotion, a will power and an 
 intellect, and put him down there. So God begins to maka 
 His preparation. Now He says, Let there be light. 
 
 All Provided For 
 Here is the point I want to give you. Whenever you start 
 out to walk with God, remember that God has made all the 
 provisions ahead of time; everything you will ever need, God 
 has for you in Christ Jesus, and He says to you LET Jesus 
 in. God knows the soil of my heart, God knows whether Je- 
 sus has conquered this disposition of mine. I don't have to 
 ask any bunch of high-brows what Jesus can do to my soul. 
 I just let Him in, and I will have a testimony. I am getting 
 sick of folks who sit around without an experience, without 
 a testimony. It is a sore trial and I have been before God in 
 nights of prayer, asking that you come to the place where you 
 give yourself up and LET Him do a work in your soul. God 
 wants to show what He will do with Moody Church if we 
 will let Him — let Him — let Him. He knows what He wants 
 us to do in the coming days, but Oh, He wants a people down 
 on their faces before Him, to let God do the thing He is al- 
 ready planning. Somehow our poor little minds seem to think 
 we have to plan. Hallelujah, we don't! God planned this 
 tabernacle, God Himself is running it, and if we will let God 
 keep His hand on it, He will bring us where He wants to 
 bring us. 
 
"PLANTING AND PLANNING" 53 
 
 "Will You Be Good?" 
 Now He says, Let there be a firmament. Praise God, I am 
 so glad for that! God never shuts us up entirely, if we 
 walk with Him. Some part of the sky is open. Sometimes 
 we need it. Old clucking hens need to be shut up, and some 
 of these fellows who are all the time quarrelling with God 
 need to get jailed once in a while, until they say, Yes, Lord, 
 I will be good. Like the mother who shuts the door on her 
 little child, and he cries on the inside. By and by she opens 
 the door and says, "Are you going to be good?" "No, I am 
 going to cry some more." He cries some more, and after a 
 while she comes back. He's ready to say, "Yes, mother, I 
 will be good." 
 
 But to the man who minds God, there is a firmament. 
 
 "I'm living on the mountain, 
 
 Underneath a cloudless sky, praise God! 
 I'm drinking at the Fountain 
 That never will run dry — Oh yes, 
 
 I'm feasting on the manna, from a bountiful supply, 
 For I am dwelling in Beulah Land!" 
 
 Then He says, "Let the waters gather themselves together 
 in one place." 
 
 Oh, my friend, that is a wonderful verse to me spiritually. 
 He said to the old sea, Don't you come up here again. The 
 ground, the dry land, must come forth or the sower could not 
 go forth to sow. 
 
 Dry Land Appears 
 
 My life was covered with water, but bless God, He said to 
 the sin and the rolling waves of my own passions, the roll- 
 ing waves of my own personality, my own heart, thank God, 
 He said to them one day: "Go back there, and stay there." 
 And He gave me a place to live in, dry ground. The land 
 came forth that used to be submerged with sin, submerged with 
 doubt, submerged with fear, and God gave the dry land and 
 the waters went back. 
 
 I don't know what it means to you, but bless God, it 
 means life to me this morning, that He commanded the waters 
 to gather themselves into one place. 
 
54 
 
 SERMONS BY PAUL RADER 
 
 When the children of Israel came from Egypt, led out 
 toward Canaan Land, they had to cross water. If you are go- 
 ing to change your living place spiritually God lets you cross 
 over water. When Abraham came out of his own country, 
 what did he cross? — Over a brook. When the folks came 
 out of the wilderness and went over Jordan, God rolled back 
 the water and let them into a new living place. Who will roll 
 it back? God will. You cannot do it. You cannot force 
 yourself into Canaan Land, you cannot force yourself into 
 sanctifieation. You will have to let God do it. You will have 
 to get to the place where the sea is behind, the enemy on 
 either hand, and then cry out, "0 Lord, I am up against it. I 
 am up against it." Then let God strike the water, and you 
 will go through into a new land. You will cross over that 
 dead thing and leave it behind with its enemies. 
 
 Water and Blood 
 
 Oh, I beg you by every art I know of the Holy Ghost, 
 to enter into the victorious life just now with Jesus! Cross 
 over Jordan and get into Canaan Land! 
 
 When Jesus died, He shed both water and Blood. What 
 for? To show you that the. old death life had been passed 
 through. He moved out of the old flesh country of death, 
 the old sad life of death that had corrupted the world. God let 
 the stream come out of Jesus' side, both water and Blood. 
 The proof of His death was the water. Water does not gush 
 out of a side that isn't dead. He was dead. He had crossed 
 over from death unto life, and the water that came from His 
 side was a proof and whoever plunges across that stream, 
 praise God, has life forever! And the Blood came out to 
 prove that it was life that had passed over the death stream. 
 "The life is in the blood." Across the stream that came 
 from His side whosoever will may cross into a new country 
 and dwell with God. Let Him roll back the waters now. Let 
 the dry land be yielded to Him and then He will let the 
 harvest come on. 
 
"BORDER BATTLES" 
 
 I want to talk to you to-night about border battles. The 
 subject came to me as I thought of the Mexican situation — 
 of how a few men down there could run across the border, 
 commit such depredation and murder, and then ride back 
 again. Now they haven't been up here where we live, and 
 won't get up here ; we are way back in our own country. But 
 on the border line these things happen. So to-night I am 
 going to talk to you about living on the border, when you 
 could live where God is, in the very heart of His love and 
 life. Why not get clear back into the country of God? In 
 other words, why not have a real heaven-born life and ex- 
 perience ? 
 
 There are some folks who are having border battles all the 
 time; that murderer, the devil, is always after them. They 
 live too close to the border. There are others who are on one 
 side of the border and perhaps their citizenship is on the other 
 side of the border. They profess to be Christians, but they 
 live in the world. There is going to come a time when Jesus 
 comes back again when we shall know who belongs to Him 
 and who is just professing. 
 
 Then 
 
 I want to read a very familiar passage to you, the twenty- 
 fifth chapter of Matthew. Let me call your attention to the 
 first word in this chapter: "THEN." 
 
 The kingdom of heaven will not be as God describes it in 
 this chapter, until that hour when the Bridegroom comes. In 
 the thirteenth chapter of Matthew He describes the NOW of 
 the kingdom of heaven, from the time that Jesus died until 
 He comes again. NOW many can profess and seem all right, 
 and things look big; but in this twenty-fifth chapter He says, 
 "Then" — when Jesus comes — folks will be shown up as they 
 really are, for "Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened 
 unto ten virgins, which took their lamps and went forth to 
 
56 
 
 SERMONS BY PAUL RADER 
 
 meet the bridegroom. Five of them were wise and five were 
 foolish." 
 
 Many of you know this chapter, but probably there are 
 some of you here who have never read it. Let us go over it 
 together. 
 
 Five Wise and Five Foolish 
 
 "They that were foolish took their lamps, and took no oil 
 with them. But the wise took oil in their vessels with their 
 lamps. While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and 
 slept. And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the 
 bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him. Then all the vir- 
 gins arose, and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said 
 unto the wise, Give us of your oil; for our lamps are gone 
 out. But the wise answered, saying, Not so : lest there be not 
 enough for us and you, but go ye rather to them that sell, and 
 buy for yourselves. And while they went to buy, the bride- 
 groom came; and they that were ready went in with him to 
 the marriage; and the door was shut. Afterward came also 
 the other virgins, saying, Lord, Lord, open to us. But he 
 answered and said, Verily I say unto you, I know you not. 
 Watch therefore; for ye know neither the day nor the hour 
 wherein the Son of man cometh." 
 
 Profession vs. Possession 
 
 Now this is just the kind of a sermon out of God's Word 
 for the time in which we live, for in these days there is much 
 profession of Christianity and very little possession. Talk as 
 you please, my friends, if you were in my place, dealing and 
 talking with people all the time about their experiences^ you 
 would find there is very much profession of Christianity and 
 few people with the witness of the Spirit — the oil in their ves- 
 sel — the assurance that they have been born from above. 
 
 It is so easy to profess these days. You do not lose the 
 house over your head; few people ever laugh at you; many 
 clap their hands when you come to Jesus; they pat you on the 
 back, and say, "That's the thing." It is so easy to join 
 churches that church members are numbered by the thousands ; 
 
"BORDER BATTLES 
 
 57 
 
 but the people born from above are not numbered by statistics 
 of professors. 
 
 Looked the Same 
 
 God wants to show you in this Scripture I have read to- 
 night that this is a picture of our time, and that Jesus is to 
 come suddenly on the scene, and this appearance at once di- 
 vides between professors and really saved souls. Think of it: 
 these ten virgins go out, all dressed alike; they all have their 
 lamps; they pass along the street and every one says, "They 
 are the people, they are the ones" — you wouldn't notice any 
 difference between them. They all went to the meetings, sang 
 the same songs; they all came to the tabernacle, they all 
 heard the same songs, they all heard the same sermons — they 
 all looked alike, and the people couldn't tell any difference. 
 
 I might say to them, "Those who are saved, please raise 
 your hands" — and they would all raise their hands. 
 
 But when the bridegroom came, only five of them got in; 
 and five were left out in great agony of spirit. Five were 
 wise and five were foolish. 
 
