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Let us continue in worship by giving attention to the reading of God's Word as it is recorded in various portions of the New Testament noted in your calendar for worship. I begin with a reading from 2 Peter chapter 3. "But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years and a thousand

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years as one day. The Lord is not slow about his promise as some count slowness, but is forbearing toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and

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the works that are upon it will be burned up. But according to his promise, we wait for new heavens, and a new earth in which righteousness dwells." And I read next from Paul's letter to the Ephesians, chapter 3. "Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, to him be glory

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in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen." And then from the gospel according to John, the 14th chapter. "Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And when I go and prepare a place

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for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also." And finally, from 1 Corinthians, chapter 15. "So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a physical

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body, it is raised a spiritual body. There is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body." And may God bless to us and to our understanding these readings from his word. Pray with me. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen. About a year ago I was in the home of some friends with a group of other people, and

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these friends had rented a video cassette recording of a film, a scary science fiction film as the entertainment for the evening. Everyone in the room was scared by the film except me. Everyone in the room was really gripped by the film except me. Everybody in the room never left the room during the course of the entire picture except me. I left three

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times. Indeed, twice when I asked someone to pass the carrot sticks, I was hushed up. Now why was that? Why was it that I was the only one not scared, not gripped, not held fast, and willing to converse when I should have been quiet? I'd seen the movie before. I knew all about it from the very beginning. I knew the way it would end from its very

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start. And it seems to me, in a sense, that that is a picture of what Christians have as measured over against the unbelieving world. Christians have an advantage over unbelievers in this. We know how it's all going to come out. We have read the last chapter while the earlier chapters are unfolding. We do not have to be anxious. Let me give you an example

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of three certain predictions that we as Christians can make about the future. First, we can speak with certainty about the future of the world. For 70 years now, Time magazine has selected each year a man or woman of the year. Only once until this year have they departed from that. There was a time a few years ago when they selected the computer as the object of

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the year. This year, they have also departed from their norm, and they have selected as the object of the year, if you will, the planet Earth, this blue jewel on which we ride through space. Things are not going well here. 40,000 children die of hunger every day on this planet. We now have 500 million cars, but we also have 650 million people dying from the pollution

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created by those automobiles. We are producing on this globe 50,000 toxic chemicals, which we pour into the Earth and the air and the water. Now, the oceans are the circulatory system of the planet, and we have befouled these oceans with so much filth that they now vomit it upon our shores. There are 2,378 different species of animals on the planet,

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and of that number, 444 are endangered. The giant panda is almost gone. The last of the North American condors now lives in a cage. Some months ago, we spent a lot of money and a lot of time to rescue three baby whales up in the northern waters, but at the same time in which those three baby whales were being rescued, 57 whales were slaughtered

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in other parts of the world. Environmentalists tell us that at the present rate, in 100 years, there will no longer be life upon this planet. We have acquired the most dreadful disease that humankind has ever confronted. I refer to the acquired immune deficiency syndrome, AIDS. We don't know how many people in the world have AIDS. We know that 80,000 people

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in this country have had it. 40,000 of those are dead, and the other 40,000 will surely die. We know that there are 30 million refugees on this planet, most of them women and children, people without a country, and that the number of refugees is increasing at the rate of about one million a year. We know that 48 million of our own citizens use drugs in improper

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ways, not counting alcohol and nicotine, and that the scope of the world narcotic problem is so great and so out of control that it is costing the world presently about a trillion dollars a year. And we know that this 20th century of which we are a part is the bloodiest century in all of human history. Indeed, in 1988, there were 34 separate wars. Now all

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of this is contrary to God's will, and the politicians and the environmentalists, the scientists, the educators, the clergy, the writers, the financiers, the moguls of business have all tried to reverse these processes. But the fact of the matter is that they are singularly without success. We do not have the keys to solve the problems we have created.

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But as Christians, we know that Jesus Christ does hold those keys. Listen to the book of Revelation. Jesus speaks, "Fear not, I am the first and the last. I am he that liveth and was dead and am now alive forevermore, and I have the keys." What the scriptures teach us is that good and evil are in confrontation and brutal and mortal confrontation, but in

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the end, good in Jesus Christ will be victorious. "Be of good cheer," he says, "I have overcome the world. What the politicians and the educators and the scientists and the clergymen cannot do, I can do." The Christian understands that while we do not know what the future holds, we do know who holds the future. Paul's words, or Peter's words, read just a moment

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ago in your hearing, "With the Lord, one day is as a thousand years. His promise is sure, his patience limitless. He holds back only until all might find their way to him, but he will not tarry forever, for the heavens and the earth will pass away, and he will bring to pass a new heaven and a new earth where righteousness dwells." As Christians,

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we must be concerned about the world. As Christians, we must give ourselves in obedience to the testimony of the scriptures and the testimony of the Holy Spirit in the service of the world. We must pour ourselves out in seeking to make the world a more livable place, but we need never ever be finally afraid. We need not be anxious, for the old song is still true.

