There are many wonderful stories of people who were saved in the Bible. I want to read to you briefly about one of them tonight. My folks know that when I say briefly, that means nine and a half. But I promise you that won't be the case. And I want you to do me a favor. I want you to promise me that if I ask you to stand up for half a minute, you won't sneak out the back door, okay? Let's stand for the reading of the Word of God together. First, Romans chapter 16, verse number 16. You can just follow along there in your Bible. And it came to pass as they went to prayer a certain damsel, possessed with a spirit of divination, met us, which both her masters must gain by soothsaying. The same followed Paul and us and cried, saying, These men are the servants of the Most High God, which show unto us the way of salvation. And this did she many days. But Paul, being grieved, turned and said to the spirit, I command thee in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her. And he came out the same hour. And when her master saw that the hope of their gains were gone, they caught Paul and Silas and drew them into the marketplace under the rulers and brought them to the magistrates, saying, These men, being Jews, do exceedingly trouble our city. And they teach customs, which are not lawful for us to receive, neither to observe being Romans. And the multitude rose up together against them, Paul and Silas. And the magistrates tore off their clothes and commanded that they beat them. And when they had laid many stripes upon them, they cast them into prison, charging the jailer to keep them safely. Who, having received such a charge, thrust them into the inner prison and made their feet secure in the stock. And at midnight, Paul and Silas prayed and sang praises unto God, and the prisoners heard them. And suddenly, there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken. And immediately, all the doors were opened and everyone's bands were loosed. And the keepers of the prison awaking out of his sleep, and seeing the doors open, drew out his sword, and would have killed himself, supposing that the prisoners had fled. But Paul cried with a loud voice, saying, Do thyself no harm, for we are all here. Then he called for a light and sprang in, and came trembling and fell down before Paul and Silas. And when he brought them out, he said unto them, Sir, what must I do to be saved? And they said, Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house. And they spake unto him the word of the Lord. And to all that were in his house, and he took them the same hour of the night, and washed their stripes, and was baptized. He and all his immediately. And when he had brought them into his house, he set me before them and rejoiced, believing in God with all his house. And we bow our heads in prayer. Our Father, this world is confused. People are confused. We have a hundred new names for a hundred old problems. We have the answer to everything, but the solution to nothing. And we realize that when people are saved, their problems do not end. But that there comes a power in their life to deal with those problems. For thou hast said in thy word, Greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world. And we pray that not one person shall walk out of here tonight, until they have dealt with these old -fashioned words. What it means to be lost in sin, and how men can be saved by the grace of God. And may not one least, until they know by faith in Christ, an experience with the Spirit of God that has changed their beings, they have been saved. For we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Paul and Silas, the great preachers of the gospel, had been in a great revival in Philippi. Since there were no church buildings, they were preaching in the street. They were preaching in the stores. They were preaching on the mountaintop. They were preaching from house to house. They were preaching everywhere that people would listen. Now the Bible tells us that there was a girl who followed them, who was a fortune teller. She continually made fun of them. She said, These men are the servants of the Most High God. But she did so in mockery and ridicule. The Bible tells us that God, power through the lives of these men, rebuked the evil spirit. He was cast out of her, and this demented girl was transformed by the power of Christ. After she was saved, those that owned her, those who were in charge of her life, who made no small gain because of her witchcraft and her prophecy and her through things, were disturbed. And they caused them to be cast into jail saying that these men are disturbing the status quo. Now when Paul and Silas got into jail, they didn't do what most Christians do. They didn't begin to gripe and to complain, to call for their attorney. They didn't begin to murmur against the Lord. They didn't say, now Lord, we haven't been out here gambling and lying and stealing. We've been preaching the gospel. We don't deserve to be in jail. What have you got us in here for? No, they learned the secret of what Gail Evans had said, in