 Make Sure 
 
 Say, friend: Don't you think it would be the best thing in 
 the world to-night for you to make sure you are saved? We 
 have so much professional Christianity that it would be a 
 splendid thing for you if you would say to yourself, "I am 
 going to know, beyond the peradventure of a doubt, that I 
 have passed from death unto life. God can deliver to you 
 the assurance in your soul, and you'll know it. Then, thank 
 God, you will have His life in your heart, and when the Bride- 
 groom comes you will get in. 
 
 Think of it, they called Him Lord, Lord, Lord — yes, as you 
 have, some of you; and you have never been saved in your 
 life. You have never had the witness from above; worldly 
 pleasures still are your source of joy. "Lord, open unto us!" 
 But He says: "I know you not. I knocked, and you would 
 not open. You put Me on, you slipped Me on like a cloak. 
 You knew the passwords, you knew the language, you got into 
 
58 
 
 SERMONS BY PAUL RADER 
 
 the virgin crowd — the church, but you never let Me in. You 
 never gave up your heart to Me and let Me walk in you. I 
 never knew you." 
 
 Real Experience 
 Oh God, speak to us to-night! This may be the last time 
 that some souls ever get a chance to buy oil this side of the 
 appearing of Jesus Christ our Lord. The Spirit will speak 
 to you, men and women, warning you, so that you may have a 
 real experience in Jesus to-night. Thank God there is a gen- 
 uine one, and you can have it. "Come buy, without money 
 and without price" — it flows free. But you will have to get 
 your heart open ; then you would not be ashamed to come down 
 that aisle with the tears running down your cheeks. Then you 
 will admit your need of Him ; your utter lost condition outside 
 of His life and virtue. Oh may God put a hunger upon this 
 congregation to-night for old-fashioned genuine salvation 
 from sin by the power of the Blood of Jesus and the life that 
 is in Him alone. 
 
 One of the Twelve 
 
 Yes, we have these multitudes of folks that look all right. 
 When Jesus was standing in the streets with His disciples, I 
 imagine men could say, "Who is that sagacious looking man 
 there with Him? He must be very close to Jesus, because he 
 is holding the bag; he must be the chief est disciple. He is a 
 fine looking fellow — see how he snaps his eyes. See how he 
 stands there in bold defiance of the crowd. He doesn't seem 
 to be so meek as those other poor old fish-smelling fishermen. 
 Pretty nifty, isn't he? He looks like a banker." 
 
 And he heard them talking about him and kind of smoothed 
 down his clothing and straightened his beard a little bit. 
 
 Yes — he looked it — but his name was Judas, and he never 
 got in. Judas, in the twelve, but not in the redeemed. "But 
 Mr. Rader, Judas took communion." Sure; but Judas will be 
 in hell. 
 
 Listen to me, my friends. God help me to-night — and I have 
 asked Him all day to help me to help you — to get you out of 
 hypocrisy and the awful, terrible mist that is over the eyes of 
 
"BORDER BATTLES 1 
 
 59 
 
 professing Christianity to-day; to get you into the place where 
 your heart is changed and you are born from above and you 
 know it. I tell you, there are some of you here from different 
 churches in and out of this city who don't know you are 
 saved. You haven't a testimony. You have no oil in your 
 lamp. 
 
 No Testimony 
 
 I remember hearing a group of convention men speak once, 
 when I had with me a young fellow who wasn't a Christian; I 
 brought him there to get help, but there was no help there. 
 He said to me, "Paul, do you call those fellows saved?" I 
 said, "I guess they are, son." 
 
 "Well, now," he says, "they talk fine." And then he turned 
 around to me and said something that has been a help to me 
 from that day to this. He said, "Paul, I have been on street 
 corners and listened to men preach, and as they spoke they 
 had a testimony, but not one of those fellows who have talked 
 to-day had a testimony." 
 
 "My," I thought, "if a sinner can shoot a bullet like that, 
 what will God shoot when He opens us up?" 
 
 "They have no testimony." They could talk about doctrine, 
 they could talk about things, but not once came the flow of 
 their own soul, with their own love for Jesus and what had 
 happened to their own hearts. Not an underflow through their 
 words that would indicate the oil of His presence. 
 
 Even Before Gabriel 
 And if you have a testimony, you could stand before Ga- 
 briel and the archangel and the people in Chicago, and say, 
 "Thank God, I have passed from death unto life." God help 
 you to get an experience to-night; have a testimony; tell men 
 and women you are saved. If you cannot truly witness to the 
 fact that you are saved you will have a pretty hard time try- 
 ing to get into the marriage supper of the Lamb. If there is 
 no flowing oil in your soul to-night burning for Him, how do 
 you expect to meet Him when He comes? 
 
60 
 
 SERMONS BY PAUL RADER 
 
 Fear Removed 
 
 Are you the kind that is filled with fear of people instead 
 of love for Christ? You care more for what the man or the 
 woman sitting beside you thinks than what Jesus Christ thinks ? 
 When I ask you to walk down these aisles you look at people. 
 Jesus isn't your God. You are not cut loose from the devil 
 and the world and people, unto Him. His love, thank God, 
 will cast all that fear out of you. You may tremble in your 
 knees, but your heart will move your lips with love. 
 
 Like one fellow who said to me, "The night after I was 
 saved and you called on us to testify, first I trembled in my 
 feet, then I trembled in my tongue, but my heart would get 
 it out, or die." And that fellow had a testimony, too. My 
 Bible tells me if I am ashamed of Him before men, He will 
 be ashamed of me before His Father which is in heaven. And 
 He doesn't lie. May God take fear of men out of your heart 
 to-night, save you and make you a witness for Jesus, with oil 
 in your lamp. 
 
 Judas was with the Christian crowd, yes, with the crowd. 
 Oh, the horror of that man's end, the terror of his death, to 
 walk in there and take the thirty pieces of silver, and sell Jesus 
 out; and then go away and commit suicide, when he could 
 have lived forever with the same Christ he sold. 
 
 "All Slumbered" 
 
 "While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept." 
 
 The devil is up and coming; at it constantly, and his gang 
 are busy night and day, but oh how he loves to get God's 
 children to feel tired. The fellow that used to go to a dance 
 every little while until the morning hours has been saved 
 quite a while now, and if he had to spend a half night in 
 prayer he would feel that at once a golden crown should drop 
 on him. 
 
 Sing Lullaby 
 
 The actors do matinees and every night shows and have to 
 make the crowd laugh, no matter how they feel, and get new 
 
"BORDER BATTLES" 
 
 61 
 
 stuff and keep up the pace, but if a preacher tries to beat 
 the devil on an eternally-at-it basis, the devil tries to make 
 him think he'll soon die from his puissant practices, with pul- 
 monic poverty, and immediately begins to sing a lullaby. 
 
 Forget 
 
 Or he'll get the folks so taken up with other things that they 
 slumber to the fact that any moment their Lord may come 
 from the glory. Oh he may try to keep people from letting 
 others know anything about what God teaches in His Word of 
 the return of Jesus to catch away His redeemed ones. Then 
 the five wise, saved ones may slumber. 
 
 Calls of the World 
 But the foolish are eased to sleep, about Christ's return, by 
 the pleasures and calls of the world. They're thinking about 
 money, clothes, positions, pleasures, worldly profits and little 
 earth thrones of destruction and thus they slumber. 
 
 "A Cry Made" 
 
 "At midnight there was a cry made." There has come a 
 great cry of late. "Behold, the Bridegroom cometh." Those 
 who raised their voices a quarter of a century ago were put 
 into the class with the fanatics. It was foolish to say the 
 Bible taught that Jesus was coming back to this earth to reign. 
 To believe it and teach it meant ecclesiastical ostracism. 
 
 Now Popular 
 
 Those who taught it then were made to feel the keen blade 
 of separation. But of recent years the teaching, because of 
 the stand of great Bible teachers and great evangelists and 
 writers, has become almost popular. Bible Conferences all 
 over the country have spread the cry far and wide. And this 
 in a day when the cold wing of biblical criticism, and a call 
 for natural religion from the places of canned education was 
 increasing the midnight darkness of unbelief and worldliness. 
 
62 
 
 SERMONS BY PAUL RADER 
 
 Destructive Cry 
 
 The cry is still going forth: "Behold, the Bridegroom com- 
 eth; go ye out to meet Him." It is the most destructive cry 
 among the followers of Christ to-day. Millions of pages of 
 literature in the form of papers, magazines and books, con- 
 cerning the Lord's return are being sent far and wide, edited 
 by godly and scholarly men. 
 
 Wake Up 
 
 God intended that this cry should wake men up to their lack 
 of life in Jesus and to the approach of the Lord. He says, 
 "He that hath this hope in him purifieth himself even as He is 
 pure." 
 
 "Behold, the Bridegroom cometh." Yes, He will soon be here. 
 Jesus Himself coming back again — my Jesus. Shall I see Him ; 
 I, who was a dinner, who but a few years ago refused to 
 speak His name or sing His praise? I, a sinner, shall I see 
 Him? Yes, glory to God, a sinner saved by grace, and I 
 shall behold His matchless face! I have been born again and 
 I may see Him. Oh bless His name. 
 
