From our archives... The Billy Graham Classics. [applause] Now I want you to turn with me to the passage that
Ralph Bell read to us. The third chapter of II Peter. I wish I had an opportunity to go verse by verse
in this chapter because it‘s one of
the most important chapters concerning the coming again
of Jesus Christ. I want to speak on the day of
the coming of Christ. "That day"
it's called in Scripture. Now when you woke up
this morning, I want to ask you what were
your expectations of today? Many people began thinking, Well, it’s going to be
just an average day. Nothing unusual about that. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing much to look forward to. Just an average day. And then there may
be the graduation day or anniversary day
or promotion day or a day in which you retire, maybe a day in which
you start your vacation, or maybe your birthday
or the birth of a child. But tonight, I want to talk
to you about a day that is unique in
the history of the world. The day when the Bible teaches Jesus Christ is coming
back to this earth. And that day is
on God’s calendar. The word of God says
it will only happen once. And it’s going to come as
a devastating shock for those that are not prepared. But for those who look forward
to the coming of Jesus Christ, it’s going to be a day
of great joy. The early New Testament
Christians continued to talk about and look forward to
that day, or the day, or the last days. These expressions are used
throughout the New Testament. The last days. And we are living, I believe,
in the last days. What kind of a day are
we looking for? What’s going to happen
on that day? Well, first of all, it will be
a day of revelation. II Thessalonians 1:7
says, "And to you who are troubled,
rest with us. "When the Lord Jesus shall be
revealed from heaven "with his mighty angels.” He’s not going to come
riding a donkey the next time. He’s going to come with
the mighty angels of heaven. It’s going to be
the personal return and appearance of Jesus Christ. After the crucifixion and
the resurrection of Jesus, the Bible says
He appeared in person to his disciples, and to
five hundred of His followers. But Jesus didn’t appear
to Pilate. Have you ever wondered why? Or to Herod,
or to the chief priests or those that engineered
his crucifixion. He didn’t appear to them. Why? Because it was not the time. They’re going to see him
on that day that is yet future. Revelation 1:7 says, “Look,
He’s coming with the clouds “and every eye will see him,
even those who pierced him. “All the peoples of the earth
will mourn because of him.” Even the people that
pierced him, even the people
that engineered his death are going to see him and they’re going to be
in a state of shock. The Scripture says
in I Thessalonians 4:16, “For the Lord Himself shall
descend from Heaven.” In Acts 1:11 it says, “This same Jesus shall
so come in like manner “as you’ve seen him go
into heaven.” And they were watching
to see Him go into heaven, His ascension. And it says He disappeared into
a cloud. I think it was a cloud of angels
come to escort him back to heaven, because there were angels
that came when he was born. They escorted him to earth. Now He’s going back to heaven
after His resurrection and they’ve come
to escort Him back. You know, before a great
work of art such as a stature or painting
is presented to the public, it’s usually kept hidden. People may know that
the work is being prepared. They may even know the location,
but they’ve not seen it. When the day of
the presentation arrives, the artwork is covered
by a cloth until the moment of unveiling. People come with
great anticipation and the event is often preceded
by a ceremony. When the covering is removed, the work of art stands unveiled,
open for all to see. That day, the scripture says, it will be the unveiling of one
who has been hidden. Today is day in which
Christ is hidden. He’s not here in person
in the sense of his flesh. He’s not seen. “Whom having not seen, ye love,”
said Peter in 1 Peter 1:8. But in that day,
He’s going to be revealed. You see, this is a day of faith. We come to him by faith,
but then it’s going to be sight. We’re going to see him
person to person. And I’m looking forward
to that day when I see Jesus Christ
person to person. To be able to fall at his feet
and thank him for dying on the cross for me so that I could have
my sins forgiven and I could go to heaven
and spend eternity with him. You know in eastern countries
a man is presented, in many eastern countries, a man is presented on
his wedding day with his bride. The first time he’s ever seen
the bride is on his wedding day. She’s hidden under a veil. I can imagine
