[0:00] Well, we are very honored tonight to have Brother Don Sisk. He is the Director Emeritus of BIMI, Baptist International Missions Incorporated.
[0:11] We're in the process of trying to get this land purchased and get us a place for our training center. So we asked Brother Sisk about it. He said if we would put VBM, branch of BIMI, he might help us.
[0:27] But I am very honored. I met Brother Sisk probably 35 years ago. I was at a missions conference I just started. And we were in Orange Park, and we were playing golf.
[0:38] And I couldn't hit the ball or find it after I hit it. And Dr. Sisk won, and they gave him that green jacket, I think you give him. He got the green jacket.
[0:50] And I think he and every other pastor enjoyed laughing at the kid from Tennessee. But, man, I'm honored. I hope you are honored and blessed tonight to have this great man with us. And you listen.
[1:00] I know God's going to bless us. Come on, preacher. Thank you, Pastor Gardner. It's a great blessing to be with you. In fact, at my age, it's a great blessing to be anywhere in the world, okay?
[1:13] A few months ago, I was in a church in Michigan. And we had had dinner in the basement. And we were going up the stairs to the auditorium for the service that night.
[1:29] And at the top of the stairs, there was a beautiful little girl, probably eight or nine years old, something like that. And she looked at me, and she said, Sir, you look old.
[1:41] And I said, Hon, the reason I look old is because I am old, okay? A few months after that, I was in Wilson, North Carolina at the Tabernacle Baptist Church. And we had a great, great meeting.
[1:54] But the pastor and I and his wife were eating dinner one time. They got a place down there called something about the steakhouse or something like that. It's a little bitty hole in the wall.
[2:07] You wouldn't expect anything. But they open up at 5 o'clock. And if you're not there at 4.30, you won't get in until 6.30. I mean, it's the best steak I've ever eaten in my life. We were having a wonderful time.
[2:17] And Elizabeth looked at me, and she said, Brother Don, you used to come to my church every year. And she was from the Temple Baptist Church in Herndon, Virginia.
[2:29] And she said, and I was a little girl. And she said, you were old then. I said, yeah, I've been old a long time, okay? But thank God I'm here tonight.
[2:43] And it's a great blessing to be with you. Open your Bibles to Revelation chapter 7. And I'm going to have you stand for the reading of God's Word, if you don't mind. Revelation chapter 7.
[2:56] And I'm going to begin reading with verse 9. This is a wonderful, wonderful passage of Scripture. It says, And they crowd with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God.
[3:35] By the way, nobody's going to get to heaven and say, man, I made it here on my own. We're all going to say that same. Salvation is of the Lord.
[3:47] Which setteth upon the throne and unto the Lamb. The Lamb of God. That takes away the sins of the world. Amen. And all the angels stood round about the throne and about the elders and the four beasts and fell before the throne on their faces and worshiped God, saying, Amen, blessings and glory, wisdom, thanksgiving and honor and power and might be unto our God forever and ever.
[4:20] Amen. And one of the elders answered, saying unto me. John is writing, okay? One of the elders answered, saying to me, What are these which are arrayed in white robes?
[4:33] And whence came they? And listen to John. And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest. And he said to me, These are they which came out of great tribulation and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
[4:56] Therefore are they before the throne of God and serve him day and night in his temple. And he that sitteth upon the throne shall dwell among them.
[5:09] And I love this. They shall hunger no more. Neither shall there any. Neither. I'm sorry.
[5:20] Neither thirst anymore. Neither shall the sun light on them nor any heat. For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, shall lead them unto everlasting fountains of water.
[5:37] And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes. Heaven. Great place. Amen. Let's pray. Dear Lord, I thank you for the blessings of the day that I've had here with these dear people.
[5:53] For the opportunity to be here tonight. Now, Lord, every time I try to preach, I'm cognate of the fact that without you I can do nothing.
[6:05] And, Lord, I'm totally dependent upon you tonight. And I pray that you'd take me and use me for your honor and your glory. Encourage your people. Lord, if there happen to be somebody listening here tonight or online that does not know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, they're not sure they're going to heaven, that this would be the good night when they'd get that thing settled.
[6:28] Thank you for your word, the Bible. In Jesus' name, amen. You may be seated. Several years ago, Dr. Mark Rasmussen, one of the vice presidents of West Coast Baptist College, gave me a book.
[6:47] And, by the way, between Mark Rasmussen and Dr. Paul Chappell and my son Tim, they want to be sure I'm educated, okay? I'm always, one of them's always giving me a book, Tim, and you've got to read this book and so forth, okay?
[7:00] The name of the book was Unbroken. You may have read the book. Unbroken. It was made into a movie also. It was the story of the amazing survival of an Air Force officer.
[7:18] His name was Louis Zapparini. Before he enlisted in the Air Force, Louis was an Olympian runner. He and another officer survived 47 days on a raft in the Pacific Ocean.
[7:37] I mean, that sounds like an impossibility. There was another young man on the raft, but that young man died and was buried at sea. For 47 days, they suffered every kind of adversity you could possibly think about.
[7:54] After 47 days, they floated onto a little island in the Pacific Ocean. And this island was occupied by the Japanese.
[8:08] For months, they suffered unbelievable torture. They were then sent to a Japanese concentration camp where he became the object of the unimaginable cruel treatment from a Japanese officer by the name of Watanabe.
[8:24] Watanabe had been defeated in the Olympics by Louis Zapparini. He hated Louis Zapparini. Did everything. I mean, you know, it's a big, big, big book.
[8:38] And, you know, day by day by day, all of these adversities and so forth. And I knew that in the end, something good was going to happen.
[8:50] And I got so depressed reading the book that I thought, I'm going to turn to the back of the book. And I'm going to find out what eventually happened, and then I can read it with us.
[9:02] And sure enough, I did. Hey, by the way, some of you elderly people, you remember years ago when they'd hand out the math books?
[9:14] And the teacher would say, now the answers are in the back of the book, but don't look back there. Well, that was wasted breath. I mean, you got hung up on a math problem, you're going to look in the back of the book.
[9:31] Okay. Just about every day, I just got an email before I came here, telling of the death of the father of Brother Richie, who is a missionary in Mongolia.
[9:48] And a couple of days ago, a good friend of mine called me and said, Brother, sis, my wife just went to heaven. I'm having a hard time struggling with it. So just about every day, there's something that happens in my life that compels me to turn to the back of the book to see how things really turn out.
[10:15] Wars everywhere. Hatred expressed. People starving to death. Child molestation. Cruel treatment from wives or husbands to their mates.
[10:28] Unjust judgments. Hundreds of other things that would make one wonder, is there any hope? Then, I turned to the back of the book.
[10:41] Hey, by the way, we win. That's good to know. Amen. We win. In this wonderful passage, we read these words.
[10:52] Notice this statement. Look at it very carefully. Chapter 7, verse 9. And after this I beheld, and lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations and kindreds and people, and tongues stood before the throne, and before the Lamb clothed with white robes and palms in their hands.
[11:22] Look at the statement. There was an unbelievably great multitude of people. Heaven's multitude. By the way, the Bible never exaggerates.
[11:37] They're not Baptists, amen? They, you know, the Bible, when the Bible says there was a great multitude which no man could number, an innumerable number of people in heaven.
[11:53] Now, there are a lot of people that just can't get a hold of that at all. They just think there's just going to be a few people in heaven. In fact, some people think like this. I'm not sure about anybody but me and you.
[12:06] I'm not real sure about you, okay? And people get the idea that there's only going to be a few people in heaven. Well, this is not my writing.
[12:20] This is God's writing. And God says there's going to be an innumerable number of people in heaven.
[12:32] Let's ask ourselves some questions about this passage. In this wonderful passage, we read the words, the statement, a great multitude that no man could number, all nations.
[12:47] And usually when the word nations is used in the Bible, it's not talking about a nation like the United States of America, a United Kingdom, something like that.
[12:57] It's translated from the word ethnos, which means an ethnic group. And while there are maybe 200 and something nations, I'm not sure about that.
[13:11] I don't have it right written down. If it's not written down, I don't remember it, okay? But there are thousands of ethnic groups. For instance, in India, there are hundreds and hundreds, maybe thousands of ethnic groups.
[13:25] And so the Bible states here that there's going to be an innumerable number of people in heaven. And the wonderful thing is that they're going to come from all ethnic groups, all tongues.
[13:44] Isn't it wonderful? Heaven is going to be a very diverse place. I was born and raised in western Kentucky. You have a man here from west Kentucky, and he knows all about that area, okay?
[14:00] But western Kentucky, the only people I ever met were Caucasians that spoke English and so forth.
[14:10] They were all nearly alike. And I never will forget the first time I went to Hawaii. And a priest in one of the churches over there.
[14:21] And there were so many nationalities represented there. And I looked out on that group, and I thought, man, this is going to be like heaven. Huh? I mean, not Hawaii, okay?
[14:35] But that's a little bit of heaven, too. We're being these days for most people in the United States of America. If they could be in Hawaii during this time. But Christianity, biblical Christianity is not a local religion.