 Brother, if there was hope for me, there is hope for you. I 
 was a hypocrite — oh, how I hate to say it; I was a hypocrite, 
 as hundreds of you are to-night, but praise God I went in for 
 something and I got it. And you may have it. I was a pro- 
 duct of the churchanity of our day. Oh, there are so many 
 these days, born of the gasoline and machinery of the church 
 and not of the Blood of Jesus Christ. But thank God, the 
 thing happened in my life, and to-night I am born from above. 
 Oh, let the cry come to you to-night, and you come to Him 
 while the cry rings out; there is oil now. 
 
 Give Us of Your Oil 
 And they cried: "Give us of your oil." "No — I wish I 
 could." I wish I could go down every aisle and up and down 
 the benches and just give you the oil that is in my heart; but 
 I cannot. You will have to come to Christ and get it for your- 
 self and there is a chance to-night to get it. 
 
"BORDER BATTLES" 
 
 63 
 
 A young girl went down to one of the Southern colleges. 
 She had the prettiest of auburn hair, and she could sit down 
 at a canvass with her paints and brushes and sketch anything 
 — so easily. She would sit in school and draw pictures of the 
 girls. They said to her, "How did you get it, that auburn 
 hair of yours?" 
 
 And she would tell them one thing and another — what she 
 washed it with to give it the color. Then they asked her how 
 she did these sketches, these pictures — and she said she prac- 
 ticed for hours. She had been drawing since she had on little 
 short dresses. She tried to tell them they could do it if they 
 worked. 
 
 So one day the mother came to the school to visit her daugh- 
 ter. When she got off the train, here was the same auburn 
 hair. They looked at Dora, and said, "Now we know where 
 you got it." The mother sat in the room with her pencil, 
 while three of the girls were singing, a little extemporaneous 
 trio, and when the next paper came out here was a little car- 
 toon of these three, a perfect picture of them that Dora's moth- 
 er drew. And the girls said again, "Now we know where you 
 got it; she passed it along to you." 
 
 Join Churches 
 Oh, you cannot get this oil by works; it must come from 
 Jesus. It is a personal matter between you and Him. You 
 must be born of Him. Joining societies, churches, cannot do 
 it. We ask you to join churches, when? When you have the 
 oil, when you have been saved. Get saved first — and then after- 
 wards join, if you want to. And you ought to, if you have 
 been saved; and if you have been saved you will want to. 
 Why? Paul says, "I know I have passed from death unto 
 life, because I love the brethren." And the person who has 
 been born again will "love the brethren" and you cannot keep 
 him out of the church. He will say, "Where can I stick closer 
 to folks like those who have been saved?" He wants to join 
 in with new creatures in Christ Jesus, like himself. 
 
64 
 
 SERMONS BY PAUL RADER 
 
 The Door Was Shut 
 
 Now comes the awful statement of Jesus (for Jesus gave 
 out this parable Himself to His disciples). He says, "And the 
 door was shut." Friends, I think that is a most awful state- 
 ment : "And the door was shut" — was shut. There is another 
 statement that is terrible to me, and something like it, in the 
 Bible, and that is : "Judas went out and it was night." Sitting 
 at the table with Jesus, he dips in the sop, then he goes out to 
 betray Him, and "it was night" — night — night. "And the door 
 was shut." Five people on the outside, knocking, "Lord, Lord, 
 Lord," and it was shut. 
 
 Friend, there comes a time when all your efforts are as 
 nothing. God has invited you to open your heart, and you 
 laugh and shut it up and walk out of the tabernacle. He says 
 there will come a time when you will knock, and it will be too 
 late. Judas had a chance to have Jesus, but the time came 
 when he went and hanged himself, and down in hell he will 
 walk around and say to men, "Say, did you see the thirty 
 pieces of silver?" And he will sit there counting them — one, 
 two, three, four, five, six. The men will look over his shoulder, 
 and say, "What are you doing 1 ?" 
 
 "I am counting my money, that is what I am doing. Who 
 are you?" 
 
 "I am the rich young ruler." 
 
 "You down here, too?" 
 
 "Yes. You are only counting thirty. I had millions to 
 count." 
 
 "Well, go on and count them." 
 
 Oh, forever counting money. "What is it worth, Judas?" 
 "Nothing — but we will have to count it forever." "Did you 
 have a chance to get the life of Jesus?" "Yes." "Did you 
 take Him?" "No." "What did you take ?" "Money— money," 
 
 "Dances — Dances" 
 Young girl, forever you will count off your dances, dances, 
 dances, dances — hell and dances. Your card parties — your 
 little movies — your little shows. You know you refuse Jesus 
 
"BORDER BATTLES" 
 
 G5 
 
 because you love the world — these things are your world. For- 
 ever — oh, they will get stale, but forever you will count them 
 off — forever. 
 
 And Pilate will walk up through the crowd and say, "I 
 want a little water — have you got a little water?" 
 "What do you want it for, Pilate?" 
 
 "I want to wash my hands — to wash my hands of the whole 
 matter." 
 
 And you will say, "Oh, I want a chance in one of those 
 benches again. I had a chance in the tabernacle one night 
 to take the Son of God in my heart, but I said 'I guess I will 
 get along all right. I want to live with a bunch of live ones, 
 full of the pep of sin. I'm going out to live my own life.' " 
 
 My God, wake you up to-night. Jesus of Nazareth passeth 
 by, and can save you if you will let Him. But remember; 
 "The door was shut." Don't wait. 
 
 Little Davie 
 
 Little Davie, a young traveling man of the west, married 
 little Kathreen the year I left a certain town. When I came 
 back there they said to me, "Do you remember little Davie?" 
 
 "Sure," I said. 
 
 They said, "Go up to the insane asylum and see him." 
 "What, the insane asylum? Where is Kathreen?" 
 "Oh, she is dead." 
 "Tell me about her." 
 
 Why, Davie went off one day on one of his regular trips, 
 to be gone two weeks. He had never told Kathreen he 
 drank. That was all on the side. He never told Kathreen 
 he was a sport. That was all on the side. His mother never 
 knew he was a sport. That was all on the side. They tele- 
 graphed him at his scheduled hotel and town, but they couldn't 
 find him. For many days they hunted for him. Finally he 
 came back for a change of clothes at the hotel where he had 
 first stopped, and he read the telegrams that were waiting 
 there for him: "She is dead. She is buried. We couldn't 
 find you." 
 
66 
 
 SERMONS BY PAUL RADER 
 
 He went back to the city and ran up to the little house he 
 had furnished for her, and he yelled outside the door — but 
 nobody came. One of the neighbors jumped across the fence, 
 and called, "Hello, Davie." 
 
 He says, "What is the matter? Where is she?" 
 
 "We have had the funeral, and she is gone." 
 
 "She is gone — I never saw her!" 
 
 "She is gone, Davie. We telegraphed to you, but you were 
 drunk." 
 
 "My God!" He ran down yelling at the top of his voice, 
 to his mother's place, and she looked at him and said, "Davie, 
 she is gone." 
 
 He started up and down the town, crying, "She can't be 
 gone, she can't be gone." Yes — but she is gone. "She can't be 
 dead." Yes — but she is dead. 
 
 He was too late. She went while Davie was drunk. 
 
 Oh, some of you say, "I will get by." Won't you listen 
 to me to-night, and come to Jesus now, while you may? The 
 door is going to be shut, is going to be shut as it was for 
 Davie. Too late! "THEN shall the kingdom of heaven be 
 likened unto the condition I am talking about. Then, But 
 you know neither the day nor the hour when the Son of man 
 cometh," 
 
 A San Francisco Man 
 
 When Mr. McKee and I were at the tabernacle in San 
 Francisco, there was a man with a little black moustache who 
 sat near to the front with his wife and daughter. I noticed 
 him smile at them, every time we would talk about something 
 real, of salvation; the joy would come in his face. One day 
 I was walking along and met him, and he said, "I don't know 
 whether you noticed me or not; I sit there near you, Mr. 
 Rader. I want to tell you about my case." 
 
 He said, "Before the earthquake, my wife and my daugh- 
 ter used to go over to Oakland and visit some little meetings 
 over there. They learned about real salvation," he says, "and 
 I tell you, they got it. They brought it into the home. I am 
 a chef in one of the cafes down here, and was raised in the 
 
"BORDER BATTLES" 
 
 67 
 
 old country. Church was good enough for me. I said, Til 
 take my little show, my little smoke, my little drink when I 
 want it, my own way.' I had been confirmed, and could recite 
 the catechism in three languages; my father had a parish 
 in the old country, and I was proud of my church connection." 
 
 Reail Oil 
 
 "But oh," he said, "my wife got something real. She had 
 something real or she never could have stood all the stuff I 
 threw at her. Then," he says, "she came back and told me 
 Jesus was coming again; how He was going to come down 
 and catch up His own and the rest of them would be left, 
 and there would be such great tribulation. I tried to throw 
 it off, but I couldn't get it off: me. I would rattle the dishes 
 while I was cooking, and try to sing some old songs and make 
 all the noise I could, but I couldn't get away from the fact 
 that there was something that I didn't have, that somehow 
 I ought to have a connection with God I didn't have. I knew 
 my wife had it. 
 
 "One day — I had never done such a thing in my life before 
 — I slapped her. The daughter made a sweet mild protest, 
 and I slapped her. Then I went down town and it was worse 
 still. I couldn't cook, until I had called my wife up on the 
 telephone and said, 'You'll have to forgive me.' And she said, 
 It's all right.' She had something and I knew she had some- 
 thing. 
 