the anticipation of those young men waiting to see
what kind of a woman their parents picked out
for him, to see his bride
for the first time. We love Christ,
but we’ve not seen him. He is hidden behind a veil. We long to see him in person. Now we see through a glass
darkly, but then face to face, the scriptures says. We will see Him
with his mighty angels. What a day that’s going to be, when He comes
like lightning from heaven, like a crack of thunder. And then secondly, it will be
a day of condemnation. To believers it’s going to be
a time of ecstasy and joy and excitement
and glory; but to those who
do not know him, it’s going to be
a day of judgement. God has placed within us
a strong desire to see justice done
in the world. We cheer when the good guys win
and the bad guys loose on TV. We applaud the legal system
when it brings to justice a person who has brought
great harm to others. We applaud the legal system
when it does something to bring about social justice
in our communities. Yet many people
refuse to believe that God will one day bring
justice to this earth, but He’s going to do it and it’s going to be
on his terms. To every one of us, we’re going to have to face
the judgement. God is perfect
in love and justice. God is a god of love. Don’t leave here and
let people think that God is not a god of love. The thing that I want you
to remember most out of his whole crusade is
that God loves you. No matter who you are,
what you are, what your ethnic background is,
how many sins you’ve committed, God loves you. And there’s nothing
you can do about it. God is going to keep on
loving you to the very grave. He loves you. He is a god of love. But He’s also a god of justice. And He’s going to bring people
throughout the world to a place of judgement and
bring justice to the world. In II Thessalonians 1,
the eighth and ninth verse it says , “In flaming fire, “taking vengeance on them
that know not God “and that obey not the Gospel
of our Lord Jesus Christ, “who shall be punished with
everlasting banishment “from the presence of the Lord,
from the glory of his power.” Think of that. The revised standard version
translates this verse as “exclusion from
the presence of God.” You see, what it really means
is that we’re going, those of you that are lost,
those of you that don’t know Christ as
your Lord and Savior, you may be a member
of the church and all that, but deep inside you’re not sure
how you stand with God, and you may be lost. To all of you, you’re going to
catch a glimpse of Christ in His glory. You’re going to see
all the glory and all the thrill and the joy of heaven
for one moment and you’ll carry that memory
throughout eternity, but you won’t be able
to enjoy it. You’re going to be excluded
from His presence, the Scripture says. I remember when I heard about
that for the first time from a Greek scholar
at Cambridge University. I remember the impact
that made upon me when he said, "That’s what
that passage means." And I began to think about
catching a glimpse of Jesus in all of His glory and
all of His power and I was to be
a part of it in heaven and I missed it because of
my own lust or my own greed or my own pride
or my own ego or because I wouldn’t surrender
to Christ on the cross. It also is going to be
a day of salvation, a day of salvation. That’s where we come
to glorification. You’ve heard of salvation
and sanctification. That is called glorification. Who are the objects
of salvation? What is the nature of salvation? II Thessalonians 1:7 says rest. This indicates that
many inequalities are going to be ironed out. There will be perfect justice. The poor of the world will have
their needs met. And many of the rich
will become poor. You remember the rich man
and the poor man Jesus spoke about? And the poor man died and went
to heaven to be with Jesus and the rich man, who had
no time for the poor, died and he went to hell. And there was a great gulf
between them. And the rich man cried out. He saw Abraham and
he cried out and said, “Come and bring
just one little bit of water. "Just touch my tongue with water "and please go tell my brothers
not to come to this place. "It’s terrible." Whatever hell is,
it’s separation from God. Heaven is described in terms
that indicate the important thing though
is not going to be our joy. I’m going to jump up and down,
if they’ll let me. I’m going to applaud
more than the people of Albany. I’m going to applaud
the Lord Jesus Christ until my hands fall off. I’m going to kneel until
my knees will be filled with blood from kneeling and giving Him the glory
and the praise and honor. But that’s not going to be
