"Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?

"Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city:

"That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar.

"Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation.

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!

"Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.

"For I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord."–Matt. 23:33—39. I had preached one night on Hell, and a large number had been saved. A lady was waiting for me as I came from the inquiry room.

She said, "Oh, it was terrible!"

"What was terrible?" I asked.

"That sermon! It was awful!"

"Yes, Hell is an awful place," I said.

But she said, "The idea of your preaching a sermon like that! Jesus preached beatitudes. He said, ‘Blessed are the meek’ and ‘Blessed are the pure in heart’ and ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit.’"

"Yes ma’am, but have you read the entire sermon from which you are quoting?"

"Yes, I have read all the beatitudes," she answered.

"But," I asked, "have you read the entire sermon, the Sermon on the Mount? Have you read the part where Jesus said, ‘If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell’?" (Matt. 5:29,30).

"Oh," she said, "did Jesus say that?"

"Yes, He certainly did. That was His first sermon. Have you ever read His last sermon? Have you read how He stood up in the temple and said, ‘Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?’" (Matt. 23:33).

Occasionally we find people who do not like evangelists because they sometimes tell death-bed stories. Jesus went beyond the deathbed when He told about the rich man who lifted up his eyes in Hell and saw Abraham afar off and Lazarus in his bosom; and the rich man cried, "Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame" (Luke 16:24).

There are a lot of wicked, Hell-deserving sinners, and some of them are sentimental, worldlyminded ministers, who say that God is too good to send people to Hell, that His love precludes such a place as the Hell of the Bible.

I suppose they think they know more about love than He whose name is Love; than He who so loved the world that He gave Himself to die on a cruel cross and endured the infinite wrath of a holy God!

I suppose they think they know more about love than He who was so filled with compassion that He cried to the weeping friends along the way as He bore the heavy wooden cross on His lacerated back, "Weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children"! (Luke 23:28).

I suppose they think they know more about love than Jesus, because Jesus said, "Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?"

Jesus had more to say about Hell than anybody else in the Word of God. Of all of Jesus’ disciples, the one who wrote more about Hell was that disciple who is called "the disciple of love," the Apostle John. Under divine inspiration, John wrote of the "lake which burneth with fire and brimstone."

I know that the so-called Jehovah’s Witnesses and some others will tell you that when Jesus spoke about Hell, He used the Greek word Gehenna. It is true that in some instances He did, but He had reference to the same place He called Hades in other passages.

Gehenna or Ge-Hinnom, as it is in the Hebrew, is the Valley of Hinnom, southeast of Jerusalem. Here the ancients worshipped the god Molech. They practiced the most abominable ceremonies imaginable; they even practiced prostitution as a religious ceremony. Little babies born as a result of these religious orgies were sacrificed to this awful god, a great bronze image which they kept heated almost white-hot. They would pull a lever, and the mouth of the image would open, and the little babies were cast on the inside of this image.

The valley was also called Tophet from Toph, meaning a drum, because drums were beaten to drown out the cries of burning babies.

When Josiah became king in Jerusalem and had the temple renovated, they discovered, of all things, the Law of the Lord which had been neglected and lost. Josiah had a public reading of the Law, and it brought a revival, and in the wake of the revival there was a reformation.

Josiah destroyed the worship of Molech and turned the Valley of Hinnom into the city dumping grounds. Here the dead bodies of malefactors were cast, and the dead bodies of animals were thrown, and the sewers of Jerusalem emptied their filthy contents into the valley. A fire was kept burning in the valley to devour the filth. That valley became a symbol of everything that is heinous, abominable and bad.

During the inter-testament period the Jews made it a symbol of Hell. When Jesus spoke of Hell, at least on one occasion, He used the well-known figure, but He did not confine His remarks about Hell to figurative language. He also used the Greek word Hades, which is the equivalent of the Hebrew word sheol, the place of the departed.