 "So the days went on. They had a great banquet on one 
 day, and I was sleeping that night down in the hotel, as I often 
 did. You know how the quake came on," he says. "I was 
 asleep in a folding bed, and the only thing I could remember 
 was the head of that bed coming for me, and the next thing 
 I knew it hit me. When I woke up I began to push my way 
 out of that bed. I climbed on the floor, and part of the 
 building was gone. If I had taken another step I would have 
 dropped down many floors. I looked out over the city and 
 the smoke was rolling over the whole affair." 
 
68 
 
 SERMONS BY PAUL RADER 
 
 God's Word a Sword 
 
 He says, "Rader, I can never tell you how the truth of 
 God's Word came to me. My wife had read to me the story 
 of the five wise and the five foolish virgins; how some were 
 taken and the others didn't get in, and," he said, "I thought I 
 was left behind. But I said, 'Lord, as long as there is life in 
 me, I will seek you.' And I started to seek Him. Men yelled 
 for me to try to come down. I didn't care whether I came 
 down or not. I was going to settle the question of eternity 
 with God. I pleaded with God. I hunted around to see if my 
 wife by chance had left a Testament in my pocket. 
 
 "Finally the men got hold of me. They thought I was 
 crazy because I was praying and calling for God, and they 
 locked me up. But days after they let my little wife come to 
 me. And she led me to Jesus. In a few minutes," he said, "I 
 was as calm as a baby in a mother's arms, and I said, 'My 
 God, I'm saved, I'm saved ! Something is real.' " He said, 
 "I went after oil, and I got it!" 
 
 "I Am the Way, the Truth and the Life" — Jesus 
 Friend, whenever you seek Jesus you will get Him. He 
 says, "In the day that ye seek Me with all your heart, ye shall 
 surely find Me." The door will be shut some day — it is open 
 now — will you step in while you can? Man, woman, in God's 
 name let me help you to Jesus now. Do not be satisfied with 
 a profession, with lamps, robes and songs, but have a new 
 life given by Jesus Christ: The oil; His Spirit a burning 
 witness within you. 
 
 Which shall it be: Wise or foolish? Profession or real 
 possession? Come! Decide before the door is shut. Buy oil 
 now, without money and without price. Cross over the border 
 and have your citizenship in heaven and your life in Jesus. 
 
OUT OF THE CAVE 
 
 "I cried unto God with my voice, even unto God with my 
 voice; and He gave ear unto me * * * *," Ps. 77. 
 
 This Psalm tells the story of David and how he got out of 
 the cave. As Professor James G. Murphy of Belfast says in 
 his commentary, "The Psalm was most probably composed 
 on some critical emergency in the eventful life of David. The 
 hiding of David in the cave of Adullam has been suggested 
 by different writers." 
 
 It is the devil's peculiar joy to get us into a hole, and it is 
 God's particular delight to get us out of it. The man or the 
 woman who has learned how to get hold of God and get out 
 of a hole, out of a predicament, out of a dark place, has 
 found the greatest joy in the world, for this reason: he has 
 found reality in God. This is the greatest joy in the world, 
 to lay hold on a promise of God and feel the pull of God on the 
 other end that lifts you out. Oh, it is delightful. 
 
 A Delightful Sensation 
 A group of men were standing around and talking about 
 a "delightful sensation/ 7 and a man from the coal mines said 
 to them: "You fellows don't know what a delightful sensa- 
 tion is." 
 
 He said, "I was in a coal mine when there was an explo- 
 sion and a cave-in and I was left alone in a large cavern. I 
 reached around for anything that I could get with which to 
 make a signal. I was in a room where there was no pipe, 
 so I couldn't tap the pipe. There was quite a bit of air m 
 the room, and I groped around probably for twelve hours try- 
 ing to get hold of something, but I couldn't find a thing. 
 
 "Finally," he said, "there slipped into my hand a wire, and 
 all of a sudden it dawned upon me that this wire ran into the 
 elevator shaft. I began to pull the wire — and then the aw- 
 fullest feeling in the world came over me, because when I 
 pulled, the wire came my way. I thought the men might be at 
 
70 
 
 SERMONS BY PAUL RADER 
 
 rescue work in the shaft, but when the wire came my way I 
 utterly lost hope. I just laid down and cried. I was dis- 
 couraged, I was worn out. 
 
 Always Pull Again 
 "Something within me made me pull at the wire again, 
 and when I pulled it again, some one at the other end just 
 pulled it out of my hands. They didn't hear me yell up 
 there, but I want to tell you I yelled, feet and head and body 
 and everything else, I yelled. I pulled again — they pulled 
 back. I tell you it was just a joy to pull and pull and feel 
 them at the other end.. They knew where I was, just by the 
 wire, and before long they had a hole through the excavation, 
 and I was out; in my wife's arms, and my children climbing 
 all over me." 
 
 Friend, there is no joy like the joy of laying hold of God's 
 promise and feel God tug at the other end. God wants to get 
 us out of the holes and caves of life, and the devil wants to 
 get us in. 
 
 David Chosen of God 
 God had picked David out, wonderfully anointed him, and 
 told him what his life work was to be; now he found himself 
 pursued, haunted, hunted by his great enemy, Saul, chased 
 into a cave. The old cave life was hard on David. He could 
 picture his enemy on the throne and it made the cave even 
 worse. He cried out despondently: "I am sick of this old 
 cave; I am sick of myself; I'm sick of the crowd that's with 
 me." 
 
 Poor troubled fellow, with his hair knotted up, his clothes 
 dirty, needing a bath and something to eat; sick of this old 
 cave. He was so sick of it that the cave got on the inside of 
 him. There are times when you can throw off your circum- 
 stances, and these times are always if they are only on you; 
 but if you allow them to get in you they will throw you down. 
 The trouble was not only that David was in the cave, but the 
 cave was in him. 
 
OUT OF THE CAVE 
 
 71 
 
 It is not an awful thing to be in the world, but when the 
 world is in you, then real trouble starts. A ship may sail 
 well and be in the water, but oh the trouble when the water 
 comes into the ship! 
 
 Has God Forgotten? 
 The cave pressed upon David until he began to feel God had 
 gone clear back on him. "Has He forgotten to be merciful*? 
 Has He in anger shut up His tender mercies?" he cries out 
 in anguish. 
 
 "Did you ever have any experiences with the Lord, David f 
 "Yes, but I don't believe I will ever have them again; I 
 don't believe there is any hope. Life's so small in the cave. 
 God seems far away." 
 
 And David started out to be despondent and discouraged, 
 as so many Christians are these days. I find so many folks 
 who are oppressed of the devil ; the devil seems to get his hands 
 on them and wears them out and oppresses them; tries to get 
 circumstances to get inside of their souls, and let prayer stop 
 and faith leak out, and their tongues begin to talk of cir- 
 cumstances instead of God and His rich promises. 
 
 In Spite of Circumstances 
 And God says, "I want to teach you how to trust Me in 
 spite of circumstances and in spite of disappointment, and in 
 spite of the things 'round about you. He had to teach David 
 that, or David would never have been able to shout in the 
 Psalms as he did. David shouts later because he has some- 
 thing to shout about; he has a glad song in his heart later be- 
 cause he has gone through something with God. 
 
 A Splendid Warning 
 
 So in this seventy-seventh Psalm David starts out with a 
 warning; shows us what a mistake he made. He says, "I 
 complained, and my spirit was overwhelmed." 
 
 If you commence to complain when you get in a hard 
 place, you are patting the devil on the back. The minute you 
 begin to murmur against God, you jump clear over onto the 
 
72 
 
 SERMONS BY PAUL RADER 
 
 devil's side and boost his game. The minute you begin to say, 
 "Other people have it pretty good, but I haven't/' you are 
 right over where the devil can fill you with purple ink; you 
 will be overwhelmed; there won't be a thing you can get hold 
 of; you will be absolutely despondent. 
 
 Because 
 
 Why? Because the minute a man begins to complain 
 against a God who is for him, begins to complain about a God 
 who loves him so much that he sent Jesus Christ into the world 
 to die for him and beat the devil and save him in spite of the 
 fact that he was a rebel and an alien from God, is manufac- 
 turing clouds to shut out the sun. This loving God is willing 
 to lift him up and give him a place as the very Bride of Christ, 
 and if he complains against Him there is no more light in 
 the world. The saddest mistake a man or woman can make 
 is to complain against God when they get into trouble — to 
 say, "God has forsaken me!" 
 
 Change Youe Cry 
 
 Change your cry. Say, "My, but it is dark, but by God's 
 grace I will reach my puny hand up through the clouds and 
 touch the hand of Jesus, for His hand is stretched out to me. 
 Say, "If God be for me, who can be against me?" When you 
 believe it, you are taking sides against the devil with God ; and 
 the man who will say, "I know God is true, whether every 
 man is a liar and everything has gone to pieces, I know God 
 is faithful"; and whether you feel it or not, it will not be 
 long before you feel a tug at the other end of the rope and 
 the first thing you know you will be above the clouds and sail- 
 ing out. David found the truth and by the Holy Ghost sent 
 it down for our help. So let us not make the mistake. 
 
 Remember, he says: "I complained and my spirit was over- 
 whelmed." Will you take the first step and stop your com- 
 plaining ? 
 
 First Get a Foothold 
 Take men to-day who are philosophizing, writing books 
 against God; they have no foothold; forever they seek one. 
 