the big thing. The big thing is that Jesus is going to be so revealed
in beauty and glory, in and through us,
His saints, that the whole universe
is going to stand and marvel that Christ could do
such a thing by his death and
his resurrection. That He could take sinners
like you and me, who are opposed to God,
who break his laws, who disobey him every day and He’s going to take us and make us into
what He plans for the future. We’re going to share with him
in reigning and ruling. He’s going to be so revealed
in beauty and glory in and through his saints that the whole universe will
stand in amazement. You see, a craftsman is revealed
by his work. Sir Christopher Wren was
the designer of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. And I remember when we first
went to London, the year after the war. Cliff Barrows with his wife
Billie, and my wife and I went to England and we preached
there for six months and the whole city was
almost in ruins, but you could see
St. Paul’s Cathedral standing in all of its glory. It had suffered a little damage,
but not much. And Sir Christopher Wren had
designed it. And inside the Cathedral
there is a plaque to his memory. And it says, “If you seek the monument of
Sir Christopher Wren, "look about you. "This is his monument." The monument of
our Lord Jesus Christ's work on earth at the cross
and the resuurection is going to be
you and me." All of those who know Christ,
the body of Christ. We are his workmanship. When the universe looks upon
His glorified church they will marvel at His beauty. They’re not going
to think of you and me. They’re going
to think of Him. All of our thoughts are
going to be centered in Him. The universe will be impressed
not by us but by Him who could accomplish all this. Christ will be
the center of heaven. And in hell, wherever you look,
you’ll never see him. “This is the day
that the Lord hath made. "Let us rejoice
and be glad in it,” the scripture says. There is going to be a day
when Christ comes back. Now today when He’s coming
is a secret. According to a recent
New York Times article last year, the United States government
created 6 million, eight hundred thousand
classified messages and documents. Now that’s a lot of secrets. And, of course, we all know
that those secrets have leaks. But God has one secret that
He’s revealed to no one. No one. And we’re not even
to speculate about it. And that is the day
and the hour of his return. We don’t know. But Jesus, before His death, took His disciples
to the mountain and they privately asked Him, Lord, when are you coming and what are going to be
the signs of Your return? What can we look for
just before You come back? What will be the indicators
of Your coming again and the end of the world? Or the world system as we know
it, which is dominated by evil. And Jesus replied, “Not of that day nor hour
knoweth no man, “not even the angels. “Only my Father knows." But He stated clearly
to the disciples that at the time of
His coming again there would be signs
that we’re to look for. And what are some of
the signs that He left? First, He said there will be
wars and rumors of wars. Doesn’t that sound like
the headlines of our papers all the time? Wars and rumors of wars. Oh yes, we had a wonderful time
of peace seemingly break out in the world. And I’m thrilled at
what’s been happening, but even with all of this peace
that’s broken out, that doesn’t mean that
it’s not a dangerous world. The Economist in London
the other day ran an editorial and said the world is still
a dangerous place. The end of the cold war
and new the relaxation between East and West have
tempted some to believe that peace is
the order of the day. The Economist said
it is it not. We get rid of one big source
of tension; the world still has
a lot of little ones. Neither hatred, intolerance,
nor aggression, nor even the clash of ideas died
in the changes that took place last year and this year. Peace is breaking out,
but so is conflict. Then the second thing He said, “Many will come in my name
saying, ‘I’m Christ.’” I’m told there are more than 400
people in Los Angeles alone that claim to be Christ. He said there will arise
false Christs and false prophets and shall
show great signs and wonders. Many people today are teaching
that we are god. All you have to do is
get in touch with the power that is within yourself. Unleash it and you can solve
all the problems of life. And then thirdly, Jesus said
the masses will be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness
and the cares of this life and so that day will come upon
myriads of people unawares. In other words, we’re going to be having