all things, give thanks. Rejoice in tribulation, for this is the will of God. And so the Bible says at midnight, they began to pray. They began to sing. They had obviously been witnessing in that Genzee jail to all of those people who were in there with them. And when they began to sing, they must have been something like the way Harvick and Isle and Frank sing. It must have been terrible. The Lord couldn't stand it. And he sent his earthquake angel down to take the thing and to stop the singing. Now the Bible tells us that these men were singing and praising God and their power and their spirit, their contagious enthusiasm, their witness for Christ had permeated the whole jail. And so when the earthquake came, the doors flew open and all of those around stayed still. They didn't leave. They were Christians and they knew to obey the law. Now the Bible tells us that the jailer sprang in trembling. You see, there was a custom that when one let one in his care get away, that he would pay for it with his own life. What was going to happen to the jailer who in charge of this jail, regardless of an earthquake over which he had no control, had let scores of people go. And supposing that they had been fled, the Bible says, he drew out his sword and was ready to fall upon us and take his own life. But Paul cried out and said, do thyself no harm. We're all here. We're secure. We're not going to leave. Don't worry. This man was suddenly gripped with a tremendous conviction of the spirit of God that there was something in him he didn't have. He had seen other men blaspheme and swear and profane God and curse and hate and curse the jailer. But these men had something that gave them power in the midst of difficulty. They had something that gave them inner composure in the midst of adversity. Their lives and testimonies had convicted of the jailers. And so he got the light and came in and finding they were there, was so interested in what they had that he didn't, fell down before them and said, sir, what must I do to be saved? What a wonderful conversion experience he had. I think of the conversion of the thief on the cross to yonder hanging quest heaven and hell when life was being snuffed out, looked on the Lord Jesus Christ and said, Lord, remember me, and was converted. I think of the story of the conversion of Hyman Appelman, a brilliant Jewish lawyer who at age 14 came to America from Russia, couldn't say a word, started in the first grade, by the age 20 had his law degree and had to have a special dispensation to be admitted to the bar to practice law before he was 21 years of age in the state of Illinois. I think of the conversion of Marty Alexandra, dance band leader, a young friend of mine, the outstanding young man I've ever known, who is today the pastor of a fine Baptist church. I think of the conversion of Stuart Hamlin, a man who wrote, I won't go hunting with you, Jake, but I'll go chasing women. So you, you, you put them hound dogs back in the cage and put your silly grinning. And in less than one year, wrote it is no secret what God can do. What he's done for others, he'll do for you. What happens? You can talk about a downward stumble on an upward progression, a temporary evolutionary lag, but the Bible says that what's wrong with men is that they are unequivocally lost. You can talk about a profession of faith or going up or believing or responding or joining the church or being baptized or homogenized or pantherized, pasteurized or pantherized. But there's only one thing that happened to Stuart Hamlin. Stuart Hamlin was saved. He met Christ and he was never the same again. But of all the conversions that I've ever heard about. This to me is one of the most exciting, if I believe not the most exciting, in all the world. Four very brief things I want to say to you in closing. Number one, here is a man that knew he was lost. You're never going to be saved until you understand that you're lost. And most Americans have no knowledge of what it means to be lost. I heard a story about a man who went out in the country the other day, and he went up to a house, and he was on fire for the Lord. He wanted to witness. He knocked on the door, and the man came to the door, and he said, sir, he said, are you lost? He said, no, I've been here for 25 years. He said, no, that is what I mean. He said, I mean, are you ready for the judgment? He said, well, I don't know if I'm ready yet or not. When's it going to be? He said, well, nobody knows. Maybe the big day, maybe tomorrow, maybe next year. He said, don't tell my wife. You want to go off three times. Now, a lot of people don't know what it means to be lost. And if you do not comprehend, ladies and gentlemen, that you are lost and need to be saved without any experience of the new birth through faith in Christ and repentance, then there's one of two reasons. You are probably attending a church where you never hear the gospel preach, and you need to change churches. I'm not suggesting you come here, but I'm suggesting that you go somewhere because only through the gospel of Christ and the word of God do men understand that they are lost and need to be saved. Now, most churches go to church, people go to church these days, and they hear glorified weather reports and positive thinking and how to get along with your grandmother, but sin and hell and the new birth and judgment and conversion and the word of Christ. They hear very little of that. It is by the word of God that men understand they are lost and they need to be saved and that they are saved. And then it may be that you have so hardened your conscience that you have no conviction about anything. The Bible says, he that is often reproved and hardeneth his heart shall suddenly be cut off and that without remedy. I warn you this night that if you are at the point in your life when you have, that you have no conviction of wrong and right, no conscience, that you need to turn very quickly, lest the spirit of God depart from you forever and never give you a consciousness, a conviction, an awareness of what it means to be lost. The most important thing that will ever happen to you is that you will come to the time that you realize you're lost and need to be saved. Now, it isn't just enough to be religious. It isn't enough to be a Baptist or a Presbyterian or a Methodist or a Lutheran. It isn't enough just to have a desire and know that you need something. There is innately in all of us the desires to have some kind of fulfillment. People realize they need something. People are looking in hippieism and yippieism and materialism and Confucianism. I wish you can't translate that. And we're trying Mohammedism and Muslimism and rheumatism and every kind of ism. But I submit to you that what this world needs more than anything else is a good old -fashioned dose of the gospel, of people understanding they are lost and need to be saved. Thank God this man had that much sense. Now, most people these days are very religious and intellectually they know a lot of religious terms, but the honest, clear -cut divisiveness of the gospel in wherein some are lost without Christ and some are saved with Christ has never come to them. If I understand the story of the parable of the sin virgins, it is that probably five out of ten who profess to be righteous do not have the spirit of God within them and may belong. Let me ask you a simple question. Do you know for sure whether or not you've been saved? Has there been a clear -cut, specific, definite time in your life when you have acknowledged, oh God, I am a sinner. Come into my heart. Change my life. I want to be saved. You say, how may I know? You say, how may I know? I'll tell you exactly how you may know. If you have turned from the love of the world and sin and self from Christ and have turned to where you love the things of God and the church and the word of God and you have a taste for spiritual things, you may know that the proof of the pudding is in the eating and you have been saved. Now there are a lot of folks who go to church on Sunday morning. They're very religious. They have their names on the church rolls. the auditorium is beautiful, the seats are commodious, the atmosphere is our condition, the music is professional, the sermon is not long, and yet they're miserable, they squirm, they're unhappy, they just can't wait to get out, they're out of place. Oh, if they'd been fishing or playing golf or watching the movie, the eyes would have sailed by. But when they're tasting spiritual things, the time is interminable. And they really think they're going to die and go to heaven and hocus pocus, they're going to have a new nature, they're going to enjoy heaven and sing about Zion and love Jesus Christ forever and ever and ever. Don't you believe it? The truth of the matter is, you wouldn't be in heaven five minutes until you'd be asking how to get out. You wouldn't be happy. If you do not have a case for spiritual things here, don't deceive yourself, you probably need to be saved. I am firmly convinced that a great majority of the so -called rededications need to be regeneration. I want to be very severe at this point tonight. I'm preaching this way on purpose. You must have a clear -cut, tangible, knowable experience wherein Christ has changed your life. More than a mental assent to a group of facts. This man, thank God, knew he was lost. Secondly, here's a man that wanted to be saved. And I know you're lost is one thing. To want to be saved is something else. Now, I've talked to a lot of people in this world. There are some folks that want to argue. You prove this verse of Scripture to me. You prove God to me. You prove this to me. You prove that to me. And we'll talk about religion. And I've discovered a long time ago that the best thing to do is not to try to prove God or to argue God, but to witness and tell them what Christ has done for you and leave it with the Holy Spirit. I remember the disciples on the Sea of Siberia. One day, the Bible says, a great storm came upon the lake. Jesus Christ was asleep in one corner of the boat. Now, while Christ was sleeping, while the placid waters were sailing