OUT OF THE CAVE 
 
 73 
 
 You will find they are like a heavily burdened traveler on a 
 mountain trail that is slippery and frozen; their very doubt 
 and complaint freezes the pathways, there is no place for 
 their feet. When you complain against the best Friend, the 
 tender, merciful God, the Ruler of the universe, there isn't a 
 place in the world for you to put your foot. 
 
 "But without faith it is impossible to please Him; for he that 
 cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a re- 
 warder of them that diligently seek Him," Heb. 11:6. 
 
 Be Still 
 
 Learn to keep still, to keep your mouth shut. God Himself 
 lets the clouds blow around, but the clouds will even blow over 
 after a while if you will just learn to keep still. God says 
 the man that waits on the Lord "shall exchange his strength." 
 I have prayed many a time when it seemed that the clouds 
 were so thick you couldn't pray through them, but you can 
 do as some of you may have done if you were ever lost in a 
 dust storm, a sand storm on the prairie: duck your head and 
 hold on until the wind doesn't blow so hard. 
 
 Oh how God has again and again in His Word called our 
 attention to His great ability to fight for us, if we but learn 
 how to take our hands off: and trust and be still — not "watch- 
 ful waiting," but an active trust in stillness. Hear His re- 
 assuring words in Second Chronicles 20:17: 
 
 "Ye shall not need to fight in this battle; set yourselves, 
 stand ye still, and see the salvation of the Lord with you, O 
 Judah and Jerusalem; fear not, nor be dismayed; tomorrow 
 go out against them, for the Lord will be with you." 
 
 Our Tongues 
 
 So much of our trouble comes because of our tongues; we 
 make so many statements against God. We complain of cir- 
 cumstances, we talk about people so that it takes months after 
 we get right to straighten up all we said before. When we 
 get into trouble it seems to be part of the plan of humanity 
 to spread it around, go and load it on somebody else. We go 
 to people; we try to lay our burdens somewhere else instead 
 
74 
 
 SERMONS BY PAUL RADER 
 
 of waiting before God. God says the man that waits on Him 
 "shall mount up on wings as eagles." And thank God, it is 
 true. Wait on God, and God will show Himself. 
 
 David's First Step Up 
 
 David saw his mistake of complaining, and as soon as he 
 saw it he began to talk in a different kind of language. "I 
 have considered the days of old." He leaves his feelings and 
 runs back, oh away back as far as he can, to facts, facts. 
 
 Friend, that is a mighty good thing to do, to go back as 
 far as you can go back with God in your memory or knowl- 
 edge, and then just let God trail you along, showing you facts. 
 
 Grandfather's Experience 
 I remember my grandfather, when I was a boy, asking me 
 to sit down and sing to him: 
 
 "I saw a wayworn traveler, 
 In tattered garments clad, 
 And struggling up the mountain, 
 It seemed that he was sad." 
 
 He made me sing all the verses in his little old hymn book, 
 a little old square affair, well used; grandmother had put five 
 different covers of calico on the back of it. He'd sit back all 
 ready and say, "Sing it, son." I loved the chorus part, then: 
 "Palms of victory, crowns of glory," but I remember he loved 
 a certain verse best: 
 
 "Then casting his eyes backward 
 O'er the path which he had trod, 
 He shouted loud Hosannas 
 And praises unto God." 
 
 I remember as I sang that part I saw the tears running out 
 of his big blue eyes, and he clapped his hands together, and 
 said, "Glory to God! Glory to God! I never will forget it. 
 And then he said to me this: "Some day, when you are older, 
 you will get to a place where it seems like God has forsaken 
 you, but son, if you ever do, just sit still a minute and look 
 to the time when God first touched your life. It may be 
 
OUT OF THE CAVE 
 
 75 
 
 slippery then, but you will shout as you look back." There 
 he was, in the last years of his life, but he could look back 
 and see all the way God had led him, and shout. 
 
 So David says, "I began to get out of the hole that way. I 
 began to look back to the old days, look back way down there 
 where God called me, and then my soul began to be encour- 
 aged. And I said, 'This is my infirmity' " — in other words, 
 "I am a fool." It's a nice thing, you know, to call a head 
 that won't work right "infirm," but it is a better thing to call 
 it a fool. 
 
 "Lord, I am a fool, sitting here complaining against the 
 very God who has been working for me all my life; I am a 
 fool. Lord, my curls are all matted, my poor old clothes are 
 all twisted, I am sick of the old cave, but Lord, it is my in- 
 firmity and my foolishness." 
 
 David's Second Step 
 Now David takes another upward step: "I will remember 
 the years of the right hand of the Most High." 
 "What do you mean, David?" 
 
 "Why," he says, "I will remember the times in my life when 
 I felt God's hand, that hand of strength, that grip in my 
 life. I will go back and remember those times." 
 
 "All right, David, start ahead. Let's see you do it." 
 
 "Oh," he says, "I am standing here, Lord, an older man 
 now, but I remember the day when a man walked into the 
 field while I was herding sheep as a little boy, and somebody 
 cried out 'David!' Just the way they called it," he said, "my 
 heart turned over; I had been talking with God. 'David!' 
 they cried, and I got up from the ground and said, 'What do 
 you want?' 
 
 " 'There is a man here, Samuel, come to your father's house 
 to look all the boys over, and he wants to look you over.' 
 
 "I fixed my little red head the best I could, and went to the 
 house and there were all the boys lined up. There was my 
 big brother at the head, and he said, 'What in the world do 
 you want with that little scrap? What in the world do you 
 want him for?' 
 
76 
 
 SERMONS BY PAUL RADER 
 
 "I remember Samuel, a godly man, turned to me and said: 
 "The Lord says : "Arise, anoint him, for this is he " 7 ; and 
 there, while the boys were looking, he took oil and poured it 
 on my head and anointed me, and the Spirit of God was upon 
 me, from that day." 
 
 Get a Fresh Start 
 
 Oh, friends, go back to the time when God pulled you 
 away from the crowd and separated you unto Himself: the 
 days "of the right hand of the Most High." 
 
 David said, "I will go back to that time of the right hand 
 of God, when Samuel came to our house — came out, anointed 
 me king. I may be on the outside this afternoon, hiding in 
 this old cave, hunted by Saul and persecuted by the devil, 
 but thank God, Samuel anointed me as king, and whether I feel 
 like it or not, I am going to be a king!" 
 
 Friend, when Jesus has saved you, and you are discouraged, 
 say: "Whether I feel like it or not, though I may feel down 
 and discouraged, Jesus saved me one day, and I am the child 
 of a King, and I am going to glory, thank God! My poor 
 body may not feel like it, but bless God, one of these days 
 through the open portals of heaven I will sweep in and sit 
 down with Jesus Christ at the marriage supper of the Lamb. 
 Glory to God!" 
 
 Friend, you will soon get out of the cave. You will have a 
 shout after a while. Your very skin will begin to change. 
 Your bones will begin to wax well again. 
 
 A Real Lion 
 
 Then David said: "That isn't all, old devil; take some 
 more. Listen: I remember a few days after that, being with 
 my sheep, and a lion came along; and I was a poor little 
 frail fellow, but it was my business to take care of those 
 sheep. And when that lion came along, God just stirred me 
 on the inside and said 'David, grab him.' 
 
 "But Lord, I am such a little fellow." 
 
 "Grab him!" 
 
OUT OF THE CAVE 
 
 77 
 
 And something gave me nerve enough to grab the lion 
 and I broke his jaw. I don't know how I did it, but some- 
 thing came into me that day, and I slew the lion." 
 
 A Real Bear 
 
 "And I remember the day the bear came up, and I slew him 
 the same way, and my, I was scared when I saw him there 
 dead. But I looked up, and said, 'God, you did it.' Yes, 
 sir, I am going to remember the days of old. I may have old 
 matted hair now, and Saul on the throne, but God is going to 
 make good some day; He didn't bring me all this way for 
 nothing." 
 
 A Real Giant 
 
 And then he said, "Yes, I remember something else, old 
 devil; that day I went down to the army, to carry some food 
 to my brothers, and they were looking for somebody to kill 
 that old giant. I went up to Saul, and he says, 'What do 
 you want to go out and fight that giant for V I felt it again- — 
 that same spirit just boiling in me. 
 
 "Saul said to me: 'Have you got any medals V 
 
 "Sure, I have." 
 
 " 'How do you know you can kill him V 
 
 "I have killed my lion and my bear, and sure as you live, 
 I can kill that old giant. 'The Lord that delivered me out 
 of the paw of the lion and out of the paw of the bear, He 
 will deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine/ " I Sam. 
 17:37. 
 
 No Armour 
 
 "And Saul says, 'You better put my armour on you/ and he 
 tried to put his armour on me, but I threw it off, and took 
 God, and my little sling, and threw it around my head, and 
 I said, 'I may miss, but God can't miss — let her go V Round 
 my head it went, and it wiggled around, but God took hold of 
 it and shot it straight at the giant, hitting him square between 
 the eyes." 
 
 "I came back with his old head dangling, and said to Saul: 
 'Here I am/ 
 
78 
 
 SERMONS BY PAUL RADER 
 
 "And Saul says, 'Who are you, you poor little fellow?' 
 
 " 'I am the son of Jesse; that's all I am/ I answered." 
 