[14:55] Many times in Japan, the Japanese would say to me, Jesus is the American God. We have our own God.
[15:05] And by the way, they do. Gods, thousands and thousands of them. We have our own God. Jesus is the American God.
[15:17] And I would always remind them, when Jesus came to the world, there was no America. Come on. Okay. So, he's not the American God.
[15:31] He's the God of the entire universe, isn't he? But they're going to be, where did they come from? And we've heard people come across the platform this evening.
[15:46] And all different kind of countries and so forth. Now, I've had the privilege to visit some 80 different countries around the world. And a lot of times you go into a place, you know, you've never been before.
[16:00] And the missionaries are there and they help you and so forth. And you can't understand anything that people are saying. But even though you can't understand what they're saying, the Holy Spirit of God just binds you together.
[16:12] And so, there are going to be people from all over the world. All kind of languages. Now, they're not going to speak all those languages.
[16:27] When we get to heaven, they'll all speak English, okay? Maybe not, but we'll all speak the same thing, okay? Notice another statement.
[16:39] Where did they come from? Look down in verse 14. And I said to him, Sir, thou knowest. And he said to me, These are they which came out of great tribulation.
[16:50] Where did they come from? They came from all different ethnic groups all around the world. And then the Bible says, And they came out of great tribulation.
[17:05] Listen to the Bible, okay? And I saw a new heaven and a new earth. And that's the wrong... Yeah.
[17:16] And the first heaven and the first earth have passed away. And that's the wrong passage, okay? Let me see if I can find the right one. Okay, here it is.
[17:27] Okay. Bear with me, okay? I'm old, okay? John 16, 33. Listen to it. These things have I spoken unto you, that in me you might have peace.
[17:45] Okay? Jesus, I want you to have peace. Then he said, In the world, you may have tribulation. Is that what your Bible says?
[17:56] If it is, you've got a bad translation, okay? Listen to it. In the world, you shall have tribulation. Be of good care.
[18:09] I've overcome the world. Acts 14, 21, the Bible says this. And when they had preached the gospel to that city and taught many, they returned again to Lystra and Iconium and Antioch, confirming the souls of the disciples and exhorting them to continue in the faith and that we must, through much tribulation, enter into the kingdom of God.
[18:38] Christian, could I remind you tonight, don't be surprised and shocked when you go through persecution. Now, I know what we've come through, the elections and all that thing, people are scared to death and so forth.
[18:53] But it just may be that America is going to find out what it costs other people to be Christians around the world. And I know sometimes we think, this is typical Christianity.
[19:06] This is our typical Christianity in America. Yeah. And so he said, we're going to have tribulation. Romans 5, 1 says this.
[19:16] Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we also have access by faith into the grace wherein we stand and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.
[19:32] And not only we, but we glory in tribulation, also knowing that tribulation worketh patience. Now, here's one of the strangest passages of Scripture in the whole Bible.
[19:49] 2 Corinthians chapter 4 and verse 7. Listen to Paul. For our light affliction. Really?
[20:01] Your affliction was light? Light? Light? You were scourged five times. You were beaten with rods. You know, you were stoned. You had all kind of problems inside the church, outside the churches, on and on and on.
[20:17] And you called that light affliction. How could he do that? Listen to the rest of it. For our light afflictions, which is but for a moment.
[20:29] worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. While we look not at things which are seen, but things which are not seen.
[20:44] For the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. I shiver to think, Brother Gardner, what some of these missionaries that came across this platform tonight are going to face.
[21:05] And to be honest with you, I shiver to think what's going to happen to a lot of people in America. Okay? We are in danger of losing religious freedom.
[21:22] COVID's done a lot of things. One thing it's done, it's given governors authority to tell churches what they can do and what they can't do. They don't have that authority.
[21:35] Now, I know, they trashed the Constitution. And I have six grandchildren and I have ten great-grandchildren.
[21:47] And I look at them and I think, unless things drastically change in the next four or five years, my great-grandchildren won't have any idea what America was really like.
[22:02] Tribulation. Tribulations are real. We all have them. Of course, some have more than others. But thank God, one day, there will be no more tribulation for any of the children of God.
[22:20] Heaven. That's what heaven is. There is a passage in the Bible that is found 457 times.
[22:32] Here it is. It came to pass. It came to pass. Whatever tribulation we may be going through, it didn't come to stay.
[22:48] Thank God it came to pass. Amen. And one day when we get to heaven, all those tribulations will be gone. The best thing that happens to unbelievers happens on this earth.