by, while all was calm, everything was fine. They didn't need Jesus. Leave him alone. Let him sit in one part of the boat. But when the storm came up, when a catastrophe hit, they got in business, and they came to Christ and said, Good master, we perceive that a high alto -fractal cumulus cloud system has developed over the Gulf of Mexico and the high -pressure system, you see. No, no. They didn't go into a lot of hyperbole. They just said, Help! Save us! We perish! I have found that when men really get curious about their soul's relationship to God, they'll quit arguing theology, they'll quit arguing evolution, they'll quit arguing science, and they'll come to God and they'll get in earnest, and they'll say, God be merciful to me, a sinner. This man wanted to be saved. And I remind you of the fact tonight that it took a catastrophe in his life before he was ready to get in earnest about the salvation of his soul. Number three, here was a man that received the Bible's only answer to the question, What must I do to be saved? The Bible says that when he came in and said, Sir, tell me, what must I do to be saved? He got right to the point there was no tomorrow. He made business. So all was gone for him. The Apostle Paul said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. Now let me repeat. He received the Bible's only answer as to how to be saved when he said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. On the day of Pentecost, the disciples were preaching. People were responding, and some of them came and said, Men and brethren, what must we do? And they said, Repent and be baptized. Those instructions to repent and be baptized were not an answer to the question, What must I do to be saved? The only answer the Bible gives to that question is to believe on Christ. That answer came in response to the question, What must we do, period, not to be saved? You see, they called them brethren. They had responded to Christ. They had been saved in the congregation. They came forward. They had received the Lord. They had believed on him in faith, and they came confessing him. And they said, Men and brethren, you see, they had already embraced him as their brethren. What must we do? And they said, Repent and be baptized. In other words, now that you've been saved, change the way you live and join the church. If a man comes up to me and says, I believed on Christ. I've just been saved. What must I do now? I would say, repent and be baptized. Now that you've been saved, change the way you live and join the church. This man was not asking, what must I do now? He was saying, what must I do to be saved? He wasn't saved yet. The only answer the Bible gives to this question is, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and I shall be saved. Let's look at it briefly. He says, believe. I'm glad that he did. He didn't say save money, because some are poor. He didn't say become educated, because some cannot do that. He didn't say live well, because most of us are spiritual paupers. He didn't say be good, because most of us are not good. But there is one thing that is common to all men, the capacity that is inherent in human nature, the ability to believe. I remember when I was in school, and they started in arithmetic at the point of fractions. One day the teacher said, now we're going to talk about fractions. And she put up on the board, one -third plus one -half, and said, now add that up. Well, I added it and got two -fifths. She said, no, you have to find a common denominator, one low number into which each of the bottom numbers will go. And that was six. And so I learned that the answer to that was three -sixths, and two -sixths was made five -sixths. There must be a common denominator. And just as Jesus Christ, the God -man, was the common denominator between God and man, so it was that in the ability to believe, in faith, that Christ will come into your life, that He is the Savior, to affirm, to receive, to trust, to connect. That all men, everywhere, can be saved. You can believe. You did not know that Dale Evans would be here tonight, and yet you came to hear her sterling testimony, because in faith, you exercised the ability to believe. You stood at the altar and said, do you receive this man or woman to be your husband or wife? And you said, I do. You did not know they would make a good husband or wife. You just thought they would. You accepted it in faith. You believed they would. You said, I do. And by that simple act of your will, of your believing, they became yours. In the same way, when by a simple act of your will, you believe on Christ, and commit your life to Him, the Bible says, you shall be saved. Now, I want you to remember that he did not say, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. He said, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. There are a lot of people in this world that believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, I want to be very careful at this point. I'm very happy to say that as a result of part of our inner city ministry, that in First Baptist