<TITLE>05. Par 44-55</TITLE>L-44 Mr. Isler, driving his old truck, jumped out and put his arm around me. He said, "I've heard you preaching on the street corner, Billy; I've seen you standing in the Tabernacle; I've heard you at the hymn singing's, how you exalted Christ, what you said He was." Said, "Now He has taken your father, your brother, your wife, and your baby." Said, "Now what does He mean to you?"
I said, "Mr. Isler, if He would send me to the regions of the lost, I'd still love Him. For one day down yonder in an old coal shed, something happened down here in my heart that there is nothing that can rub it out. It was nothing that I did. It was God's eternal grace that held me in the hour of great decision."

L-46 And when our blessed Lord in the Gethsemane, when going there, when He was re--to be rejected at Jerusalem, and the council was going to take His life... When the Eternal destination of every soul that ever was or would be on the earth rested upon His decision... Oh, how little mine was, comparison to that. How little yours was, in comparison to that. Such a pity that we can't stand these little things.
But in that great crucial hour until He suffered knowing all things, until the water and Blood separated in His body, and great drops of sweat-like Blood dropped from His brow... He died more death in Gethsemane than He did on the cross.
He was just at the event of this, just before the great battle was to start, and He took the communion. He brought His disciples together to talk over things with them.
And that's the way He does you and I just before the great battle of life starts, before the great battle of right and wrong begins to battle within us, God brings us to a Gethsemane. He brings us to the communion and He talks it all over with us.

L-51 Way out in Phoenix, Arizona, there used to be a little trio that used to sing for me, "I would like to talk it over with Jesus. I'd like to say, 'Jesus, You loved me when my path got so narrow. When it was so dim that I could see no farther, You loved me when it was dim.'" And the little song goes on to say that, "I'd like to talk it over."
And it's a good thing that men and women of this earth stop in life's long travel and talk it over with Jesus, have communion with Him in a fellowship. Then the battle begins of the testing and the trying. "Every son that cometh to God must be tested."

L-53 Now, the communion is not err. It's not given for the purpose that many people think it is. It's taught--taught by certain denomination of church, that communion is called the last rites, that it pertains to salvation. Communion does not pertain to salvation. Communion does not give you salvation. Whether you take it in your death, or--or what, it does not have nothing to do with your salvation.
It is a commemoration. Jesus said in the Gospel; He said, "This do in remembrance of Me." Not it leaning or pointing to salvation, but it's in commemoration of a finished work that's been done in you by the Holy Spirit. It's a commemoration.

L-55 Now, there's many that take the communion, is not saved. Many eat the paschal lamb and perished in the wilderness. And many take the communion today that will never see God.
But you cannot be a partaker of His salvation and not see Him, because salvation is a gift of God. And communion is commemoration of the great all-sufficient Sacrifice that was made for that salvation. It's to let people see that we believe in the death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. It represents a finished work.


<A HREF="P6">Next Page</A>