[23:08] The worst thing that will ever happen to a believer happens on this earth. Because when we breathe our last breath, thank God the tribulations will all be over.
[23:26] I could never, never forget watching my dear wife of 65 years breathe her last breath on July 8, 2017.
[23:41] 2017. And the passage has always meant a great deal to me. But the passage it says, absent from the body and present with the Lord.
[23:56] I mean, you know, I thought, she breathed her last breath of earthly air and her first breath of celestial air. By the way, that's the way it happened.
[24:08] Absent from the body, present with the Lord. No soul sleep. Absent from the body and present with the Lord. Listen to a couple of verses.
[24:20] And he shall judge among the nations, shall rebuke many people, and they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.
[24:32] Nations shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore. Glory to God. Amen. Another one. The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together, and the little child shall lead them, and the cow and the bear shall feed, their young ones shall live, lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw like an ox.
[25:08] Believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, those who have been born again by the Spirit of God, one day all the tribulation will be over.
[25:21] Next question. Okay. What are we going to do in heaven? You ever wonder that? I don't know how many times recently I've thought, I wonder what Virginia's doing today.
[25:37] Valentine's Day. We had great times on Valentine's Day. I always bought her candy and flowers, never quit doing that. Her birthday, Christmas, all those things, and I'd often, what's she doing?
[25:51] How do you celebrate your birthday in heaven? You say, well, those are dumb questions. Well, they may be for you, but when your mate's gone, they'll come around, okay? What are we going to do in heaven?
[26:06] Notice two things that I know for sure we're going to do. Look for just a minute at verse 10. And they cried with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God, which setteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb.
[26:29] And all the angels stood round about the throne and about the elders and the four beasts and fell down before the throne on their faces and worshipped him.
[26:44] What does that mean? He is worthy of praise. By the way, we're going to be praising God every day in heaven. You say, well, won't that get old?
[26:55] No. We'll learn something new every day throughout the ceaseless ages of eternity about God that'll make us praise him more. We used to sing a little song.
[27:08] It went like this. Now, relax. I'm not going to sing, okay? But the song went like this. We'll talk it over in the by and by. We'll talk it over, my Lord and I.
[27:19] I'll ask the questions and he'll tell me why when we talk it over in the by and by. But I got to thinking recently. Once I see him, there won't be any questions, ain't there?
[27:37] I mean, imagine, we are going to see him with our eyes. And we're going to worship him. Worship.
[27:51] Realizing that we have been recipients of his marvelous grace and we'll praise him. Somebody as well said, I would tell you who said it, but you'd think I was a liberal for reading about him, okay?
[28:07] But he said, we are most useful to God when we are most pleased with God. How pleased are you with God tonight?
[28:19] That'll tell you how useful you are for God. So, so what are they doing? They're, they're worshiping. Now, something else. Look down at verse 15.
[28:30] Therefore, are they before the throne of God. Now, watch this next statement. And serve him day and night in his temple.
[28:48] Think about it. They will serve him. In heaven, we're going to worship. But guess what? In heaven, we're going to work.
[28:58] Now, the dumb person that pictured heaven as somebody with a harp and floating around on a cloud was probably the devil.
[29:14] Amen? And by the way, if that was heaven, I wouldn't care about going to heaven. I mean, after all, I don't trust that cloud and I can't play a harp, okay? No, no, no.
[29:27] We're going to be serving him. Well done, thou good and faithful servant. I've been faithful over a few things. I will make thee ruler over many things.
[29:38] Okay? In other words, we are going to be working. I heard a preacher make this statement a few years ago. He said, if Eve had not eaten of that apple, now he didn't like women, okay?
[29:54] If Eve had not eaten of that apple, we wouldn't have to be working. Wait a minute. God gave Adam and Eve something to do even before they sinned.
[30:07] Now, work became more difficult after they sinned, okay? But we're going to be working. You think about it. this entire universe and this earth is just a little bitty speck in comparison to the universe.
[30:28] But that all belongs to God. And through the ceaseless ages of eternity, we're going to be serving God.
[30:40] God may say to me, hey Don, go over to Jupiter today. Get over to Mars. And it won't take me any time. Just like, I'm there. I mean, the more you read about heaven, the more you want to go there.
[30:56] Greatest book I've ever read on heaven is written by Randy Alcorn. It's just, the name of the book is just heaven. But it makes heaven so real. I've got an audio book of it.
[31:09] I've given away any number of hardback books to people that have terminal diseases and they know they're going to die pretty soon. It's been such a, such a great blessing.