Church, there are black and white. There are rich and poor. There are the educated and the illiterate. There are those who come from fashionable homes, and there are those who come from the streets as well. And many times, when I talk to the flower children, the street kids, the hippies, I find a universal belief in Jesus Christ. Sure, I want to join the church. Sure, I'll be baptized. Sure, I accept Him. Sure, I believe in Jesus. Man, He's the going thing. They even have Jesus free. Everybody believes in Jesus. That's not what I'm talking about. It's more than that. It doesn't mean to say, sure, I believe in Jesus. Man, He's a gas. And then go back into drugs and sacks. To believe on Christ is to commit yourself to Him. And there can be no saving faith in Christ without repentance and turning from sin. You do not turn to something without turning from something else. Now, I do not know how this thing holds me up. I can stand down there on the floor all night and say, I believe in that platform. But it'll never hold me up until I trust my weight to it. Now, I am believing on it. I'm committing myself to it. I have a car in the parking garage. I believe in it. I believe in it 100%. But it'll never get me home until I believe on it. When I get in it and I say, now I'm committing myself to it, now take me there, I get home. You can stand back there and read the Apostles' Creed. You can recite your church's affirmation until you're blue in the face and never be saved. It's not enough to say, I believe in Christ. You must believe on Him. That's why we have an invitation. That's why we say, all right, then come forward. Then confess Him before men. Then do something about it. Some proof. Commit yourself to Him and change your life. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Take up His cross. Give yourself to Him. Receive Him in faith and thou shalt be saved. Now the last word is this. Did it work? Oh, what a simple solution. There are those who say, Preacher, it is too simple. I remind you that the Bible says God has chosen the foolish things of this world or in this world's eyes to confound the wise. Sure it's simple. Sure it's easy. Is it too easy? Is that why you missed it? There are hundreds and thousands of persons and many of whom may be in this building tonight. They love the Lord intellectually. They know he was a wonderful man. They sense his presence in a great congregation. They believe in him as they believe in other great teachers. But their life has never been changed by a personal encounter with Christ. The only way that happens is when you give him the Lordship of your life. Completely. Not as Miss Evans said, a fire insurance policy to keep you out of hell, but the Lord of your life day after day day after day. That's all that he did. That's just that simple. Did it work? The Bible says, listen, and immediately he was baptized he and all his house. After he believed, he was obedient. Now baptism doesn't wash away your sins. It cannot save you, but ladies and gentlemen, it is the first step in obedience after you're saved. Putting on a ring doesn't make me married, but it's the first thing I wanted to do to show I had been married. And baptism is the first step of obedience after I've accepted Christ. Then I join the church, I read the word of God, I give, I partake, I grow as a Christian. This simple thing so changed his life that he began explicitly to do the will of God. He was obedient. And then I want you to notice that he went back and undid the wrong he had done. It was he who had administered the beating. It was he who had laid the stripes on their back until it was emaciated time after time when the cat of nine tails tore into the back of the apostles. And immediately when all he did was believe on Christ, nobody told him to do it, it was instinctive with him. He knew he was the Christ. He could do nothing else. His heart that had been sealed against God was so moved with a compulsive love for God that instantaneously he started washing their back. He started administering a soothing balm on those souls. That was the first tangible thing he could get his hands on to undo what he had done all of his life. And the last word is this. He set and meet before the apostles, before Paul, before Silas, all his house, he had the preacher over for supper. Now when you do that, man, you've got religion. You've got religion. Now you know what I think they have? I can get. Maybe beans, cornbread, fried okra, and big purple and big purple and that's he. That's he. Now you see, he unged what he had done. He began to love the people of God. He was obedient and the Bible says he rejoiced with all his heart. I cannot understand our first so -called Christians. I'm going to tell you from beginning to end in the story of my life and conversion from jazz to Jesus as a professional dance band leader that I'll give tomorrow night how Christ changed me. I want you to know that the fake, phony, plastic, same, show business grin that I had as a dance band leader was replaced by the genuine love of Christ in my heart.