such a good time and be in all of our parties,
going to all of the night clubs and the excessive drinking
and drug use. The sex and violence are
major threats to the current generation,
it's said. And they are major threats,
but Jesus predicted all of that. He said they will be living
like in the days of Noah, eating and drinking and marrying and
giving in marriage, exchanging wives. And that’s all going on today on a scale we’ve never
known before. The social critic and author
Tom Wolfe commenting on the 1980s called it a decade of
money fever in which the idea of sexual immorality
came close to vanishing. Where are our moral values? We go to the talk show people
and they tell us what the moral values are
at that present moment. And I know one of
those people and have known him
for a long time. And he used to have
strong moral values, but over the years,
he himself has succumbed until now, when you watch him
on television you see he has slipped
a long way from where he used to stand. Jesus made it plain. There would be untold wealth
and greed and overindulgence as we approach
the end of the age. One newspaper columnist
called our American lifestyle a Babylonian existence. And then fourthly, Jesus said there would be
famines in many places and pestilences. Not universal, but in
different places, He said. And much of the famine in
the world today is man-made, the result of
political struggles and civil war. Look at the famine
in Monrovia, Liberia tonight. Five hundred thousand people
jammed into that town. There’s no water. The water has been cut off
for ten days. There’s no food, there's no rice, and disease is breaking out. What’s going to happen? And that’s happening
in many parts of the world. It’s happening in places in
India and it looks like war between India and Pakistan
is very, very close. And we see all of these things
taking place now. And they’re all things Jesus
predicted would be happening just before he comes. American’s spend billions
of dollars annually on reducing programs when the rest of the world are just
trying to get enough to eat. And then He said
iniquity shall abound. And He was talking
about sex perversions. Yes, I’m not going
to go into that tonight because we don’t have time, but the daily crime rate
staggers us. The young women that are
being attacked today and raped is forty percent greater
than it was a year ago. Something has happened. It seems like some terrible,
evil spirit has been let loose, and he has. It’s the devil. Somebody asked me
what’s wrong with the world. I said, "Sin is wrong
with the world." and the devil is flaming
the fire or fanning the fire, and that’s what’s happened. We ask ourselves, have our moral values
gone completely? Almost, so that even Christians
today are confused, and we become worldly Christians instead of
Bible reading Christians, studying the scriptures
and praying in our homes. We sit in front of
that little box and get our moral values
from there. And then he said, there will be an increase
in earthquakes. There are some six thousand
earthquakes detected throughout the world each year. The average death toll from
earthquakes in the 20th century has been twenty thousand people
every year. In Armenia in 1988
there were twenty-five thousand. In Iran, a few weeks ago,
there were fifty thousand. Earthquakes are increasing. In II Peter He said since everything will be
destroyed in that day, what kind of people
ought you to be? We now have the ozone effect. Everybody is getting concerned
about the environment. They ought to be, because in this passage of
scripture it teaches that the earth is going to melt. It’s going to fade away. Something is going to happen. Some climactic thing
is going to happen, and it seems to me that what we are reading about
in the ozone effect is the thing that Peter is
talking about. And he said, since everything
will be destroyed and changed in this way, what kind of people
ought you to be? You ought to live
holy and godly lives as you look forward to
the day of God, and speed its coming. The Christian is not
a dropout from life. On the contrary, it is believing
that Christ will return that gives us the confidence
and the courage to live as we should today. Knowing that Christ is coming
back makes me want to work that much more. I want to feed more people. I want to preach to more people. I want to help more people
who are starving and homeless. It encourages us. It’s an incentive
to get out in society and do the best we can. We know that the whole world
is not going to be saved, but coming out of the world
are going to be people who will be saved, because we look for