 It didn't take David long to show the first essential of a 
 servant of God. It took just one thought, and he took the 
 lowest place: just "the son of Jesse." 
 
 "I am the son of Jesse." .Yes, David had real humility in 
 him. Slew a giant by the power of God, then walked up in 
 front of the king, the great giant's head dangling from his 
 hand, the whole army in consternation and admiration and 
 envy, but David asks for no praise. Most of us would have 
 thrown out our chests and said "Who am I? I'm the fellow 
 who just killed that giant!" But no, David says: "I am the 
 son of Jesse — just a little fellow that came from the sheep." 
 
 Praise God for the power of God, but bless God for the 
 humility that comes of God and gives God the glory for the 
 whole business. 
 
 See How God Freed You 
 David said: "I will remember the right hand of God." 
 David is getting out of the cave, as sure as you live. And 
 you will get out of the cave if you go back there and see how 
 God freed you, gave you power over a habit that used to 
 get you down. Oh, when I think of it to-day, I could go 
 through the skylight shouting the praises of God for deliver- 
 ance from the hand of the lion and the bear that used to live 
 in my old breast. You may make fun of preaching a life of 
 victory, but I'll have to shout the praises of Jesus Christ 
 who has delivered me from the lion and the bear that lived 
 in this breast. 
 
 David's Third Step 
 
 In the next place, David said: "I will remember the works 
 of the Lord; surely I will remember Thy wonders of old." 
 
 So he goes back and recalls the time when God took Abra- 
 ham, and said to him: "Abraham, come across the brook, 
 walk through the length and the breadth of this land and I'll 
 give you all you can see, forever." He recalls the time God 
 brought Isaac into the world, miraculously, and he recalls the 
 time when God promised Abraham his children, when he did 
 
OUT OF THE CAVE 
 
 79 
 
 not even have a son, and then told him they should be like 
 the sands of the sea for number, and should come out of 
 Egypt after they had been in bondage. He recalls the works 
 of Moses, the plagues of Egypt, and sees Moses stand and 
 stretch out his hand over the sea, and speak in the name of 
 God — and the waters divided themselves and the very people 
 of God from whom David himself had crossed the Red Sea 
 and come into Canaan Land. He could take the dirt from 
 beneath his feet and say : "Here I am, hiding in the very land 
 God has given to my father." 
 
 A Holy Hush 
 Surely there must have come over him the hush of the Holy 
 Ghost, and the shoes began to come off his feet, and he got 
 down and began to praise God. "The very dirt I am on be- 
 longs to God," he must have cried out. "It has been pur- 
 chased by the power of God. The very cave I have been in is 
 the sanctuary of God. This is Canaan Land where I am. 
 Saul may be on the throne now, but David shall be on the 
 throne. Out of David shall come the very Christ of God and 
 sit on the throne of the whole world — forever!" 
 
 Sees a Coming King 
 David not only began to look at Canaan Land, but he be- 
 gan to lift his eyes up to God, and maybe it was in this dark 
 hour that God spoke to him of the mighty things to come, 
 when the Messiah, Jesus Christ, would sit on his throne, as 
 Peter says in his sermon at Pentecost: 
 
 "Men and brethren, let me freely speak unto you of the pa- 
 triach David, that he is both dead and buried, and his sepul- 
 cher is with us unto this day. Therefore being a prophet, 
 and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him, that 
 of the fruit of his loins, according to the flesh, he would raise 
 up Christ to sit on his throne," Acts 2:29,30. 
 
 Out of the cave — oh, he got a vision of the coming of Jesus 
 Christ into this world as King of kings and Lord of lords, 
 and praise God, the old cave became a palace — "and prisons 
 
80 
 
 SERMONS BY PAUL RADER 
 
 will palaces prove, if Jesus will dwell with me there." God 
 came down to meet him in the cave — in the cave — and he be- 
 lieved himself in truth a king, every inch a king, a son of 
 God and the one through whom Jesus was to come, himself 
 the possessor of the throne which Jesus Christ should come 
 and reign forever. 
 
 And he lifted up his hands to God and began to praise 
 God: "Why, Lord, you led Moses and Aaron, you took them 
 and led the children forth as a shepherd would lead his sheep, 
 and I am safe, I am perfectly safe. God has His plan made, 
 and I shall not fail. All that He has promised He will do." 
 
 He began to pull at his old garments, straighten them out, 
 and the men began to say, "David, what's the matter?" 
 
 "You needn't worry about me any longer," cries David. "I 
 don't care if I am dirty. Glory to God, I am a king." 
 
 The Cave Crowd 
 And the poor old bunch that David had gathered around 
 him began to kneel and swear their allegiance to him. 
 
 "And every one that was in distress, and every one that 
 was in debt, and every one that was discontented, gathered 
 themselves unto him; and he became a captain over them; and 
 there were with him about four hundred men," I Sam. 22:2. 
 
 He turns to this peculiar crowd and says, "You're a dirty 
 looking crowd now, you look like has-beens now, but wait 
 until I am a king. We are a bunch of forlorn and forsaken 
 looking folks now, but God is going to take me out of this 
 cave and put me on the throne, and I will remember all of 
 you when I come in." 
 
 Yes, and he did what he promised to do: made them gen- 
 erals and rulers of the land; and when Jesus comes to sit 
 on David's throne He will do the very same thing. Men who 
 were drunks, women who were harlots, despised and rejected 
 ones, down-and-out, who has been cleansed in His Blood, will 
 rule and reign with Him. Hallelujah! 
 
 Oh, friends, get out of the cave this morning! Jesus is 
 coming back, and when He does the crowd that is being made 
 
OUT OF THE CAVE 
 
 81 
 
 fun of here, the poor of the earth, the despised, the rejected, 
 the turned-aside, will come into their full inheritance. Jesus 
 says, "Keep faithful, and never forget that I am King of 
 kings and Lord of lords." Yes, He is coming back again. 
 Many think of Jesus now just as the lowly One of Nazareth. 
 He is only a man to the world; but to us — oh, beloved, we, as 
 Paul says, are "looking for that blessed hope and the glorious 
 appearing of the great God, and our Saviour Jesus Christ." 
 
 It may look dark, war is all around you, the cave and the 
 darkness, but keep faithful. Caves and all they mean will 
 soon be a thing of the past. By Thy grace we will wait for 
 Thee. 0 King of kings, from glory this morning! Friends, 
 He is coming soon, glory to God, and we will be caught up to 
 meet Him, and later come back to this old earth to reign with 
 Him. 
 
 "Though the cave has held you captive, 
 
 Jesus still is near, 
 
 He is true to every promise, 
 
 Cheer, my comrades, cheer. 
 
 Hold the fort, for I am coming, 
 
 Jesus signals still, 
 
 Wave the answer back to heaven, 
 
 By Thy grace we will!" 
 
KINGDOM RECRUITING 
 
 "The Kingdom of Heaven Is Like" 
 
 These words fall from the lips of Jesus again and again: 
 "The kingdom of heaven is like" — and are recorded for us in 
 the thirteenth chapter of Matthew. Picture Him standing there 
 in the little boat as it rocks quietly in the water, and before 
 Him crowded right up to the water's edge a great multitude, 
 listening intently to every sentence from His lips. 
 
 "The kingdom of heaven." These are surprising words. 
 Is there then to be a kingdom heaven born, heaven bought, 
 and heaven sent? That is exactly what Jesus is saying, and 
 furthermore He is showing by speaking to them in parables 
 just how it is to come. 
 
 Like Breaking Waves 
 His words roll to them like tremendous breakers along the 
 coast in a storm. Six times these words break on their tars — 
 "The kingdom of heaven is like" — and each time accompanying 
 the words comes a parable to explain the kingdom to those 
 who have ears to hear. As the great waves on the beach break 
 suddenly and then burst into foam and run up the sands, so 
 this phrase "The kingdom of heaven is like" would break and 
 then would foam forth the explaining parable. With each 
 breaking wave the kingdom program becomes clearer. 
 
 The Program of Man 
 
 These waves are beating too against a stubborn world pro- 
 gram of man. In the breast of the men before him is a pro- 
 gram of the earth earthy, of the flesh fleshly, and of the devil 
 devilish. There is there before Him in living, breathing men 
 a kingdom of this world and He has come to start a kingdom 
 of heaven. He is finally, when He has gotten His subjects, 
 to come back to this world and set up His kingdom with all 
 authority and power. 
 
84 
 
 SERMONS BY PAUL RADER 
 
 His Kingdom Here 
 Yes! Hear me if you will. He will set up His kingdom 
 right here in this world; right here where the Garden of Eden 
 grew; right here where the devil tempted Adam and Eve and 
 they fell; right here where the curse came, where Adam 
 walked out of the Garden and because of sin started to work 
 and earn his bread by the sweat of his brow; right here where 
 Eve because of sin brought forth her first-born in pain and 
 anguish; right here where because of the fall sin entered and 
 the devil became the prince of this world, and Cain killed his 
 brother Abel and went out from the presence of God marked 
 with the sickening mark of a murderer. Yes, He will set up 
 His kingdom right here where passion has reeked its awful 
 toll of infamy, here where hearts have been broken, where 
 man has fought his brother, cheated his brother, lied about his 
 brother, robbed his brother, where he has hated, envied, cov- 
 eted, blasphemed God, laughed at His laws, poopooed His 
 miracles, even denied His very existence, and tried to tear His 
 blessed Book, the Bible, to pieces, and tried to choke the faith 
 of babes and clog the minds of the young that would seek 
 after Him. Yes, praise God, Christ is to set up His kingdom 
 here where His rich holy Blood flowed from His side, here 
 where He suffered, here where He rose again. Yes, it is here 
 where the nations are warring for supremacy that He will 
 take His throne and reign in righteousness. 
 