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He's got the whole world in his hands. We can also speak certainly about the future of the Church. More Christians have died for their belief in the 20th century than in the previous 19. And of course, across the history of the Church, again and again, there have been those who have predicted the death of the Church. Voltaire, the French encyclopedist,

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set the top aside that the Church would be dead within 50 years of his own lifetime, and Voltaire's house today is the headquarters of the French Bible Society. Hitler said he would snuff out the Church. The Church was the only agency which persisted, not at its best, but at least persisted until Hitler himself was snuffed out. Lenin said that religion

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would die, and there are more card-carrying Baptists in the Soviet Union today than there are Communists. Mao said that Christianity would vanish from every Communist society, and the Church in China is thriving today. Of course, we experience the attack upon the Church more subtly in this country. It comes principally through the media, who consistently,

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day after day, attack the Christian faith and the values which it proclaims. There's 55 times as much violence on television as there is in real life. The Annenberg study just recently completed demonstrates that people who watch television where minority groups are consistently underrepresented and over-victimized, people who sit and watch

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television are more likely to oppose actively members of minority groups moving into their own communities. Television has virtually given up on the Christian family unit. Almost every family in a television sitcom is a family broken in one way or another. Religion is an object of derision in the media. You know, it's interesting that more Christians go to

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church every Sunday morning in this country than go to all of the professional sporting events of whatsoever kind in this country in an entire year. And still, the media do not take religion seriously. Clergy are depicted as hypocrites, wimps, perverts, endless coverage given to Jimmy Baker. How much do you see given to Billy Graham? KDKA television here

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in our own town has just recently announced its policy never to put on a religious commercial. A church cannot buy commercial time on KDKA television. Now, they do not hesitate to show perfume commercials which emphasize both sadistic and masochistic practices. They do not hesitate to run beer commercials and then later in the evening on the news report about

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the young people who have been killed in automobile crashes from drinking that beer. They do not hesitate to run movie commercials which are made to be as sensual and seductive as possible. But they will not air a religious commercial, and that should not surprise us. For the Gallup poll completed just six months ago pointed out that 96% of Americans have some kind of

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religious faith, but 86% of those in the media have no faith whatever. Is it any wonder then that the media so grossly out of touch with the religious feeling of this society so consistently distorts or ignores it? Of course, the most direct attack upon the Christian faith by the media in this last year was the film The Last Temptation of Christ. It's interesting

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that Hollywood would never consider making a film based on the protocols of the elders of Zion, which is a vicious anti-Semitic attack upon the Jews. They would never think about putting on some kind of film that distorted or told lies about the life of Martin Luther King or any other great black hero from our society. The same Hollywood that a few years

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ago produced a film on the life of Muhammad and out of respect for him and his followers never even pictured Muhammad, all you heard was his voice, this same Hollywood puts out a sleazy and salacious attack upon the Savior which describes him as a psychotic, fornicating wimp. Donald Fetter, who is an attorney in Boston and who writes regularly for Boston

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newspapers and who is himself a Jew, has written these words. "Christians are the only group Hollywood can offend with impunity, the only creed it actually goes out of its way to insult. The tenets of Christianity are regularly held up to ridicule. As a Jew, I do not believe in the divinity of Jesus, but I do believe in respecting the faith of those who regard

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him as their Savior." Would that the moguls of moviedom had an equal respect. We'll never know the details of that film, of course, it was produced by MCA Universal. They spent $17 million to make it, nobody knows how much they spent to advertise it, though they did buy full page advertisements all across America and they sent out Hollywood's Jack Valenti,

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a kind of a paid lapdog to argue for the film on the basis of the First Amendment. And of course the media critics supported the film because as we've already noticed, media is actively and aggressively hostile to the things of the faith and they said that anyone who criticized the film was a fanatic or some kind of right winger. But interestingly enough,

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out of the 13,000 motion picture theaters in America, only 130, 1%, agreed to show the film. And to this date, it has lost $12 million. It's a colossal flop. But of course it's not over because Universal has already announced that the film will be re-released at Easter time. And I feel very sure that it will be nominated for some Academy Awards. The Academy

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Awards, of course, are Hollywood applauding Hollywood, defending itself, protecting its own. Across the centuries, the church has been splattered both with blood and with blasphemy. But we know this, that in the end, the gates of hell will not be able to prevail against it. There are times when the church has been too much in love with itself, but the church

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will never love itself as much as Jesus Christ loves it. It is his temple, tall and straight. It is his bride, beautiful and sweet. It is his body, not that body which he inhabited in the first century as a Middle Eastern Jew, but a body that is white and black and yellow and red, a body that is universal, that is deathless, that is immortal, that is indestructible.