a new heaven and a new earth as God has promised. And we live boldly for Him in
the context of our lives today. The Bible says there is a day
coming when God will shake
the heavens and the earth. It will be a day of salvation
for those who know Christ. It will be a day of judgement
for those who don’t know him. Are you prepared? The scripture says,
prepare to meet thy God. Have you prepared? You say, “Well, what do I have
to do to prepare?” Yes, you go to church
once and awhile. You’ve been baptized. You take communion perhaps. You’ve taken your vows
in the church, but deep inside
you’re not sure how you stand. And you want to be sure
before you leave here. This crusade will be over
in a few minutes. This phase of it, at least, because it’s going to continue
in churches and it’s going to continue
in all the great follow-up work that’s being planned; but, you need to make
a commitment to Christ today. Today is the day of salvation. Now is the accepted time. The scripture teaches
you can harden your heart. God is giving you
another moment, another chance
to say yes to Him. I’m going to ask you
to do something we’ve seen the last two nights
over two thousand people do. I'm going to ask you to get up
out of your seat and come and stand
in front of this platform and say, by coming,
I surrender my heart to Christ. I want to be sure. I want to have the assurance
that I’m saved. That I’m going to heaven. That I’m going to be prepared
to meet Christ when He returns. You say, “Why do you ask me
to come forward?” Every person that Jesus called
in the New Testament, he called publicly. He said, “If you’re not willing
to acknowledge me before men, “I’ll not acknowledge you
before my Father "which is in heaven.” There’s something about making
that public commitment that he has ordained for us to do. And I’m going to ask you
to do that right now. Hundreds of you
that God is speaking to. If you come from up here it will take you
a couple minutes, so start now. God is speaking to you. If you are with friends or
relatives, they’ll wait on you. If you’ve come in a bus,
they’ll wait. There’s plenty of time. God is speaking to you. You come. Quickly. And after you’ve all come,
I’m going to say a word to you, have a prayer with you, give you some literature to
help you in your Christian life. Just get up and come right now,
from up here and all around. ♪ And that Thy blood
was shed for me. ♪ ♪ To Thee whose blood can
cleanse each spot ♪ ♪ O Lamb of God,
I come... ♪ (Announcer)
As hundreds are responding to Mr. Graham’s invitation to make a public commitment
to Jesus Christ, you can make
that same commitment right where you are. Just pick up the phone
and call the number you see on your screen. Special friends are waiting
to talk with you and pray with you about
this most important decision. To you that have been watching
by television you can see that hundreds of people are coming
here in Knickerbacker Arena in Albany, NY. What a wonderful sight this is and Ralph Bell who has been
preaching night after night before I came has seen hundreds of people
come to Christ as he’s preached as well. There’s been a great
spiritual hunger here and a great move
of the Spirit of God. And I’m asking you to receive
Christ into your heart wherever you are. In your home,
maybe a nightclub or maybe a hotel room. You can say yes to Christ. God bless you and help you
to make that commitment tonight. And be sure and go to church
next Sunday. If you just prayed that prayer with my father or if you have any questions about a relationship
with Jesus Christ, why don’t you just
call that number that is on the screen. They’ll be someone
there to talk with you, pray with you and answer
those questions. And remember,
God love you! If you would like to commit
your life to Jesus Christ, please call us right
now, toll-free at 1-877-772-4559. That’s 1-800-772-4559. Or you can write to us at Billy Graham 1 Billy Graham Parkway, Department C, Charlotte, NC 28201. Or you can contact us on the web
24/7 at PeaceWithGod.tv. We’ll get the same helps to you
that we give to everyone who responds at the invitation. On behalf of Franklin Graham, and the Billy Graham
Evangelistic Association, thank you for watching and thank you for your prayers. It’s Anne,
she’s in trouble. If you don’t take it to the edge
every chance you get, you’re dead already, baby. I was in trouble and I didn’t know what to do. (slap)
"Ow!" (Nazi)
Where are the Jews? I knew that I could
take on the world. It’s like you’re in a dream,
but not really a dream, this is reality. I don’t really believe
in all this but I know something crazy is happening right now.
