<TITLE>03. Par 10-14</TITLE>L-10 What a beautiful picture of the church. Before the Church can ever be taken out of the critics, it has to go through the critics first. And then it's taken in the rapture to glory after it's stood the test of criticism.
And it ought to make every Christian happy tonight to know that you can live so in this earth, not being of the earth, just a pilgrim and a stranger, a sojourner here, knowing this, that our--our heritage is not of this world. Our kingdom is not of this world; it's of the world that is to come.
Knowing this that we're living in what they call "the day of man." The day of the Lord will come. That will be the day for His church. All these things are earthly and will perish.

L-11 And notice what our Lord said. "All that lives godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution." Every son that cometh to God must first be tried, chastened, child-trained. No exceptions, every son that cometh to God must be tried. And if we cannot stand the chastisement, then the Scripture says we become illegitimate children and not the children of God.
And isn't it a grand feeling to know that God's grace has carried some of you here through twenty and thirty years of trials and persecutions. God did that for you: shows that you're a real child of God. And He has taken you into His fellowship. Someday in the face of all that has criticized you, you'll be glorified and made a body is like unto His own glorious body at His coming. We wait for that blessed hope.

L-12 And then, this great picture as it was passing through the critics, there was one outstanding critic who came and he said, "Sir, I think your portrait of Christ is beautiful. And I think that the door, and the setting, and coming at nighttime in the darkest, and knocking at the door, I think that that is very fitting of Revelations 3:20." But he said, "There is just one thing that you forgot to do, sir."
And the artist said, "What would that be?"
He said, "You forgot to put a latch on the door. If the man would say 'Come in,' how could He come in when there's no latch for Him to come in by?"
"Oh," the artist said, "I painted it thus. You see, on in this case the latch is on the inside."

L-13 And that's the way it is. The latch is on the inside; Christ knocks at the door, but you have to open the door. He will not against your will... He gives you ability to let Him in, but He will--cannot force Himself in, for there's no latch for Him to come in by. You must open the door.
And then what would anyone knock at a door for? What would be the object of someone knocking at a door? It's trying to gain entrance inside to--with a message, with a present, or with a commission, or something that the one is knocking is trying to get to the inside to see who is inside. And this has been done by friends and foes through the age.

L-14 For instance, what if the great days of the great Caesar Augustus, what if he would've come down to a--one of the peasant's houses in Rome? And he would've knocked on the door of this poor, down in more of the trashy part of the city, where the poor lived... And the great Augustus would've come down and knocked at the door of some poor peasant, and the peasant would've went to the door, opened the door, and there stood the great Caesar... What do you think that peasant would've thought? "Me, a poor man, can hardly know how to get from one meal to the other, and here's the emperor of the nation standing at my door." What an honor that would've been for the peasant, the poor man, because Caesar was the most important man in the whole Roman world. So it would've been a great honor for him.
Now, and so he would've said, "Great emperor, come into my humble home. If there is anything in my home that you desire, it's yours. You may have it. If there is anything that I can do to help my great emperor, this I will do." Because it's the importance of the person at the door what makes it so real?


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