[31:22] Heaven. We're going, we're going to be working. What are we doing? We're going to worship. Hey, by the way, since we're going to worship Him every day in heaven, it'd be a good idea to get a little practice down here.
[31:38] Amen? So, amens and praise the Lord and hallelujah. It shouldn't be a bad thing. I heard about this little lady and you've probably heard about this story.
[31:50] And she went into this church and it was pretty formal. And the preacher, he got to saying something real good and she said, praise the Lord. You know. And one of the ushers came up to her and said, ma'am, ma'am, we don't, we don't do this thing in our church, you know.
[32:06] And she said, oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to serve. And then, a little later in the service, she got all involved in it again. And she said, hallelujah. And the usher came and ushered her out to the best of you.
[32:21] And said, ma'am, said, we don't, we don't do things like that in our church. And she said, well, you know, I recognized one day I was a wicked sinner. And I trusted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.
[32:34] And every once in a while, I just have to say, amen, praise the Lord, hallelujah. And the usher said, well, you didn't get it here. Okay. Thank God you can get it here.
[32:48] Amen. They're going to be working. They're going to be worshiping. Question number three. How did they get there? How did all of this great innumerable multitude of people, how did they get to heaven?
[33:10] Look at verse 13, 14 again. And one of the elders, and you have to kind of recognize the fact that the apostle John is just listening to the Holy Spirit of God and he's writing.
[33:25] And one of the elders answered saying unto me, What are these which are arrayed in white robes? And whence came they? What are these in white robes?
[33:38] Where did they come from? And listen to John. And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest. Hey, I don't know.
[33:50] I'm just writing down what God the Holy Spirit tells me to write down. And he said unto me, These are they which came out of great tribulation and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
[34:11] Question. How did they know about the blood of the Lamb? By the way, when you hear it, words like that, it's talking about the vicarious suffering of the Lord Jesus Christ.
[34:25] everybody in heaven and everybody that will be in heaven when we get there.
[34:36] In fact, I've lived so long so many of my friends have died. I said to somebody the other day, I guess my friends are kind of thinking maybe Don didn't make it, okay? But I'm going to make it one day, okay?
[34:55] But everybody in heaven one day heard the Word of God. Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.
[35:10] And you know that your great mission church. for whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. But how shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed?
[35:23] And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear? Without a what? Somebody to communicate the message to them.
[35:36] How did they hear? People like walked across this platform tonight. Left America, left England.
[35:49] They're now leaving Korea and Japan and all the Philippines. They're sending missionaries all around the world. That's how they heard.
[36:00] Somebody went there. Somebody learned their language. Somebody adapted to their culture. Somebody started a church and a lot of people got saved.
[36:13] They'll be in heaven. Thank God. How did they get there? They got there by trusting Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.
[36:28] I'm going to sing. I wish I could sing. If my voice was halfway decent, I would. Here's my favorite mission song. Contemporary music song.
[36:44] I dreamed my life was done. I stood before God's Son. It was time to see what my reward would be.
[36:54] with love he reviewed my life to count what was done for Christ.
[37:09] For that is what will last eternally. See, I've done my best to tell that Jesus really saves and he would save if they would just believe.
[37:22] Oh, but seldom did harvest come. And so few did I see one until the Lord said, turn around and see.
[37:39] Then he showed me the faces of the ones who came because of me. So many faces that my life had led to Calvary.
[37:51] All those years I thought nobody saw as I labored in lonely places. That's when Jesus smiled and showed me all the faces.
[38:07] One day we're going to get to heaven and we're going to see everybody that has been saved as a result of the ministry of vision baptism.
[38:25] Every soul that's been saved by missionaries supported by this church, you're going to see them.
[38:35] a lot of times we think not much is happening. Hey, be patient. God is doing a lot more than we can see.
[38:52] I love that then he showed me the faces. Faces. Faces. Let's pray together. Pastor. With your heads bowed, your eyes closed, I don't know if the Holy Spirit's dealt with your heart about something.
[39:08] Maybe souls that you ought to be sharing the gospel with and the Holy Spirit's dealt with you. Maybe discouragement, maybe family members that have died and you were bothered and you trust the Lord with now.
[39:26] Or maybe some that are close to dying and you just like to pray for them and know that God's going to take them to heaven. Would you get out of your seat and come? Maybe God would have you be a soul winner, a missionary, do more giving, whatever he might be dealing with your heart about.
[39:49] Father in heaven, I pray that you'd work tonight. I pray your name would be glorified. I thank you so much for the message. God, I thank you for heaven. Thank you for what you do for us.
[40:01] Thank you for saving us. We're going to give you all the praise for all you do. In Jesus' name.