 Recruiting 
 
 This great stupendous event is in the future, and may be 
 very, very close, but the part of the program now being car- 
 ried out before the kingdom shall be ushered in is the recruit- 
 ing of subjects. The Gospel is the good news, telling how 
 whosoever will can become a subject of this kingdom. 
 
 Man's Belief 
 
 The belief of the kingdom of this world presided over by 
 the devil is that man in and of himself is abundantly suffi- 
 cient, that his brain, his brawn, his wonder-working ingenuity, 
 
KINGDOM RECRUITING 
 
 85 
 
 his will, can guide him safely through all the waves that roll 
 against him, and men speak of this as the first law of nature, 
 the great law of self-preservation. The outcome of all this 
 is what they love to call natural religion, and of course in this 
 religion man and man alone is the god. There, so-called cul- 
 ture and learning have led them away from idols of wood 
 and stone, neither do they call the wind, the sun, or the moon 
 by names to indicate them as gods, but they deify the reason 
 of man. They worship the works of his hands in invention 
 and art, in science and industry. They are pleased to refer 
 to this as their second law of nature, which is the law of 
 self-expression. 
 
 The Last Law of Nature 
 
 There is only one law of nature left and this they do not 
 care to talk of, for it is an awful nightmare. This is the law 
 of self-mastery. Oh, hide your face now. Stop your ears. 
 Close your eyes, and try not to think. The shock will be aw- 
 ful if you are a devotee of the god called man. He has lost 
 all control over himself and must yield all his houses, all his 
 land, all his power, all his pomp, all his hopes, all his plans, 
 all his loves and labors to a strong enemy called death. He 
 may drink of the best concoctions of his genius, he may hold 
 with all his might, with his wonderful will, to life, but death 
 will take him. Man is not master of himself. 
 
 Life and a Kingdom 
 
 Jesus came to this world and from this little boat throws 
 out the great life-giving promises of His kingdom. He had 
 no subjects for His kingdom when He opened His eyes in 
 that little manger cradle, for all men are the subjects of sin 
 and death. There is not a one that is not a born and willing 
 subject of the kingdom over which the devil is ruling; not a 
 one who is not under the dominion of sin. 
 
 Hear what God has to say about this statement: "By one 
 man sin entered into the world and death by sin, and so death 
 passed upon all men, for that all have sinned." 
 
86 
 
 SERMONS BY PAUL RADER 
 
 Again hear God's Word: "But we are all as an unclean 
 thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags, and we 
 all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities like the wind have 
 taken us away." And still again God says : "We all like sheep 
 have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way, 
 and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all." We 
 see then that Jesus started without a subject and if He was to 
 have subjects He must get them from the ranks of the devil, 
 who in league with human nature and as prince of the world 
 sits in the place of world power, and by his power of tempta- 
 tion holds the hearts of men captives to sin, the world, their 
 flesh and himself. 
 
 He Must Create His Subjects 
 Jesus then before He can have a kingdom must have sub- 
 jects, and before He can have subjects He must set them 
 free from their old leader and master and make them new 
 creatures. This is the first task to which He directs Himself 
 when John has baptized Him in Jordan, and God has bap- 
 tized Him with the Holy Ghost. He goes immediately into 
 the wilderness, and there after fasting until His flesh, in al- 
 most death, calls, cries for food, He meets the devil. 
 
 The battle is on. The devil offers all he has, even to the 
 kingdom of this world lying in his power, if Christ will but 
 fall down and worship him. All the deviPs temptations and 
 pleadings are in vain. Christ will have nothing to do with 
 him. The battle is over. Christ is true to His Father and 
 does His will. 
 
 Christ Is Victor 
 
 Christ returns to announce that He is the victor, as the 
 Scriptures had prophesied He would be. Now He is ready 
 to announce His program as God had written it down in His 
 Word, and arises in a little church the first Sunday and reads 
 out of the Bible thus about Himself: "The Spirit of the 
 Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me to preach 
 the Gospel to the poor, He hath sent Me to heal the broken- 
 hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering 
 
KINGDOM RECRUITING 
 
 87 
 
 of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, 
 to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. * * And He closed 
 the Book and sat down * * and He began to say unto them, 
 This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears." 
 
 He has conquered the devil then. He is to be the Deliverer. 
 The prince of this world before whom every other living soul 
 has had to bow and become a sinner has found One now who 
 will have nothing to do with him. He is an active victor, 
 going on to offer help to any that are bound by satan, and 
 are his subjects. 
 
 To Destroy the Devil's Work 
 
 Jesus Christ stands there talking to the multitude from the 
 little boat then as the conqueror of the devil. The Scriptures 
 go farther and say that He was "manifested to destroy the 
 works of the devil." So this, then, is the first battle Jesus 
 Christ had entered on His campaign of conquering and be- 
 fore He finishes He is to destroy the works even of the devil : 
 the very results of sin? Yes! The devil then I recognize as 
 my enemy, but he has been defeated by Jesus Christ who 
 comes lifting His victorious banner, asking all who would be 
 free from sin to enlist, and become His subjects in this new 
 kingdom He is to bring in when He has gotten all His subjects 
 from all lands. 
 
 Jesus Offers Joy 
 
 The world with all its allurements and charms for sin, its 
 amusements that take hold on hell, its fascinations that exalt 
 man and the devil and forget God, all this, which is the world, 
 is my enemy. It was all offered to Jesus but He turned it 
 down flat. He has conquered the world, and offers instead 
 of worldly joys a joy which He alone can give, but which the 
 world cannot give and cannot take away. Jesus then raises 
 His banner of joy and offers it as lasting and real, without a 
 sting, and calls to men to leave the world and its pleasures 
 and the devil that is running them and enlist under His banner 
 of joy that will last forever. This world gave Him nothing, 
 but He could be filled with the deepest kind of joy and peace 
 
88 
 
 SERMONS BY PAUL RADER 
 
 without needing anything the world could give or the devil 
 had to offer, Everlasting peace and joy is on the banner un- 
 der which He asks subjects to enlist and this same blessed 
 banner is to float over the palaces of His kingdom forever. 
 
 The Final Enemy 
 
 At last the hour comes in the life of Jesus when He must 
 go against the enemy called death. Jesus has broken the pow- 
 er of sin by conquering all the deviFs temptations and offer- 
 ing His conquering power to His subjects. But all mankind 
 are under the power of death: the awful wages of sin. If 
 Christ is to have subjects this bondage of death must be brok- 
 en, and He must be able to offer life instead of death to those 
 who come under His banners. 
 
 He has made His boasts and the devil and his subjects are 
 made and planning to put Him out of the way. Their very 
 anger and wrath and love of murder is to be the means in 
 God's hands of letting Jesus get into death so He can conquer 
 it. His very enemy the devil is pushing a program of hate 
 that will cause men to kill Jesus, and by the deviFs very ef- 
 forts to destroy Him he is giving Him the great chance for 
 which He has come into the world: namely, to die man's 
 death and conquer death by rising victor over it. He is to be 
 the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world. The 
 hour comes. They nail Him to the cross and in the dark, 
 with God's face turned away from Him, He dies, taking the 
 place of men with all their sin. 
 
 He Pays the Debt 
 
 The wages of sin is death, and He takes all that wages for 
 a whole race on Himself. He dies an accursed thing of sin, 
 with God's face turned from Him as the curse. He pays the 
 old debt that every subject whom He will afterward get owes, 
 and the subject can come to Him with no old scores unpaid to 
 his old master, sin. 
 
 Let us say, for example, that I wish to have a young fellow 
 who is working hard for a certain firm come and work for 
 me, but when I approach him on the subject he tells me 
 
KINGDOM RECRUITING 
 
 89 
 
 that he is heavily in debt to the company. Before he can 
 come to me those debts must be paid, and if I pay all his 
 debts and tell him he can go free he is then in a position to 
 work for me. Jesus by His death not only paid the debt of 
 sin which His subjects owe, but He conquered death itself, 
 and arose from the grave the living victor over it, and with 
 this tremendous, staggering, offer of sharing His victory with 
 any who would believe Him and become His subjects, He 
 called for recruits. He has added life then to the list of vic- 
 tories on His banner, and offers to those who will become His 
 subjects life instead of death. Praise God! "Death is swal- 
 lowed up in victory," as the Scriptures say. 
 
 Flesh Conquered 
 
 When Jesus consented to enter death for humanity and con- 
 quer it, He did not consult with His flesh. The flesh, the 
 natural mind, draws back from death, but Jesus delivered up 
 the flesh to the death of that shameful cross, and became vic- 
 tor over the flesh. 
 