Moreover, He described the suffering of the rich man in Hades. Jesus Christ, Love Incarnate, preached Hell, and He did not pull His punches.

He said, "These shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal" (Matt. 25:46).

He spoke of Hell as a place of outer darkness where there shall be "wailing and gnashing of teeth" (Matt. 13:42).

He asked the hypocrites, "How can ye escape the damnation of hell?" (Matt. 23:33).

Do not slander God by saying there is no Hell. He is a holy God, so holy that He would sink every sinner who ever lived into Hell forever before He would do wrong. But He is so merciful that He came and took our Hell for us so that we might be saved from Hell.

After Jesus preached the scathing denunciations of Mat-thew 23, He turned around with a broken heart and, I believe with hot tears in His holy eyes, cried, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!"

‘I would…but ye would not.’ "Ye will not come to me, that ye might have life"! I believe that God is sovereign, but I also believe in the free will of man. God calls and man refuses. "We pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God" (II Cor. 5:20).

When you were a little child, you went to Sunday school. One Sunday you came home with a little card in your hand. On that card was a picture of Jesus receiving little children. Underneath the picture were the words, "Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God" (Luke 18:16).

The next Sunday you came home with a picture of Jesus nailed to the cross. Underneath was the golden text of the Bible: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life" (John 3:16).

You were young and your mind was impressionable. It was not easy for you as a little child to push aside the invitation of God’s Spirit. Your feet were tender, and it was not easy for you to walk over those good influences. But you trampled upon them and started a course toward Hell. Nay, thank God! Some of you came to Christ at the first opportunity as you reached the age of accountability.

I do not believe that there must be a gap in the life of an individual after he becomes accountable to God before he can accept Christ as his Saviour, a period when he must of necessity go to Hell if he should die before he is not old enough to be saved. I believe that little children need to be born again when they come to a realization that they are sinners.

Where did the idea come from that a child must be twelve years of age before he can get converted? I believe in getting children saved when they are four and five and six years of age so that there need not be a time in their lives when, if they should die, they would be lost.

It is fine to have children’s church, and a graded Sunday school is of a tremendous importance so that various lessons may be adapted to the age level of the different groups. But I also believe that at times little children should be in the regular services of the church and should sit under the thundering of the Word of God from the pulpit.

"Suffer little children to come unto me," said the Saviour.

Some of you came to Jesus when you were little, and you know you are trusting Him and have been born again, although you may not even remember when you first put your trust in Him. If you are saved, of course there was a time when you were born again.

Others of you failed to heed those first pleadings of the Spirit and turned your feet toward Hell. But God said, "I do not want to see that child lost," so He put it in the hearts of friends and loved ones to pray for you.

How I thank God for the prayers of loved ones! Before my father went home to Heaven, his last words were, "It is all right now. Jesus always answers prayer."

I stood by my mother’s dying bed. She had lain for hours without opening her eyes. But suddenly she said, "There are so many of them!"

I leaned over her bed and asked, "So many what, Mother?"

"There are so many flowers. Aren’t they beautiful!"

I looked at the flowers in the room and said, "Yes, Mother, they are beautiful." But I knew that she had not seen those flowers.

Then she opened her eyes and said, "And there are so many angels!"

"Yes, Mother, there are many angels."

Then she said, "Aren’t the walls beautiful?"

I looked at the cold, grey walls of the hospital room and saw nothing beautiful about them; but I knew she was talking about walls I could not see; so I said, "Yes, Mother, they are beautiful."

Then my mother went to sleep and woke up on the other side of those jasper walls.

The verbally inspired, inerrant Word of God, the Holy Bible, was placed in your pathway, and you have had to neglect it to continue your downward journey. It may lie on a table a bit covered with dust, or it may be stuck back on a shelf untouched and unread, but it brings conviction to your heart. You cannot look upon it without conviction. You may not be willing to admit your conviction. Men invent all kinds of cults and false systems in their effort to throw conviction aside. They mistreat the Bible in so many ways.

