MEMORABLE QUOTES FROM SERMONS #3: Ian Paisley, 1968-- "60 Minutes To Go!"

Albie's note: I like the fiery Northern Irish Protestant preacher Ian R. K. Paisley [Born 1926.]  This Brother has been thrown in jail, vilified, harangued and slandered more times than we American Christians can even contemplate. 

This excerpt is transcribed from a 1968 sermon entitled "60 Minutes To Go."  I'd love for you to read this, but I'd be even happier if you'd listen to the entire sermon, which is avaible in audio form HERE. For one thing, Dr. Ian's powerful and thundering Irish voice adds a really indescribable dimension.

...And, friend, you are not saved. Some of you have sat under gospel preaching all your days and you are not saved. And you have got old and grey headed under gospel preaching, but you are not saved. And so tonight I would appeal to you in God’s name, 60 minutes to go! But, praise God, you can be saved tonight. You can turn to Christ and be saved!


When I was a student studying for the ministry I visited often in a home and there was a dear old lady in that home. She was an Irish Presbyterian, one of the old "blue stocking Presbyterians," knew the catechism backside forward, not only the Shorter, but the Larger! She was a real old Presbyterian, but she wasn’t saved. I used to call her "grandmother." And she took ill and I went out to see her and I climbed up the stairs and went in to her room.

She said, “Ian, I am glad to see you.”


And we talked about many things and then I opened the Bible. And I said, “Grandmother, I would like to talk to you about the Lord.” And then the atmosphere got very tense and I read to her about Nicodemus and what the Lord said, “You must be born again.” And I said to her as tenderly as I could, I said, “Grandmother, you would need to be born again.”


She was very angry. She said, “Ian, you had no right to come here and tell me that.” She said, “You know just how I think about these things. And I don’t go in for this salvation business and I don’t go in for this new birth business.” She said, “I was baptized in the
Presbyterian Church and I have attended it all my life! I never did anybody any harm. I am a good, straight, honest woman. I am 76 years of age.” And she said, “If anybody will get into heaven, I will!”


I said, “Grandmother, I want to tell you it will not be heaven you will be in. You will be in hell.”


And I said, “I know after today our friendship is finished. I know that. I know after today you will not want to talk to me,” but I said, “Grandmother, some day you and me will be at God’s Judgment Bar and it would be a terrible thing if you turned around to me and said, ‘Ian Paisley visited in my home and talked to me and never told me I needed to be saved!’”


So I said, “I have come to tell her.”


She said, “You can go.”


So I set my book and I went to the door of the house. I discerned a little tear in Grandmother’s eye so I stood in the doorway and I said, “Grandmother, is that final? Are you saying goodbye not to me, but to Jesus today?”


She burst out into tears. She said, “Ian, could Jesus wash away 76 years of sinning and receive me, an old woman that rejected him all my life? Could he do that??”


I said, “Praise God he can do that!”


And I went back into the room and I knelt down and I took her frail hand in mine and I prayed and I said, “Lord, Jesus, here is grandmother, 76 years of age, a Christ rejecter, a religious woman, a good woman from the standards of the world, but as far as you are concerned a rejecter of your Son and she wants to come to you.”


And grandmother prayed the sinners prayer and came to Jesus, got gloriously saved!


Not long afterwards she passed the river and she said to the Presbyterian minister-- he was an old apostate-- he knew nothing about the gospel. She said when she was dying-- and, of
course, she was a good churchwoman and paid into the church and he would have done anything for her-- she says, “I want Ian Paisley to preach at the grave side!”


He says, “What do you want him for?”



I had a bad reputation even in those days, 22 years ago. I never had a good reputation in my life. [Laughter.]


She says, “I just want him to preach at the grave.”


So I went to the funeral and he went over his antics in the house, for that is all you could call them. He was an old sinner himself, knew nothing about the gospel, led his congregation to hell, made jokes about gospel preachers, laughed at "Bible Thumpers" as he
called them. But at the graveside I was there and he said to me, “This woman told me that you were to preach at the grave side.”


I said, “Sir, that is what I intend to do.”


So he stood there like a stuffed mummy and I preached the gospel hot and strong. And after I had finished I said, “Man, I am going to tell you a wee story. I am going to tell you what Grandmother would have told you if she had been here.”


And I told how I led grandmother to the Lord. You should have seen those big men standing and the tears running down their cheeks as I told bout 76 years of sins going under the blood.


It is a great thing, isn’t it?

PEACE

TOUCHING THE HEM OF HIS GARMENT