 When the blessed feet of Jesus left the earth and with that 
 resurrection body He made His victorious way back to the 
 throne of God, He left behind Him a complete victory over 
 the world, the flesh and the devil. This all may have who 
 believe Him, they may have it here and now. He conquered 
 death and Himself became the first-fruits of them who have 
 slept the sleep of death, and when He comes again before 
 long to get His subjects and usher in the kingdom, He will 
 give all His subjects (those who have left the devil's ranks 
 and the ranks of the world) a glorious body like unto His 
 own glorious body, and with Him here in this old world we 
 will rule and reign, having gotten back all that Adam lost 
 in Eden, and, oh, a thousandfold beside all that. 
 
 King of Kings 
 By His life, death and resurrection He has become King 
 of kings and Lord of lords, and has a name far above every 
 name, and there is coming a day soon when every knee shall 
 bow to Him, even the devil and all his subjects. The world 
 
90 
 
 SERMONS BY PAUL RADER 
 
 system as it is shall be done away. The curse shall be lifted 
 from the ground and the living creatures below man. No 
 more place of vice, no more graft and poverty and wrangle 
 and hatred and suffering, and misrule, but righteousness and 
 joy under His loving scepter. 
 
 Our High Calling 
 But we who have taken Him as our Saviour and King and 
 Conqueror are called into the highest of callings. We who 
 have been sinners, servants of the devil, rebels before God, 
 refusing to obey His voice, have come over now under His 
 banners and are not only to be His subjects, but are to be 
 His Bride. Think of the great grace and love in the heart of 
 God that could plan such a glorious redemption that one 
 who was a sinner and rebel could become the Queen with the 
 King upon the throne of this wonderful, everlasting kingdom. 
 If this vision strikes your heart you will never think of life 
 the same again. Everything around you will glow with a new 
 meaning, and souls for whom Christ died will become dearer 
 and more valuable than any treasure of earth. You will catch 
 the call of His love to things which angels would love to have, 
 and you will allow nothing that the world has to offer to 
 keep you from the glories that are in Christ, and the majesty 
 that shall be revealed in His kingdom when He appears with 
 ten thousand of His saints and sets up His rule over all the 
 earth. Yes, God and humanity are going to get together 
 by and by, and the kingdoms of the earth shall become the 
 kingdom of our wonderful Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and 
 we shall be His Bride. Praise the Lord! 
 
 Jesus Waiting 
 Jesus Christ has defeated all our enemies. Jesus Christ 
 has returned to the throne of His Father, there to wait while 
 men filled with the power of His Spirit carry the news of His 
 victory around the world, and call upon men to forsake their 
 sin and their service of the devil, and join Him and His king- 
 dom. By His wonderful life He offers men a new life. By 
 His wonderful victory He offers victory now. By His won- 
 
KINGDOM RECRUITING 
 
 91 
 
 derful death and victory over death He offers life forever to 
 all who will take it, and He is now patiently waiting for 
 men to believe Him and turn from darkness unto light. 
 
 When the last subject has given His heart to Jesus and 
 the Bride of Christ is made up, then our blessed Saviour, 
 "The Lord Himself, shall descend from heaven with a shout, 
 with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God : 
 and the dead in Christ shall rise first : then we which are alive 
 and remain shall be caught up together with them in the 
 clouds, to meet the Lord in the air, so shall we ever be with 
 the Lord." Thus shall all the believers be caught up and 
 changed in a moment in the twinkling of an eye. Then will 
 they be given their place in the kingdom and return with 
 Him to the earth clothed with power and great might to rule 
 and reign with Him and put down the kingdom of satan 
 and sin with all world powers under man rule. Yes, praise 
 God, we will return. 
 
 Listen to God's Word: 
 
 "And I saw heaven open and behold a white horse, and 
 He that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in 
 righteousness He does judge and make war. His eyes were 
 as a flame of fire and on His head were many crowns, and He 
 had a name written that no man knew, but He Himself, and 
 He was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and His name 
 is called The Word of God. And the armies which were in 
 heaven followed Him upon white horses clothed in fine linen, 
 white and clean, and out of His mouth goeth a sharp sword, 
 that with it He should smite the nations: and He shall rule 
 them with a rod of iron: and He treadeth the winepress of the 
 fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. And He hath on His 
 vesture, and on His thigh a name written, King of kings 
 and Lord of lords." 
 
 All Will Not Come Under This Banner 
 Standing in that little boat on the little lake Jesus did not 
 seem a king but He is indeed King of kings and Lord of lords. 
 From that little boat He announced what the kingdom would 
 be like while He was in the glory and was calling through men 
 by His Spirit for subjects. He plainly shows that while the in- 
 vitation to participate in His glorious victories and to become 
 
92 
 
 SERMONS BY PAUL RADER 
 
 one with Him in the coming Kingdom is extended to all, that 
 all will not come, and that of the many, many who do profess 
 to come there will be a great number of pretenders who really 
 do not break with the world and the devil and the flesh, but 
 make a profession only. He shows that a large organization 
 will come into being, which people can join, but that it will 
 not be made up of real subjects of this coming kingdom but of 
 some who are real subjects and many who are pretenders but 
 who in fact are of the world, and have not stood against satan 
 in the power of Jesus' name and sought to do His will. 
 
 Some Hear His Words 
 Out of the boat speaking to the multitude that day Jesus 
 shows by the parable of the sower that the whole world will 
 not be saved before He ushers in His kingdom. He shows 
 that some hear of His great offer but pay no attention to it. 
 These are the stony ground sort. Some hear it and start but 
 they can't stand to be laughed at, and they stop. These are 
 the shallow-soil quitters. Some start and get a good growth, 
 but the world calls too loudly and they keep company with the 
 same old gang, and they get choked, and you never hear any 
 more about them but that "they started, but — Some get busy 
 and believe with all their heart and love Him and trust Him 
 and expect Him to do all He promises, and stick true to Him 
 and the interests of His kingdom — these are the real subjects. 
 He'll rule the kingdom with these. 
 
 Another Wave of Parable 
 Then He lets another wave roll and break in parable form, 
 saying "The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed wheat 
 in his field, but while he slept his enemy sowed tares." Here 
 He shows that while true Christianity will be in the world, 
 while He is in the glory waiting for subjects, the enemy will 
 start something that looks like Christianity and get folks to 
 join it and it will all be under His name; the organization will 
 be called a church and will act like a church, and yet it will 
 be no more made up of His real subjects than tares can be 
 wheat, though they may look alike to some folks. In this par- 
 
KINGDOM RECRUITING 
 
 93 
 
 able He asks a question: Shall the tares be pulled up? The 
 answer is that they shall both grow along together until the 
 harvest or the time when He gathers His subjects, then He'll 
 catch up His own, but the bluffers, the four-flushers, the hypo- 
 crites, or as the parable calls them, the tares, He will put in 
 the fire. That doesn't sound like the world was going to get 
 better and better, until it would all be good at the harvest 
 time. No, sir, wheat is wheat and tares tares up to the har- 
 vest, and then the wheat gets the kingdom and the tares get 
 the fire. 
 
 Another Wave 
 Next He says that the kingdom of heaven, while He is in 
 the glory waiting for subjects, is like a mustard seed planted 
 in a field that, though it is small it somehow has a very pe- 
 culiar growth and keeps it up; yes, a very unnatural growth 
 until it becomes a tree so that the birds of the air lodge in its 
 branches. Here He shows that the organization upon which 
 men put His name will become very popular so that the 
 demons of hell will roost around in it but it will not be 
 sincere and true throughout. What better picture than this 
 of a place called a church pulling off a show or an organiza- 
 tion calling itself Christian giving a dance, could be found? 
 They have the name and the gathering but they are not of the 
 kingdom. They seem to do big things but the big things are 
 roosts for the devil and not for the One who conquered the 
 world, and was not of the world. 
 
 The Jew 
 
 Again He speaks of His buying a field because it has a 
 hidden treasure. You remember God's great promises to the 
 Jews and you must remember they are never forgotten. The 
 Jews are scattered, yes, many of the tribes lost, but they are 
 in this field called the world, and Christ has bought and paid 
 for this world, and His own treasure the Jew is in it, and He 
 will fulfil all His promises to him. 
 
94 
 
 SERMONS BY PAUL RADER 
 
 A Precious Pearl 
 Yet again Christ speaks of the kingdom of heaven as a 
 goodly pearl for which a man sells all he has and buys it. 
 Jesus gave up all He had for this believing crowd of His sub- 
 jects, which He calls the ecclesia — the called out one — the 
 Church. This is His Bride. Through them He is speaking 
 to the world to-day. They have not all been gathered in yet, 
 but when the last one has said yes to Him and come under 
 His banner, that long expected shout will fill the heavens 
 and the voice of the archangel and the trump of God shall 
 sound, and we will be with our King, and sit down to the 
 bridal supper. The kingdom will have come. 
 
 What Have You Done 1 ? 
 Think of all that He offers you, my friend. What have you 
 done with this wonderful offer of life and a kingdom? Are 
 you professing without possessing? Have you come out open- 
 ly for Jesus and cut a clean line between yourself and the 
 world, or are you trying to play both sides? Have you sworn 
 a fight in Jesus' name against the flesh, are you enjoying 
 victory in Jesus? Line up now. If you are ashamed of Him 
 before men He will be ashamed of you before His Father in 
 heaven. 
 
 You must do something with Jesus — 
 Neutral you cannot be. 
 Some day your heart will be asking 
 "What will He do with me?" 
 
 He is waiting for subjects. Powers are being shaken. His 
 kingdom will soon be ushered in. 
 
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