The atheist denies it. The skeptic doubts it. The modernist dilutes it. The liberal–whether an admitted liberal or a neo-orthodox professor–also waters it down. The cultist wrests it to his own destruction. The worldling shuns it. The papist misinterprets it. Men supplant it–the Buddhist with the old vedic literature of the Hindus, the Mohammedan with the Koran, and the communist with Das Kapital.

But in spite of all the misuse and abuse dealt the Word of God, it stands, as Gladstone said, "the impregnable Rock of Holy Scriptures." It is "quick and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart" (Heb. 4:12).

Some of you have turned deaf ears to the Word of God and have chosen to go on stubbornly and blindly toward Hell.

But Jesus calls again. He calls through the testimony of Christian people, both audible and silent. He calls through the church. Even though a church may be dead or worldly or liberal, the old shell of a building with its spire pointing heavenward may bring conviction to your heart. You are reminded that Jesus went away and left His disciples to bear witness.

Sinner friend, you cannot escape the testimony of the church to the saving grace and power of Jesus.

Driving down the highway, you turn on the radio, and there is a gospel witness. Walk down the street, and perchance someone hands you a gospel tract, or you overhear someone telling a friend what Christ has done for him.

On a plane away above the clouds one day, the cabin door opened, and the captain of our ship came down the aisle and spoke to me: "Are you Dr. Parker? The hostess told me you were on board. She and I both are born-again Christians." He gave a wonderful testimony so that he was heard by all on board the flight.

Once I heard a bus driver testify to those who got on the bus on a two-hundred-mile trip.

It may be that someone has spoken directly to you about your need of Christ. He may have been a stranger, or a friend, or a loved one. Perhaps you heard the message in church. Maybe it was at a funeral. In all probability, you have heard it many times; but if never before, you are hearing it now:

Over all the appeals of Jesus, the sinner stubbornly goes tramp, tramp, tramp on his determined march to an everlasting lake of fire and brimstone. But Jesus keeps on calling. He daily loads you with blessings, and both reason and revelation remind you that "every good gift…is from above."

Providence calls and pleads with you to open your heart to your gracious Benefactor. Gratitude beckons every sinner to come to God, and one must stifle this emotion and sear his conscience to reject the invitation to "the God of all grace."

"It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks" (Acts 9:5). People who go to Hell are intruders. They are usurpers. Hell was not prepared for them. It was "prepared for the devil and his angels" (Matt. 25:41). Jesus said:

"Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:

The Christian struggles against the world, the flesh, and the Devil; but he has the peace of God in his soul. The sinner struggles against Almighty God, and he has no peace. If I have to struggle anyway, I had rather have peace while I struggle. "The way of transgressors is hard" (Prov. 13:15).

Sometimes the sinner must go through great sorrow before God can reach him. "Man’s extremity is God’s opportunity." Many a man has found God in a foxhole. Hardships, sorrow, adversity, financial depression, sickness, injury and the death of loved ones are often God’s envoys calling people to the Saviour.

Down in Pensacola, Florida a young woman was converted in one of my meetings. She came back the next night and asked me to pray for her unsaved husband, saying, "I made a stand for Jesus here last night and went home and told him, and he laughed."

I said, "All right, we will make a covenant. ‘If two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven’ (Matt. 18:19). Let’s ask God to bring pungent conviction to that man’s heart."

She agreed.

We prayed. She came back two nights later and said, "He laughed at me again."

"Let’s pray for him."

We prayed again earnestly. We had a prayer covenant. We took God at His Word. We said, "God is bound to bring conviction into his heart."

Sunday afternoon when I came out of the studio where I was broadcasting, I was called to the phone and asked to come to a certain address. When I got there I found crepe on the door and a crowd of people in the house. I went into the living room, and a casket was over in the corner. I walked over and looked into the casket. I recognized the body of the little woman who had asked me to pray for her husband.