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The body he used in the first century, that body was crucified. That body, for a while at least, died. But the church has never died. It has been banned. It has been burned. It has been starved. It has been ridiculed. It has been hanged and tortured and machine-gunned. But it lives on. The Scriptures say, "Now to him who by the power at work within us

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is able to do far more abundantly than all that we can ask or think, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever." We do not know what the future holds, but we know the one who holds the future, and he loves the church. And just one last thought. We may speak certainly about the future of ourselves. A few days

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ago when Pan Am 103 crashed, my thoughts went back, as they always do at such a time, to an old friend of mine named Larry Hoyt. Larry told me once that he was taking flying lessons, and when I heard about his bouncing around in these little puddle jumpers, I said to him, "I hope you'll be very careful." Oh, he said, "I'll be very careful. Don't worry

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about it. And by the way, if you ever hear that I went down, remember I really went up." Well, my friend Larry Hoyt went down about a week before he was to solo, but he really went up. And whenever I hear of things like Pan Am 103, I think of those believers who went up.

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My Christian friends, our ultimate future as the servants of Jesus Christ is never in doubt. Jesus says to us, "In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go, I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am, ye may be also." There's a picture, you sometimes see

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it on Christmas cards at this time of year, Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus fleeing from Palestine into Egypt, seeking to escape the wrath of King Herod. The painting is at midnight. They're in Egypt. They're resting at the base of the sphinx, that strange creature that is part woman, part lion, and part bird. Joseph is stretched out on his robe asleep.

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Mary leans against the knees of the sphinx. She has the sleeping Christ child in her arm. The sphinx looks grimly out over the silent sand. Every time I see that picture, it speaks to me of life and death, because you see in Greek mythology, the sphinx was the symbol of death. The sphinx was that creature that stood beside the road, and as you approached

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it, it would ask each and every one in their own time a riddle, and being unable to answer the riddle, they would all die. That is until Oedipus came. Oedipus answered the riddle, and when he died out of chagrin, embarrassment, and rage, the sphinx jumped to her death. In that picture of the sphinx and the baby Jesus held in the arms of his mother, in that

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picture, we have testimony to the fact that for generations before, the sphinx of death had stood beside the roadside of everyone who ever lived, and all kinds passed that sphinx, philosophers and sages, patriarchs and prophets, poets and apostles, and none of them could answer the riddle, and all of them went down to death until that child became

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a man. And what that picture says to me is, "Here is death and life, but in Christ, life overcomes. Here is darkness and in light, but in Christ, the light overcomes. Here is defeat and victory, but in Christ, victory overcomes. Here is the grave and here is eternity, but in Christ, eternity overcomes. We may not know all the future holds, but we know

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the One who holds our futures. We shall not go down. We shall go up." Lo, Paul writes, "I tell you a mystery. There is a physical body and there is a spiritual body, but that which is sown in dishonor will rise up in glory, and the trumpet shall sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable. Thanks be to God who giveth us the victory

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through our Lord Jesus Christ." We can be certain about that. So as we set sail upon the sea of a new year, none of us knowing the joys or the sorrows that it will contain, hold fast to these certainties. God holds the world, God holds the Church, and God holds us. God holds the sea, God holds the ship, and God holds the sailors. We need not be

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anxious. Indeed, our vision can be oceanic. And the words that Alfred Lord Tennyson put upon the lips of Ulysses so long ago can be our words. For our purpose holds to sail beyond the sunset and the baths of all the western stars until we die. It may be that the gulf will wash us down. It may be that we shall touch the happy isles and see the great Achilles

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whom we knew. Though much is taken, much abides. And though we are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are one equal temper of heroic hearts, made weak by time and fate, but strong in will to strive, to seek, to find, and never to yield. Let it flow.

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Our Father, we are in your hands, and we are therefore unafraid. We will not be anxious because you love us so. Thank thee to thee who giveth us the victory, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. [Silence]