I stood there and said, "Thank God, she was ready. ‘Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints’" (Ps. 116:15).

I looked around, and there stood her husband. I took him by the arm, led him to the sofa, and I said, "Now, listen! I know your heart is broken. I hardly know what to say to you, but I am glad to tell you that your wife was ready. I talked with her. She was a Christian. She is with God."

"I know it. I know it." Then he began to cry.

I put my arm around him and said, "Listen, fellow. I don’t know, but maybe God took her to bring you to Himself."

As I said that, he cried out, "I know it!" Then he looked around as if he were ashamed of his outcry, but again he said, "Yes, I know it."

"Will you trust Jesus?" I asked.

"Not now. Not tonight."

"Now is the time, sir. You need Him tonight," I urged.

He changed the subject and asked, "Would you preach the funeral?"

"Why, of course," I said, "but why don’t you trust Jesus to-night?"

"Not tonight."

"When is the funeral?" I asked.

"Tomorrow morning," he answered. "We want to have a little service here at the home. Then we will go to the cemetery forty miles from here, near the Alabama line, way up there in the old country cemetery in the community where we lived, and we would like to have a longer serv-ice at the grave."

I preached the funeral, and after the interment, I turned around, took the young man by the arm, and we walked off together. I said, "Now, listen! God has been speaking to your heart. Won’t you trust Jesus?"

"I will be out to hear you preach tonight," was his answer.

I said, "Do you feel like coming?"

"Yes, I’ll be there."

"I’m afraid you won’t feel like it. Why don’t you let God save you this morning?"

"I’ll be out tonight."

He came that night and sat through the service. I preached, and the power of God was there. People found Jesus. But that man would not come. He went through a dark valley of sorrow, walked over a casket, trampled upon a shroud, climbed over the body of a little wife, lived his own life; and when he gets to Hell, there in the midst of his suffering, he will have to cry out, "God is love! He wanted to save me. He saved my wife, then took her to Himself in His efforts to reach me. God is just. God is love."

Wait a minute! You will have to climb over a mountain if you go to Hell. It is a little mountain, just a hill; but it is hard to climb. It is in the shape of a skull. On the brow of the hill there is an old rugged cross. On that cross is a bleeding Lamb. Now, thank God, He is on no cross. He is in no tomb. But He once hung on the cross and suffered the agony of Hell for you.

"I must needs go home by the way of the cross." If you go to Heaven, you’ll go by way of the cross. But, friend, if you go to Hell, you’ll go by way of the cross. You’ll go over the cross.

I read of a boy who literally worried his mother to death by the wicked life he lived. After the funeral, his old father, lonesome and blue, was sitting by the fireplace. When the young man came downstairs dressed to go out, the old man said, "Son, where are you going?"

"Father, I have a date."

"Son, you can’t go out and leave me tonight. Son, I need you here."

"Now, Father, cheer up. Mother has gone. There is nothing we can do. And I can’t break my date."

The old man pled, "Son, don’t leave me tonight."

But the boy answered, "I’m going out, Father. Good night."

Again the father said, "Son, you can’t leave me tonight."

When the young man insisted, the old man walked over between his son and the door and said, "Now, listen, Son, you can’t leave me tonight."

The young man said in harsh tones, "Now Mother is gone. There’s nothing I can do. Get out of my way, Dad! I’m going out."

The old man fell down on the floor and said, "If you go out of this house tonight, you’ll walk over my body."

The young fellow stood there, insisting that he get up; but the father lay there. With a curse upon his lips, the boy walked over the body of his father and went out to spend a night in sin.

If you go to Hell, you’ll walk over the crucified body of the suffering Son of God who throws Himself between you and Hell and begs you in lovingkindness and tender mercy to stay back. You’ll have to trample on the blood of Jesus if you go to Hell.

Will you not come to Him now as He stands with open arms and with a heart yearning for your soul’s salvation, and as He speaks again through His word, ‘How often would I have gathered you unto Myself.’